The Tour de La Approaches!

Thanks to the efforts of many of our club members, things are coming together for the upcoming Tour de Louisiane, June 18-19. The online registrations are beginning to tickle in as usual and the local riders are asking about course maps and scheduling weekend rides to check out the road course. For those of us involved with making this little event happen, it is both exciting and frightening. I will need to check on the event permit and insurance today to make sure nothing has gone astray, but my main responsibility is to get the race bible finalized and printed and make sure I have everything in place to get the results done quickly.

We did an easy Friday ride today, which was nice considering it was hot and humid and looks like it will stay that way for a while (like probably until September). The Daughter is heading back to Iowa City early tomorrow morning, accompanied by this huge guy from Iowa who is driving up with her. Yesterday's long ride was pretty fast, which was just what the doctor ordered after having a dinner meeting that involved $120 worth of wine and a nearly $500 hit to my checking account. Hopefully that reimbursement will go through quickly! The hot weather is making me feel kind of lethargic and it's nice to have that extra motivation of a group ride to get me out the door in the morning. I've missed the last three Wednesday training races and I really feel it. I NEED those evening races and never seem to quite get in shape if I miss too many of them. I heard the one this week had a pretty good group, so that's encouraging. Of course, I would have made it there if I hadn't been at "Restaurant August" on Tchoupitoulas Street at the time with a couple of consultants and Tulane folks. The place was actually pretty nice, and the service was very good. The food was more along the lines of "designer food." You know, the kind where they charge extra for dribbling various sauces onto the otherwise empty places on your plate in order to disguise the fact that there really isn't all that much actual food there. I had "Crispy seared blackfish over parsley root, lobster-parsley salad, lobster jus." I don't know what "jus" is but maybe it's just chef-speak for the stuff that drips out of the lobsters they served to other folks.

Gina called last night to see if I was still alive. She won a little criterium town in Tucson last weekend and there are a whole bunch of photos of her linked from the azcycling website. After the women's race she rode the Cat. 1,2,3 race and got bumped off the road into the bushes by some guy who also landed, considerably less elegantly, in the bushes. I think the photo she liked the best was the one where she is checking out the fallen rider to make sure he hadn't broken anything or punctured a lung. Nice to have a med student in the field.

Meanwhile, Kenny B has been traveling all over the country hitting some of the big criteriums. He actually made it onto the podium (3rd Place) at the big CSC Invitational in Arlington (Cat. 1/2) and finished well at Somerville too. I'm impressed. Makes my own pitiful existence seem rather more insignificant of course. That's Kenny in the middle of the photo wearing the red helmet and blue jersey.

Hopefully we'll have a few folks who want to do a ride on the "Tour Course" on Sunday. There's a group going on Saturday but I won't be able to make that since I'd like to see The Daughter off in the morning. It looks like a few riders are interested in going up there on Sunday too, so that would be good since I'd like to check out the course and the parking situation myself. We'll be using the field adjacent to the Health Club for parking this year, so I hope that works out OK. It will be much more convenient for everyone since it will be right at the start/finish line.