Long Weekend Coming

I've been a regular on the morning Levee rides for the last couple of years, and like a number of the other regulars, I've got the timing pretty much down to a science. Usually, if you arrive three minutes early, nobody is there. If you arrive three minutes late, they're gone. Nearly everyone seems to appear within the same three or four minutes. This usually works out great, since I can savor every last minute of sleep in the morning, but if you throw in any sort of unexpected delay, however trivial, all bets are off.

I headed out the door this morning right on cue, and everything was going according to schedule until I heard the horn. As Willow Street closed in on River Road, the train running along the river and I were on a perfect intercept path. I was only about a minute from the crossing when I heard the horn sound. I sprinted for the turn at the end of Willow Street, but just as I came around the corner, the engine rolled across the road right in front of me. Luckily the train was a short one and the group was still hanging around on top of the levee watching me trying to find a break in the backed-up traffic on River Road.

Friday is always an easy day, and today was no exception. With the hot and humid mornings we've had lately, nobody seemed too energetic anyway, so we put in the miles, chatted a bit, and that was that. The path was wet with rain near the city, so we had just missed a little shower. When I made the sharp left turn off of the bike path, I felt a little squiggle under my rear tire and knew without looking what it was. I was running dangerously low on air but just really, really, really didn't want to stop and change the tube. It's only a couple of miles to the house from there, so I stood up the rest of the way to keep the weight off of the rear wheel and actually made it home before it went completely flat. I'll bet I forget to fix it tonight!

I'm still pretty undecided about going to the track meet tomorrow. My front track tire needs to be re-glued rather badly, so there's no way I would ride it. I could always substitute one of my clinchers, I guess, but somehow spending the whole day at the Velodrome - there are morning and evening sessions - getting my ass handed to me just isn't seeming like what I want to do. I guess I'm in some kind of a funk anyway because motivation is generally lacking all-around.

We're supposed to spend Sunday and Monday out in the country at a friend's summer house up around Franklinton, so I'll bring the bike and do a couple of long solo rides, I think, which means I'll miss the little group ride that the club is putting together to scout out the road race course for the upcoming Mad Potter's race. July is going to be a long hot month and I'm already feeling pretty tapped-out. At least I know it will be deadly quiet around the office today. The day before a holiday weekend at a University means that by 3 p.m. it will be a ghost town for sure. Should give me a chance to finish up that blasted Semiannual Lobbying Report that is already overdue. What a ridiculous waste of time!