Thanks Ben!

The minute that Ben S. cancelled this weekend's track meet, I knew we were in the clear. Indeed, as hurricane Dennis traversed Cuba it lost most of its punch, emerging into the Gulf of Mexico as a relatively mediocre Category 2 hurricane. Since then, the projected path has solidified and the consensus is that it will make landfall around Pensacola, which is a good 200 miles to the East. As a result, I'm expecting a relatively nice day tomorrow with a nice North wind and maybe even some slightly drier and cooler air. Bullet dodged! The only question now is how badly my dad's house in Ft. Walton will get hit.

When I got up this morning, I made a quick check of the Weather Channel, and headed out to the Lakefront for the Giro ride. Just as I got to Robt. E. Lee Blvd, a couple of blocks from the lake, I ran into Eddie. He said that Lakeshore Drive was closed and that the police had just run him off, so we headed down to the Casino bridge to await the group, picking up Jeff along the way. We waited for a long time up on top of the bridge before the group finally showed up. The group didn't seem too energetic as it worked its way down Hayne into a moderate headwind, but after turning on to Paris Rd. it picked up quickly and we hammered all the way down to Chef Highway. After a while I drifted back to toward the back of the group, but as we approached the last couple of miles I noticed that a small group had split off the front. There was a sporatic chase, a few solo attempts to bridge, but eventually the headwind killed everything off and it came back together before the turnaround. My legs, which had felt pretty dead earlier, seemed to be feeling better now and it wasn't long after the turnaround that the speeds started creeping upward. For once we got the green light and so the group approached the Goodyear sign sprint at full-bore. I was stationed near the front, not really committed to a sprint, when Howard looked back at me and patted his butt - the international sign for "stick to my wheel." About 200 meters from the line Howard took off with me glued to his wheel. By the finish he had taken us up to 40 mph and I had one of those rare occasions to check out the 12. It was a nice ride back, for the most part, and I sprinted up both of the bridges, but when I looked back at the bottom of the second one, there was practically nobody back there. A few of us rode back together, but we never saw most of the group again.

The Tour de France looked like it must have been pretty good toward the end. A couple of guys held off the pack by a few seconds, but Lance stayed with the small lead group. Unfortunately, Hincapie came off on the last climb and finished with the second group, moving him down to about 8th on GC. I'm sure that much will be said about how Lance ended up without any teammates on that climb.