Thick Air

Up on the levee this morning the air was so thick with moisture you could hardly see through it. Over to the east, the haze reduced the rising sun to little more than a dull orange ball. A typical Monday group eventually materialized nonetheless, and with the addition of John R on his TT bike and Rob K, the pace was a bit faster than usual. At some point one of the guys said to me, "I thought Monday was supposed to be the easy ride." Actually, it never got really fast, but the steady 23 mph pace was a couple of mph faster than usual. Like much of the country, we're mired under a huge high pressure system right now. Combined with the moist tropical air blowing up from the Gulf, it can make things pretty miserable around here. In fact, we're under a "heat advisory" right now. This is the one time of the year when people in New Orleans actually start wishing it would rain.

I put a bunch of nice photos from last Saturday's criterium up on the NOBC website. Perhaps I'll get some more later this week. I took a bunch myself, but they really don't compare with the ones taken by the folks with the really nice cameras. The one above is the only one I took that is different, mainly just because it's kind of interesting. I worked through the results at some point today and have the LCCS points standings about ready to go, I just need to find out when one of the riders who was unattached the last time he raced joined the TCF club so I can assign appropriate points to the club standing. I am thinking that next year I may push to use only the club affiliation listed on the USCF database for LCCS purposes. Having to track this stuff down is a pain, and you never really know if the club is stretching the truth in order to add a few more points to it's total. In order to really do this stuff right I'm going to need a database rather than the Excel workbook I'm using now, especially if the number of riders increases.