tRain Delay

Ahhhh, Friday!

There were still little pools of water here and there in the street this morning, remnants of yesterday evening's thunder and lightning show. When I got back from work it was raining pretty hard so I ran up into the attic to see if I could make a good assessment of the little leak that's been slowly making a mark in my bedroom ceiling (directly over MY side of the bed, of course). Alas, not a trace of water there. Lots of traces of rats, to be sure, but no leaks. I suspect a strong East wind and an all-day rain is needed before any water gets through, so I'll move it to the very crowded back burner for now.

But I digress.

At 6:40 a.m. there were only Bob P. and myself up on the levee. Reo rode by and stopped for a minute, but his clock was ticking and he had to go. We rolled down the levee and picked up three others before the playground, but when we got there one of the guys was standing on the side of the bike path with two innertubes in his hand looking rather despondent. Being a Friday, we all stopped to render aid, and it was a good 15 minutes and yet another blown inner tube before the issue was resolved. It seems that the cheap rim strip had a hole in it and one of the spokes was protruding through enough to puncture the tube(s). Anyway, we finally got going and had a nice recovery ride, keeping the pace around 20 mph. Matt C. and I rode at the front the whole way chatting about various things. Matt's just finishing up a summer session at one of the local universities, and after a little vacation in Florida will be heading back up to Oxford, MS where he's a student at Ole' Miss. He was bemoaning the fact that Christian Leask won't be there this Fall. If I were he, I think I'd be bemoaning the fact that I was going to be taking Organic Chemistry! Between the slow pace and the tire-repair session, I was running pretty late by the time we got back, but I decided to stay on the bike path all the way to the Corps of Engineers building rather than deal with bumpy Oak St.

Wouldn't you know it? Just as we approach the Corps building where I turn off, a train comes by. It turned out to be a really long one, too, and as I was riding around in little circles waiting I was hoping it wouldn't stop because it was mostly a long string of unloaded flat cars designed to hold those big ship containers. Luckily, it kept rolling and I finally made it home about half an hour late.

The house next door to me just went up on the market, and when I looked out the back window this morning I was surprised to see a woman and two kids in the back yard. Hopefully it will sell to a nice family with lots of money who will improve the property value. That's my strategy, you see. Have a poorly maintained house in a good neighborhood so that the neighbors' houses help keep your property value up.

Tomorrow is the Delta Racing Stage Race in Baton Rouge. Actually it's really neither a real stage race nor in Baton Rouge, per se, but close enough I guess. I'm not holding out much hope for this one since there's an opening Time Trial that's around 8 miles which means I'll probably start out pretty low in the overall. There's only one other stage, a road race the same afternoon, and although it has two time bonus hot spots and pretty big time bonuses for the finish places, it'll be hard to make up enough time to compensate for my usually mediocre time trial. Beats sitting on the couch, though!

Ran across a funny little website showing all the different ways riders in the TDF were dealing with their sunglasses on one of the big climbs. When you're climbing like that, you're going so slowly that the sweat drips all over your glasses and eventually you have to take them off so you can see. The problem with the Oakleys, however, it that they don't fold up, so you have to find some place to stash them where they won't fall, but won't get in the way either. Personally, I use the Padrnos method most of the time, and the Armstrong method other times.

Much reaction locally to an article that ran in the local paper entitled "Armstrong's achievements good, not great." I can't say that I disagree too strongly with the author on most points, except when he starts trying to make comparisons and writes:

"Furthermore, Armstrong's career accomplishments don't even put him on par with athletes such as Jack Nicklaus (18 major golf titles), Pete Sampras (the all-tennis leader in Grand Slam titles with 14) and Tiger Woods (10 major golf titles)."
"Is Armstrong's streak of Tour de France titles more impressive than Edwin Moses' 102-race winning streak in the 400-meter hurdles, or Martina Navratilova's mark of six consecutive women's singles titles at Wimbledon?

"No."

Now that's just total bullshit, but I guess it will endear him to the local beer drinking golf club crowd. That was, after all, the whole point.