Tropical Rains Moving In

As usual, I forgot about yesterday's flat until 10 minutes before I had to roll out the door this morning, and the result was that I didn't actually hit the road until nearly 6:10. I knew I'd be late for the long Tuesday ride, and as I time-trialed my way to the Levee I noticed that it was much too dark for that time of the morning. There were already a lot of dark menacing clouds to the East and South blowing in from the big Tropical Storm out in the Gluf. The latest storm track puts it on a collision course with the city, which will mostly mean a lot of rain over the next few days. There's also another storm moving into the Gulf from the Atlantic that is likely to become a hurricaine over the next few days, so here we go again! The mayor of Grand Isle has already issued an evacuation order.

But for the moment, it was still dry and after chasing the group for a couple of miles, I finally made contact somewhere past the bridge. I hung onto the back for a while to recover and soon the pace started creeping up. A few riders turned back because of the threat of rain, but I figured I'd go ahead and ride today because tomorrow was looking like a real wash-out anyway. Before I knew it there were just Todd, Eddie and me and the pace was still going up. The rest of the group hovered half a minute behind us. When Eddie and Todd started taking their pulls at 29-30, I started skipping mine. A tailwind is nice and all, but I didn't want to be so blown up that I'd have to call a taxi to get me home from Destrehan. The pace eventually settled down into the 26-27 mph range, at which point I happily returned to the rotation. When we finally made the turn-around and the survivors regrouped, we took it pretty easy for a long time. In the distance, we could see nothing but black rain clouds hovering over the city. We were going to get wet. The only questions were how long and how wet.

It started as a light rain. By now we were cruising along in the mid-20s, fighting a light headwind and staggered a bit to avoid some of the wheel spray kicking up from the lead riders. By the time we hit the River Ridge area, though, the warm summer rain had turned into a heavy downpour. I could feel the huge drops stinging my thighs and there was a steady stream of water coming through the vents in my helmet. My socks were already soaked and after a while I stopped trying to avoid the wheel spray since there was nothing left to salvage. Thankfully, it eased back down to a steady drizzle by the time I got home where I stripped naked in the basement and threw the whole mess into the washer. I put the helmet and shoes in front of the fan for the day and then it was Fire Drill time to get cleaned up in time to walk the five or six blocks to catch the 9:00 shuttle for the Health Sciences Center. By the time I got there, my feet were soaked from wading through some flodded spots on the sidewalk, but I had a dry pair stashed in my messenger bag, so at least I wouldn't have wet feet all day at work.

I am supposed attend an important meeting in Baton Rouge tomorrow with one of my coworkers, and we just discovered that what we thought was going to be a 1-hour meeting is actually an all-day "retreat" starting at 9 a.m., so as far as I'm concerned, it can just rain like hell tomorrow because I won't be able to ride anyway! Right now the rain is pounding my window at work and showing no sign of stopping. Gotta love it!

There was a little drama at the Tour de France Team Time Trial this morning when the U.S. rider on CSC, Zabriskie, crashed just a couple of kilometers before the finish. CSC ended up finishing two seconds down on Discovery, and I'm sure they would have won if not for the moment of confusion caused by that crash. Zabriskie had won the Stage 1 time trial. Because of the way the TTT rules work, he now drops all the way back to 53rd, 1:28 down. That's gotta suck. I really like being able to listen to the live commentary via eurosport.com while at the same time reading the real-time updates on cyclingnews.com. Don't need no stinkin' digital Cox Cable secret decoder box, thank you.