Homeless in Dallas

So I guess we are officially refugees now. All indications are that the city will be evacuated and that the infrastructure won't be functional for four to eight weeks, at best. We're lucky to be staying with The Wife's sister in Flower Mound, TX at a nice house in a very exclusive golf course subdivision called Tour 18 where people happily spend $800 a month to water the landscaping. Too bad I don't play golf! My currently accessible possessions include two pairs of jeans, five shirts, four pair of underwear, a couple of jerseys and riding shorts, my bike, and little else. I'm sure there are thousands more in the same situation. One of the neighbors came by today with a bag full of clothes for The Wife, and everyone has been very kind. The Mom has been pretty much of a nervous wreck, but I think she is slowly beginning to accept the reality of the situation. It is difficult, to be sure, and the uncertainty is particularly troubling. The rampant looting and general lawlessness of the relatively small number of scumbags still out roaming the streets is, for lack of a better word, sad. For what it's worth, know that most of the population of New Orleans is as disgusted by it as anyone - probably more so.

It has been quite comforting to hear from the other area riders, most of whom are scattered around Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. There are a number of them who haven't reported in to the NOBC e-mail list, of course, and I hope they are safe and sound somewhere - and that they brought their bikes with them!

The brother in law is supposed to be leaving New Orleans in the morning. It is a very dangerous place to be right now, on many levels. The flood waters have begun to recede a bit and federal, state and local agencies will soon descend upon the city to begin the recovery effort. I will try to get in a good ride every day, but it will be mainly for the psychological benefit now. There are some very nice roads here around Flower Mound and although I have to get in the car and drive a mile or two to a place where I can start my rides because of a narrow busy highway that's just too dangerous to use, there are some nice rolling hills around here and it is pretty pleasant in the morning. There is a nice weekend training ride as well, so I will probably try to make that if I can. If I cannot get in touch with anyone at Tulane who can find me something useful to do, I may go see if I can find some temporary work around here.

We are hoping that by the weekend some sort of plan and timetable for the recovery and return efforts in New Orleans will have begun to take shape and we will at least be able to make some plans. I have still been unable to contact any of my co-workers at Tulane, and am hoping that Tulane will find another university soon that can host the tulane.edu mail so that communications can get going again. Cellphones continue to be useless for anyone in the 504 area code and the land lines went down some time during the day today.

We are holding out some faint hope that the house escaped major flooding and looting. It is a raised house, about 6 feet off the ground with an unfinished "basement," as we call such things in New Orleans. The property is slightly higher than most of the surrounding neighborhood as well, and has never flooded in any of what we used to call the "big" floods. If we got a few feet of water in the basement, it would not be a huge problem, since there is little down there of significant value, the walls are unfinished, half of the floor is dirt and most of the electricals are three or four feet high. Anyway, I dare not hope for too much.

I had a long talk with The Daughter in Iowa City this evening. She has been making a scrap book on the hurricane for us. I must admit that I have begun to avoid watching too much of the reporting coming out of the city at this point. It is just too depressing. But it is late and I am tired and as Scarlet said in her fabricated Hollywood South accent, "Tomorrow is another day."

Herring Gas team update

As I suspected, the Herring Gas guys, along with Realdo, were (are?) stranded in Miami. The plan is to get to Brookhaven MS where Frank M. lives. Kenny B. is recruiting guys to try and sneak back into the city on bikes to do a quick assessment. He recommends being well armed.

Otherwise, not much new to report. Frank the brother in law reported last night that his house, which is just across River Road from the Mississippi River levee five or six blocks upriver from Audubon Park was still dry. I have not gotten a report yet today. He is planning on leaving the city, probably tomorrow.

Top priorities today for the city are repairing the levee breech (it was actually a floodwall lining the drainage canal that separates Orleans from Jefferson parishes), and evacuating the people stranded in the Superdome. FEMA has been calling up doctors asking them to come into the city to assist.

From Bad to Worse

The flooding situation in New Orleans continues to worsen as efforts to seal the leaking levees have apparently failed. A notice on the WWL website says that they are expecting nine feet of water throughout the city within the next 12 hours. I am disappointed, frustrated, and depressed. After surviving the storm itself, are we to succumb to a levee breech that goes unrepaired for 48 hours? The brother in law reports that the flood waters continue to rise and now I can hear the tiredness in his voice. The hospitals downtown are no longer functioning and a huge public health crisis looms. Thanks to all who have sent their good wishes. It helps.

And still there is nothing I can do.

WWL TV Katrina Blog

Charity Hospital has been shut down due to the flooding.

http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/WWLBLOG.ac3fcea.html

A Month!!!

From the WWLTV.com website:
Jeff Parish President. Residents will probably be allowed back in town in a week, with identification only, but only to get essentials and clothing. You will then be asked to leave and not come back for one month.
Homeland security chief optimistic that 3,000 pound sandbags can close break in levee at 17th Street canal.

I definitely don't have enough underwear for that. The news keeps getting worse by the hour.

Evacuees - Update since Saturday

At 5:30 a.m. Sunday morning I awoke The Wife with the words "We need to go." The Mom got the same call an hour later and by 8:00 our two-car caravan was on the road. My travelling companion was Brutus, my sister's Doberman. The Wife and The Mom followed in another car with Cosmo the dog and Midnight the cat. I had grabbed a few days worth of clothes and little else, but of course the bike was with me. The going on the interstate was at walking speed for the first couple of hours and about 12 hours later we finally arrived in Flower Mound, TX, near Dallas, where The Wife's sister lives. My own sisters had headed East to Ft. Walton to stay with The Dad.

It is Tuesday morning and after returning from a really nice 50 mile ride, I was greeted with "the city is flooding." We had gone to bed the night before with news from the brother-in-law, who had stayed behind in N.O., that the houses were all basically OK. The problem now was that the levee North of the city had been breeched and the lake water was pouring into the city. To make matters worse, the pumping stations were all out of commission. Without the pumps, New Orleans, ringed by levees, fills up like a bowl. They are currently dropping huge sandbags from helicopters in an effort to plug the hole. The lakefront area is probably ten feet deep right now, and we have not had any recent information about the uptown area where our homes are. They are saying it could be a couple of weeks before we are allowed to return to the city. The interstate bridge coming in to the city from the East was knocked out. The causeway bridge over the lake to the north was damaged. Interstate 55 to the West is closed. It is now the "Isle of Orleans" quite literally. Our information here in Dallas is sketchy and everyone is nervous, especially The Mom. Cell phones have not been working, although text messaging seems to get through sometimes. Parts of the city are being evacuated now, 24 hours after the hurricane hit, because of the flooding.

I have not heard from the guys who were in Guyana. They were due to return on Monday, and I expect they made it to Miami. I spoke with Realdo's wife a couple of times Sunday and she evacuated with the kids up into Mississippi.

I had written up a nice little story to upload last night, but it's on my old laptop and wasn't worth transferring to this computer, even if I could lay my hands on an old floppy disk.

Looks Like the Big One

Still in N.O., but expecting a mandatory evacuation first thing in the morning. It will not be easy to get The Mom to cooperate, and bringing along The Sister's Doberman, The Mom's dog and our own cat will be no walk in the park either, but we're not seeing any good news from the hurricane center at all.

I think this is going to be bad.

Eye of a Storm

Although the storm track keeps shifting with each revision, it looks like we will be slammed pretty hard by Katrina one way or the other. The weather here is wonderful today and Tulane is hurridly shuttling its new students through orientation even as a Category 3 hurricane with our name on it stirs out in the Gulf. The Giro ride had a medium-sized crowd today and I felt like riding hard, perhaps sensing that the next few days could be bad. On the way out on Chef Highway I dropped out of the rotation at the front and eased back for a little recovery time. By the time I had gotten back in, a little group had rolled off the front. The moderate headwind seemed to be enough to keep most of the riders in the pack from wanting to chase, so we arrived at the turnaround half a minute back. On the way back, I was uncomfortable with the slow pace, and so Woody and I did some work off the front, finally getting reeled in a couple of miles before the sprint on Chef. After the sprint the pack sat up again and three of us rolled off the front. As we came down Bullard toward the lake, the cellphones started ringing. I had three phone calls myself. The Mother, The Sister, etc. It seems Sister #1 left her dog at the vet while she went to Florida. Because of the hurricane, the vet is closing at 1 pm today and Sister#2 is supposed to pick up the Doberman (which BTW is quite neurotic). However, since her car got stolen and is in for repairs right now, I'm the only one with a vehicle that can handle the beast.

Cars are already lined up at the gas stations around here and some people are planning to evacuate. I expect we'll get a voluntary evacuation order around noon today. Don't know yet if I'll stay or go. As I'm writing this, I got an e-mail from Tulane:

In response to Hurricane Katrina’s shift to the west, Tulane University will close as of 5 p.m. today, August 27. Classes will resume on Thursday, September 1. Tulane employees should report to work on Wednesday, August 31.

So it will be a very busy couple of days, I think, and if we end up getting a direct hit by Katrina it will be far worse than just busy. It will be a bona fide disaster. Let's hope we can dodge this bullet.

Katrina Changes Plans

Hurricane Katrina seems to have changed her mind a bit and now seems to be leaning toward a visit to the Crescent City. I was afraid of that. The earlier predictions were all over the map. Probably no landfall until Monday, but who knows? It will certainly be a Category 3 hurricane in a day or so.

So much for the boring summer weather!!

The Muggy Summer Routine

Perhaps it's the weather, or maybe the hours I spent yesterday afternoon trailing The Wife as we shopped around for a birthday present for The Daughter. It certainly wasn't the nice little dinner we had at Bravo's in the shopping center parking lot. In fact, I think that was probably the highlight of the whole day for me. Whatever the cause, I have felt tired all day today. Up on the levee this morning the air was warm and muggy, as it has been for much of the summer, and the pale blue sky blended seamlessly into a hazy grey horizon. It always reminds me of the warning signs I used to see at the old Lakefront airport in New Orleans when my dad would take me flying. "Warning: Beware of loss of horizon ..." Indeed, I remember flying out over Lake Pontchartrain this time of year, straining to see over the impossibly high dashboard, when it was impossible to discern where sky met water. For "seat-of-the-pants" recreational pilots like my father, that can be a little disorienting. It seems the sky has looked like this nearly every day for a couple of months now, and I'm quite ready to see the crisp blue skies of Fall. Alas, as I sit here amid the steady drone of the building's air handling units, I know it will be yet another month before I dare expect that. The forecast has looked the same for over a month now and so I've basically stopped paying attention to the weatherman since it's always a low of 80, high of 90-95, with a 30% chance of scattered thunderstorms (which is code for "it might rain like hell at any time in any place but we have no way of predicting it). The one thing I like about this time of year is that getting dressed for the morning ride takes no thought at all. Any shorts, any jersey, and any socks will do just fine. Anyway, the grey skies seem to mirror the fog that seems to be inside my head today. Whatever it is, my head feels like it's full of cotton and it's making it hard to concentrate.

The morning training ride was a typical easy Friday ride with six or seven riders cruising along and chatting in a double paceline at about 20 mph. My legs felt heavy, though - maybe a little sore from yesterday's effort. It felt hard holding 20 mph at the front. It was the kind of feeling you get the morning after you've had a few glasses too many of wine the night before. Thing is, I didn't have any wine last night. Perhaps I should have?? No races for me this weekend, so I guess it'll be another Giro Ride weekend. I hope I'm feeling a bit more recovered by then.

Sister#2 got her car (Dodge Caravan, I think) stolen last week from in front of her house, which is literally a stone's throw from the levee bike path down by the Corps of Engineers facility. The culprits parked the car they had previously stolen there (with the engine running, of course, since it had been hot-wired), broke into and hot-wired her car, and had a nice time driving around town. The police found the car this morning a few miles away in a little alley that the locals call "death alley" near the Sewerage and Water Board facility. Amazingly, it hadn't been too trashed. They had stolen the two removable bench seats from the back, left a bunch of cigarette buts all over the place, and of course had popped out the door lock and steering column lock, but otherwise it appears to be salvagable, so I guess that's a bit of good news.

Poisoned

There was no hint of Fall for this morning's ride and when I headed out in the dim light of early dawn the air felt thick and heavy like it does most summer mornings. We ended up with a rather large group up on the levee and quite early a little cohort of four or five split off the front. The rest of the group was still rolling along pretty well, though, and there was no real effort to bridge. Luke looked up the road and remarked that most of them were only going as far as the pumping station in Kenner. He was right. Rob was left alone and waited for the group. At some point, Eddie C. went to the front on his TT bike and once again I found myself on his wheel clinging to a slim draft at 27 mph for what must have been a few miles. Somewhere out there near Williams we picked up Tim R. After the turnaround everybody seemed ready for a little rest and besides, Ronnie had gotten a flat around the Luling bridge, so things didn't get going again until we were past the "dip."

Next thing I knew, I'm sitting on Tim's wheel and the pace is going up and up and up. Tim's on his TT bike and he starts pulling at 27-28 mph steady. I'm hanging on for dear life about three inches off his rear wheel, spinning a 53 x 15 and trying to make myself very small. I finally look back and the rest of the group is a blurry smudge in the distance. After a couple of miles, Tim motions for me to take a pull. I go to the front and the pace immediately drops two mph while I take maybe 60 revolutions before pulling over and seeking shelter again. At Williams Blvd., Tim turned off the bike path to head home and I was happy to be able to ease up and recover a bit before getting swept up by the pack. Turned out to be a good training ride. When I got home my jersey and shorts were soaked with sweat as usual.

The word from the Tour of Guyana wasn't very good last night. A bunch of riders got food poisioning and one result was that Troy took a trip to the local hospital (which must have been a real interesting experience all by itself). In fact, the video on www.rfo.fr showed him getting into the ambulance. He didn't look too chipper. Kenny was apparently also not feeling well, but I think he finished the stage. The same video showed him, apparently off the back, looking at the cameraman and patting his stomach. Quite a few other riders weren't so lucky, however. Realdo is in 9th on GC. Hopefully everyone is feeling better today.

So the Louisiana Board of Regents is trying to revamp some of the programs that are part of the Board of Regents Support Fund, a state program that funds research projects, endowed professorships and that sort of thing. There is a whole contingent at LSU that thinks the private universities like Tulane (actually, specifically Tulane) shouldn't be getting any of those funds and they keep trying to put wording into the policies that exclude private universities. So this morning I had to go dig up the language in the Louisiana Constitution (yes, it's actually in the state Constitution) that specifically says that both public and private universities are eligible, and then go find the Attorney General's opinion from quite a few years back that confirmed it. I'm still trying to figure out what the BOR staff thinks it's doing by even including such language in the proposed policies, since I know that they know it is illegal and would require a constitutional amendment to change (not they won't probably try some other even more interesting maneuver). It really gets tiresome to have a few narrow-minded folks constantly beating the same dead horse. The support fund was never intended to be a form higher educational welfare, it was supposed to be used to best develop R&D and education in the state of Louisiana.

Up Day

It seems to be kind of an "up" day for some reason. The morning training ride was nice. Our small group did a brisk and steady paceline, keeping things around 23-24 mph, with everyone taking long pulls. Felt good!

So I think the Mexican EPA is definitely on the right track with this ad to protect the turtles! No more turtle eggs for me! Naturally, some U.S. group complained about it. Go figure. It worked for me.

I heard this morning that the Base Closure and Realignment Commission voted not to shut down the New Orleans Naval Support facility (which I can see from my window) and instead go with a plan by the Mayor and Governor to turn it into something they are calling a "federal city." Anyway, all of that is a good thing for the city, a victory for the Mayor who I hear did a great job on this one, and a relief for lots of people who work there. So a rare bit of good news for the city.

The boys down at the Tour of Guyana seem to be working hard. Haven't had a chance to look at the video clip yet. Taylor A. reports:

Kenny called yesterday and said he thought Bain was in 5th and that Bain
might get some kind of special award for his riding yesterday! He said the
pace was about 32mph and it was really rough. Keep in mind that both
yesterday's and today's stages were 130km.The newscast from yesterday has an
interview with Realdo and Bain towards the end of the program. Check it out!
Taylor
http://guyane.rfo.fr/#

A very distracting e-mail from Gina recommending a vote for the Russian cardiologist in the Planet Muscle FitBods competition: http://www.planetmuscle.com/fitbods.htm . Just doing my part to support the medical profession!

The Daughter called for an update. They've finally got a full coaching staff on hand and workouts are going well, although her knee continues to give her trouble. The athletics folks just keep wanting to prescribe antiinflammatories and rest which of course does nothing for the underlying problem which is fairly obviously a meniscus problem that will need to be fixed arthroscopically - the sooner the better. She's still working out, but not without some pain. They start morning workouts next week in addition to the regular afternoon workouts and their strength training is being re-vamped to be more gymnastics-specific. Sounds like the program is coming together pretty well. Her roommates this year include only one other gymnast. There are two cross-country runners, and I don't know who the other person is.

BlogSpam

Well there were four BlogSpam comments posted to today's blog, so I have changed the settings to require anonymous commenters to verify a word presented as an image. I've had an occasional bit of BlogSpam before, but four in the same day is a bit OTT, so my apologies to all you anonymous commenters, whoever you are! Now if only killing off all those "Pepsi vs Coke" pfishing scams that have been showing up in my mailboxes were only so easy.

Long Ride, Crash on the Side

This was the first morning I felt like I needed to strap on the headlight to meet the 6:15 group. Our annual tilt away from the sun becomes more noticeable each day, and despite the persistent warm tropical weather it makes me think of Fall. You know, those three or four days we get between Summer and Winter around here.

There was a nice group of 15+ riders today for the long levee ride, and it didn't take very long before Rob and a few others started to push the pace. Not far past the Country Club, a small group split off the front and I think if The Donald hadn't made a long and determined effort it might never have come back together. Anyway, everyone was back together by Williams Blvd., and when the pace eased back down to reality, which in this case was 26-27 mph., I finally had a chance to reach back and pull my Oakleys out of my pocket and put them on. They were, of course, all fogged up, but I had already had enough dust in my eyes at that point, so I wiped them off with my already wet jersey and made do. A big surge just past the bridge finally split a few guys off the front as somebody ahead of me eased up. I eventually went around, but my meager 27 mph effort wasn't even putting a dent in the gap so I finally sat up too.

The ride back stayed pretty slow for a long time and although it eventually got going fast again somebody (Todd?) flatted and most of us stopped to wait. By the time that was fixed and the pace was back into the upper 20s, we were around the Country Club. A few minutes later, with the Huey P. looming just ahead, Eddie D., and Dan D. got a small gap on the group for a little while. As they were coming back to the group on the left side of the road, a pair of sunglasses somehow ejected themselves from Eddie.

They hit the ground just ahead of me and bounced off my foot, but amazingly nobody ran over them. Eddie, already riding along the left side of the bike path, turned to look back and when he did, he dropped his front wheel off the left edge of the road. Instinctively, he leaned back in to try and get back onto the asphalt (which is hard not to do, but practically guarantees a crash). At that point I was just starting to pass him on the right, and the last thing I saw out of the corner of my eye was his front wheel alongside me at an impossible angle with "road rash" written all over it. As he hit the deck I swung as far as I could to the right because it looked like his bike might take out my rear wheel. I was able to stay clear, but Dan, who had been on his wheel, wasn't so lucky and plowed right into him as he and his bike body-surfed along the bike path.

Nothing was broken, but Dan and Eddie went down pretty hard. There was a three-foot long stripe of red on the asphalt that turned out to be the material from Dan's red jersey which now sported a ragged hole across the upper back. It looked like Dan got the worst of it. There was blood oozing from his elbows and right knee, and his hip had a big patch of road rash as well. As we rode back toward home, he was gradually starting to feel the burn of sweat as it started getting into all of those skinless patches of raw meat.

I did not envy his morning shower!

Monday Routine

It seems to be routine lately that I am rather sore for my Monday morning ride, and today was no exception. There were only four or five of us today and I spent a long time chatting with John R. as we rolled along at 20-21 mph. The pace seemed to hurt a bit more than it should have, and I guess I'm a little tired from the weekend. I suppose, too, that the half bottle of wine I had last night didn't help the situation either. John's been pretty mileage-deprived lately due to work and family stuff, but now that the kids' softball season is winding down he's hoping to get more bike time. Everyone around here is already looking forward to cooler weather, but it will really be another month before we start getting significantly cooler days. This is really one of the hardest times of the racing season in the South. It's hot and humid every time you go out to train, and it's no better for the races. After a while it gets hard to keep your motivation going. In a way we're lucky that we have a number of nearby races left on the calendar - a Crit/RR weekend in Mississippi, District Individual and Team Time Trials, Rocktoberfest, and I think one more track meet. There should be something there to keep most of the riders in training mode at least until the end of September. In addition, I know there's a bunch who are heading up to Georgia to do 6-Gap. I'd love to do that, but it's another expense I don't really need to be making.

Anyway, the shifter was a bit more cooperative today, although I think I need to tweak the cable adjuster a little bit.

Matt the Motor

Went out this morning in the dark. More dark than there should have been, in fact. The sky was overcast and as I made my way out to the lakefront in a light drizzle I wondered if anyone would be out there. Things were dry on Lakeshore Drive, though, but the mere threat of rain must have scared off a few people. The group was only about 25-strong, but that didn't seem to make it any easier. By the time we were halfway down Hayne Blvd. we were rolling pretty fast and after a while Matt got on the front on his TT bike and the group split. I was sitting on Matt's wheel (well actually it was more like hanging on for dear life) as he pulled at a steady 27 mph until we got to Six Flags, where he finally eased up and we all regrouped. Not long after that, on Chef Highway, he did the same thing. Once again I was basically motorpacing on his wheel for what must have been five miles.

The return trip was easier and relatively uneventful except for the loud blowout one of the guys had on the service road. Regardless, by the time I got home I felt pretty wasted, so naturally I went out in the sun and trimmed hedges and trees for a couple of hours.

Realdo's wife sent an email out to the group today to report that things were going well for the guys doing the Tour of Guyana, and said there would be some coverage of it at www.rfo.fr.

On the equipment front, that right shifter still didn't seem right, so I took it apart again this afternoon and rebuilt it again. This time, I think I got all the washers in the right places and it seems to work a bit better now! On the plus side, it was much easier to reassemble the second time around.

Back to da Giro

It was back to the Giro Ride this morning, the local group weekend training ride. By the time we hit the end of Lakeshore Drive, there must have been 60 riders or so, including a few of the guys from the Northshore. The pace was fast all the way out. With so may riders today, the group's collective IQ dipped pretty low, especially at the intersections. The run down Chef Highway turned into a sweet circular paceline with 25 or 30 guys pulling at a steady 27-29 mph. Of course as we got closer to the sprint at the end it started to disintegrate and the pace ramped up a bit more. I was pretty far back and was working my way back up to the front, but a little group had already gotten away and then the guys in front of me eased up before the end, so no sprint today for me!

The ride back got all split up because of two flats. Some riders waited, some didn't.

There was a big crash up in Baton Rouge on Thursday during their training race on River Road. One of the guys, Kirk, had a concussion and broken collarbone. Dave wasn't so lucky. He was airlifted to the hospital with a broken femur, broken collarbone, punctured lung, and cracked ribs. Yes, it was during the sprint. The crash was in the "B" group.

Waiting . . .

Well you'll be glad to know that I got all the bits and pieces of my shifter back together after doing exploratory surgery the night before. There's one particular spring connected to the thumb shifter that is quite difficult to get back into position. The rest is fairly easy. Of course, since I didn't actually replace any of the obviously worn-out components, I'll have to wait until I decide what to do about it all. In the meantime, it's shifting just as badly as it was before, but at least now I know why! I figure I have a few choices here, and the decision won't be an easy one. I could just bit the bullet and buy a new Record shifter, but I doubt I can really afford that. I could wait and lurk on eBay and see if I can get a lightly used one at an affordable price, which might be quite a wait. I could buy the $65 or so in parts needed to rebuild my existing lever, which would be fairly easy and satisfying, but could put me not all that far from the cost of a used replacement one. The other issue here is whether to upgrade to 10-speed at the same time. The bike needs new rings, chain, cassettes and jockey wheels. I don't even want to add all that up, though. It would be too depressing. Anyway, the car's brakes have the first shot at the next available cash. I'm just waiting until I've got enough in the bank. On the plus side, the brakes on the bike are working fine now, thank you.

This morning's ride was a nice 20 mph spin on the levee with five or six other guys. Even Rob, who showed up a little late after catching us from behind, was under control today. I was glad that my shifter was at least minimally functional, since I put it back on the bike at about 6:15 this morning, half-asleep, and didn't even touch the barrel adjuster on the derailleur.

Right now I'm waiting for a couple of folks from Congressman Jefferson's office who will be here for a meeting with the architects designing our Riversphere project, which is actually pretty cool. Later, they'll be visiting Dawn Wesson's arbovirus lab over in the Johnston Building. Can we have about $5 million please? Pretty please? We'd better act fast, because the Feds recently busted into his office and home and hauled off a bunch of "evidence." Nobody's giving me any juicy details on that, but I'm sure we'll hear about it sooner or later. I think they found a large wad of cash stashed in his freezer. Hmmm. We'll just have to wait and see . . .

On the home front, we're awaiting The Daughter's 21st birthday at the end of the month. Now there's a truly scary thing from the parental perspective. I've been feeling quite out of touch with her lately since her house's wireless router left town. She said they are on the list for new service, but don't expect it to be up and running until the end of the month. I'm not sure if they even have a hard-wired telephone any more, so dial-up to the university's system might not even be a possibility. Maybe somebody next door will get a new wireless system going and she will be able to get a signal??

RRRRRRetro

Some time around 10 pm last night I decided to have a look at that baulky rear brake that's been causing me grief for the last week or two. The first thing I discovered was that the cable didn't want to come out of the housing when I pulled on it from the front of the brake lever. Not knowing whether the problem was inside the lever body or just a problem with the cable housing, I decided to go ahead and unwrap the handlebar and take the lever off for a good look. As it turned out, I found that the plastic housing on the brake cable had a big tear in it (How'd that happen??) right around where it came out from under the handlebar tape near the stem. When I pulled the cable out, using pliers and a whole lot more force than should be necessary, I found that an inch or so of the cable was coated with what can be best described as "grunge." I guess sweat had been getting in there and had just made a mess inside that little section of cable. So anyway, that was easy enough to clean up but since I had the lever off the bike anyway, I decided I may as well do a little exploratory surgery.

The inside of the shifter was a bit of a mess with lubricant all over the place, but in general it was fairly clean and, surprisingly, nothing was actually broken. Both "G springs" were intact, as were the other two main springs, so I just cleaned everything up. It looked like many of the key parts in there were pretty well worn, so a complete rebuild is definitely in order, but the good news is that it is otherwise in decent shape and worth rebuilding. The only question is whether to rebuild it as 10-speed or 9-speed, since I'll be needing to replace most of the drivetrain anyway. Getting the spring tension back with all the little parts that stack on top of each other proved a bit too much for my sleepy brain, so I decided I needed sleep more than a shifter and hit the sack, leaving bits and pieces of shifter scattered about the workbench. I'll have to scout around on the 'net and see if anyone has any hints about reassembly because as far as I can tell it requires a minimum of three hands.

So this morning I dusted off the Really Old Bike for the Thursday long ride. I got the old Pennine frame new back in 1972. It was custom ordered from England through my local bike shop. I was able to specify the colors, the style of lugs, the type of dropouts, the fork crown, where the chrome should go, where the braze-ons should be placed, etc. As I recall, it cost $110 including the fork and headset. I raced on it for ten or eleven years. I guess that now, like me, it's a genuine antique. Anyway, it fits well and doesn't really feel all that different when I'm riding a steady pace, except of course that the old school front fork puts the front wheel alarmingly far in front of the bars and I'm limited to a 5-speed freewheel with a high gear of 52 x 14. It was a nice ride anyway today. It seems the Thursday rides have gotten to be somewhat less intense than the Tuesday ones, but still not what you'd call "easy."

A Day Off - Visit to the Other Side

I decided last night that it was about time to take a day off from riding. Since the weather has been so cooperative lately, I can't remember the last time I skipped a whole day, and that in and of itself is ample reason to do so.

So today I pretended to be normal. Although I've always aspired to normality, I admit there's something in me that rebels against it at every turn. I didn't start racing bicycles because it was "the thing to do." In fact, back when I started it would have been more properly termed "the thing NOT to do." Hence, of course, I did it. Likewise my decision to pursue science and research, which although somewhat sidetracked along the way, still serves as my primary motivational guide. Anyone with a lick of common sense would have ditched the bike racing and majored in Business Administration or Pre-Med.

Anyway, I got to work an hour earlier than usual, via a motorized vehicle, with air-conditioning, and a cup of Starbucks coffee, wearing a tie, and didn't need to change shirts once I got there. How normal is that?

Just to remind me that all is not perfect on the "other side," as I pulled into the garage at work, I heard the front brakes squeal, which means that the pads are worn down to nothing and will need to be replaced right away. That will almost surely involve new rotors and enough money for a season's worth of entry fees.

Well, it's Internet Worm-Virus time again. Every year, just as school starts, there is a huge outbreak of internet worms and viruses as all those student computers start connecting to the campus network. We got a notice just today:

New virus appearing on campus: W32/IRCBot.worm!MS05-039
A new Internet Relay Chat (IRC) bot worm has appeared on campus. This worm has the ability to spread by exploiting systems which are not yet patched for the MS05-039 vulnerability.
More information, including removal and prevention instructions is available on McAfee's Web site at:http://vil.mcafeesecurity.com/vil/content/v_135491.htm
If you require help or need additional information, please contact the Tulane University Help Desk at (504) 862-8888.
If you do not have anti-virus software, visit http://www.tulane.edu/~software/downloads/index.shtml for instructions on acquiring your Tulane licensed copy (Tulane University faculty, staff and students only).

I talked with The Daughter last night, asking if her computer was working because I hadn't seen her on AIM lately. Turns out one of the roommates who moved out took the wireless router with her, so they need to all get together and get a new one for the house. Classes start Monday, so hopefully that will be high up on the priority list.

I'll leave with a favorite bit of Kipling, who unknowlingly wrote something immensely relevant to bicycle racing:

Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back—
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.

Mish-Mash

Lots of things going on today, yet few of them focused on anything in particular. The bike is begging for a major overhaul, but I dare not start taking things apart for fear of what I will find and the cost of putting it right. That right brake lever now works well as a parking brake, as you can see in the picture. It's not supposed to do that, is it? The problem's somewhere in the lever, I think. It's always been kind of stiff and I guess the accumulated grunge of a summer in the South has nearly done it in for good. The little rubber band you see, which is really just a piece cut from an old inner tube, is substituting for the shift lever spring that broke (rusted to death, no doubt) a couple of years ago. The one on the left lever went South a month or so ago. I guess 46,000 miles or so is about all you can expect from these things. I'm hoping everything will continue to be minimally functional until this winter when I will be more comfortable taking everything apart for a week or two and riding one of the really old bikes in the meantime.

My niece the soccer player is apparently enjoying the U.S. Naval Academy, and got her pic on the website the other day. Meanwhile, The Daughter is getting ready to start classes next week up in Iowa City where the new Assistant Coach recently arrived. The Wife drove up to Baton Rouge with her sister to meet another sister to visit their mother. I had to cringe last night when I was filling up the tank with $2.70 premium. Apparently gas prices went up ten cents overnight. This is starting to remind me of the "gas crisis" of the early 70s that turned out to be, basically, a conspiracy by the oil companies to raise prices. It worked, by the way. Still, it's apparently not high enough yet to get people to leave the cars at home and take a bike to work. I have to admit, I grin a little bit when I think of those people who abandoned the city and fled to the distant suburbs and are now paying $60 to fill up their 8-cylinder SUVs twice a week and getting hit with big property tax increases for all the stuff they thought they could do without. About the only thing I really need a car for is to get to bike races.

This morning's long training ride was pretty standard fare, although a few people were intent on pushing the pace. I was impressed when one surge opened a gap and Courtney, all 100 pounds or so of her, towed me and the whole paceline across to Carey at 28 mph. My legs felt a whole lot better today, but there is still some lingering soreness from the weekend bashing and so I was trying to limit my "at the front" time today. Although the district Time Trial championship is still a month away, and the Team TT a couple of weeks after that, some of the local TT specialists and wannabe specialists are out in force lately. The levee is lousy with carbon fiber TT bikes, $3,000 wheelsets and $500 handlebars, sometimes piloted by pudgy guys with sketchy bike handling skills. To me, Time Trials are the things you have to do in order to ride the next stage of the stage race or to get back to the pack after you get a wheel change in a road race. Still, some of these guys - the Real(tm) Time Trialists - are able to sustain speeds that I can barely handle while in the draft, so I guess I'm impressed.

It is also Tour for Cure Season around here. The annual early October charity ride has a huge following and in the last couple of weeks all of the hopeful participants have been showing up in little groups trying to get in shape for it. I think it's around 70 miles a day for two days. A lot of them will disappear over the next couple of weeks and will end up doing the ride quite unprepared, but the organizers expect that and provide copious amounts of food and refreshment along the way. Some people take a good six or seven hours to complete each day's distance, and those who are in over their heads can get rides back in the truck.

The Herring Gas team, along with Realdo J., are heading off to The Tour of French Guyana for a 16-day odyssey. The stage race is something like nine stages, I think. Hopefully they'll be able to send us a few updates now and then. The guys who are going are: Frank Moak, Kenny Bellau, Chris Alexander, Troy Porter, Bain Foote, and Tim Regan. It should be interesting. My guess is that the stage race will suit Chris, Troy and Bain really well. Frank and Kenny will be there for the opportunistic stuff, including pack sprints, and Tim will be mainly trying not to fall on his partially healed collarbone, I hope.

Well, for now it's time to get back to putting together someone else's $990,000 grant proposal that's due at NASA - Glenn on Friday. You would think the Principal Investigator would at least try to sound interested in that, wouldn't you?

Weekend Race Wrapup (long . . .)

After Saturday's races, we gathered up most of the club members and went out food-hunting. The Mall-side restaurants, including Macaroni Grill, Olive Garden, etc. were jam-packed with crowds of people waiting outside for tables and waits of around an hour. We settled for a Roadhouse Grill, mainly because we were tired of driving around, and after a half-hour wait finally settled down for some grub. This is one of those places with free peanuts and a bar, so a few of the guys pulled up stools and did some brewed carbo-loading while we were waiting.



As it turned out, it was Charlie's Birthday, so naturally someone told the staff and he got the usual restaurant chain birthday routine!

We were up before dawn again on Sunday for a quick breakfast at Waffle House and the half-hour drive up to the road race course. Although the start/finish was the same as Saturday, the course was completely different, and included quite a bit more hills. I thought it was a really nice 14-mile circuit, but was a little disappointed that the hot spot was not at the top of a climb and the finish, although preceded by a good long climb, was fairly flat for the final 300 meters or so. Neither was good news for me. My power-to-weight advantage is mostly due to the denominator, not the numerator.

The masters field seemed a few riders smaller than on Saturday, which was surprising since I would have expected a few new guys to show up on a Sunday. In the overall omnium, I was precariously placed in 2nd, but in a two-event omnium that's not worth much and my only plan was to ride the race without worrying too much about the omnium. All that points stuff just gives me a headache anyway. I never was very good at playing games, and I could definitely have used a coach and a radio as it turned out.

The first lap of the 5-lap race was pretty calm with lots of riders obviously focused on the hot spot near its end. Mark took a few flyers off the front during the lap to keep things moving and make some of the other teams do a little work. My legs were a little sore from Saturday's race and although I knew I needed to be serious about the hot spot, my heart really wasn't in it. In the kilometer before the hot spot I moved up onto the wheel of the Oklahoma rider (OKC Velo) who had won the previous day's road race, but I was hemmed in by the center line (we didn't have the full road for the hot spot sprint). Without a climb to string things out, I never got a clear shot at the line until it was way too late and crossed 4th in the 3-deep hot spot. The OK rider (Tom) took 3rd. That's he on the right in the photo above.

Immediately after the hot spot, one of the Colavita guys attacked hard and I had to dig pretty deep to respond, but I knew this could be the whole race and to hesitate now could be a big mistake. Those Colavita jerseys, by the way, always make me hungry. We blasted through the right turn to start the second lap and when I looked back there was a gap. In the break were four riders: one from Colavita (Dallas), one from Woodlands (Houston), Tracy from Twin City (Monroe) and me. Tom, however, had missed the break, so we put our collective heads down and hammered pretty steadily for the next ten miles, at least. By then we were way out of sight, but with no idea how big the gap was or what was going on behind. By now I was in team time trial mode and everyone was working pretty well together. I was pushing the pace, thoroughly enjoying the terrain and the effort, hoping the rest of my team was able to take it easy back in the pack.

About half-way through the third lap, as we climbed one of the longer hills on the course, we lost Tracy and were down to three riders. Everyone was still working well together as we passed the Cat. 4 field that had started about five minutes ahead of us. By the start of the last lap, the effort was starting to get to me and the break's pace had slowed a bit. Where we had been going 25-26 mph, we were down to 24 or so, and we were climbing the little hills much more slowly now. Half-way through the last lap, the Woodlands guy, who was behind the Colavita guy and me on overall, stopped taking pulls, figuring it was pretty much up to the two of us to battle it out for the win. My legs were hurting now, and although I thought I might still be able to pull off a respectable sprint, my confidence was lacking. I decided my best chance was to keep the pace fairly high and hope the other guys were hurting at least as much as I was.

I was sadly mistaken.

With a couple of miles to go, things slowed down a whole lot as the others started anticipating the sprint up the hill. I really hate it when things slow down before a sprint. It is never a good thing for me, so I tried to keep the pace going and led our little trio pretty much all the way up the last climb. When it started to level off about 300 or 400 meters from the finish, the Woodlands guy attacked. I stood up, but there was nothing left and with 50 meters to go I sat up and coasted across the line in third place.

I was rather surprised that I had not had enough left to mount a decent sprint, but by 10:00 that night I knew why. By then my legs were really stiff and sore, as they are still. So I guess that although I rode strongly, I played the game badly yesterday. Since this was a points-based omnium, all my work was for naught, because the Oklahoma guy, who ended up placing 5th, still stayed ahead of me on points and the Colavita guy moved ahead of both of us (I think), leaving me in 3rd overall, despite the huge time gap we had on the pack by the finish.

After I finished, I stopped and had a cold drink of some sort, chatted a while with the other guys in the break, and then rode about half-way down the hill to look for the pack. I could see them in the distance, approaching the climb, but despite my roadside cheerleading, they all suffered on the hill, mostly finishing around mid-pack.

We had to leave for the 5.5 hour drive home about an hour after our race and the results weren't done by then, so we really don't know for sure where we all placed in the overall, and also don't know how Jason and Brooks did in the Cat. 5 race that started around that time.

Although Woody missed the break in the Cat. 1/2/3 race, it sounded like he was pretty pleased with his ride. He ended up 13th on Sunday, coming off the back a little bit as the pack sprinted up the final hill before the finish.

News Flash!! As I'm writing this, an e-mail went out to the LAMBRA list about Frank. Here it is:

Just to let you all know, Frank Breure is currently in room 2018 at Willis-Knighton, 318-212-7001 in Bossier City. He crashed with one mile to go in the Cat. 1-2-3 race (he won't hesitate telling you it was his fault). Broke his hip in the crash and had surgery last night, got a couple of screws put in. He did finish the race Sunday and finished 2nd overall in the omnium points! He had taco'd his wheel, then suddenly Teresa White, a volunteer, drove up and said she had a wheel in her truck and Frank stuck it on. He rolled out at a screaming 8-10 mph and got 4th place since the breakaway he was in had about 9 minutes on the field.I dropped in on him this morning and he looks good. Russ checked in on him last night. If anyone wants to give Frank a hard time, call or drop by. He'll probably go home by Wednesday latest.
Alan

Frank probably does more races each season than anyone else in the state, and it's really a shame that he's going to have to end his season this way. Broken hips aren't all that uncommon in cycling and Frank's the second rider I know who finished his race after breaking his. I guess he's the fifth rider I know who has broken a hip because of a crash.

This morning I went out (late) for a short spin on the levee. My legs were still really sore and stiff and I wasn't very interested in going more than 18 mph. I saw Realdo and rode with him for a while. He and most of the Herring guys are leaving for the Tour of Guyana tomorrow, and he promised I'd get some phone calls so I can keep the local folks updated on how the race is going. Tim R. is going despite his wife's advanced pregnancy, but if she stays on schedule, he will be back in time for the big event. The only question now is whether the locks on his house will be changed or not when he returns!!

So despite the sore legs and my own lack of tactical savvy, it was a long but fun weekend. The road courses were great and the only thing really lacking was a larger field. Perhaps next year when word gets out a little more?

Rocky Springs - Day One

Loaded up Woody’s truck and headed out of town Friday evening, arriving in scenic Bossier City some time around midnight. Five hours or so of sleep and then to the local Waffle House to satisfy Charlie’s waffle craving before making the drive out to the road race.

For the 57 mile race we had four guys, Charlie, Mark, Rick and me, along with a few riders from Colavita,Team La S’port and a couple of other clubs. There was a 3-deep points bonus hot spot near the end of the first 14-mile lap. That sort of thing often seems to keep people on the defensive, and indeed it seemed like most of the pack was intent on waiting for the hot spot sprint. The Colavita riders, however, made a few attempts to slip someone off the front, but the pack wasn’t letting anything go too far, so we came into the hot spot en masse. The sprint was at the top of a short climb and although I wasn’t really too focused on it, I ended up 3rd, which was good for something like one point. My legs had been feeling a little achey all morning, so in a way I was pleased that I was able to handle the uphill sprint without a problem. The sprint opened a gap and there was a brief effort to keep it going. I took a few fast pulls at the front, but everything came back together on the long, fast downhill that followed as we began the second lap.

Lap 2 of 4 saw my teammate Jay roll off the front solo and unchallenged until the rest of the field figured he wasn’t coming back without a fight. For the better part the lap I was busy up near the front covering attacks and generally disrupting the chase effort – in a nice way, of course. At one point, Jay had maybe a minute on the pack, but after the course turned into the wind his lead started to erode. The pace in the pack was varying from 20-26 mph, and although my soft-pedaling at the front was keeping the average speed down, it was clear that Jay was starting to have trouble. I thought he might be able to hold out until the second hot spot, which would have been good for a free dinner somewhere in town, but the last stretch was on a long, flat, and mostly straight road that made it easy for the pack see him and provided ample motivation to reel him in. Although I wasn’t interested in going after the hot spot, I still covered it in case there was an attempt to convert it into a breakaway.

It wasn’t too long after the start of the third lap that Jay found himself off the front again, this time with one other rider. I thought that combination might be enough, but they just didn’t seem to be going fast enough and were eventually caught after a short and fast effort by one of the other teams.

By the last lap, it was looking like a pack sprint was inevitable, and the pace really started to drop. Masters riders can be a lazy bunch when they want to. At one point I remember looking down at my computer and seeing 17 mph. I was glad that we had been the last group to be started on the loop, because it would have been embarrassing if the Juniors had caught us!

The finish was about seven-tenths of a mile past the hot spot line, and thankfully there was a bit of an attack on the hot spot hill that strung out the bunch and got the speed up higher. For a second, I thought the pack would split altogether. Still, the pace stayed fast enough that the slightly uphill run into the finish wasn’t too slow. I was sitting in maybe 5th spot and when we passed the 200 meter mark without anyone jumping I was worried and just about to go myself when I heard bikes coming up fast on my left. A few riders got past before I could sprint, and although I passed some riders as I dumped it into the 13, the best I could do was 2nd. Charlie ended up 5th or 6th and Mark and Rick finished with the pack. Tony? from Oklahoma (OKC Velo), who was without teammates and had wisely been watching the other teams battle with each other all day, took the win. Overall, the pace was pretty slow and I was rather surprised that a break never materialized. In fact, I don’t think more than one or two riders were dropped before the finish.

The Cat. 5 race followed ours, and so Brooks and Jason got to race in the searing heat today. Jason said the race was pretty good, and he got some points in the hot spot, but the heat took its toll and in the final kilo when the pace ramped up he started to cramp. He still finished 9th with Brooks 10th in a field of somewhere around 40, so not too shabby.

Tomorrow’s course looks a good bit more hilly than today’s and combined with the slightly longer distances and sore legs, it should be interesting.

Rocky Mount Weekend

Thanks to Charlie D, our team captain and general travel coordinator, I'll be heading up to the Northwest corner of the Pelican State tonight so that the Shreveport guys can take turns ripping my legs off. It's not really as bad as it looks in the course profile (check the scale), but it ain't the levee either. Shreveport is a lot more like Texas than the rest of Louisiana, and indeed their races often attract some of the I-20 crowd from Dallas, which is considerably closer than New Orleans. However, unlike New Orleans, it is situated on a legitimate part of the continental land mass, as opposed to Mississippi River delta muck, and as the race's name implies, there are both mounts and rocks. Not a whole heck of a lot of either - after all, this isn't exactly Colorado - but some of those little hills are steep and long enough to hurt, especially since the usual climbing technique practiced around here is to attack anything that goes uphill.

With two longish road races in the August heat, I am expecting it to be hard, but I've got a ride up there and the club's picking up the hotel cost, so I registered online with active.com last night, a couple of hours before the deadline, so I could save maybe a buck fifty since active's service charge eats up a fair chunk of the $5 race-day registration late fee. For the Tour de La, we pay the late fee, so it's a little bit more "worth it" to pre-register and that's what we want since it really cuts down on the race-day registration chaos. For Rocktoberfest, where the budget is a little tighter, I chose to split the active.com fee with the riders, so they only pay half of it. Seems fair enough. I've got to say that the folks at active.com are extremely helpful and for a larger race they do earn their fees. When I set up the registration for Rocktoberfest last week they went and checked it out to make sure everything agreed with the event announcement and then even added a feature so that riders can pre-register for a second race on the same day for only $10 (which we say in the flyer). I think they have some significant competition with Bikereg.com, though. I have been wondering if LAMBRA could set up a deal with them for reduced fees if we require that all LAMBRA, or maybe just LCCS, races will use them for online registration.

Anyway, I guess I should have broken down and fixed my right brake/shifter. It's gotten so stiff the last few weeks that I have to push the brake lever back forward after I use it because the spring can't overcome the friction. Basically, it's all screwed up and will require major transplant surgery, if not a complete replacement. I'm pretty sure something in there related to the shifter is also broken, because the computer's gear indicator has been really flaky lately - when it works at all. It was all so much simpler and more reliable when the shifter was on the downtube and the brakes didn't have those wimpy return springs like they do now. All I know is that once I take it apart and find what I expect to find, it will be a number of days before I can gather up the necessary bits and pieces to make it all right again, and I'd rather wait until then end of the season for that. In the meantime, I'll just keep spraying TriFlo in there and dealing with it unless it stops working altogether.

This morning's ride was warm and extremely humid. I wasn't surprised, since the temperature at 10:30 last night was still nearly 85F. Being a Friday, though, the "20 mph rule" was invoked and so I did an easy 24 miles or so up on the levee with three or four other guys. I could still feel my legs from yesterday, though.

That never used to happen when I was 25 years old.

Abandoned

We are definitely back to the hot and muggy summer weather around here, and this morning was not exception. I really noticed how dark it is already getting at 6 a.m. The tail light will soon be back on the bike, I'm afraid.

Today I didn't stop at the usual meeting spot. I was supposed to meet Robin to get him to sign some event permit forms for Rocktoberfest. They were safely sealed in a ziplock bag in my jersey pocket and I figured I'd try and catch him at the playground and get that taken care of before the ride, but he never showed up. He called later in the morning to say he had been up late dealing with family stuff and needed to sleep. So there you have it! Robin does sleep. Who knew??

Anyway, the group arrived soon and off we went for the Thursday long ride. When the pace got up to 24 or 25, Ronnie started letting the guys who had just pulled off into the paceline in front of him. Soon, we were down to about six riders pulling and everyone else kind of stuck behind Ronnie. Now if you're going to be doing this, at least do it near the back - not 6 riders from the front. Well I handn't signed on for a team time trial this morning, so after a few pulls I dropped all the way back despite Ronnie's "get in." Tim did the same. Eventually, though, I went back up toward the front. You know - for the exercise.

I guess we were rolling mostly at 25 mph all the way out, with a big surge toward the end. As usual, riders started dropping off about half a mile before the turnaround, so there were only maybe five of us who did the whole distance, I think. Anyway, after we turned around we could see riders who had turned around early way, way down the road already. VJ took off ahead of us, and the remaining four rolled along easily for a while, as is usual. Normally we regroup here. However, for some reason the riders who turned around early didn't wait for us today and before we knew it they were about a minute down the road. Yeah, we were a little bit pissed. We upped the pace a bit, first to 23, then to 24, then to 25+, but we weren't closing much.

Soon we picked up VJ who had never been able to catch either, but he came off the back after a while. Well, the four of us could have had a nice enough ride, except that three of them turned off at Williams Blvd., so now I was alone. Abandoned. No way I was going to catch solo, so I backed off, eventually catching Dan, who had gotten a late start today and wasn't feeling too good, and Ronnie who had come off the back of the main group. We waited up for VJ at that point too.

So I think I'm heading up to S'port late tomorrow, somehow, for two road races they're having up there. Not looking forward to the long 5-hour drive, though. I hope we have a good turnout.

Kenny B in NC

If you haven't already, you should read Kenny's recent writeup on the Crossroads Cycling Classic in North Carolina last week! Whose wheel is that he's on??

"The Blender was made with me in mind. If you're a spectator, you'd see us twice a minute. You turn left every 7 or 8 seconds. This is NASC AR's short track. Hey Ya'll, watch this! My top speed on the swooping back straight was 37.4 MPH ... and I never sprinted!"
[More . . .]

Malled

It was an early wake-up this morning. Since I needed to get some new rubber on the old 850, I hit the road before 6 so I could sneak in a little 20 mile ride before taking The Wife to work and myself to my friendly neighborhood Sears Automotive establishment. I was (still am) feeling really lousy this morning - stuffy head, unsettled stomach, mile headache - and I guess I'm trying to fight off something. After getting the car in the queue for a couple of new front Goodyears, I wandered aimlessly through the little shopping mall. Shopping malls always tend to render me semi-comatose, and today was certainly no exception. If you need to know what's on sale at Target, Bed, Bath & Beyond, or Sears, just drop me a line. The guy at the counter said it'd take about two hours since I had them do a front end alignment too, so I walked back over there after about 1:45 and saw the car parked out on the other side of the drive-through garage. Figuring it was done, I headed for the counter, only to find that the little matter of the alignment has slipped their minds. Another half-hour of waiting in their luxurious waiting room - "Days of Our Lives" blaring from the TV - and I was finally outta there, albiet $287 poorer. On the plus side, they had the Goodyears in stock that were on sale in the right size and for the advertised price! I must admit that I fondly miss the days when I would settle for nothing less than the high-quality Michelins, but hey, sometimes life's a compromise. For those of you who have noticed my somewhat distressed rear tires, I should add that they're on the list for next month. Really, it's just the rubber that's slashed. The casing is fine. Really!

The morning ride felt a lot worse that it should have and now I think I know why. I'm obviously a little bit under the weather, and showing no signs of improvement. Hopefully I can make it through the Gene Therapy Research Consortium's Board Meeting that starts in a few minutes.

Now where's that Advil I had . . .

Picture Day - Updated

Well, all the recent e-mail about the hazards of training on the levee resulted, rather predictably, is a large turnout this morning for the long levee ride. Here's a pic of the early arrivals at the first meeting spot around 6:15 a.m. We picked up a whole lot more along the way. I must say, though, that the group was especially courteous (to others, yes - to those at the back - no) to the other bike path users today. My legs were feeling better than yesterday, which isn't saying a whole heck of a lot, and the fact that the group's speed rose very smoothly this morning certainly helped. We must have had a bit of a headwind on the way out, because it was a job to hold 25 mph at the front once the 25-rider paceline really got rolling.

I brought along the cheap little camera this morning. I guess about 25% of the pictures were minimally acceptable for blogging purposes. None were what you'd call "good," but hey, taking pictures from within a paceline going 25-28 adds a whole new element to the photojournalism experience!

After the turnaround, the pace picked up quickly and we zoomed along at mostly 27-29 all the way back. I didn't do much pulling on the way back, mainly because I got stuck at the back and wasn't willing to make the 31 mph trip up the side to get ahead of wherever the short-circuit was in the paceline. When we went down the "dip" on the way back, a bunch of gaps opened ahead of me and since I was near the back at the time I had to do a little bit of chasing to reclaim the group. I think that a few people never made it across that gap and lost the paceline at that point. There was a pretty good surge over the last mile or two, and it all made for a pretty good ride.

So yesterday I found one of the front tires on the car was nearly flat and after bringing it back up to pressure (which means driving around until you find a gas station with a minimally functional air pump) it was almost flat again last night. Couldn't find a nail or anything - bad sign! The Wife brought it over to good ol' Al Usner's Shell Station, which still has a full-service lane and a mechanic on duty, early this morning.

The diagnosis, however, was that it was terminal. Something about leaking through a seam or something and not being repairable. Sounds kind of fishy, but since those guys aren't really in the tire-selling business and the tires are getting pretty worn down, I guess I'll have to go make another donation to the local Sears Automotive this afternoon for some new rubber and a front end alignment. Figure on $350+ by the time I pay all the disposal fees and new valve stems and all the other add-ons, and that's if I escape buying the Road Hazard Insurance. I'm supposed to have a meeting this afternoon, though, but the person calling it can't seem to settle on a time which is really starting to irritate me. It looks like Sears has some Goodyear's on sale, which means they're only about $100 or so. We'll see. Usually the ones on sale just happen to be out of stock but they always seem to have lots of the "slightly" more expensive ones on hand. Funny how that works, huh?

I just noticed in CyclingNews a note about Gina Grain who is the injured rider that Gina V was caring for until the paramedics arrived at the Bank of America Criterium last weekend. Basically, the story says that she doesn't remember much, broke a bone in her face and fractured her skull and the base of her thumb and of course had a concussion. Looks like an early end to her season, as the doctors want her off the bike for a couple of weeks.

Feels like a Monday

I woke up tired and achey and probably should have stayed in bed, but old habits die hard. I had stayed up late to try and get a deal on a pair of Nike shoes on ebay, but the price went over my self-imposed limit at the end so I let them go. I'm not about to spend a lot of money for a pair of used shoes that might not fit quite right. That's what bike shops are for. If there's one thing that you should buy from your LBS, it's shoes. I'd just like someone to explain why they cost so much, because the prices are ridiculous. Hence, I'm still wearing my $100 Sidi shoes that make my feet hurt.

Anyway, there were only four or five on the morning levee ride today, and we kept it slow and easy the whole way.

Man, our LAMBRA track stuff is really screwed up. After having to cancel two track meets, they ended up essentially combining an omnium with some of the track championships last weekend. Attendance was poor, of course, since there was little advance notice and the whole thing was pretty confusing. I'm supposed to work out the LCCS rankings from what I got, which didn't even include USCF numbers like it's supposed to. I also don't have the results of a couple of the team events and one of the June track meets. It's really kind of a joke when people who come in dead last in a particular event end up getting 3rd place double LCCS points. The minimum fields should be higher. Then there's the issue of which events were actually "championship" events. There is conflicting information about that, also some of the events that were held are not legitimate USCF championship events but I suppose some people thought they were, and some USCF championship events were not held.

Destrehan Mountain

A long weekend is finally coming in for a landing. Saturday's Giro ride was, well, the Giro ride. I haven't been feeling too sharp all weekend, and there were times during the Giro when I was wishing I was somewhere else. I had gotten up extra early so I could stand outside in the early dawn and see the space shuttle / space station trace a smooth arc almost directly overhead, passing quite close to the red planet, which is currently visible just before sunrise, before fading out in the brighter Eastern sky. It was the second time I had caught a shuttle fly-by, and I was lucky to have seen it because by the time I got out to the lakefront an hour later the skies were already quite overcast.

There was a pretty big group, a pretty good chase, a pretty good sprint, and a long ride home. An hour later I was en route to Baton Rouge to visit the mother-in-law. That made it a really long day. For example, there is always the obligatory trip to Wal-Mart, an aimless drive around the lakes and University area, and a stop for ice cream. I must have gotten into and out of the car 50 times on Saturday. Lately, we are also treated to confusing conversations, typical of early Alzheimers. As we drove past an "Old Navy" store at the shopping mall, she said to her daughter, "remember when I used to take you kids there to buy your school clothes . . ." Then at Wal-Mart she walks up to someone in one of those motorized wheelchair/shopping cart things and starts up a conversation as if they were old friends. The befuddled guy was very nice, but of course had never laid eyes on her before. Happened a couple of other times with other random people too, each of which she said lived in her apartment building.

Toward the end of Saturday's ride, a few of the guys started talking about getting together for a long levee ride on Sunday. Reo was determined to put in another four hours or so, and ultimately a rather complicated plan was sketched out. So Sunday morning I got up early again and rode the 12 miles or so out to Williams Blvd. on the levee bike path. It wasn't too hot this morning, but not a cool as yesterday either. It felt rather odd to be skipping the Giro ride, for some reason, not that I needed another run down Chef Highway. I met Reo and Jay S. and Eddie there and we hung around a while to see if Tim was going to show up, but I think yesterday was a heavy lift for him coming back from that broken collarbone and we never did track him down.

Our next stop was on the other side of the river where we were supposed to meet a group that started over there and was riding upriver on river road. So we exited the levee and rode up Mount Destrehan, aka the Luling-Destrehan bridge. Around here, this is what substitutes for a hill. It's is actually a nice, reasonably long, but not too steep climb. The only problem is that you have to negotiate the reflectors that are stuck all over the shoulder, which is a pain in the arse but preferable to being in the right lane since it's technically part of the Interstate highway system. Luckily the local police don't seem too concerned about seeing us riding over it. One of them went right past the group without lifting an eyebrow as we were climbing the on-ramp. When we came down on the westbank, nobody was there, so cellphones were activated and we got the word that the westbank group was still a few miles down river road. We headed in their direction for a few miles until we saw them coming, then made a U-turn and finally had a nice sized group of nine or ten. When we hit the bridge a few miles later, Reo went straight to the front, setting a nice brisk tempo. Half-way up I shifted to an easier gear and moved over to let the rest of the group go past. My legs were tired and figured I'd just ride my own pace to the top. Right after that there was a loud explosion as one of the guys caught a sharp rock and put a huge slash in his rear tire. So now there's a whole group of us way up on the bridge doing this major tire repair job. This suspension bridge doesn't have much of a railing or anything, and standing up there you really feel like you're on the ledge of a very tall building. Not a good place for the moderately acrophobic. Luckily, somebody had one of those official store-bought stick-on tire boots, which definitely saved the day, since one alternative already on the table was an early morning phone call to a sleepy wife with a search and rescue request.

Anyway, we finally made it across and back onto the bike path which by now was getting busy with weekend bike riders and runners and all. A few more riders were picked up and there were yet more stops and slow-downs before we made it to the end of the bike path after which we did a loop through Audubon Park. The westbank group headed off into town to catch the Canal. St. ferry while the rest of us went back to the levee, riding all the way back out to Williams Blvd. where Jay peeled off and we turned around again to finally head home. We kept up a good pace all the way back, and by the time I exited at Oak Street, I was on the outskirts of Bonksville with 78 miles showing on the odometer and a big "E" showing on the carbometer.

It was a good training weekend and now that I'm sitting on the couch full of homemade smoothie and peanut butter, I'm thinking I won't be feeling too guilty if I do an easy ride tomorrow.

Gina called yesterday - perfectly timed during a lull in the Giro ride - to say she was doing one of those crits today, but when the pace started to ramp up again I had to say g'bye because I needed both hands to pedal by that point. She said that she had gotten only about 14 hours of sleep all week and was hoping she could get through the race.

Update! Gina just called in her report on the Bank of America criterium last night. She said it was a bloodbath. Something like $11,000 on the line for the women, 100 girls at the start, prime on the first lap. The primes were like $1,000. Huge crash, of course. Both the men and women had big pile-ups on the same corner on the first lap as the course turned onto a narrow street. She went down with the rest and did a little damage to her arm and leg, probably more from getting run into more than road-rash. She's currently doing a rotation at Duke in trauma surgery, so she was right at home amidst the tangled bodies and blood. She said she had to take command for a while until the ambulances got there. Ended up with blood all over her. One of the girls had a fairly serious head injury - Gina said she checked her pupils and they were all over the place! Word is she spend the night in IC. Anyway, they stopped the race to take care of all the medical issues and then restarted it. Gina got back in, but it sounded like she couldn't get her head around the race at that point and eventually backed out. The first few laps of a crit are always fast and dangerous, but when there's that much moula on the line, it gets positively crazy. Getting stuck toward the back of a 100-rider field on a crit course like that means you will never even see the front of the race.

Calm Before the Storm

Living near a university and working at one too means that, like it or not, your life ebbs and flows according to the academic calendar. Right now we're in that quiet period between summer session and fall session. The bike room at work is deserted. The uptown campus is quiet and empty. Faculty are on vacation and unreachable. At home, the first of the new crop of students is starting to move into the many apartments in the neighborhood. There are "for rent" signs all over the place as landlords try to avoid having to advertise in the newspaper, preferring to rent to Tulane students. Across the street is a 4-plex with two new tennants. Last year's women's basketball players are long gone, and I havent yet figured out the new students. There are clues, of course. The out-of-state license plates, for example. Somehow, just love the continual change.

So the last of the excess apartment furniture is stacked outside awaiting the garbage trucks. I'm restless and unsettled, anxious to see what the new semester will bring. Like the new med student who was checking out the bike room at work when I arrived yesterday who thought it was "awesome."

Having never gone away to college myself, I've always felt I missed something important. Perhaps that's why the new academic year still seems exciting and new to me despite the fact that my own life is terminably stable and boring.

Except, of course, for the bike racing part . . .

I've had a couple of extra glasses of wine tonight. Can you tell?

Cool Friday

I guess it doesn't actually qualify as "cool," but this morning it was definitely below 80F at sunrise and that's something to get excited about! As we were waiting up on the levee to get started, a girl who was running along the bike path stopped to ask when the rides started and if she could join in. Interesting . . . Anyway, we rolled out with the usual laid-back Friday group and after a while we picked up Tim Regan. Tim is just getting back on the bike after breaking the end of his collarbone a few weeks ago at the Baton Rouge Velodrome. (Note: You definitely do NOT want to pull a foot out of the clip in the middle of a match sprint!) Tim headed home early and later we picked up Realdo. Tim, Realdo and most of the Herring team are getting ready for a trip to the Tour of Guyana in a few weeks. I think there's a betting pool going as to whether Tim will actually make it there. Besides his collarbone issue, he and his wife are due for a new baby pretty soon.

If you want to see what happens when you pull a foot out in a match sprint, take a look at the video that Brooks B. took and that I put up temporarily on the website for your viewing pleasure. If you look closely (full-screen mode helps) you can see when he pulls his left foot out and launches himself over the bars. Just make sure it doesn't affect your plans to go over to Baton Rouge tomorrow for the track championships! I hope there's a good turnout tomorrow. Me? I dunno.

I'm thinking it might be a good weekend to try to put together a long ride on the Northshore on Sunday. Two road races the week after up in Shreveport. Word is that Kenny B. is up in NC doing the 5 crits in 5 days thing. Hope his legs recover from that in time for the trip to Guyana.

So yet another idiot writes a letter to the editor of the local newspaper complaining about cyclists. My favorite part:

"If you want to ride in the street, you should stop at signs, obey traffic lights and get insurance. I hope the police start giving tickets to cyclists who obstruct traffic."

I think she should get her fat ass out of the SUV, take the cellphone out of her ear, and do something useful. BTW, Bonnabel Blvd. is 4 lanes wide with a parking lane, so it's not so difficult to just go around the cyclists like everybody else - unless, of course, you're driving your air-conditioned SUV with one hand and talking on the cellphone while inhaling the toxic fumes from your recent trip to the hairdresser and eating a double cheeseburger from McDonald's that's dripping special sauce onto your Wal-mart dress.

Perhaps I stereotype. Seems only fair.