Beautiful

A cool front came through last night and the weather today was nothing short of beautiful. I left the house around 6:45 in semi-darkness, headed to the levee. It was a bit windy, and I was planning on an easy 30 mile ride. I was surprised how few people I ran into this morning, although I did ride most of the way with other people. I suppose a lot of people did the Giro ride or perhaps the Northshore ride this morning, but I had a long list of things I wanted to get done today and I didn't want to end up wasted until noon after a hard ride. I ended up doing around 35 miles, most of it at quite an easy pace. After riding I hit the back yard, taking down some of the broken tree limbs, cutting the grass, cleaning out the garage, etc.

That gas leak in the basement was really bugging me, so I decided to take another shot at pinpointing its source. I thought about it for a while, and then realized that I probably had the perfect bit of technology right in the house. After searching through the bathroom, I finally found what I was looking for. Bubble Bath!! I mixed it with water in a bucket, grabbed a sponge, turned on the gas, and went to work. It didn't take long. As I suspected, the leak was coming from the gas meter, so it looks like it'll be 1-800-Entergy. They'll probably tell me that I have to pay to relocate the meter to outside the house and it'll be freezing cold and Christmas before I have heat again. Just in case, I checked out the old portable electric heater to make sure it was still functional.

I wandered over to Bob G's house a few blocks down Pine St. to find him installing a new gas water heater in his now-gutted basement. Being a clever Ph.D., he had gotten the same model as he had before to make the installation easy. Nice try, Bob. He discovered that although the model number was the same, all the fittings were in slightly different locations, so he has a bit of plumbing to do.

So with winter fast approaching, I searched all over the place for my arm-warmers but couldn't find them. I think that perhaps I gave them to The Daughter, so I'll have to check out longscycle.com to see if they have something I can get for cheap. It's supposed to be even colder tonight and I'm planning on doing a very early ride before a few hours of work at home and then the trip back to Baton Rouge to pick The Wife up at the airport.