Pumped up the tires on the track bike, laced up the old track shoes, put on the yellow Limar helmet that I crashed on last year and headed out brakeless early in the morning to squeeze in at least a ceremonial ride on the levee. I only got in 10-15 miles, since time was short, but I did run into Rob K. and turned around to ride with him for a while. He said that there was a Giro ride last Sunday! I got an e-mail from Jeff today, and he mentioned the Giro ride as well. There will be another next Saturday f'sure. Anyway, it was great to be riding on familiar turf for a change. Negotiating the debris-strewn neighborhood streets on the way back was a little dicey on the track bike. Good thing there was practically no traffic!
The city currently smells like a dumpster full of bad Mexican food that has been sitting out in the sun for six weeks. The smell is everywhere, and the streets are lined with duct-taped refrigerators full of putrid food. Progress appears to have been rather slow in many areas of the city. We spent a couple of hours in the Tidewater Building downtown this morning finding important files and hauling boxes down the stairwell. I guess I made seven or eight trips up and down from the 3rd floor to the 10th. Ordinarily, we would have been able to drive into the parking garage all the way up to the 7th floor, but they had just had a diesel spill on the 7th floor where one of the generators is and there was fuel all over the place, so we weren't allowed to drive into the garage at all, which meant much more heavy lifting.
After that we drove out to the home, near Esplanade on Bell St., of someone from whom nobody had heard since the hurricane. The house looked fine, but showed no sign that anyone had been there since the storm. The owner works at Tulane and had an older relative who lived on Almonaster in N.O. East, and we are quite worried that they may have tried to stay there during the hurricane and were caught in the flood.
Driving through mid-city, the amount of work that will be needed to fix up all those houses with water marks five and six feet above the ground is overwhelming. There are crews here and there working on houses, but they are surprisingly few and far between. Most of the houses just look abandoned.
Uptown near the universities things look a bit more lively, although still nothing near normal. We stopped for lunch at the Maple St. Cafe, which was one of the few restaurants open along that normally busy stretch of Maple Street. P.J.s Coffee and Starbucks were both closed but undergoing repairs. Despite the stench wafting in every time someone opened the door, it was nice to sit at a table with a real tablecloth and pretend to be civilized. Of course, reminders of the reality of the situation were unavoidable. While there was the older woman near the window having her regular lunch with a glass of Chablis, next to her was a long table occupied by special security guard types (probably the ones Tulane has hired) who were dressed in black and had guns strapped to their hips.
It has been a nice visit, and I think I will be able to return regularly on the weekends at least. I'll definitely bring my bike this weekend and try to make the Giro ride if I can.
No comments:
Post a Comment