Short Ride, Long Day

Sunday morning I woke up early feeling quite sore in all of the places where I used to have muscles, so I took my time and didn't hit the road until around 7 a.m. I rode down Carrollton all the way to the river just to see what might or might not be open. There were signs out that the Rue de la Course coffee shop at Oak St. was "Now Open" so I called The Wife so we could meet up there after I finished my ride. All over New Orleans, the neutral grounds are festooned with signs announcing businesses that are open, businesses that are looking for help, and contractors of all sorts. I was a few miles down the road when a small group of triathletes came past, so I latched onto them for a while until we came up to Robin and Steve J. and a couple other guys. I slowed down for a second to take a pic, and when I did, Robin and Steve jumped to bridge up to the triathletes, so I had to put my head down for a while and spin up to 28 mph to catch back up. The tri guys were holding 25mph pretty steadily, but Robin and Steve were afraid to get too close. They were all on their aero bars and so they looked a little squirrelly. Anyway, I hung on until we got to St. Charles parish and turned around there to head back. I ran into Rob and Realdo next and they turned around to ride with me for a while, and when we got to the Jefferson Playground, I saw The Wife coming toward us. I backed off as she went by, expecting her to turn around, but instead she kept going. Eventually I figured that out and turned around and finally met up with her after she turned around at the country club. So anyway, we came back by way or Oak St., but when we found the coffee shop there closed, we decided to head down to Magazine St. to see if CC's was open. They weren't, but there was a sign on the neutral ground for the Laurel St. Bakery, so we tried that out and it turned out to be quite nice.

After returning home, I had to go back out to The Mom's rental and clean out an upstairs refrigerator. My brother had removed all of the contents, but now I had to clean out all of the maggots and wipe it down with bleach. This was pretty disgusting work, as you can imagine. I could have filled a quart bucket with maggots. Back at the house, a number of the neighbors were home and I soon found myself up on one of their roofs doing some temporary roofing. When we were running around the car started giving us trouble. The "check engine" light came on and the temperature gauge went all the way into the red, but there was no steam or other sign of overheating. Watching the gauge, I could see that it was fluctuating all over the place, so I decided it was probably either a failing thermostat or a bad temperature sending unit. Anyway, we made it back to our foster home in Jackson La., by early evening where I hit the sack early.