A Very Looooong Ride

The regular Tuesday long ride seemed a long longer than usual today, at least to me. It was much cooler than it's been lately, but I still ended up a bit over-dressed. To make matters worse, there were certain individuals on this morning's ride who wanted to make it both long AND hard. Todd and VJ spent most of the ride about 20 seconds off the front despite persistent head and crosswinds. A few of us were none too interested in making a race of it, but on the other hand we weren't willing to drop off the back either. Although I was careful to maintain the pace when I came to the front, I was staying out there for only 30 or 40 pedal strokes before pulling off. On the way out there were a few surges that took us up to 27 or 28 and started to close the gap to the duo off the front, but there wasn't really enough horsepower, or perhaps just motivation, to bring it back together again. Surprisingly, the return trip turned out to be quite fast too, with long stretches up around 26 mph. Since my legs had felt achy from the start, this all made for a very long ride. I can't really explain why my legs were hurting like that today. Perhaps I rode a bit harder than usual yesterday, or maybe the cooler weather had something to do with it.

So the City of New Orleans has set up FREE high-speed wireless internet throughout the CBD and French Quarter. Once the area loses its "disaster area" designation, they'll have to drop the speed down a notch so as to not compete unduly with the regular service providers (mostly COX and BellSouth around here), but still, it makes us the only actual City that has gotten away with a city-operated free internet service. Amazingly, I had heard nothing about all of this until I read about it this morning. Not that I did not have a clue, however. Yesterday, while sitting in the Bioscience workgroup meeting I had fired up my laptop to see if there was a good signal and found five or six low-level wireless networks within range, all with the "city of new orleans" ID. I wondered if perhaps some of the city's administration was operating out of the hotel temporarily, but of course now I know better. Tulane Hospital today opened a small primary care facility on LaSalle St. on the ground floor of the parking garage across from the (currently closed) emergency room. That's another bit of good news!

I had to run home around noon today to meet The Cable Guy (who I thought was supposed to come on Wednesday rather than today). I had to give him directions to the house, as he was clearly unfamiliar with the area, but once he found the place he got everything fixed up quite neatly. I could hear the Latin music blaring from his open truck door the whole time. Beats the hell our of Rap, IMHO. One more Katrina item to check off the "to-do" list.

So the insurance company called to say they had increased my roofing settlement amount up to the estimate I had gotten, adding about $10k to the total, so it'll now cover the whole roof (barring any nasty surprises). I think I can probably live with that, although The Wife is afraid it won't be enough to fix everything.

I think I'll go have a glass of wine now . . .