So first, check out Tulane's "welcome back" video.
It was around 65F this morning when I finally woke up, rather later than usual, with intentions of riding the Saturday Giro ride out at the lakefront. I pulled on a jersey, shorts and arm-warmers, not necessarily in that order, and rushed down the stairs to the basement. Shoes, helmet, glasses, gloves. I was out the door a couple of minutes later, with not quite enough time to make it to Lakeshore Drive without having a Time Trial for breakfast. Thanks the absence of stoplights (there are only temporary 4-way stop signs at the intersections) along Carrollton Ave., and my willingness to blow through numerous 4-way stop signs on the quiet early-morning roads, I made it to Lakeshore Drive just in time to catch the Giro ride a few minutes after it had started.
We had a pretty large group this morning, and things stayed civilized until someone, I suspect Todd, went to the front and ramped it up to about 30 mph, taking a handful of riders with him. The pack, or at least a few members thereof, mounted a reluctant chase, but the horsepower was lacking and we didn't really catch until they eased up around Chef Highway. It wasn't long, though, before the pace heated up again. I kept reminding myself that it is November as I spun the lowest gear I could handle near the back of the 40-rider pack. There were a few riders off the front again, and the pace was up around 27 or so, and soon Realdo drifted back alongside me and commented that even though you don't really care about the group off the front, you still hope they get caught before the turnaround. Indeed. I suppose that's one way to tell the bike racers from the bike riders. If there's one thing that all bike racers learn to hate, it's the feeling that they're getting dropped!
So I ended up riding a bit harder than I had planned, but I was able to keep things under control enough to avoid doing much damage and so I'm sure my legs will be fine for tomorrow's ride, assuming that the rainstorms that started rolling through here half an hour ago clear out before morning. Reo and I rode back down Canal Blvd. together. The prediction is for strong storms all night, finally easing up around 7 a.m., so it may be a tough call tomorrow.
The area around my home continues to move more and more toward recovery, but there are clearly some things that are going to take a while to get worked out. I still have yet to have any mail delivered to my house, and the stuff I ordered over two weeks ago, and was shipped via U.S. Postal Service, has yet to surface. There are new stoplights at most of the major intersections nearby, but a mile or two in any direction except toward the river things deteriorate pretty quickly. Riding through Lakeview on the way home today, The watermarks are still clearly visible on the houses along Canal Blvd. The worst are about even with the tops of the doorframes, though most seem to be at around the five foot level. Many, perhaps most, of the houses I could see have been gutted, and sit sadly awaiting their fate. Apartments are in high demand near the University, and the owner of the three-unit house across Pine St. from me told me today that she had just rented it to a student sight-unseen, and has already received the deposit and first month's rent via FedEx. I didn't dare ask how much. There is still a large pile of branches and tree trimmings, to which I added today, on the neutral ground near the house, and another pile of construction debris a few houses down where they recently ripped out a whole gound-level basement. They've been there a couple of weeks now and grow higher each weekend. Garbage pickup seems to be happening about once a week, apparently on Wednesday.
The Wife and I spent much of the day outside cleaning up. While I trimmed dead and broken branches from the Oak tree, balanced on top of a ladder with a long pole-saw and sawdust falling into my eyes, The Wife bagged up leaves and debris from around our house, from around the next-door neighbor's house, and from around the unoccupied 4-plex across the street. The next-door neighbor is supposed to be moving into his FEMA trailer in the driveway some time after Thanksgiving, but hasn't yet shown up, and the apartments across the street are normally rented to students, so I don't expect we'll see any action there until January. On the plus side, the SUV that's been parked in front of those apartments since the hurricane disappeared a few days ago. I don't think it was badly flooded, so hopefully the owner finally retrieved it and it didn't get towed away to the flooded-car graveyard. BTW, the admissions department at Tulane reports that over 90% of last semester's freshmen have already registered for their Spring semester classes. That's a good sign, I think.
While we were outside today the roofing company's guy showed up!!! Now that was truly exciting, since we've been waiting for about a month. This guy was brought in by Orleans Sheet Metal and Roofing from Montana to help them catch up on their estimating. He gave us two estimates. One for a true "equivalent" roof made of some sort of composite plastic type of material that looks like slate, and the other for some good-quality dimensional asphalt shingle roofing. In both cases, it's necessary to overlay the entire roof with plywood first. The first estimate was around $26k, and the second was around $19k. We still haven't heard from our insurance company, but I'm guessing they aren't going to spring for the $26k job, and will probably try to tell me that all I need is $9k to fix things up. Should be interesting, eh?
It's raining cats and dogs outside right now!
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