Last Ride of '05 - Out with a Wimper

It's noon on Sunday and I have a headache. Perhaps a bit too much wine at last night's little get-together, or maybe just a case of Katrina Head. We had a nice little group at the house yesterday - a few of the neighbors, a few people from work. Reo rode over and Adam stopped by, so it was nice to be able to talk about bikes for a little bit instead of the realities of the disaster. The Wife had gone out and stocked up on beer and wine - far more than we needed. I think we'll have to have another get-together just to take care of the surplus. We have about ten different varieties of Abita beer, including of course "Fleur de Lis Restoration Ale" and a few big bottles of "Little Penguin" wine (which seems to be our most recent "house wine." I just fished one of those big bottles out of the freezer where it had been put, and forgotten, by The Wife. Of course, it had frozen and popped its cork, but didn't make too much of a mess, so it's sitting on the kitchen counter right now thawing out. The seafood gumbo that The Wife made was pretty good, and I think there's enough left for dinner tonight.

I'm sitting here on the front porch, legs a bit sore and head a bit achy, listening to the construction workers next door and watching the damned Buck Moths fluttering around under the oak tree perpetuating the life cycle of the nasty Buck Moth Caterpillar, one of which is destined to give me a bad sting next year. The cat is busy stalking the moths through the screen door, lunging at them when they get too close.

When I awoke this morning the fog was really thick, but I went ahead and rode out to the Lakefront anyway. After all, when the morning temperature is 65F in January, you just gotta ride. I mean, there are freezing riders in Minnesota who would give anything for a day like this. It was much darker than normal due to the fog, and the streets seemed particularly quiet. Nonetheless, there was a decent sized group for the last Giro Ride of the year, and by the time we were half-way down Hayne Blvd. it was strung out into a long, thin 28 mph line. The group split and reformed a couple of times on the way out, and we had a nice rotation going on Chef Highway, but after the turn-around everyone seemed happy to ride easy and chat, which was fine with me because every time I'd go hard my head would start to throb!

This year the City is trying to strictly enforce the anti-fireworks law, and it's a good thing too. With half of the homes covered in flammable blue plastic, the chances of fireworks-ignited house fires is very real. Yesterday morning as the Friday levee ride group was riding, we were stopped by one of the Jefferson Parish police officer who was out reminding everyone he saw that they would be issuing citations to anyone caught using fireworks on the levee this year.

So here in New Orleans the year 2005 will go out with more of a wimper than a bang, in more ways than one. I know I'll certainly be glad to get this one behind me, and this year in particular I will appreciate the sense of renewal that New Year's Day will bring. On the positive side, many of the uptown residents are back in their houses, lots of the children are back, and the local schools will be reopening in a few weeks. On the negative side, the U.S. Postal Service is still not delivering mail here on a regular basis, the city has a very long way yet to go, and there's a brand new water line leak on the corner in front of my house.

c'est la vie.

Premature Attackulation

It must have been the warmer weather and lighter winds this morning. Right from the start, Rob and a couple others were rolling along faster than usual, and when other riders would meet us, the group was reluctant to slow down very much. By the time we were half-way out it was already starting to feel like a race, and the occasional surges by Howard and Todd were taking their toll. Donald, clearly unhappy with the Giro-esque mentality was in gap-opening mode, letting big gaps open in front of him in hopes that the lead group would wear themselves out. I bridged across a couple of times, and the last time the split stuck. It was the first time in a long time that it felt almost like a race. The group was feeding on itself and there were a lot of clearly premature attacks, the perpetrators of which, I knew would have to pay up before the end of the ride. For my own part, I was skipping pulls here and there when the pace would get too high.

The return trip was mostly more of the same and for the first time since Katrina I was back home at the "usual" time. I have to admit, however, I was pretty tired by the time I got to work this morning. Fortunately, it's pretty quiet around here for now.

So we decided to have a little get-together this Friday night at the house. As usual, we are totally unprepared, but we'll pull something together at the last minute. Everyone reading this is invited! 6:30 pm, Friday, 81 Neron. Should be fun.

Short Week

It seemed like a particularly long holiday weekend, and I was happy to get back to some semblance of routine this morning. The usual Tuesday long ride eventually accumulated a group of a dozen, but when I hit the meeting spot this morning there was only one bike there. As I rode up, I saw that Rob had his front wheel off, but he was just standing there looking at it. Odd. Turned out that he had slammed into one of our city's new potholes in the dark on his way over and blown both tires. Having only one spare tube, he was close enough to ride the flat front to the levee where he could borrow another tube. His rim had a huge dent it in - huge enough that I was surprised he hadn't gone down. Anyway, I gave him a tube and we were on the road a bit late, but then so was everyone else. The ride was fairly steady today, hovering around 21-23, until we got about half-way back and The Howard decided out of the blue that he needed to up the pace to 30 mph. A few riders split off with him, and the rest, including me, just sped up a little bit. After a while we were mostly all back together, though. Erich M. was in town from Athens, where he's about to start work for a financial investment advisor type of company. As we approached one of the pumping stations in Jefferson he and Rob split off the front a bit and as we went around the pumping station I put a little pressure on the pedals to close the gap. Apparently I was about the only one to do so, and we ended up doing a little 3-man TT the rest of the way. As soon as we eased up around the playground, Mark D caught from behind. He must have been chasing solo for a few miles at least.

Yesterday morning after a short training ride I decided to clean up the neutral ground across from the house and spend a couple of hours with a shovel, rake, etc., eventually filling up five of those huge contractor-type plastic bags with leftover hurricane debris. It looks better, but my hamstrings, back and shoulders are all sore as hell today, which never seems to be much of a problem while riding, although walking isn't all that much fun.

So this will be a short week at work. We were off yesterday and will be off again on Friday. That should leave me completely confused since I already think today should be Monday.

Christmas Day '05

It was a long christmas day this year, and also another day off the bike. We were up before dawn to exchange presents before The Wife and I drove up to Baton Rouge to visit the mother-in-law. A large part of or visit consisted of driving aimlessly around Baton Rouge during the day looking at christmas decorations. There were a few times when I swear I was about to fall asleep at the wheel from sheer boredom. It also consumes a lot of energy dealing with someone with early Alzheimer's disease. Although traffic was very light when we drove there in the morning, by the time we headed back around noon, it was much heavier. It also seemed that the average speed was around 85 mph. After our big christmas lunch with the family, which didn't happen until around 2 p.m. this year, we watched a dvd movie and finally got back home in time for Joey D and Kelly to stop by. We had a real nice visit, and finally called it a day around 10:30 p.m.

It looks like tomorrow will be pretty cold, but since I have the day off I'll probably wait until the sun comes up to go for a ride.

Frosty

There was a some yesterday, but much more today. Although the temperature was about the same, a slight shift in the wind had brought in a bit of Gulf moisture, resulting in a nice little frost that covered levee and rooftops all along the ride this morning. We accumulated only four or five riders this morning, including Joe F., and so the pace stayed slow enough for conversation. By 9 a.m. the temperature had risen from 39 to the mid-50s, and my short commute to Gibson Hall for the last work day before christmas was an easy one.

It's 2:30 p.m. right now and the place is nearly deserted. I've just finished three glasses of eggnog daiquiri. Rebecca dropped in to the office a while ago with a gallon of the delicious slurry, and although there were only three of us left to polish it off, we clicked plastic glasses, toasted New Orleans, and did our best. Now, as always seems to happen, I'm the only one left here. The lack of distraction this morning did allow me to finish off the rest of the Research Office's website re-design, however, and I'm thinking I'll skip on out of here shortly.

Christmas, such as it is this year, is just about here in the Crescent City. There is a pretty good article in today's USA Today. I particularly liked this bit:

"What makes New Orleans different, worth the billions of tourism dollars that come in every year, even worth living in, Ogden says, is its gritty charm. "We don't want gated subdivisions with cul de sacs like Dallas or Atlanta." That thought, he says, "makes me wake up in the middle of the night, screaming."

and this one:

"It's hard to work. It's hard to concentrate. I was watching TV last night, and there was a little girl who was worried that Santa wouldn't know how to find all the children, and I just broke down and cried," says Miester, who is living with her mother since her home was destroyed. She says a friend of hers went into a bagel shop, and when they asked her what she wanted, the friend burst into tears: "I want my house back!" They gave her a bag of bagels."

I leave you with this little number that someone sent to the psychiatry list. You'll recognize the rythmn.

The Twelve Days of Post-Katrina Christmas

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
The power turned back on by Entergy.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Eight dump trucks hauling
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Nine roofers roofing
Eight dump trucks hauling
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Ten electricians wiring
Nine roofers roofing
Eight dump trucks hauling
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Eleven plumbers plumbing
Ten electricians wiring
Nine roofers roofing
Eight dump trucks hauling
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveriesFive MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Twelve painters painting
Eleven plumbers plumbing
Ten electricians wiring
Nine roofers roofing
Eight dump trucks hauling
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergyyyyy! PLEASE!PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!

Surprising

Yesterday's ride was a typical Wednesday levee ride - a handful of riders, a moderate pace, and no surprises. Although when I arrived home there was no mail (the U.S. Post Office seems to be delivering selected mail only two or three times a week around here, and we have not received a single christmas catalog!), I was surprised to find a small package at the door. Inside were the missing package I'd ordered Nov. 5, and a few pieces of month-old mail, including a traffic ticket reminder from Iowa City compliments of The Daughter. This was the stuff that the Jackson Post Office had forwarded to me after I finally got in touch with them last week. So now I can pump up my tires again!

It was surprisingly cold this morning. Colder than yesterday or the day before. I've really got to start paying more attention to the weather forecasts. Before I headed out into the darkness, I put on my good ol' Pearlizumi vest. I knew that somewhere along the 42 mile morning ride it would end up in my pocket, but then that's exactly what they're made for.

It took a dozen miles for us to gather up a group of ten or so riders this morning, and the pace stayed pretty steady for most of the trip. I had contemplated skipping the ride this morning when the alarm went off, but I was ultimately glad that I pushed myself out the door, as usual. I got The Daughter to give me a ride to work this morning so I could bring in a few bacchanalian gifts for the office. She had just returned from a drive over to mid-city and Lakeview to take some photos for the folks back in Iowa City. She didn't have to go far to find houses with water marks at six and seven feet.

Things have gotten pretty quiet here at work over the last couple of days, so I've had some time to do more work on the Research Office's website. They've got a lot of stuff on there that they can't possibly maintain, so I'll have to set up a reality-check meeting with the director so they don't end up with a bunch of outdated information and links, but at least it will be a good start. I'm listening to the KPLU.ORG Jazz stream right now, which feels just right today. I think the weather will be warming up over the next few days, and although it was around 38F this morning, the temperature is up to 55 right now. The high for Saturday is supposed to be 71F, after which another cold front is supposed to come through just in time for christmas morning. There are no temperatures below 42 in the 10-day forecast, though, so except for the increasing chance of rain around New Year's Eve, the riding should be good.

The Mayor has lifted the 2 a.m. curfew for the functioning areas of the city, starting Friday. As you might have expected, this was of sufficient importance to returning Tulane students that they were calling the President's office to find out when it would be lifted. Tulane students and faculty who need housing will be living on a cruise ship docked at the university's "RiverSphere" berth on the river downtown. Now, that would be interesting! It's been a few days now since I've ventured outside of the uptown area here, and things are feeling more and more "normal." Of course, I know that if I go half a mile in the wrong direction, reality will slap me in the face, but I'm glad that I can enjoy occasional periods of denial anyway!

Hopefully I'll be able to make the Giro ride Saturday, but I'm guessing Sunday will be a day off the bike.

A Few Days of Winter

We were already 17 miles down the road tby the time the sun came up this morning. The cold weather wouldn't feel nearly so bad were it not for the darkness. When the sun's out, 40F feels just great, but when it's dark, I swear it feels fifteen degrees colder. To make matters words, my little flashing headlight was really acting up this morning, and every time I hit a little bump in the road it would stop working. I guess one of the battery contacts is a little flaky, but regardless, it was just driving me crazy. At least I wasn't underdressed today, at least my my standards. With long tights, skullcap, a short-sleeved jersey, two long-sleeved ones, my Un-DeShirt, DeFeet gloves and shoe covers, and clear glasses, I was pretty comfy. There's just no point being cold on a weekday training ride, IMHO.

I arrived alone atop the levee a minute or so before 6:15, and a few minutes later there were three of us. We took one last look down the bike path toward uptown, and headed out. Eventually, we accumulated a good-sized group of maybe ten or so. With it so dark in the morning, lots of people have started meeting us along the way rather than riding all the way down to the "official" starting spot.

As often happens when I'm cold, my legs were reluctant all morning, and when Todd picked up the pace by five mph about a mile before the turnaround, I dropped to the back and eased up, taking a few minutes to look at the scenery and let my legs recover a bit. Shortly after we started back, we ran into Donald and Ronnie who had missed the group because of a train crossing. A little group split off the front early on the return trip, but there was never an effort to catch it. With a pretty good headwind, it was a challenge to maintain 22 mph at times, but the group in front wasn't doing much better. It looks like the lows will be 38-40 for the next couple of days, but by christmas it should warm up a bit. Of course, by my standards, it will still feel like winter.

I got the bulk of the work done today on the Office of Research website changes, and although I'm not entirely satisfied with it, I think it will work, and besides, I want to back away from it soon so I can hand it off to ORA to maintain. At least it doesn't look like something from the 90s any more!

One thing I've really noticed over the last five or six days is the number of students and children around. I think that a lot of people have returned to the city in the last week. For some, it's not so easy. One of our office staff is living in Gonzalez, LA, which is a good hour and a half drive, each way, her husband also has to communte into town, leaving at 5 a.m. each morning. Their house in New Orleans East was completely flooded. She says she wishes they would just bulldoze the whole area, because it's just so depressing to see.

Nice on the Northshore

The temperature was a full ten degrees colder on the Northshore this morning. As I had expected, I was the only one from the Southshore to make the drive, but I was glad I did. Our 9-man group started out straight into the 39 degree north wind, but by the time we had clicked off ten miles it was already warming up thanks to the clear blue sky and a few hard efforts. I tried out the Nike skullcap that The Daughter gave me yesterday and I was surprised how warm is was.

For the most part, the pace stayed pretty reasonable. On the run back into Enon on the way back, Jay attacked and things got fast for a while. Then, as usual, there was a surge to the top of the watchtower hill. For the whole last half of the ride, the weather was nearly perfect. Perhaps the tailwind had something to do with that, though. Anyway, I felt pretty good riding today, despite, or perhaps because of, my minimal mileage last week.

In the afternoon, I foolishly agreed to accompany The Wife and Daughter on a shopping trip to Lakeshide Shopping Center. The parking lot was packed, so once The Wife started trying to tell me how to drive and where to park, I decided to drop them both off at one of the entrances and handle the complex task of parking the car solo.

Good move.

I ran into Eddie C at the Mall and he said that the Giro ride was fast and hard today, and his legs were sore. Geez guys, it's the friggin' weekend before christmas.

Chill!

Rainy Day

It's been an odd week. Thursday morning was cold and windy, and although the streets were still a bit damp I wanted to ride. I really did. I headed out the door, turned the corner and the cold damp wind cut right through my clothes to my skin. It took about two blocks for me to figure out this wasn't going to be any fun at all. I hit the "abort" button and returned to old homestead.

So by Friday morning I was really needing a ride, and I left home figuring I'd probably be riding by myself. As it turned out, we had a nice little group on the levee. It was a nice day with slightly warmer weather and just a light wind, and though it might not have qualified as a legitimate training day, considering my lackluster rides of the preceeding week, it was nice nonetheless. I always tell myself "it's only December" when I have weeks like this. Jeff was out with his Powercranks. Man, those things are just unnatural. Especially when the rider coasts with both feet down. Wierd. Ronnie was out on his new Litespeed time trial bike, and he ended up pushing our pace just a bit, which kind of kept us honest. I think that without him, we would have spend more time going 18 mph and less going 21. On the way back, we picked up Joe F., and I thought about how I'd be lucky to be riding like that when I get to be his age.

The forecast for Saturday was looking none too good - a fitting end to this week. On the "plus" side, there have been some positive signs coming out of D.C. that will go a very long way toward restoring confidence in the city.

Saturday morning I could hear the sound of car tires on wet streets as soon as I awoke, and although I didn't really have to get up and look, I did. It wasn't really all that bad, but the combination of wet and cold is just not my cup of tea. If it had been February, I would have ridden anyway, but "it's only December." So it was a rainy day for me. It pretty much rained all day, and I felt a lot colder than the temperature warrented for some reason.

So I ended up going out to the Sears store with my mother because they were having this big 10% off sale on top of the state's "tax holiday" weekend, which meant a 14% discount even on sale items. On top of that, if you used your Sears credit card, you could get a 10% rebate. The mom needed to buy three refrigerators, two ovens, and one dishwasher to replace the appliances damaged in the flood, so we headed out there for the half-day sale, bracing ourselves for long day. When we arrived, they were giving out numbers. Ours was something like two hundred eight. They were calling for number twenty-seven, so we were looking at about an hour and a half, easy. The place was packed. After an hour or so, my mom was talking to another woman who had been given someone else's ticket when that person gave up and went home. She gave her the number since she didn't need it, and a few minutes later it was called! Nice!! We picked out the appliances, which added up to around $2,000 even with all the discounts. The next available delivery date was in mid-February, so we decided we'd figure out a way to pick them up, and scheduled pick-up for January 5. Anyway, it was an experience! The Wife and I made a feeble attempt to do some christmas shopping, but we just couldn't get motivated and after driving around and wandering through a few stores, we called it a day and stopped at Taquera Corona for a few tacos and a bottle of XX.

The Daughter came home this evening from Iowa City for the first time since mid-summer. Her flight out of St. Louis was delayed for about an hour while the authorities removed a drunk passenger from the airplane. Tomorrow I'm planning on doing the Northshore ride. I'll bet I'm the only one from the Southshore.

Nothing Good to Say

I had a nice ride this morning with a small group and it was pretty much all downhill (figuratively, not topographically) after that, culminating with a thunderstorm and a brand new roof leak, probably thanks to insurance adjusters and roofers walking around on it.

December Sunrise

In the early morning darkness the only light in the room came from the clock-radio and the flashing VCR that hasn't been reset since Katrina. I stumbled down to the basement and clipped the headlight onto the handlebars for a ride in the dark. With a meeting scheduled for 8 a.m., it was going to have to be an early ride for me, and I'd have to be back home well before the usual Tuesday levee ride group even made it to the turnaround. Riding up the bike path from Oak Street, I spotted a flashing headlight up above me, and by the time I got onto the levee he already had about twenty seconds on me. It was still pitch black, but the reflective strips on his jersey reflected the flashing of my headlight. I wasn't gaining on him. Suddenly, somewhere before the playground, he stopped to text-message someone else who was supposed to be riding early and I caught up. It was Justin, and I was glad to have the company. Despite the darkness, we held a good pace all the way out to the parish line. The western sky ahead of us still pretty dark, but when we turned around we were greeted by a beautiful orange dawn reflecting off of a calm Mississippi River. I thought "red sky at morning, sailors take warning." We returned a little bit more slowly, finally crossing paths with the 6:15 Tuesday group a mile or two from the playground. I was glad I had ridden. It would have been easy to have blown off the ride, considering.

After dropping The Wife off downtown and then sitting through a long meeting of minimal consequence, I finally got back to the office around 11:00. There was a lot going on, none of it good. The medical school faculty were in a bit of an uproar following the layoffs and then the sudden resignation over the weekend of the Dean of the Medical School. Meanwhile, on the legislative front, Congress has been content to sit back and fiddle while the city's economy struggles. The universities are getting the cold shoulder, as is the city. I guess it's more important to rebuild Bagdad than New Orleans. Various groups are trying to formulate a thoughtful recovery plan, but there is still not a unified voice, and as we know, they are easily confused.

So in a weak moment while trying to distract myself from the problems I think I volunteered to redesign the office of research's website. There is a story on it on the WWL website, though. There are probably a lot of somewhat disappointed lawyers.

The Corps extracted some of the sheet piling from the 17th street canal floodwall near the point where it failed because some researchers from LSU used some sort of ground-penetrating sonar system earlier and claimed that the sheet piles that were used were about ten feet shorter than the specification. As it turned out, the researchers were wrong and the sheet piles measured out to the correct lengths. Oops. I'll bet that story doesn't make it onto the front page of CNN.

Looks like warmer weather tomorrow ahead of the next cold front and its associated rain.

Got an email from Gina V yesterday. Her new Diet Cheerwine team had an announcement in CyclingNews. It should be a fun season for them.

Weak Link

It was a marvelous winter riding day today over on the Northshore. We started out with 13 riders under a clear blue sky with the temperature just under 40F but rising quickly. There was only a hint of wind, and that made the cool temperature feel a whole lot warmer, especially considering that the first few miles of our winter rides always seem to head straight North.

Although I had more than a couple glasses of wine at the party the evening before, I was in fairly good shape when the alarm went off at 5:45 a.m. this morning. Noel had called earlier to say that he could give me a ride across the lake, so The Wife dropped me off at the Morning Call so I could switch over to Noel's fancy truck. She was planning on driving across the lake herself to do some christmas shopping, since a lot of the stores over here are still closed. We had a good group for the ride, starting some time after 8:00 ,and ended up doing about 60 miles, arriving back at the cars around 11:30. We weren't too far along when Noel dropped his chain climbing a little hill. He stopped for just a second to put the chain back on, and we all continued on, but a bit later I noticed something odd. Noel's chain was now acting like it had a stiff link, so we finally stopped again five or six miles later. It turned out that one or maybe two of the links were bent, twisting the chain and causing it to jump off of the jockey wheel every time that spot came around. Luckily, Jorge was there with his handy multi-tool (gotta get one of those) which includes a chain tool, so I removed the offending links and we were good to go.

Although much of the ride today was at a nice steady pace in the low to mid-20s, things did get a bit out of hand a couple of times. When we were coming back down Lee Road toward Enon Jay took off, perhaps anticipating the Enon town sign sprint. A number of us responded and pretty soon most of us were in full-out race mode. It was fun! For once, we didn't stop at the store in Enon and just continued on up the Watchtower hill. Jay and Rick took off near the middle of the climb, but I waited a little bit before going after them. For a little time it was Race #2 and there were only six or seven of us still together by the time we go to the Tung road turn.

Now if there's one thing I hate, it's having to rush off from a training ride, salty and unwashed, without a chance to go home first and shower and eat. The other thing I hate is shopping. Especially when the traffic is all backed up with christmas shoppers. So by the end of the afternoon, we had checked a bunch of items off of the christmas shopping list (especially The Daughter's list), and I was a tired, cranky and rather fragrant mess with a significantly lighter wallet.

A Quick Giro

A somewhat complicated day today. I took the car out to the lakefront for the Giro ride this morning. I normally ride the seven or eight miles from home, but this morning I was supposed to be back at the office around 10 a.m., which is about the time I usually get home from the ride. Anyway, it was going to be tight.

The morning weather was cool, and although I knew it would warm up by the time the ride was over, I dressed for the start rather than the finish. The ride today was mostly civilized, with only a few brief fast sections. The changes along the Giro route through New Orleans East are coming painfully slowly. This week two of the seven or eight stoplights along the ride are flashing. The rest are still out, replaced by folding stop signs placed on the corners. The old lighthouse at the West end of Lakeshore Drive has fallen farther over into the scoured-out hole left by the storm, and it's just about to collapse altogether. I wasn't feeling too sharp todayand was sort of avoiding doing much hard work, concentrating instead on spinning a slightly lower gear than usual. Since today's ride wasn't particularly fast, by the time we got back to the parking lot it was around 9:30 already. I make a quick exit and rushed around when I got back to the house, still arriving at the office about twenty minutes late. The five of us got to work on the report and finally got it finished and sent out around 2 p.m. Then it was off for the Intercontinental hotel downtown for the Psychiatry christmas party. There were lots of shrimp and raw oysters and wine, and the turnout was quite good. I guess that the christmas party competition is weak around here this year, so if you have a party you can be sure of a good turnout.

It's looking like it will be a chilly winter northshore training ride tomorrow.

Long Day Off

It was cold and windy this morning and it didn't take me long to choose to drop The Wife off at work and take the car to work, which meant skipping my morning ride. The Wife is working a meeting downtown tonight through Sunday morning, and she'll be staying at a hotel for the duration. There will be a party Saturday night, and I'll be there for that, but I guess I'll have to skip out early Sunday in order to make the Northshore training ride.

I knew it would be a long day at work trying to help get a report finished for a meeting on Monday. This is a committee report (well actually a workgroup of a subcommittee of a committee of a commission), and that kind of complicates the writing process. By 10 a.m. our small group of people from the bioscience workgroup were in our "office" for another group writing marathon. We had all been there until around 7 p.m. the night before, and it was looking like it might be a repeat performance today. In fact, we finally gave up around 7:30, having agreed to meet again Saturday morning at 10:00 to try and finish up. A few of us headed over to Cooter Brown's for a beer before heading home, and I readily chose a bottle of Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar Ale. By the time I got home it was already after 9 p.m. I'm pretty tired and could really use a break.

Well, not to worry. I'll be out there for the Giro ride Saturday morning, though I'll really have to rush to get to the office for 10:00.

Cuts and Bleeding

It was darker than usual this morning as I headed out to the levee, thanks to overcast skies and a rainy forecast ahead of another approaching cold front. Appropriate weather for today as you'll see later. Even so, I was surprised to find the bike path deserted when I arrived a couple of minutes after 6:15. I found Donald alone at the playground and we continued on, eventually picking up a couple more riders along the way, and once again we cut the long ride to a medium-length one. We had a pretty good ride, though, and the added effort of the smaller paceline and moderate wind made up for the shorter distance.

Today a press release by Tulane was scheduled for noon. Tulane announced its cuts. Some of the details are on the "Survival to Recovery" website. Numerous degree programs have been eliminated. The Medical School's clinical enterprise is being slashed. A number of athletics programs are being eliminated. As I sit here there is a group downstairs in the President's office stuffing FedEx envelopes with letters to the 230 faculty and staff who are being terminated. It is both sad and scary. The university is bleeding, the city is bleeding, the state is bleeding, and the Federal government is responding with about the same level of urgency we saw when the levees failed. I guess they don't call us "the city that care forgot" for nothing.

I look outside the window of Gibson Hall and there is a handful of workers working on the landscaping and putting christmas lights on the Azaleas that line the semicircular drive across from Audubon Park. It seem odd under the circumstances.

Easy ride tomorrow for sure.

Southern Winter

Tuesday morning was cold and windy, and indeed it was hard to get myself out the door and to the levee by 6:15. The 39 degree air felt a lot colder thanks to the strong winds and I wasn't too surprised to find the bike path virtually deserted. There were only four of us and when Donald, who recently started a new job working for FEMA, said he would have to turn around early, we all decided that would be a fine idea for the rest of us too. We still got in around 35 miles. Later in the day, I had a nice ride from the uptown campus to the health sciences center (and back) downtown for a meeting. Ended up at work till around 7:00 working on a report and returned home to find that the neighbor and The Wife had strung up lights on a couple of the oak trees. Man, this next electric bill is gonna be interesting. Anyway, the street looks quite festive, except for the ever-present contractor trucks and the FEMA trailer parked in the neighbor's driveway.

Wedesday the weather was still pretty cold, by "southern winter" standards, but a bit warmer, although The Daughter called to say it was ten degrees below zero up in Iowa City where they spell winter with a capital "W." We had a nice group of eight or so for the usual Wednesday ride and things were going along smoothly until Donald inexplicably decided to attack about half-way back. The rest of the paceline sped up just a bit, and I'm sure everyone was thinking that he would ease up and come back to the group quickly. Eventually big Richard pulled the line back up to a pace that was starting to close the gap, and then I cam around and finished the job. Along the way we dropped a few of the guys, though.

So Tulane bought an apartment building just off of St. Charles near Jackson Ave., and has lined up a cruise ship also. The cruise ship will be moored at the "Riversphere" location, which is really an old riverboat casino building that Tulane was given downtown. Luckily, it happens to have a beautiful concrete dock. As I rode the commuter bike through campus this morning it seemed that the level of activity had moved up another notch. There's just about a month left before classes resume. Compared to much of the city, Tulane's campus will look like a real jewel.

Seasons

Who says we don't have seasons down here in New Orleans? Damn, we practically had all four of 'em just this week. When we went to bed last night we had the air conditioner running. By morning it was in the 50s outside and tonight it will around be down to the upper 30s with a much lower wind chill. Yeah, I know that's not considered cold in Minnesota, but it's pretty cold by New Orleans standards. I'm thinking it won't get below 40F here, but I'm sure it will feel a lot colder. It's all relative, you know.

Today was another day off the bike, thanks to the rain we had all morning ahead of the cold front. On Sunday I skipped the Sunday Giro ride, and instead did a long solo ride up on the levee. Somewhere way out there around Destrehan, my computer hit 49,000 miles. It's going to be tough to get out the door tomorrow morning in the dark with that cold wind blowing. Tonight The Wife decorated the artificial christmas tree, and the house is full of the usual holiday decorations. Hey, anything to get your mind off of reality, right?

It was a long day at work today, and I had to skip one meeting downtown that I had wanted to make in order to put together a last-minute photo presentation for Sharon to take with her up to D.C. around mid-afternoon. Somehow I managed to get good photos from four of the local universities, put them all into a nice little package with four photos per page, find someone in the building with a color laser printer, etc., etc. Under the circumstances, I think it came out pretty nicely. Thinks are not looking too good for the university, financially speaking, and the uncertainty is starting to get to everybody. We've already lost a few key administrative/academic people, and I suspect more will follow. I think things will get worse before they get better.

Summer Weekend in December

It is late Sunday night and a cool front is slowly approaching. Behind it comes cooler weather that I'm not really sure I want. It felt like summer this weekend in New Orleans, and between the warm weather and my rest day on Friday, my legs felt pretty good for Saturday's Giro ride. The temperature had warmed up so quickly that the overpasses were all damp with condensation, and most of the group stopped to walk across the slippery steel grating on the top of the Seabrook bridge near the start of the Giro ride. There was a little group that split off the front at that point, and they didn't wait for the ride to regroup. Eventually, though, someone had a flat and things were able to come back together. It was a fairly fast Giro ride for this time of year. I felt good during the ride, but then had to battle a headwind all the way home.

The annual LAMBRA meeting was on Sunday in Baton Rouge, and since I was the one who would be representing the NOBC I had to skip the Northshore ride and instead went out for a long solo ride on the levee. The meeting went fairly well and we at least got a start on the 2006 race calendar. We also decided to add a Cat.3 division to the LCCS points series, even when the 3s are combined with the 1s and 2s. Should be interesting. By the time the meeting was over I was not feeling too good. I'm really hoping I'm not coming down with a cold or something. The Wife came up to B.R. with me and spent about three hours at the local shopping mall, so we ended up taking home an artificial christmas tree to replace the one that was ruined in the flood. The Daughter and I always have allergy-like problems when there's a real tree in the house for very long. Tomorrow will be a long day at work and I'm already pretty tired, so I'm off to bed now . . .

Listening

Since my body's obviously been trying to tell me something the last few days, I decided it was time to do a little listening today, so I skipped my usual morning ride. Of course I woke up at 5:45 a.m. anyway. I've done my weekday riding in the morning for so long now that I'm decidedly uncomfortable when I don't.

Yesterday it was raining when I was ready to head home from work, so I got a ride with The Wife and left the commuting bike at Tulane. As a result, I had to walk the mile or two to work this morning, which would have been quite nice except for the 40 pound messenger bag I was shouldering the whole way. In addition to the laptop and all the other usual stuff, I had a few 2006 calendars in there too. As it turns out, we have maybe forty cases of these rather nice calendars that are put out by the anxiety disorders association down in our basement right now. They were apparently printed with the wrong color ink and the whole job had to be re-done, so they gave them to the Psych department and they ended up in our basement.

So our final staff person started work again today and I decided that since we'll probably be stuck working out of this classroom through December, I'd see about getting some printer-sharing going. Ordinarily, that would be pretty simple, but since we're using the university's network, I knew it wouldn't be. I've been down this road before. Luckily, the TIS support folks are also shacked up in Gibson Hall, so I walked downstairs (yep, all they've got them and their computers down in the basement - slow learners, aren't we?) and one of the guys came back upstairs to set something up. Theoretically it should be a simple matter to share a printer that's connected to a computer with other computers on the same network, right? Well, naturally it wouldn't work and we'll be trying again on Monday.

Slow Day

I almost didn't go. I mean, is was kind of chilly and damp this morning and I musn't have slept well because I woke up feeling tired. But of course I went out anyway, and as usual it was fine once I got out on the road. I arrived at the usual meeting spot on the levee right on time, but it was just me and Richard. Eventually we ended up with eight or nine riders, and although Todd raised the pace from a comfortable 23 mph to an uncomfortable 27 mph, it didn't last too long. He took off again with BJ on the way back, but the rest of us weren't interested and just watched them ride off into the distance. My legs were feeling like lead again today, making 23-24 mph feel like a real challenge, so I wasn't taking very long pulls.

At work, things were pretty quiet, at least for me, so I ended up making some updates to our office website's contact information pages. I had a heck of a time dealing with the odd way that Dreamweaver handles shtml files that contain server-side includes.

It's only 8:30 p.m. right now, but after just one glass of wine (well, maybe it was more like three) I'm already sleepy.