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.