A Long One

The plan was to do a long ride this Mardi Gras morning, but I didn't know if there would be a group ride, or when it would meet. I didn't really care, actually, and was expecting to do most of the ride solo. Still, I didn't want to be out too late because I wanted to catch the Rex parade that started at 10 a.m., so I hit the levee around 6:30, and found a few guys up there looking for a group. Once the sun came up the weather was great, and we rolled the 23 miles out to the turnaround at a steady pace, except for when Howard was on the front of course. On the way back, we saw a big group coming the other way, and I guess they must have started at 7:00 from the Playground. Howard turned around to ride with them, but a little while later we picked up Realdo who turned around as we came by. In doing so, he broke a spoke but the wheel was still good enough to ride. I think he eventually got in three hours this morning. What I got was a flat on the way home.

We headed out around 9:45, this year on foot, for our annual pilgrimage down St. Charles Avenue to the French Quarter about 6 miles away. This year we timed it just right, arriving at Napoleon and Freret just as the parade started to roll. We kept pace with the front of the parade all the way down to 3rd street where we found Realdo and family, so we hung around there for a while while I ran back and forth to the floats with Reo's son on my shoulders collecting beads. Eventually we all walked down to the Burger King for some food, and then The Wife and I continued on our way downtown.

This time our timing was all wrong and we got trapped behind the barricades and had to wait until the last Rex float was past Royal St. before the police opened up the barricades and the crowd flooded into the French Quarter. The crowds were definitely a bit thinner than usual and I took a lot fewer photos than last year, but it was still quite interesting. The only problem was this post-nasal drip and sore throat that I still have. I'm quite sure I should have stayed in bed all day today, but seeing as how it was my civic duty to celebrate Mardi Gras, how could I do that. So I ended up walking something like 15 miles today and by the time I got home my feet were killing me. This walking stuff is for the birds. It was a long day and an even longer walk. Give me wheels any day! I put a little photo album up on the kodak site.

Zinc

Yesterday evening we hopped on the clunkers and pedaled through the traffic to see the Bacchus parade and, hopefully, Endymion that followed. The weather was great and we locked the bikes up to the iron fence at Sacred Heart and walked down St. Charles Avenue, eventually meeting up with Realdo and his family around 3rd Street. The crowd was pretty good but not overwhelming, which made for some pretty good parade watching, much of it done with one of Reo's kids on my shoulders. We were having a pretty good time when all of a sudden we noticed that there was this huge gap between floats. Looking up St. Charles, we could barely make out the lights of the next float, which seemed to be at a standstill. I heard later that there had been a problem with one of the floats hitting a power cable or something. Anyway, it was starting to get late and The Wife was already uncomfortable with the crowds, so I reluctantly headed back to the bikes. Things started rolling again eventually, and I saw the first of the Endymion floats just before I crossed Napoleon Avenue at the edge of the parade zone. Along the way I first lost my camera case, which I suppose is now in the belly of one of those big street sweepers that follows the parades. Then I lost The Wife who was practically in a neurotic dead-run to get out of the crowd and back to the bikes. We reconnected back at the bikes, though. I was kind of disappointed not being able to stay for more of the parades.

Today was "Staff Appreciation Day," at Tulane, which is really just a kind of floating holiday that they wisely decided to give the day before Mardi Gras. Since I had a good ride yesterday and my legs were a little sore, I took the chance to sleep late and didn't get out of bed until almost 7 a.m. However, I spend most of the next seven hours working on the LAMBRA website, the NOBC website, some writeups for work, and the LCCS results. Naturally, once they were posted, people started emailing me about how they should have gotten points. I wasn't surprised. There were a few people that I suspected had bought annual USCF licenses on race day, but since I didn't know that for sure, I couldn't give the team points. Anyway, I guess things are about settled now. The LAMBRA site still needs some cleanup, but most of the important things are there now. The NOBC site still needs to have a ton of stuff uploaded to the new server, but that will wait until I'm back at the office where the connection is faster and where I hopefully have most of the files.

The whole time I was working I was aware of an irritating post-nasal drip that I know is going to turn into a sore throat. Finally, around 4 pm, I made the trip to the drug store for some of those Cold-Eeze lozenges with zinc. Hopefully the viruses will have more trouble with the heavy metal poisioning than I will. Anyway, I am fully expecting to wake up tomorrow morning with a sore throat at best and a fever at worst.

The U.S. Postal Service continues to drop the ball. You know, for a branch of the Federal Government, and a very visible one at that, you would think they would have their act back together by now. They don't. Laura mailed me a reimbursement check (for the new website) on the 22nd. I got it today. Distance from the Metairie post office, where it was mailed: maybe five miles. It wasn't even postmarked in Metairie, though. It was apparently sent all the way up to Baton Rouge where it is postmarked, and then sent all the way back to New Orleans for delivery. Now that's efficiency, isn't it?

Weather tomorrow is looking very good. If this sore throat by some miracle doesn't get worse, I should be able to get in a few miles in the morning before making my annual pilgrimage down to the French Quarter.

So so nice!

Well, as bad as yesterday's weather was, today's was just awesome. That is, if you overlook the wind which was awesome in its own way. The temperature started out around 40 but was probably around 60 by the end. I rolled across the causeway to meet the Northshore ride group way up around the new Tour de Louisiane road race course this morning. It was my first time riding the course, and I think it's pretty good. It's a 16 mile loop with smooth roads, very little traffic, and pretty much nothing but rolling hills. We did the loop first, and then headed out for a longer loop, eventually racking up 60 or 70 miles. I don't know for sure because my computer, which is as usual acting very flaky after yesterday's rain, stopped showing me my speed at somewhere around 64 miles. Jason had already put in an hour when we arrived, and after he, Keith and I did a little 3-man time trial over the last ten miles or so, he was probably hurting a bit more than we. My legs were fairly good today and although they were hurting a bit on the hills, it wasn't too bad to keep me from pushing the pace now and then.

The Bacchus parade starts in about an hour, followed by Endymion, so I'm heading out shortly on the bike. I'll try and make it over to around Realdo's place on St. Charles around 3rd or 2nd street, because we'll definitely need a place to pee, and as the well-known song says "ain't no place to pee on Mardi Gras day!" That goes for pretty much any parade.

Getting Close

We must be getting close to the racing season. The forecast for today was bleak, to say the least, but when I looked out window this morning it was dry. A quick look at the weather radar told me it wouldn't stay that way, but after thinking about it for a few minutes I figured it was worth a shot. After all, it's getting to be time to get off the couch and train. By the time I got to Lakeshore Drive, the street was already wet from a rain shower that I just missed. I wasn't expecting to see anybody else, so I was surprised to see a little group of six or seven coming my way. I got in with the group and we headed off down Lakeshore drive, deciding along the way to stay on the lakefront. I think we ended up with about a dozen riders. You know it's getting close to the racing season when there are a dozen guys out training in the rain on a Saturday morning. By the end of the first 10-mile lap it was already starting to rain, and pretty soon I was soaked from the combination of the light rain and the spray from the other wheels. I was seriously thinking about heading back home at that point, but Realdo was intent on getting in a workout and every time I would start to pack it in, I'd decide to keep riding just a little bit farther.

So I ended up doing about three hours in the rain. Tomorrow is supposed to be much better, though, and in fact it's supposed to be really nice all the way through Mardi Gras. Speaking of which, the annual celebration is ramping up pretty well, under the circumstances. Last night I was watching the Burbocam live feed down in the French Quarter and in a 10-minute time period I think I saw six or seven sets of bare tits. A few of them were rather nice. It is starting to feel like Mardi Gras is getting close, now. There are a lot more people on the streets, especially at night. Last night I was awakened at around 4 a.m. by the sound of a skidding car outside my window. I looked out to see somebody who had slid up onto the sidewalk across the street. Luckily they missed the big pine tree, so they just backed up and drove off. Happens all the time around here.

This afternoon was supposed to be the Endymion parade, which is one of the bigger ones. I really wanted to go, but the weather was threatening. I packed up a backpack with a rain jacket, hat, vest, and umbrella and The Wife and I got on the bikes to ride down to see the parade. We didn't make it one block before it started raining pretty hard and we bailed out. A few minutes later it stopped raining and we decided to try again. This time we made it about two blocks before the sky opened up again. So we went back to the house and opened a bottle of wine. It was a good thing too, because although we didn't know it at the time, Endymion had already decided to postpone their parade until tomorrow after Bacchus. Tomorrow night should be good!

Since yesterday morning I must have spend 10 hours working on the LAMBRA website and LCCS rankings. The latter took hours and hours to do because I had to look up practically every rider in the USCF database to confirm who had annual licenses, who didn't, what their real categories were, etc. They I had to finish up the first cut of the redesigned website so I could post the results. Some time late last night I finally dumped the fancy javascript menu because it was driving me nuts. It just wasn't worth it for this application. I'd rather keep the site simple and spend my time worrying about the content. There are still a whole lot of loose ends on both the LAMBRA and NOBC websites, but I'll probably get most of that cleaned up over the next few weeks.

Compromise

I woke up this morning to the sound of tires on wet streets. After staying up late to watch the good stuff from Italy (and I don't mean the freaking figure skating), I really had to drag myself out of bed to check the weather channel so I could see what was going on. The good news was that it looked like the rain had just passed through. The bad news was that the roads were still quite wet. So I decided to break out the old Pennine which is still sporting its slick old steel fenders. As I'm rolling it out the door, I notice something odd. The freewheel is not freewheeling! I had to take the rear wheel out and give the freewheel a nice bath in Triflo before it started to cooperate. I guess that last ride in the rain was more wet than I thought.

By now I was too late to meet the group, but I figured there wouldn't be anyone there anyway and planned compromising with a quick 20 miles or so since I needed to get to the office early anyway. I ran across Todd, who was going the other way on his TT bike, but otherwise was having a nice solo ride until I flatted on the way back. At first I thought I might make it farther, but no such luck. As I was changing it Todd came back from the other direction and gave me a hit of CO2 so I wouldn't have to pump the tire up the hard way. Since he owns The Bicycle Connection, I guess those cartridges come pretty easily! I heard there were a few guys who showed up for the regular ride, but since I turned around early, I never saw them.

At work it was pretty much a fire drill all day and I had to compromise on the report I was working on for a 3 pm meeting after having a major fight with the damned copy machine. There are two pieces of office equipment that I have never been able to get along with: telephones and copy machines. Telephones always have bizarre non-intuitive secret codes that you need to make long-distance calls, get your voice mail, etc. They're just way too stupid. Copy machines just basically don't have a right to exist. Everybody should just have one of those little tablet computers like they always had on Star Trek. The damned things never fail to jam, run out of toner, run out of paper, and generally drive you crazy any time you're trying to make a bunch of copies - especially if you're in a hurry. They are the only inanimate objects with which I've ever resorted to physical violence.

I did squeeze in half an hour or so of work on the "new" NOBC website, mostly fixing links and reorganizing the file structure. Much left to do to be sure, but at least the most basic stuff is accessible again. Now I need to move on to the LAMBRA LCCS rankings from the recent 2-Man Time Trial. Maybe I can wrap that one up tomorrow.

Busy, busy

It felt a bit like springtime this morning with the predawn temperature above 60 and a soft southerly wind. The dozen riders on the morning levee ride stuck to a moderate pace for most of the trip. I was feeling pretty good, but preoccupied with other things. Yesterday evening I was called into a meeting at around 6 p.m., walking out half an hour later with a few more items on my plate that consumed much of my morning today and pushed everything else back even farther. It was later in the day that I found out that our efforts to get the Carnegie Foundation to upgrade our classification from "high research" to "very high research" had been successful. Also around the same time I learned about a certain attempt to end-run a certain group of university presidents by a certain group of state legislative staff who are clearly in defiance of congressional intent on a certain $95M appropriation for higher education Katrina relief. I didn't have much time to think about it, though, as I started working on sorting out the last five years of sponsored program awards for a meeting tomorrow afternoon. I'm afraid my report will be a little rough around the edges on this one, even if I stay up most of the night, as I likely will.

Meanwhile in the local cycling world, I talked with Brooks B. this morning on the levee ride and he said that they'll have to postpone the planned "Privateer criterium." The new home for the NOBC website is ready for uploading already, and I'm disappointed that I won't be able to spend any time on it tonight or tomorrow. I could just do the easy thing and copy the entire existing site over to the new location, but that would just be too easy, wouldn't it. Nobody would know about all those orphaned files and cluttered and mixed-up directories - except for me.

That just won't do.

Bound to Happen

It was foggy and damp this morning, so I wasn't taking any chances and dressed rather warmly - a bit too warmly, but it was OK. We had a pretty good group up on the levee, and although it took a while for things to get rolling, especially after Big Richard flatted, most of the guys did the whole ride today. As he turned off early, an obviously disappointed Donald taunted the group with "go ahead, keep going, see if I care ..." Don't you hate it when work interferes with riding?

The fog was the same for the whole ride today, moderately thick, but not dangerously so. I had discovered that my tail light wasn't working after I left home, and I think the batteries in my front light are starting to go, so I guess it's getting to be battery time again. I left the headlight on for the whole ride, so I guess that didn't help much. Anyway, on the way back there were a few surges and that, combined with a light headwind, split the group and I ended up in a 4-man team time trial with Todd, Rob and Luke. The pace was just right. Fast enough for a good workout, but not really ballistic. After the Playground, Luke eased up to wait for Richard and Rob and I rolled in the last mile or two easy until I heard the train whistle. As I sprinted for the bike path exit I thought the whistle sounded a bit odd, and as I made a full-bore left turn off of River Road in order to make the next crossing before the train I realized why. I caught just a glimpse of the train and saw that it was no ordinary train. In fact, it was a genuine Steam Engine, belching a huge plume of steam and blowing its whistle practically non-stop. As I crossed the tracks there were a number of photographers there snapping away. I wonder what the story is on that. I think I've seen the train, or at least the antique passenger cars it was pulling, before. Naturally I hadn't taken my camera with me today because of the fog.

Well, it was bound to happen eventually. I finally got in touch with the guy who has been hosting the NOBC website since it was started back around 1995 and he said that he had to give up his T-1 line and although he could probably get the site back up on his DSL connection, we were going to have to finally break down and move it to a new home because the old gnofn.org domain wasn't going to get renewed. I'd been putting this off for years, largely because the domain names that I wanted (nobc.com, nobc.org, and nobc.net) had been taken long ago. Well, that and the fact that it was free! So anyway I went ahead and registered neworleansbicycleclub.org today and in a few days should have at least the primary pages of the NOBC website up in its new home: www.neworleansbicycleclub.org. I've been kind of dreading this for a long time because the entire site, including probably a thousand orphaned files, has something a bit over 11,000 fairly disorganized files that take up at least half a gigabyte. So, like I did with the basement after Katrina, I will have to throw out all the junk and put the site back together with a somewhat more organized structure. I sure am getting pretty backlogged on bicycle racing stuff lately. Hopefully I won't lose too much of the old stuff in the process. If Ken can get the site working in its old location for a couple of weeks, that will help a lot!

In the world of Real™ bicycle racing, I was checking out the Valley of the Sun results and noticed that the Texas Geri Atrix boys did pretty well in the 45+ races with George Heagerty (of USAC fame) taking 5th in the Crit. and our own alumnae Gina V. taking 6th in the Pro Women's Crit.

It's been almost six months since the hurricane and although we'd like to think things are more or less back to normal, in many cases we have yet to achieve what we used to optimistically refer to as "normal." The New Orleans Post Office, a branch of our Federal Government, just cracked open its doors recently offering only a minimal level of service:


Downtown Post Office reopens
11:50 AM CST on Tuesday, February 21, 2006
WWLTV.com

The main Post Office branch located in downtown New Orleans reopened its doors Tuesday.
The branch on Loyola Avenue reopened with limited services. Customers will be able to buy stamps, drop off mail and access P.O. boxes only.
Mail processing still occurs in trailers stationed next to the New Orleans Arena, so delivery delays are unlikely to be affected by the opening, according to post office workers.

Climate Changes

Sunday morning I was up early, again staring at the weather radar and forecast. I wanted to do the training ride on the Northshore. Outside, the streets were wet. The temperature across the lake was 38º F. The chance of sunshine was Zero. I decided that I was desperate enough for a ride in the country to do it alone if necessary, and considering the weather and the fact that there were a bunch of mardi gras parades scheduled starting at noon, it was entirely possible that nobody would show up. So I was glad to see Mark D., who has finally returned along with the rest of Chevron, to offices in N.O., waiting at the Morning Call when I arrived. Over on the northshore it was cold and a bit windy, and we had only five riders, but it was good. Considering the wind and the small number of wheels, we kept the pace relatively slow but very steady for most of the ride, and after throwing in a few miles of harder efforts I felt like I got in a pretty good workout of 3 ½ hours under the circumstances. Later in the day my recent shortage of sleep finally caught up with me and I took an unscheduled afternoon nap that I guess I must have needed.

I had an unplanned 9 am meeting Monday morning, and since the streets were still wet and the weather rather nasty I decided I'd better skip the morning ride today. It seems that on Friday some of our omniscient state legislators on the "Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget" decided to throw a monkey wrench into a carefully constructed allocation plan for $95M in relief funding for higher education that had been worked out by all of the university presidents. Of course, they must have had some help from some defectors. Now, distribution of the badly needed funds is up in the air again. It is very frustrating, and it's not like every university around here isn't having major cash-flow problems right now. At the President's Advisory Council meeting this morning he remarked that in this state you are always punished for being successful. True indeed. The fact that Tulane got its act together quickly after the hurricane and rebuilt and repaired much of its campuses in time for the Spring semester is now being viewed as proof that we don't need as much relief money as other universities. One of the VPs said "next time we have a disaster, I guess we'll just sit on our hands."

Anyway, we have a lot of pots on the fire right now and very few cooks, and I'm pretty backed up all-around. Maybe tonight I'll find some time to work on the LCCS rankings and LAMBRA website, but I suspect that the 5-year analysis of the School of Medicine's research portfolio, broken down by department, faculty member, and research theme, might take precedence since I need to finish it in time for a Thursday meeting and just got the data I need for it yesterday. And yes, the NOBC website is still down and I don't know why.

An Eventful Giro and a Nasty Day

It seemed like the forecast got worse every time I checked it over the last couple of days, so when I awoke this morning, after looking out the window and noticing the sheen of the streetlights reflecting off the wet streets, the first thing I did was check the radar. It didn't look too bad, but nobody was making any promises. The hourly forecast showed the temperature dropping rather than rising during the day, but for the moment it wasn't raining and the temperature was around 58°. So I headed for the lakefront in shorts, a couple of jerseys, arm-warmers and my trusty Un-D Flector. There was a pretty good-sized group and things were going along as usual until the crash. There's one little stretch of the Giro ride where we're actually on the shoulder of an Interstate Highway (actually it's just a spur). I was over on the right threading a line between the reflectors when I heard it. When I looked back I saw Keith A. in a heap in the middle of the right lane, which is kind of scary all by itself. He had hit a piece of 2x4 that was in the road and gone down pretty hard, apparently landing mostly on his head and knuckles. He seemed to be OK, though, and knew what day it was and all that. Todd's truck wasn't too far away, so they turned right when the group turned left.

Soon enough we were flying down Chef Highway. With a couple of miles left before the turnaround, the pace suddenly surged and as my speedometer passed 27 mph, I eased over to see who was on the front, fully expecting it to be Howard. In fact, it was Brooks B. I did a quick assessment and gradually let the gap open in front of me. I was pretty sure they'd be back. A minute later there were riders flying backwards so fast we had to swerve to avoid plowing into them, but near the end Howard came past and I latched onto his wheel as he pulled us up to, I dunno, 31 or so?

After the turnaround, I noticed the sky ahead of us was looking darker and darker and by the time we turned off of Chef Highway it was starting to rain. Somewhere along the service road, the rain finally soaked through my socks and hit my feet. The temperature was dropping, the wind was increasing, and it was raining. We were really having fun now. Just before Bullard we waited to fix a flat and got really cold. Then, as we came over the top of the Seabrook bridge, most of us walking gingerly on the wet steel grating, somebody said that Tim had flatted. I turned around and rode back down (the wrong way) and waited again. Luckily there was a nice tailwind as Reo and I rode back from the Lakefront. I got home wet, cold and gritty. On the up-side, my legs felt good today and I was really wishing the weather was better.

The bleak weather remained all day. Temperatures around 47° F with an on-again, off-again light drizzle and strong wind. We ended up driving up to Baton Rouge to spend a couple of hours sitting in front of the TV with The Wife's mom.

One of the guys in Baton Rouge put up some photos from the recent 2-Man Time Trial, and got a good one of Realdo and me.

The Daughter's team is competing against Illinois tonight at 7 p.m., and I see they'll have live stats online, which is great. We don't know if she'll be competing or not, though. Her knee seems to be improving, and she's probably lobbying to compete beam at least, but I guess we'll have to wait and see if she ends up in the lineup.

Looks like it'll be kind of chilly on the Northshore ride tomorrow, but I really need a long ride, so I'll probably do it. Looks like the rain should be gone by then.

So Slow

There was a surprisingly large group of about a dozen this morning for the Friday levee ride, and although there were a few brief surges, in general the "Friday Trust" prevailed and speeds stayed under 22 mph. I was glad to have a slow day to hang out at the back of the pack. The weather is warm and humid and even at 2 p.m. there's still some fog around. It's looking like the weekend will be cloudy, but if the predictions hold, the rain will be Saturday night. I'm hoping to do a long ride up on the Northshore on Sunday. Could be worse. It's 71ºF right now, but up in Iowa City it's all of 9ºF with a low tonight of -9ºF.

It's been really slow and quiet here at work today. There were many fires to put out earlier in the week, but everything seems to have died down today. Just as well. I'm feeling pretty tired and lazy myself.

So Mardi Gras parades begin in earnest this weekend, and I notice that this year, although there are fewer days when there are parades, on those days they've got up to five parades scheduled one after the other. You can probably see some of the uptown parades on the ParadeCam which is located near Fat Harry's on St. Charles Ave. Then again, there's always the BurboCam too. That one's on Bourbon at the Cat's Meow and they usually do a live webcam show on the really busy nights.

So the NOBC website has been down for most of the week and I still haven't heard anything back from the folks who host it for us (for free!). I guess either something broke or we filled up the hard drive, or both. The website has been running on a server at atwater consultants since we started it back around 1995. For what it's worth, there probably aren't many other cycling websites that have been around that long. All I know is, I'm dreading the day when I have to actually clean it up. There's probably a couple of gigs of photos on there and a whole lot of orphaned files too. I've been working a bit on the LAMBRA website when I've had the chance, but I haven't quite settled on the final look and content. It will be pretty simple and straightforward, though. If you want, though, you can get a sneak peek! It's actually a bit farther along than that, I just haven't uploaded the latest version yet. Maybe this weekend??

The South

Much, much warmer and humid, with a wind from the South this morning. It looked like a good enough group, but then I noticed something. Both VJ and Howard were on their TT bikes. And they were at the front. And there was a tailwind. 1 + 1 + 0.75 = 27 mph. It wasn't long before I looked back from the shelter of VJ's arse and saw a long, long stretch of empty road between the group and us. Although I was feeling OK this morning, I wasn't foolish enough to try and match speeds with these two, especially with a long headwind waiting for us on the return trip, so I stayed in the rotation but took much shorter, and sometimes slower, pulls. There was a bit of a lull after we came back up the levee at the dip, but toward the end Howard just emptied the whole chamberpot and somewhere around 30 mph I saw VJ's shadow slip off my wheel. A moment later the SRB separated and I shifted back out of the 13 as we coasted in the last half-mile to the turnaround.

On the way back I found myself accidentally way out in front of the group for a few miles, although I was going only 16 or 17 mph. Finally I heard tires coming up from behind and the Mother Duck came by on his aerobars followed by a long line of ducklings pedalling in his wake. I latched on to the tail end for a while, but noticed that only VJ and Howard were pulling, so I went back up to the front to get into the rotation. By the time we were back to Kenner there was a gap again, but I could feel something wrong. I did that little bouncy thing that we all do when we think we might be getting a flat. Yep. Didn't even make it to Williams Blvd. before it hit bottom and I had to stop and fix it. Good ride anyway, I think.

Lots of increasingly distasteful politics going on regarding the Katrina relief money with Baton Rouge insisting they know better how to allocate and spend it than the universities that need it. Why the hell do these people insist on perpetuating the Banana Republic stereotype? OTOH, why did Congress put the money in the hands of the State instead of allocating it directly to the institutions that need it? When you've already borrowed $150 million (this is NOT an exaggeration, BTW, it's a fact) it's pretty important to get the money sooner rather than later. Instead we've got the State Legislative Fiscal Office screwing around with $95M in federal funds. It would be one thing if someone had come up with an allocation formula out of thin air and was trying to force it down someone's throat, but in this case the presidents of all of the affected universities for which the funds were intended got together and worked it out and agreed to it.

I'm spending this afternoon setting up a new laptop (Thinkpad Z60) for our VP. After seeing the condition of her previous computers, handhelds, and cellphones, I went for the shock-protected, titanium-covered model. This one has a tiny little fingerprint scanner on it. That should be interesting.

Long Day, Swing Ride

Wednesday is the "swing ride" day up on the levee. Sometimes it's an easy conversational ride, other times it's a bike race. It all depends on who shows up. Usually it's something in-between. Today we had VJ on his TT bike. You can probably guess what happened. VJ got onto the front and pulled for something like eight or nine miles on the way out. Every now and then he'd surge and add another mph or so. I think we were going around 29 when he finally pulled off. Things came apart over the last half of the outbound leg, but we all regrouped at the turnaround. Anyway it was a pretty good ride all-around.

One thing I've noticed since Katrina is that there never seem to be any girls on the rides, so it was nice to see Courtney this morning. (In New Orleans, you're always a girl, no matter your age.) She's still doing some work at Elmwood, but since she's living on the northshore now it doesn't seem to be working out too well. When we got to Oak St. this morning on the way back there was a train, so I stayed on the levee and ended up doing a little time trial toward the end to beat the train to the Walnut St. crossing.

I dropped by Adam's yesterday after work and picked up some off-brand Look compatible cleats (all they had in stock) so I could try out my new shoes this morning. Last night I installed them, adjusting the fore-aft position by eye so that it looked like it did on my other shoes. When I headed out in the morning, I put a screwdriver in my pocket, but as it turned out, I never needed it. The shoes felt fine, as did the cleat position. It's kind of weird, though, because in the old days it would take me days to get the cleat position right. Back then, you would get these metal cleats with a plastic bag full of sharp little nails. Then you'd have to go for a ride without cleats so that the pedal cage could make a mark on your leather soles. Using that mark, you'd then align the cleats and attach them with the little nails. Of course, the minute you got on the bike you would realize that the position wasn't quite right and you'd have to pull out all the nails and try again. Eventually you'd give up and get used to whatever compromise position you ended up with, only to have the nails and cleats eventually fall off - usually during a race - only to resort to using Clement red tubular glue to try and keep the cleats on the shoes. With the advent of modern cleats and pedals and "float" the whole process got MUCH easier. I spent a little while at work checking out prices for drivetrain parts, and I think I'm going to stick with the 9-speed stuff. It'll save a lot of cash (especially if I can get a good deal on Courtney's old 9-sp levers), and of course there's really no great imperative to have the extra cog down here in New Orleans. I'm really looking forward to that silky smooth feel of new rings, cogs, jockey wheels and chain!

So work today was like pulling teeth. I had to collect a bunch of data on finances, enrollment, faculty and staff employment, etc. in order to write up a report for the Board of Regents on short notice (they gave us a bit over 24 hours to pull it all together). Naturally, I got the last chunk of data at about 5:15 pm after leaving two voicemails. Anyway, it should be out the door tomorrow morning, which will be "good enough for state work."

Surgemeister

Almost ten degrees warmer this morning with just a light breeze. This is good. I hit the levee about a minute past the 6:15 starting time and saw only Luke up there. As I approached, he headed out and I figured we must have just missed the group, so I picked it up a bit. Just as I got close, though, he turned around, saying he didn't see anyone up the road. We waited for just a bit, but nobody showed up so we rolled, finally meeting up with the rest of the group, a couple of which had started out early. So we ended up with maybe a dozen today for the long ride. My legs, inexplicably, felt achey and stiff and, basically, it pissed me off. I had wanted a decent workout today, but the legs just weren't going to cooperate. Luckily, the pace wasn't ballistic today and most of the group stayed together all the way out and nearly all the way back. Even Howard and Todd were being good citizens today, which left the morning's Surgemeister duties up to VJ. I somehow found myself on his wheel a lot today and every time he'd come to the front he would just stand on the pedals and up the pace a couple mph. Ordinarily I don't really have a huge problem with that sort of thing, but today it was just making my legs hurt more. Anyway, it was still a decent ride and, for a change, my feet weren't cold.

Speaking of feet, my Sidi shoes that have been torturing my toes for the last 4+ years are finally starting to show some major wear where the velcro strap comes through the metal loop, and it won't be long before one of the straps breaks. Naturally it will happen fifteen minutes before a race. So the other day I thought I'd do my usual eBay search - the same one I've done every now and then for the last couple of years. This time I actually found a pair of Nike Poggios in my size. Since my size is 40.5, that's a pretty rare thing. They were unused and around half of retail, so I went ahead and got 'em. They arrived yesterday and the fit feels good, so I'll have to drop by the shop and pick up a fresh pair of cleats so I can go through the dreaded cleat-positioning ritual. I guess somewhere around 50 miles into my first long ride with them my feet will tell me if they're going to work out or not. I figure I should go at least 2 mph faster with the new shoes right? Meanwhile, elsewhere on the bike, the entire drivetrain has about had it and I think I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and upgrade most of it to 10 speed some time soon.

I should probably fix the roof first.

So Tulane Hospital re-opened this morning with a big media event. It was really pretty cool from what I heard. After the hurricane, when the city was flooded and they had finally evacuated all of the patients and staff from the hospital, one of the last people to get airlifted off the roof was apparently one of the security guys. Before he left, he took down the U.S. flag from the roof and brought it with him. This morning, a helicopter landed on the roof and the same guy brought the flag back. I think someone said that they had the flag hanging from the helicopter or something. Hopefully that'll make the evening news. Nice touch!

Clear Blue

Last weekend's riding wasn't much fun for me. The combination of wind and cold lasted a bit longer than I was willing to deal with, I think. I went out Sunday morning to find both the temperature and wind a bit lower than Saturday, and put in just a bit over an hour. From the start I was not too enthusiastic. I rode out seven or eight miles into the wind on the levee and turned around to head home. Then I ran into Realdo, so turned around again and rode with him and, eventually, Tim for a few more miles before finally bagging it and heading for the showers. Sometimes it's just not worth kicking a dead horse. Reo and Tim probably put in another two hours at least. I spent the rest of the day feeling cold, lazy and hungry.


This morning, though, I was feeling better. Not coincidentally, the winds had died down to zero and there was a clear blue sky. Although the temperature was in the low 30s when I left, and the levee was covered with frost, the lack of wind and the steadily improving daylight made me far more interested in riding than yesterday. As is typical for Mondays, there was just Joe F up on the levee, so after chatting for a mile or so, I got him on my wheel and just rolled steadily and a moderate 19.5-20 mph pretty much all the way out and all the way back. This kind of riding almost qualifies as on-the-bike meditation. The skies were blue, the sunrise was beautiful, and for the first time in days it felt like I had control over my own front wheel.


After a two-hour strategic planning meeting in the morning, I thought I'd step out onto the roof and snap a couple of pictures (with my cheap backup camera). The first photo looks southeast over the French Quarter and the bend in the river at Algiers Point. Far in the distance would be the now-famous lower ninth ward. The other pic looks more to the northeast over the housing project and old St. Louis #2 Cemetery (where my great-great grandfather who started this whole U.S. klan is), mid-city and the section of I-10 that comes through the city. Part of Lake Pontchartrain is in the distance. As you can see, there's still a lot of blue in the pictures, and I'm not talking about the sky.

The Krewe de Vieux paraded Saturday night, and although I wasn't able to convince The Wife that it was our civic duty to go out in the freezing weather to attend, I did check out their website. No photos yet from this year's parade, but I'm sure they'll show up soon. As usual, they did a great job at taking jabs at all of the local, and federal, politicians. They really have a lot of material to work with this year! I liked the float that asked France to buy Louisiana back!

So The Wife made airline reservations for our next visit to Iowa City for the same weekend as Rouge-Roubaix. Hmmm. I could send her up there alone, I think. I just wish I knew if The Daughter's knee would be well enough by then for her to compete or not. If not, I wouldn't feel too bad about paying the cancellation fee and saving the ticket for the next time. We'll see...

Blown

After an evening of food, conversation, wine and ale, not necessarily in that order, it was hard enough to get up this morning. The temperature was cool but not freezing, but I could hear the wind from inside the house, and that's never good this time of year. I debated for a while what to wear, and ended up putting the vest on top of everything to help break the wind. I knew it was going to be a tough day the minute the north wind hit me. Even worse, it was really gusty; the wind grabbing at my front wheel unexpectedly. When I finally arrived at Lakeshore Drive I was running a little late and as the road went over the levee I looked down and saw just a single digit on the computer. Windy wasn't the word for it.

When I first saw the Giro group coming toward me I wasn't quite sure it was the right group. There were only five riders. As they approached someone said "this is it." Apparently the strong winds had scared almost everyone away this morning. Perhaps I should have been one of them! When we got to the end of Lakeshore Drive and the road curved briefly to the south, I sat up and peeled off my vest. I was just finishing stuffing it into my pocket when a gust of wind caught my front wheel as the road turned back to the east. I came just a heartbeat from going down before grabbing the bars underhanded with my left hand just in time to avoid plowing right into the concrete barrier wall at a 45 degree angle. The rest of the day was a constant struggle between me and my frong wheel that was getting blown around like leaf in a hurricane. It was definitely not fun.

By the time we hit Hayne Blvd., we were down to just five riders and I was skipping pulls when it would get fast in order to avoid having to call a cab to get home. Pretty soon, there were just four of us and I was really struggling in the brutal crosswind. It was impossible for me to hold a straight line in the crosswinds, and the fast pace wasn't helping, either. Even though I was skipping pulls, I was still dying at an alarming pace and my back and hands were starting to ache. I finally rode home with Realdo, happy at least that I had a nice tailwind all the way back. For the next couple of hours I felt pretty wasted and beat up.

Hibernation

It seemes like my hibernation instinct must have kicked in last night. After tolerating a dull headache all day at work, I finally took a Motrin and washed it down with a glass of wine. By 9:30 I was out for the count. I must have needed a break, because when the alarm went off this morning I thought I'd try and get in just a few more minutes of sleep. That really never works, does it? Naturally I finally awoke too late to get in a ride.

The Daughter's MRI didn't show any major damage, but she's injured a ligament or something and won't be able to handle any landings for a while. On the one hand, she's relieved that she didn't tear anything important, while on the other she's disappointed that she probably won't be able to compete for a while. They're going to try some knee-taping to see if they can tighten up that knee. After a couple of surgeries, the joint has become rather "loose," and that's what contributed to this injury.

Well, with all the elections coming up, the "Katrina response" is all over the news. Everyone's trying to point fingers at everyone else, mostly for political purposes. What else is new?

Oh well. There's always the Giro ride tomorrow, weather permitting. Rumor has it that the Levee Board is about to start ripping up parts of Lakeshore Drive to make repairs.

A Long Ride Back

Again it was windy and gusty this morning, and as I started out down Neron Place the thought of bailing out in favor of a nice hot cup of coffee on the front porch did indeed cross my mind. But, hey, it's February already and time to start building so I'm not getting dropped in March. So I soldiered on, knowing it would be a hard ride, like it or not.

There were about a dozen up on the levee. As I rode up to meet the first group, Big Richard rolled up, looked at my bike, and said something like "that's an interesting way to carry a water bottle." It took my still-sleepy brain a little while to process that, but eventually I looked down and noticed my water bottle was upside-down. Yesterday, when I hung it from the hook where it sleeps in my basement, the water bottle was leaking a little bit, so I had turned it around and stuck it back in the cage so that I wouldn't be bottleless the next morning. I had been distracted this morning because the Rat Wars have officially begun. While I usually have a rather tolerant attitude toward other species, particularly those so similar to our own as Rattus rattus, the furry little creatures of the night crossed the line yesterday and now the gloves are coming off. One of the little rodents chewed a three-inch diameter hole in the bag I keep my riding stuff in (which as always was on the floor in the basement). Since that particular pocket was wide open, there was just no excuse for that. It was the rat equivalent of a slap across the face with a glove. Besides, the powerbar that I had left in my bag after last weekend's time trial was in a different pocket, where a more courteous rat had more delicately chewed a neat hole through the plastic bag and the industrial strength powerbar wrapper, and eaten a healthy portion of it. Sorry guys, but your next big meal in my basement will be your last. I still haven't forgiven you and your fleas for that whole Black Plague thing, and you've about worn out your welcome now.

Anyway, I digress . . .

So this morning we were graced with the presence of Mr. Matt, astride his slick TT bike, looking all Euro without a helmet since he had forgotten it up in Colorado where he's currently in exile after his house in Lakeview was flooded out in the hurricane. We also had Howard "SRB" Luna, Rob, VJ, Luke, Donald, and Brooks, among others. I already knew that half of them wouldn't be doing the whole long ride.

Eventually, the SRB ignited as I knew it must, and Brooks and maybe another rider went along for the ride. I watched from 10 sec back with the group, waiting for the inevitible "pop" as the exploding bolts fire, followed by separation of the SRB and its uncontrolled re-entry back into the pack. The group's speed increased a bit and we soon caught, but after that it seemed like everyone wanted to take a flyer off the front. The SRB fired a few more times, and it got very disorganized for a while, but ultimately the speed was pushed up a bit, with help from an occasional tailwind, and Matt, so that by the time we arrived at the turnaround there was only a handful left. The ride back was long, long, long and it felt like it was mostly into the wind. After Howard turned off and we lost a couple more riders, it was just Matt, Rob and me for the last stretch, at which point Matt went to the front and pulled for a few miles at a few miles per hour faster than was comfortable. He finally eased up and pulled off just as we hit the curve at the Country Club where the wind turned directly into our faces. Our speed dropped about 5 mph in about 50 feet.

Just as we approached the Orleans parish line where I turn off to head down the levee, I heard the train whistle. Damn! I sprinted down the levee as the line of cars started to come to a stop, crossed over into the now-empty oncoming traffic lane, made a hard left in a full sprint and made it to the next crossing ahead of the train. That was the second time I've had to do that in the last week. My legs were pretty much fried after that, and my commute to work was really, really slow today. It was all I could do to get my sorry ass up the Broad Street overpass without putting a foot down!

Smooth Ride

It was pretty cool this morning, or at least it felt that way to me. It was probably no coincidence that the turnout up on the levee was a bit low. The ride today was very steady and smooth at a moderate pace - fast enough to get a little training effect, but slow enough to daydream. I didn't daydream very much, though. By the time I got home, I was sweaty underneath my vest, but my feet were still cold. Eventually I headed off to the office on the commuter wearing my penny loafers and button-down collar shirt, and was glad that the sun had warmed things up considerably.

I've felt like I was in a fog all day today, and the two glasses of wine I just polished off didn't help much. The Daughter did something to her knee during the meet last weekend in West Virginia and is really pissed off about it. After working so hard to come back after her October surgery, she's back having MRIs and taking anti-inflammatories just a week after finally getting back into the lineup for floor. Hopefully it will all work out.

Looks like the weather around here will be a real roller-coaster this week. What else is new??

Riding' Against the Wind

Much cooler this morning, but the temperature wasn't the issue. The wind was. A strong north wind promised nothing more than a few miles of tailwind in an otherwise all-crosswind 44 mile ride. When Luke rode up to meet us he immediately gave early notice that he was turning around at the dip, and I figured that Donald would have to turn around there, or earlier, as well. Bikies being like sheep, the odds were that most of the rest would follow suit rather than risk a long headwind ride with Rob and I who collectively move less air than Ronnie on his time trial bike. Indeed, once past the parish line it was just Rob and me once again. We were both of the same mindset today, looking for a good steady aerobic ride, and we rode the rest of the ride taking long pulls at maybe 75% effort, which turned out to be mostly 21-24 mph. As he often does, Rob spent a fair amount of time in weight-lifting mode, riding along into the wind in a 53x12 (or maybe 11?). While I very often find myself to be more comfortable about one cog higher than most riders, that sort of thing is just not my cup of tea! Then again, neighter is weight lifting.

Shortly after arriving back home and doing the dishes left over from last night (seafood gumbo dishes need to be washed pronto!), The Wife called to say she was stopping by the house to pick up the last of the women's health calendars to drop them off at the Audubon Zoo where there are having a huge health fair with free screenings, check-ups, and even dental work. Well, I couldn't resist getting a ride in to work rather than having to lug all my stuff up the Jeff Davis overpass into the wind today, so I hurried through and made the connection. Unfortunately, by the time we dropped all that stuff off, battled our way through the rather heavy traffic, bypassed blocked streets and a movie shoot going on in front of the Tidewater Building, I had lost about an hour. As usual, I should have just ridden my bike and been there in 15.

Here at the office, construction continues unabated. Various large workmen are in and out of the office all day, there's lots of loud noise, and there are three or four wireless tools plugged into the hallway outlets getting recharged. Of the nine elevators in the building, only two are operational. We have all become more patient since Katrina. Since New Orleans was never noted for being impatient in the first place, that's saying something. Out the window I can see the large U.S. flag atop the Entergy building (Entergy is trying to avoid bankruptcy in the wake of Katrina and the need to completely rebuild the city's entire power grid). The flag that was starting to rip last week is now split completely in two horizontally. As I write, someone on the roof over there has just lowered the flag, either to untangle it or replace it. That's good. Maybe it's just a holdover from my junior ROTC experiences in both grammar school and high school, but it just drives me nuts when people don't take care of the stars and stripes. Just to the left is the old Plaza Towers building, once the city's tallest, with its rooftop crammed full of antennas. Before the hurricane, they were all nice and vertical. Now they are all bent and leaning looking like the bristles of a very old hairbrush. Most of the view from my office window, usually a fairly spectacular panorama overlooking the CBD, French Quarter and Algiers Point, is still blocked by a large lattice of 2x2 aluminum that was removed from the roof above where it had been hiding the building's chiller until the hurricane destroyed it. I can only hope that one day, after they finish replacing the chiller, they replace it. My guess is that it's not high on the priority list, though.

Discussions over the $95M in Dept. of Education funding for higher education continues, and everything has been hammered out except for the $9.5 M that the Board of Regents wants to control for a scholarship program that all of the university presidents agree is not needed. It looks like I will end up on the committee that will have to work out how to actually handle the awarding of the funds to the various universities and colleges. You know, the unglamorous administrative part. The others will then move on to the three or four other ongoing and developing battles for federal funding.

Whoo Hooo! Entergy just raised a brand spanking new U.S. flag!

... And so it begins - again.

Today was the start of my 35th racing season. The weather was cold when Realdo and I arrived at the River Road starting location, a few miles downriver from Baton Rouge. I am not a big fan of cold weather, and with the temperature in the upper 30s, I was hoping that the sun would warm things up quickly. The turnout was quite good for this early-season 2-man Time Trial. Good enough to delay the start by about half an hour. Realdo and I were scheduled to start almost an hour after the first team, so at least there was a lot of time for warm-ups. I ended up riding in shorts with two jerseys and arm-warmers, but kept my warm jacket on until we headed over to the starting line to queue up. By then, it was noticibly warmer - I guess around 44 or so.

Our start was picture-perfect. Realdo had elected to take the first pull and when the starter said "go" he accelerated at just the right rate so that I was never more than six inches from his wheel. There was a moderate wind this morning and from the starting line we headed directly into it for the first quarter mile or so. I looked down at my computer a few seconds after the start and noted our speed - 28 mph. I chalked it up to start line adrenelin as we made a smooth right-hand curve with Realdo still on the front. Within a mile we made a 90-degree right at a stop sign and again it was one of the smoothest TT turns I've ever done. With the wind now at our backs, our speed rose quickly to 28, 29, 30 and for a few moments 31. By now the effort was starting to catch up with me, but I dumped it into the 53 x 13 anyway to take full advantage of the short tailwind section.

Gradually, the road continued to curve to the right and the tailwind switched around, first to a crosswind and finally to mostly headwind. We were begining to hurt, but in a 10-mile TT there's no point backing off to recover. Realdo was taking longer pulls than I, spinning a lower gear at around 24.5 mph. Sitting in his draft, I was comfortable and able to recover quickly and when he would pull off, I'd come through just a bit faster, holding 25-25.5 mph as long as I could.

Each of the last three mile miles was marked by a manilla older duct-taped to the asphalt with the mile marked on it in ink. This particular 10-mile time trial was more like 10.5 miles, actually, but I remembered that from last year. One final effort over the last mile and we crossed the line with a respectible time and an average speed of 26.9 mph. That left us just a few seconds short of the fastest time in the 35+ group, but probably close to a couple of minutes slower than the fastest times of the day.

Personally, I was pretty pleased with the ride. Considering how early in the season it is and my own dislike for racing in the cold, I felt like I was about where I wanted to be right now, fitness-wise. I'm waiting to see the official results, hopefully tonight, to see how we measured up overall.

After the race we had a LAMBRA meeting to go over the revised bylaws, LCCS rules, and discuss some other issues related to the track series and race calendar. During the meeting The Daughter sent me a text message saying that she had won Beam and done well on Floor at the 3-team meet in West Virginia. She said the team kind of fell apart toward the end of the meet, so they didn't do so well team-wise.

Girrrrrrrrro!

It got much cooler last night and as usual the falling thermometer was accompanied by a strong north wind. It wasn't too bad as I rode out to the lakefront but once I hit Lakeshore Drive I knew it would be a difficult Giro Ride today. The plan was to try and stay in the shelter of the pack today, since I didn't want sore legs for Sunday's little time trial up in Baton Rouge. The plan went out the window pretty quickly, though. Since there was a rather small group today, there weren't many places to hide, and even if there had been, the crosswinds would have allowed shelter to only a handful anyway.

On the way out, as we came down the Seabrook bridge, and before the pace started to pick up, I was watching Rick up ahead. Suddenly his bike swerved and his rear wheel locked up in a cloud of smoke. It was amazing that he didn't go down. A long piece of heavy wire had wrapped itself around his casette a few times and then gotten tangled up in his lightweight super-aeordynamic spokes, ripping about half of them out before he came to a stop. It was ugly. Jay ended up riding back into the headwind to retrive his car because Rick wasn't going anywhere on that wheel.

As usual, a little group split off the front at the end of Paris Road while the rest of us were regrouping. Once we got to Chef Highway, the pace ramped up, but there were only a few of us actually taking pulls. It seemed like every time we got a good rotation going, Howard would hit the front and pick it up to 30 mph and blow everything up. Every time he did, a couple more riders stopped taking pulls. Anyway, the bottom line is that I ended up doing a lot more work than I had planned.

The ride back was going along just swell until we hit the service road and Brett said he needed to stop to take a leak. The rest of the group just kept going, so Jason and I eased up to wait for Brett. By the time Brett got back to us, the rest of the group had a pretty good gap and they were going fast, too. We took a few pulls, but eventually Brett came around and we just latched onto his wheel while he pulled for the next five miles or so, finally closing the gap just before the Seabrook bridge. The legs were a little tired by the time I got home.

Strange Week

It has certainly been a strange week. The weather has been all over the place, from spring-like temperatures in the 70s and clear blue skies to heavy thunderstorms and major tornado damage. From my office window I can see the top of the Entergy Building which atop which is a big U.S. flag. Since the storm the other night, the flag is badly torn and the ends are frayed. They really ought to fix that. It seems like all I have to show for this week is a longer list of unfinished stuff than I had when it started. I'm going to have to break down and actually make a dreaded "to do" list, because I keep remembering things I need to do late at night when I can't do them.

This morning there was a pretty big group, for a Friday. I'd say about ten or twelve. As is customary for Friday rides, we rode most of the way in a double line at a moderate pace. Things were going along smoothly until just after we started back from the turnaround at the parish line when suddely John R's Look pedal body ejected itself from the spindle and he found himself with the pedal firmly attached to his shoe, but not to his bike. This one was not to be fixed on the road, I'm afraid, and he really wasn't able to put any pressure on that pedal, so after a while he told us to go ahead. I assume he eventually limped back home. I don't think I've ever seen that happen, and it's been so long since I've been inside a Look pedal that I don't remember how they're held together.

Some of the most significant tornado damage from the storm happened to be right alongside the levee near where we start, and I have to say, it was pretty impressive. There was a huge piece of metal warehouse siding completely wrapped around the top of a power pole, easily 25 feet off the ground. They're going to have to shut off the power to untangle that thing, and it won't be easy. Down on the ground there is a whole line of industrial buildings that are just completely trashed. It looks like a bomb went off. The tornado missed the company where my sister works by about a block.

So we have a little 2-man time trial this Sunday up in Baton Rouge. It's all of 10 miles, which seems more than just a little bit short to me. At least the weather is looking like it will be fairly good, if a little bit on the chilly side, with temps at race time in the upper 40s, light winds, and clear skies. Since there's a LAMBRA meeting afterwards (I still don't know where), I guess I'll be stuck in B.R. for a while. Not sure how I'm going to work the logistics on all that yet. I'm still in a stalemate with this head cold, so I haven't been too anxious to ride really hard the last couple of days. I'm hoping I can keep it from getting into my lungs before Sunday.

Dark and Stormy

Wednesday's morning ride turned out to be a very nice and smooth ride at a moderate pace. In a way, it was kind of a throw-back to the early levee rides, with Donald taking three-mile pulls and everyone else quite content to sit in the paceline and daydream. I was nursing a scratchy throat and hoping I wouldn't end up with The Wife's head cold. The weather was again cool and clear in the morning, but by afternoon there were some clouds rolling in and the forecast was deteriorating.

The evening news warned of a line of heavy thunderstorms expected to hit the city some time after midnight. This time, the forecast was accurate and I was awakened around 2 a.m. by howling winds, blowing rain and relentless thunder and lightning. I got up to make sure there was no water leaking through the patched (and unpatched) parts of the roof and then fired up the computer to check the radar. It looked bad. A couple of minutes after downloading the radar image, the DSL line went dead. Half an hour later, the power went out. I looked out the window and it was deja vu all over again. The streets looked just like they did at night the first couple of times I came back after the hurricane. It was completely dark and silent, other than the pelting rain and howling wind, without a single light visible in any direction. As it turned out, thousands of people were without power and there were reports of at least a couple of possible tornados touching down during the storm. The airport suffered some damage, a huge radio tower at the state police station collapsed and fell across Veterans highway, and a probable tornado did a lot of damage along the street near the spot on the levee where we meet in the morning. I finally went to sleep again, and since the power never came back on, there was no alarm clock, and I didn't wake up until it was too late to try and get in even a short, wet ride. Instead of riding, I drove in to the office with The Wife, stopping for a big cup of hot water extracted drugs (with four sugars) along the way. I added a couple of tablets of pseudoephedrine to the mix since it's pretty clear I'm getting a head cold. The weather now is rather nice, of course, as it always is after a storm blows through from the west.

There's an article in the news this morning about HANO (the housing authority of New Orleans) asking residents of one of the city's housing developments, the one downtown just off Canal St. that has been thwarting efforts to revitalize the downtown area for the last twenty-five years, to return. HANO is a largely corrupt local organization that handles funds from HUD. About the Ibberville housing project, they say they want to "integrate it both socially and economically."

Yeah, right. That'll work.