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.