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.