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."