I Got Trucked!

It's been kind of a rough start to the day today. First I get hit by a car, then I get rained on.

When I peeked out the window this morning the sky was darker than usual but the streets were dry. Considering that it had rained last night, I was glad to see the streets weren't slick, so I headed out as usual. I guess I should have taken a few minutes to check the weather radar, but hey, I need to ride! So I rode out to the levee down Willow Street, past Leonidas where the five people were shot the other night, and arrived at the usual meeting spot right on time. Naturally nobody was there since they were all probably clever enough to have flipped on the Weather Channel. The skies looked ominous and there were faint flashes of lightning way off in the distance, but I though I might be able to squeeze in 20 miles before the rain started. A few miles out I saw Realdo on his way in, so I turned around. He said it was already starting to rain down the road. I decided the prudent thing to do at this point was to call it a day and head for the showers, so when we got to the parish line I split off down the levee to River Road at Oak Street. Just after the railroad tracks there's a really sketchy intersection where people coming upriver on River Road have to stop and make a left turn in order to cross the tracks and pick up River Road on the other side. They're always in a hurry and I'm used to seeing them run the stop sign there, so I 'm always careful. Well, this morning as I coming across the tracks a woman in a little car rolls through the stop sign and cuts the corner right in front of me, so I'm all the way over to the right and already pissed off when the big pickup truck behind her does the same thing. He's cut the corner so much that he's entirely in my lane but heading in the other direction and I have no place left to go so I bounce up against his front fender and I'm pounding fruitlessly on his door as I go down, still clipped in. Luckily I was probably going less than 10 mph at the time, but I was shocked that he was not stopping. I could hear him accelerating as I hit the ground and thought for a moment he was going to run, but he pulled over on the other side of the road finally, after rolling over my front wheel. So the front wheel looks like a taco chip, but otherwise I was pretty much undamaged. Some very light road rash on my leg and that's about it. The guy was very apologetic and gave me his contact info, so I guess we'll see if he will ever actually pay for the wheel. He offered that he knows Billy at GNO Cyclery, and seemed like a decent enough guy, so I called The Wife for extraction just as the rain started to get heavy. I wonder if you can get 36-hole rims any more! This was my old front wheel with a high-flange Campagnolo Nuevo Tipo hub from the 70s.

Having cut my morning ride short, and considering the rain, I took a quick shower so that I could get a ride to work with The Wife this morning. Right about the time we walked out the door the skies opened up into a torrential downpour - enough for some minor street flooding here and there. By the time I got into the car I was already soaking wet from trying to juggle an umbrella, my messenger bag, a cup of coffee and a Silca pump. "Why the pump?" you might ask. Well one of the folks at work is planning to go to the Jazz Fest this weekend and as anyone who has done it before knows, trying to drive to Jazz Fest is pure torture, so lots of people dust off their old bikes and ride there since it's in the middle of town. The Jazz Fest is probably the biggest event in town aside from Mardi Gras and attracts a lot of visitors and locals alike. Check out who will be there.