Nonstop

I walked out the basement door into the humid morning air and rode off past the bags of garbage that were supposed to be picked up on Wednesday but still line the streets. Bad enough that nearly seven months after Katrina we're still on a once-a-week garbage pickup schedule, but since the Corps of Engineers handed duties over to the city's contractors a month or so ago they haven't managed to do even that. Two houses down from mine the water leak that started shortly after the hurricane has evolved into a small stream now, gurgling up from around the water meter and feeding a large puddle that extends half a block to the storm drain. The water leak that was fixed in front of my house a month ago still awaits asphalt and in the meantime creates a cloud of dust every time a car goes by. We have an election tomorrow (hope everyone who's racing remembered to vote absentee) that should be pretty interesting. For the first time since the 70s I think there are more white candidates than black, which seems to be very upsetting to some people. There will be a lawsuit if the "wrong" person wins. Anyway, there will certainly be a run-off anyway so it won't be settled for a while yet. In the last week, they've all pretty much resorted to calling each other liars as usual. I had five political messages on the answering machine when I got home, and at least three more called while I was eating dinner.

I was surprised to find so many people on the Friday training ride today. I guess we had about a dozen guys today, and for the most part everyone was happy to cruise along at around 21 mph. It was pretty much just the ride I was looking for. There was a lot going on at work and so I was going nonstop all day. Just when I had the day all planned out, I get an email that Senator Landrieu's staff wants some photos of Tulane Hospital that show the effects of the hurricane for a supplemental appropriations bill we're trying to get approved, so I spent quite a bit of time tracking down someone who could give me something on short notice. Finally, the COO tried to email me a 25 mb PowerPoint presentation that was just a bunch of rather low-resolution photos. Her mail server, however, kept choking on the file size, so I ended up walking over there in a pouring rainstorm with my thumbdrive. After all that, I looked at the pictures and they were pretty bad. On my morning ride I found that my rear brake wasn't releasing very well. I knew what the problem was. Last summer the plastic covering the cable housing had broken and sweat was getting in there and making a mess. So I had to run over to The Bicycle Connection to pick up a new housing and a big bottle of HammerGel orange (yum!). I thought it would be quicker to go to Todd's shop out in Metairie since it's just off of the interstate. Traffic was really heavy, though, and it took forever. Anyway, at least I have a fully functional rear brake now. While I was at the shop I mentioned that I wanted to get a new pair of official Look cleats with the teflon inserts. The ones I'm using now on my new shoes are some off-brand that don't have that solid feeling that the Look ones do when I clip in. They also float a lot more freely which I find rather uncomfortable. Anyway, Todd had a pair lying around on the workbench and handed them to me, but when I got home I discovered that the rectangular metal washers holding my off-brand ones on were too long for the new cleats and I didn't want to take the old ones off of my old shoes, so I guess I'll deal with that later.

I'll be hitting the road in the Volvo around 5:30 tomorrow morning for the 2-hour drive up to the Mississippi Gran Prix stage race. It looks like the weather will be good, so it should be fun even though I'll probably get my lunch eaten. I think we will have a reasonable number of riders from the club for this one, so that will be nice. Wish me luck. I'll need it.