Frrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriday!

You know it must be summer now because even the Friday levee ride is attracting six or seven riders lately. Even more telling is the fact that the pace is getting faster. This morning was no exception. I headed out, new rear wheel and all, a little early, riding down Short Street. Short parallels Carrollton Avenue, but is a whole lot smoother, and although there's a stop sign at almost every corner, it's still a nicer route early in the morning. Of course, lately there are a bunch of huge holes and sandy areas where some of the many water leaks have been repaired. Over on Carrollton, there is still no sign of the return of "our" streetcars. You see, after Katrina they took "our" authentic streetcars, which are really supposed to run only on the St. Charles/Carrollton tracks, downtown to replace the imitation ones that were flooded. I don't know when we'll get our streetcars back, but the downtown folks had better not be thinking of keeping them or all hell is going to break loose!

This morning's ride started at a nice comfortable 19 mph, but slowly and steadily escalated, and by the time we were half-way back we were rolling at 24-25 mph. It was pretty steady, though, so no problems really except that we lost a few people toward then end. I think they basically just sat up to ride in at a slower pace, though. When I got home I gave the rear wheel a spin and it looked nice and true, so I'm good to go on that score. I'll probably build up the front tonight so I can save that nice SpeedCific wheel for more important things. Guess I'm going to need to buy a couple of nice tires for those wheels, though.

The wife took the day off to go to the Jazz Fest today, but I just had too much stuff going on at work and besides, my statute of limitations for standing around listening to music is substantially shorter than hers.

For a change, I have no real plans for this weekend, so maybe I can get a couple of new wheels built, get started on fixing the garage roof, plant that new Ligustrum to replace the one that died, ride a Giro or two, get the Tour de Louisiane website updated, send in the event permit (Courtney just emailed that we got the parking at the church approved!!), set up the online registration, make the new course maps, work out the new road race distances and starting times, etc. I guess, technically, those might be called "plans."