Long Ride, Long Day

Strangely, I slept poorly last night. I'm sure the fact that we got a new coffee maker at work that needed extensive testing with Starbuck's best couldn't have been responsible, but anyway I woke up feeling tired. This being Thursday, the long levee ride was on tap, and once the group got going and I noticed there were four or five guys on TT bikes, I figured it would be trouble. We had just started going well when Tim, on his TT bike, rolled off the front taking a couple of guys with him. A gap opened quickly, and after hesitating for a second I went to the front and tried to close. I was going 28 mph and still losing ground when I realized what was going on. Tim was doing some long intervals and there was no way on earth I was going to catch until he eased up. Eventually, of course, he did, repeating the exercise once or twice again. By the time we were halfway back I was already hurting. Apparently I require sleep. It has always amazed me how my legs can feel great one day and then lousy a couple of days later, and vice-versa. I guess the lesson is that no matter how bad you feel warming up for a race, there's always a chance you'll feel like Superman by the time you get to the finish line.

Work today mostly involved collecting a long list of new things to do on short notice while actually accomplishing little. Appropriately enough, a big thunderstorm rolled through in the afternoon, so I went downstairs to the disappointing pre-made sandwich place and bought a Hubig's pie. You don't want to know what they make those things our of, but apparently they have just discovered the web. It is looking like enrollment at Tulane and all of the other New Orleans universities will be significantly down this Fall, which means more financial trouble for sure. The Senate passed a big emergency supplemental appropriations bill today that included a lot of hurricane relief stuff. The health care amendments, however, were not included. Apparently the new railroad tracks in Mississippi and the subsidies for sugar cane farmers in Hawaii were more important than health care in New Orleans. Guess which states two of the most powerful people on Appropriations come from. At least my one success for the day was straightening out a problem with my mortgage company where they claimed some computer glitch was the reason that my payment had not been applied to my mortgage. Yeah, right. One little sign of progress is that the roof people have started to disassemble the huge crane that they built outside our office window and have been using to haul stuff up and down from the street to the roof and back since the hurricane. Now if they could just fix one or two of the blasted elevators so I don't feel like I have to make an elevator reservation in order to get lunch, that would be nice!

Things improved by the time I got home, though. There, waiting on the front porch for me, was a box containing the rims and spokes I had ordered, and in the mailbox was a revised estimate from Allstate Insurance that finally looks like something I can work with. So I got to work and had a new rear wheel built up before the evening news. I'll try it out tomorrow morning and then true it up again. I've gotta say, those Mavic Open Pro anodized rims are really nice. These will be pretty bullet-proof wheels. Campi hubs, Open Pro rims, double-butted DT spokes, and brass nips. The rear built up pretty well, thanks mostly to the fact that I didn't worry too much if it wasn't absolutely, perfectly true. Now I just need to build up two new front wheels and I'll be all stocked up wheel-wise. While I was working down in the basement, I missed a call from Gina V who bought a house somewhere in Atlanta today. Damn, she works fast! I'll have to give her a call in the morning and get the scoop. Her vmail didn't sound too optimistic about her racing season, however.