Le Peugeot

Well, the old Normandy hub had English threads after all, so the single speed freewheel spun on just fine once I got the guys at Adam's Bicycle World to remove the old Maillard freewheel and accompanying spoke protector. Still need to get the fenders installed, which will require fabrication of a few little parts, and ultimately I'd like to build up a couple of new wheels. The old Normandy high-flange hubs still look sharp and spin smoothly. I got spacers for the chainring bolts so I only have to run a single chainring. The chain came from The Wife's old Atala that cracked back in the late 80's. The brake levers are from the original-issue Trek mountain bikes, circa 1984. Pedals are Campi Record and the Nervar crankset was the first upgrade I bought for my old Atala 10-speed that I started racing on in 1971. The Blackburn rear rack is the one The Wife used when we toured Colorado in 1983. The bike's probably five pounds lighter since I removed the steel crankset and pedals, derailleurs, steel handlebars, etc. A nice alloy seatpost would be nice, but finding one that will fit is probably a pretty tall order.

Home Stretch

So we're in the home stretch now leading up to this weekend's Tour de Louisiane. 35 years! Online registration is probably somewhere around 130 right now, so we'll have a pretty good turnout this year. Keith copied me on some emails about the money we needed to have ready to pay the police and I was once again taken aback by how much it costs to put on a race like this. It seems like only yesterday when we used to put this on with little more cash than what was needed to buy race numbers (that in itself was a big innovation - disposable numbers!!). No police, no portolets, no cash prizes, no official's fees, no hotel rooms, no online registration. Hopefully we won't lose too much by the time it's all over. You would think that the $50 entry fee would more than cover everything, but by the time you take out the $4 for USCF insurance, the $1 for LAMBRA/LCCS, and another $4 or so for the ones who used online registration, it's not really as much as it looks.

Tonight I'll do a little run-through with the results spreadsheet to make sure there isn't anything that's really broken. Online registration closes at midnight (Pacific time, I think), so first thing in the morning I'll have to download all of the entries and print out the filled-in release forms, noting all of the ones that were not completely filled in (there are a number who didn't put in their USCF numbers or left other lines blank). Then I'll need to run by the post office in case there are any mail-in entries there (we've had one so far) and to pick up the latest check from active.com. Tomorrow I'll have to pick up batteries for stopwatches and tape recorders, make sure we have enough paper, clipboards, pens, copies of release forms, one-day license forms, etc. etc. Robin will stop by the house this evening to pick up the race bible so he can make the copies. Keith is going out to the road course today to sweep (blow?) the corners. Robin will pick up the course markings and signage. We are begging for volunteers for the road race to work corners because the police backed off a bit on the number of officers they could provide. Unfortunately we won't have Brian on Saturday because of the Space Shuttle launch. He has to be at work to view and analyze the launch video. And then of course the Tour de France starts Saturday too. I won't be seeing much of it on TV again this year since I don't have digital cable, but frankly I'm pretty happy with the web coverage.

In the midst of all of this I've been working on getting the roof thing finalized. We're about into the home stretch on that front too. The insurance company makes the check out to me, my wife and the mortgage company, so we've both got to endorse it, then I've got to send it to California so the mortgage company can endorse it and then they tell me they want to hold it in an escrow account and send me the money after the repairs are half completed and they can do an inspection. I have to explain that this is pretty much all for a roof and the whole job takes maybe three days. They finally relented and said they'd endorse it and send it back. I guess they think I will take the money and walk away from the house and stop making mortgage payments. I guess it's been happening with some of the really destroyed properties. So anyway, between that check and the one I got earlier I *almost* have enough to pay for the roof. Now I have to wait for the insurance company to decide to let go of the "recoverable depreciation" part of their estimate so that I can pay for the whole thing. Naturally I don't want to start any of the interior sheetrock and paint work until I know the roof won't be springing any new leaks, and of course I'll be lucky if the old gutters survive the roof repair, so that'll be another couple thousand. I can only imagine the headaches that people who are having to completely rebuild are going through. Anyway, things are crawling along on that front and there's still no water dripping on my head when it rains, thanks to a few strategically placed buckets in the attic, so I'm trying not to get too stressed out about it.

The morning long ride was quite civilized today and everyone, even Howard, was content to let Donald tow the group for long stretches. Shortly after we got into Kenner on the way back Jeff's front tire just randomly exploded. If we'd been out in New Orleans East where the National Guard is patrolling, they probably would have returned fire. It looked like it just somehow blew off the rim.

Around noon we sent a courier up to Baton Rouge with our signed contract for Tulane's disaster funding from the Dept. of Education via the La. Board of Regents, since they needed it today (and told us about it two days ago). That'll be another $14 million to throw up against the $220M deficit. Ten million here, ten million there . . . after a while you're talking about real money.

This morning The Wife rode the Peugeot in to work. I still need to get that old Maillard freewheel off and install the single cog freewheel (and remove the ugly and rusted spoke protector), but anyway she made it without incident so that's nice. It'll be better once the single speed freewheel is on there because the chainline from the single chainwheel will be right. I installed an old Balckburn rack on the back last night but still haven't installed the fenders because the stays aren't quite long enough to reach the dropout eyelets and I'll have to fabricate some little extenders out of some aluminum to make it work right.

Crunch Time

It always seems like a lot of I have all sorts of things going on that manage to crowd themselves around the Tour de La date. This morning the CFO called to say he had received the contracts from the Board of Regents for the Emergency Relief Funding and that they wanted them turned around by tomorrow along with our pre-award expenditure invoice, so naturally there was a little fire drill involving three offices to make that happen since we're talking about $15.3 million. One thing I know for sure is that there will be a big sigh of relief coming from the president's office once that check arrives.

There was still an uncommon north wind lingering around the levee this morning, which made the ride a bit harder but also allowed sweat to evaporate. Evaporation is something you really don't appreciate until you're riding down here on a hot humid day with sweat dripping liberally onto your top tube while you struggle to see where you're going through your sweat-blurred glasses. So today was nice. Hardly any drips! On the way out there was a bit of a tailwind, but it was mostly crosswind so Dan and I tried to get a second eschelon going so that everyone would get some draft. It lasted about two pulls (Dan's and mine) before they all went back to riding along the edge of the asphalt wondering why they were getting dropped. It is always so hard to get a second eschelon to work. Maybe we need to have a workshop on that or something because I just don't think everyone understands that it beats the hell out of hanging onto the back without a decent draft until you get dropped. Anyway, the ride back turned out to be pretty hard, especially on the sections where we had nearly a direct headwind.

TDL registrations are somewhere around 120 or so right now with online registration closing tomorrow night, so it looks like we will easily make last year's field size assuming we get a typical Friday night and race day registration. It's great that so many people pre-register and pick up their numbers on Friday night because it really speeds up race day registration. There will be a real good representation from Texas, and that's great because one of the main reasons we've always put on this race is so that the local guys who can't travel very much can get some experience racing with some good riders they don't see every day. The Cat. 5 race will likely hit its 50-rider field limit by race day, possibly earlier, so I just sent out a reminder because I don't want anyone to be disappointed at not being able to race. I got an email today from Jay S. who said he won't be able to race because after suffering through last weekend's race with back pain, he was just diagnosed with a herniated disc (pending tomorrow's MRI, I presume).

What It's Like

Last night, in the middle of the night, something exciting happened. It rained! It wasn't even an inch, but at least it qualified as actual rain. Not only that, but some cooler and drier air blew in from the north making the morning temperature much nicer than it's been. When I arrived at the levee for the long Tuesday ride I guessed that I must have missed an email. You know - the one about riding your time trial bike today. There were a bunch of them today. I suspect they are all getting anxious about the 3-mile Stage 1 Time Trial for this weekend's Tour de Louisiane. Although we had most of the usual Tuesday crew on hand at the start, I didn't see much of them once things got rolling. There was a significant cross/tailwind on the way out and pretty soon the guys on TT bikes filtered up to the front and started playing "I can go faster than you can" with little regard for me and the other packfill. I was careful to stay near the front despite the effort required to do so, because as we all know, crosswinds on narrow roads lead to droppage. By the time we reached the "dip" the speeds had been in the upper 20s to low 30s for a while, and I think a few people decided it would be a good place to turn back. Once on the other side, though, the speeds dropped just a bit. I was trying to stay in the rotation whenever the pace would settle down to reality, but there was no way you were going to find me taking a long pull at 30 mph when I knew I'd have to make a huge effort just to stay in the wake of the TT bikes. I would just pull through and quickly pull over before the speed dropped too much.

The ride back from the turnaround was both slower and harder, thanks to the headwinds, and by the time we were approaching Kenner it was just Rob, Brooks and me. I was spending most of my time on the back, though, trying to make myself very tiny in order to salvage a bit of draft from Rob and his Banke TT bike. It was difficult work and it made me think about what it must be like for a bigger guy to be trying to draft off of me on a fast, windy day. I figured this must be what it's like. By the time I finally split off for home my back was aching from trying to stay so low.

What it was like was . . . hard!

Registrations for the upcoming Tour de La are up to 88 with a good representation from Texas, so I think we'll probably have about our normal field sizes for this weekend's stage race. It looks like we'll have a lot of the Woodlands (Houston area) guys here, along with contingents from West Florida, Simpson's, Colavita, Memphis, and of course Raising Cane's from B.R. and the other La and Ms teams.

As usual, I'd rather be riding it than officiating it but, hey, somebody's got to put on the races and it isn't like there are a bunch of race promoters chomping at the bit around here, so I'll be there in regular clothes with my officiating hat on once again. I guess I started working the Tour de La some time around 1976 or so. I remember being all excited because we were able to buy a mechanical "Rally" stopwatch that would register hours on one of the dials. We made all of the race numbers outselves out of vinyl and charged a $1 deposit for them. We would also use big poster boards to display the results and index cards to keep track of each rider's time and placings. Getting the final results done took way too long and always involved a number of revisions, which is one of the main reasons I went out and bought one of the original "portable" computers, an Osborne, and learned Basic so I could write software to do the results with. It only weighed 24 pounds and had 64k of RAM! My current office computer has about 15,000 times as much RAM (and didn't cost as much). There's a pic of me getting ready to start the women's race back around '80 in the NOBC archives. I didn't like getting haircuts back then either.

Back to the Salt Mine

Don't you just hate the Monday following a weekend of racing? This morning I went out for an easy ride with Joe and Bob up on the levee, cruising along between 18 and 20 mph most of the time and feeling good that my legs didn't feel sore at all. I guess those last four or five laps of the race yesterday, when the remnant of the pack had basically stopped racing, kept me from doing much damage. From my perspective, not having been in a break, the Cat. 1,2,3 race was significantly easier than the Master's race had been the day before.

There will be much to do this week in preparation for the Tour de Louisiane, so I took some time this morning to knock out the results websites and USCF database upload from last weekend since Shane send me the results spreadsheet first thing in the morning. For once, the USCF upload went without any errors, which means that all of the USCF numbers matched up with the riders' names. That was nice. I still need to do the LCCS rankings. Maybe tonight. Today I am feeling kind of sleepy for some reason. I think it's just that usual post-race letdown.

Got a vmail from Gina yesterday as we were driving home from Natchez. She had left it in the morning as she was driving back to Atlanta from the Rochester Twilight Crit, but my phone didn't pick it up until I got out of the boondocks and we hit the interstate. She said the Cheerwine girls got three in the top 20, including herself, with one of her teammates making the podium, and that she had spent a lot of time in the pit. She broke a ksyrium wheel and also a carbon seatpost during the race, but didn't say anything about crashing??? Hopefully she'll eventually call me back and give me the details.

Long Day at Natchez

Today were the Category-based races and Charlie and I headed back to the Natchez State Park for the 9 a.m. Cat. 1,2 and Cat. 3 races. They ended up combining them, so we had a nice-sized group plus the Cat. 1,2s got a couple of laps cut off of their planned distance. For the NOBC we had just Realdo, Charlie, Ed and me. My legs felt surprisingly good but my game plan was to stay out of the wind, help Realdo if possible, and try to finish with a group. The early pace was fast but fairly steady but as we approached the half-way point Realdo dropped back and told me he was going to attack the third hill. What he didn't tell me was that he was going to continue to do that every lap until something happened. I'm not exactly sure which lap it was but after one of his attacks there was a counter-attack to put Tim and Frank B. off the front. They disappeared down the road pretty quickly. A couple of laps later Realdo attacked twice on the hills and that one resulted in three riders, Realdo, Rob and Scott K., going clear. I honestly thought I could have bridged up to them right after they went, but I didn't think I could do it fast enough to avoid towing the rest of the pack up to them. I figured Reo could beat the other two riders, so I let it go. At that point, what was left of the pack pretty much stopped racing. A few more riders snuck off the front without much of a challenge in the final laps, so I ended up sprinting for 9th, which is what I got, thanks to David A's help in leading out the sprint early and fast. Realdo, however, finished 3rd. His 3-man group never quite caught the 2-man break (Frank B. won). Charlie came off the back at some point but was still something like 6th in the Cat. 3s. It was a pretty good race, although after the last break went I kind of lost interest. I was pleased that my legs felt good the whole time, though.

After our race, we headed down to the feed zone to hand up water bottles to Jason and Brooks who were riding the Cat. 4 race that started right after ours. It was the usual feed zone routine. Lots of sitting around punctuated by brief periods of frantic activity as the riders came through desperately seeking liquids. One Cat. 4 rider, Matt, who has been winning everything lately rolled off the front early and never looked back, finishing minutes ahead of the pack. On the last lap the pack kind of disintegrated and at the end Jason went head-to-head with a couple other riders to take the field sprint and 2nd overall. Brooks, who hasn't been training well lately, was struggling early and eventually came off the pack, but he gutted it out and finished.

1 One

Charlie and I headed up to the Natchez State Park around 9 a.m. this morning for the La./Ms. district road race. The course was a mostly excellent but short 5 mile loop with a couple of nice climbs on it. The last kilometer, however, was about the strangest I've ever encountered for a road race. About a mile or so from the finish one exits the smooth asphalt onto an older section of road that features a short section of rocks where the asphalt should be. Less than a kilo before the finish you make a short, steep climb with a hairpin turn onto a road that runs on top of a dam. Making the turn brings your speed down to a crawl. At that point you're maybe 500 meters from the finish. On both sides of the finish straight are continuous steel barriers that you would definitely not want to crash into. I took one look at that setup and, considering my usual luck with drag races, figured it would not be good.

The combined 30+, 35+, 45+ road race had a good sized field of around 40 that had turned out for the 48 mile race in the 2:00 p.m. heat. There were a lot of strong guys there, including David who had won the Giro de Rankin road race, Realdo J. who was just back from racing in Guyana, Frank M., Russ W., Rich R., Mike L. -- the list goes on. The stage was set for a fast race, but things definitely didn't go down as I thought they would.

Shortly after the start there was a longish stairstep climb followed by a couple more climbs and rollers. The second half of the course was largely downhill. So the minute we hit the very first climb, David attacks. I muttler to myself "David, give us a break!" The pack is undecided so early in the race, but finally someone goes after him and they pull away quickly. I take some pulls to try and limit the damage, but they are holding a pretty good gap and the pack is still sluggish. They are often out of sight on the winding course but as we get to the end of the first lap we can see that they have a gap of maybe 45 seconds. The second time through the hills, Realdo goes hard and opens a gap. I bridge up to him and we start working together. I think there was another rider with us for a while. Near the end of that lap we can see that we're closing and as we go through the feed zone the rider with David comes off.

So we catch David and a little while later Reo says to me "Frank's coming." Now, this is both good and bad. We can definitely use some help if we expect to stay ahead of the pack, in which there is no shortage of horsepower, but Frank could very well make the pace hard enough to put me off the back, and if that doesn't work, he can certainly outsprint me. So anyway, Frank joins us and the four of us start working together pretty well. The next time we hit the dam road we can look down and see two riders chasing (turned out to be Mike L. and someone), so we keep the pressure on. I am already thinking that I may not be able to do this for six more laps, but we are fully committed at this point. I lead up the climbs to keep the pace at an even tempo (i.e. mine) and by the time we finish the lap we can no longer see the chasers or the pack. Reo is riding strongly and smoothly and making sure the pace stays steady.

With three laps to go the guys at the finish line tell us that Russ is chasing solo but he's 2.5 minutes back. Our pace has slacked off a bit. This whole time Realdo had really been driving the pace and I can see that when I'm on the front he is coming through early in order to give me some rest. Of the four of us, Reo is the only 35+ rider, so it won't really matter how he places as long as Russ doesn't catch. With a lap to go he asks me what I want him to do. I tell him I'm not feeling too hot and might not be able to sprint (remembering my last road race experience), and what I want is not to get dropped! At this point, 4th place is not looking too bad. Reo pulled a lot of the last lap. David attacked twice and Frank once, but somehow I hung on and we came into the final kilometer together. At the hairpin turn Reo led with David, Frank and me following (I think - I never have a very good recall of the last kilo!). Things may have gotten a little bit reshuffled when we came through the hairpin because we kind of ran out of road on the outside and things got pretty tight. With maybe 400 meters to go Reo pulled off and David jumped. Frank went with him and I was on Frank's wheel like white on rice. But David ran out of gas early, and at that point I knew Frank was thinking "Oh s*&t!" He was stuck in the wind with about 300 meters left and me on his wheel. If he backed off, Reo could attack him, and if he kept going I was going to get a nice leadout. He chose curtain #2, and when Reo, who was spinning alongside in this 51, yelled "go," I went, just pulling past Frank at the line. Russ finished solo somewhere behind us, followed by the pack (or what was left of it) sprint. I think Jaro was 3rd in the pack sprint, and I heard that the two guys ahead of him were in the 30+ group, so he may have ended up 3rd in the 35+. I never did see the complete results, but anyway the team got 1st in the 35+ and 1st in the 45+ and probably a few more high places with at least Jaro, Keith, Charlie, Jason and Ed in the pack.

Tomorrow I'll start the Cat. 1,2 race, which will probably be combined with the Cat. 3 race. I have no idea how long I'll last, but if it goes hard from the start it will not be good. Perhaps I will be able to find a way to help Reo out in the early part of the race so he has good legs when it counts. We'll see....

Clipped

The Friday levee ride was a little faster today than usual. On hand this morning was Matt R., who has just moved back to his house out by the Lake after spending the last nine months or so in Aspen CO. He said it felt warmer here. Anyway, it was a nice paceline ride and by the time I got home it was already getting pretty hot.

Having been in desperate need of a haircut for the last few weeks, I finally broke down, grabbed the $8.95 SuperCuts coupon off the dresser, and rode down to the local clip joint when they opened this morning. I sat there amid a snowstorm of grey clippings thinking about how they should have some light grey sheets to put over the old guys because the sight of all that white hair against the dark blue background is disconcerting in more ways than one. I've always hated getting haircuts. I always tell them that I like it long and they always smile and cut it so short that I'm distinctly uncomfortable for the next couple of weeks. Just to emphasize the discomfort, there's always a lot of tiny hair clippings that fall down my collar and irritate me the rest of the day.

So tomorrow I'm heading up to Natchez with Charlie for the 2 p.m. master's race. It's about three hours away, so at least we won't have to get up too early in the morning. From what I gather, there will be a lot of masters there this year. It even sounds like Matt rounded up the NBO troops for this one. The 35+ and 45+ age groups will start and race together, so it should be a pretty good-sized group. Natchez is a lot more centrally located than Hodges Gardens was in prior years, so I expect we'll get a better turnout just because of that. Also, the course may be hilly, but it can't possibly be as brutal as Hodges. Or can it?? All I know for sure is that it will be hot! How I will do is really up in the air this time, since I haven't really done any intensity all week while trying to get my legs back to where they don't ache every time I push on a pedal. At least the person who gave me my haircut offered some encouragement for the race this weekend, saying, "You should be about a pound lighter now."

H u m i d i t y

Well it looks like the summer solstice has ushered in slightly more typical weather around here. With a warm and steady southerly breeze pushing Gulf of Mexico moisture up into southern Louisiana we're starting to get into our "summer pattern," which is to say that it starts out around 80F in the morning and heats up into the mid to upper 90s by afternoon, at which point scattered thunderstorms start to pop up randomly. Yesterday, from my perch atop the Tidewater building, I watched three or four such thunderstorms come and go, each of which carefully avoided the area around my house. The forecast for the next week is basically the same every day, but at least it looks like we'll stay below 95F, so that's something.

When we started out this morning from the "pump hill" on the levee there was only a few on hand and I was wondering if we'd end up cutting the distance, but soon enough we started picking riders up as we went and eventually worked our way up to a decent-sized group. The pace stayed pretty steady, though, not that there weren't a couple of the usual suspects trying to push the speed up now and then. In general, though, it was a civilized ride. The leg soreness has finally abated after three days of relatively low intensity, so I guess that's good. On the return trip this morning Howard rolled off the front early while everyone else was still chatting. After a while I went to the front and gradually increased the pace, which had no effect other than to put me off the front too. The group finally got rolling, though and caught me just after the "dip" and it stayed fast enough to eventually catch Howard before he turned off for home around Williams Blvd.

I saw last night on the TXBRA racer's forum that they had to cancel this weekend's Texas state championship road races at the last minute because they were to be held on an army base and the army suddenly had some deployments to deal with. Man, that's pretty rough to be organizing a big event like that and have the rug pulled out from under your feet less than a week before race day. I'm hoping to find some time to finish up the Tour de La race bible this evening or tomorrow. The club has been doing a great job pulling things together this year so hopefully we won't have too many surprises and things will go smoothly.

Shortly after I registered online for this weekend's district road race (in the 45+ class) Jason reminded me that I'm supposed to get a free entry this year because I came out on top in the LCCS rankings last year. I'll have to see 'bout that. Having never ridden this 5.2 mile course before, I don't really know what to expect except that the description they give starts with "a lactic acid lover's special . . ." Could get interesting. At least the 35+/45+ race is relatively short at only 47 mi. The big question is whether I will have any legs left for the next day's 88 mile Cat. 1,2 race. Considering the heat, if the course is as hilly as advertised, it could be pretty brutal, especially if the turnout is low. Luckily, I'm old enough that I can skip this race if I want, or just get dropped like a rock, without feeling a bit of guilt!

At the Back

So despite some occasional stretching and wishful thinking, I could still feel, deep down, a lingering soreness in my apparently not-yet-recovered quads last night when I finally hit the sack around 1 a.m. I had been bouncing around all evening between the computer and the Peugeot project in the basement. I couldn't resist the Tuesday levee ride, though, so I went out with the plan of keeping my nose out of the wind no matter who surged off the front and no matter who else let the gap open. As it turned out things stayed together all the way out. The pace was fast, but from my vantage point at the back of the paceline the most noticeable thing was the "accordion effect" that is so common on the tail end of a long line. The ride back was more of the same until John flatted around the parish line and a few of us stopped to wait so he wouldn't have to ride back solo. After that the pace was slower and more steady, but damn I wish this leg soreness would cease and desist.

The jerks up in Baton Rouge are messing with our proposals for the higher ed. relief funding, asking us inane questions that have no relevance to the issue at hand. Apparently they were disturbed that our budget is out of balance and showing a deficit and want to know if we are allowed to do that. Yes, of course we are. We aren't a state institution, and why do you care anyway?

The city bike project is continuing down its bumpy path. Last night I shined up the old Nervar cranks and Campi Record pedals, rebuilt the old bottom bracket and Normandy hubs, and installed the cranks. Damn they look pretty. I was thinking that I could set this up as a 5-speed using a classic old Campi shifter and Record derailleur, but the removable derailleur hanger is very Simplex-specific and there's no way the larger Campi derailleur bolt is going to work, so I decided to go ahead and make it a single-speed as per my original plan. I ordered a 16 tooth single speed freewheel to go with the 44 or 45 tooth small chainring, along with some spacers so I can remove the big chainring and re-use the chainring bolts. I probably could have gotten this stuff from the LBS but then it also would probably have taken me a couple of days to get around to it and besides, in a world full of $1,000 wheelsets and 16 pound road bikes, nobody's going to be getting rich selling me a freewheel. They'll just have to trust that I am sending them real paying customers, which I am, all the time. So I guess it'll probably be next week before I get this thing on the road.

It Will Work

Last night I hit the sack well before 10 p.m. and so naturally I was awake before the 5:45 a.m. alarm went off. As I lay in bed there was this little debate going on in my head. One side was saying, "Go on out and meet the Monday group on the levee. It'll probably be an easy ride anyway." The other side was saying, "Listen to your legs. They are telling you they are tired. A day off the bike will be good for you." I went back and forth for a good fifteen minutes before the opposing sides agreed on a compromise. So I slipped out of the house early while it was still relatively cool. The game plan called for an hour on the bike alone and absolutely no numbers on the speedometer above 18 mph. Rather than head for the levee where I was bound to meet up with someone who wanted to ride faster, I aimed the old Cervelo for Audubon Park. This is where I used to do most of my morning rides back in the 80's and into the 90's before it got to be too dangerous to ride fast there. I recognized some of the same early morning regulars who I used to see back then. The old judge who had had a mild stroke some 15 or 20 years ago was still out there jogging slowly and unevenly with one arm bent and the other straight. The first lap or two were quiet, and then around 7 a.m. a lot more people appeared. A big guy on a Trek "comfort bike" passed me easily. But I stuck to the plan, taking a long route back home through Carrollton. It was good. At some point last weekend the bike computer's odometer rolled over 55,000 miles. The Cervelo is about 5 years old this month, so that makes the "annual mileage" math pretty easy. I don't think I've kept up a training diary for almost that long, though. If I haven't figured out what works and what doesn't by now, I'm way past where a training diary is going to help!

My abbreviated ride got me back to the house early. Apparently my brain has been working on the Peugeot city bike bottom bracket problem while I've been sleeping because during my ride this morning I realized that I had a couple of Campi square-taper axles around somewhere and that I should at least check to see if one of them will work. So when I got home I scrounged around and came up with a slightly pitted one that had come from my old Cinelli at some point. I stuck it into the Peugeot bottom bracked at voila! It will work. I dug out my old Nervar Star crankset with its permanently attached Campi Super Record pedals and again, it will work. I'll need some spacers so I can remove the big chainring from the Nervar, leaving the existing 44t one, which should work out pretty well. I bought this crankset to replace the steel cottered one that came on the Atala 10-speed that I got when I was a senior in high school. The old Simplex plastic derailleur is quite bad off, so it will go, but I have a nifty old 1980's Campi Record one from The Wife's old Atala (which broke after a few years of hauling The Daughter around in a baby seat) that will polish up nicely. I may even take the old rear wheel down to the LBS to remove the antique Maillard freewheel, for which I don't have a tool, and replace it with an old Regina 5-speed straight block, which I *think" I may still have lying around in a box somewhere. Once I polish up all that old non-anodized aluminum with Mother's Metal Polish, this is going to look pretty nice. New alloy rims and spokes are on my list, but they will probably have to wait a while.

After carefully scouting out the new RR course for the Tour de La, and also checking out the new start/finish for the Crit, I guess I'll be working on finishing up the 2006 Race Bible this week. We'll be running the Crit in the reverse (clockwise) direction this year with the finish stretch on the section that, last year, was between turns one and two. It's not as nice as our usual location with all the oak trees, but there should be ample shade from awnings along the street and course-wise it should work out fine.

Training Routine

On tap for the weekend: Giro Ride on Saturday and a training ride on the Tour de La road course. Saturday's Giro had a huge group and as typically happens when there's a big group, the pace was fast pretty much the whole time. On the way back, somebody had a flat and a small group decided not to wait. I somehow ended up in no-man's-land between those guys and the group that waited. A couple of us finally got together and we worked the stretch down Hayne Blvd. When we got to the bridge, I turned around and rode back until I met the group. I ended up sprinting up the first bridge rather badly. As we approached the Seabrook bridge I saw Tim getting ready to go and latched onto his wheel. I made it about half-way up in a 53x16 before my screaming quads had enough. Anyway, it was a fast ride and afterward a few of us rode back the long way down Canal to the CBD and up the river along Tchoupitoulas. I think I ended up with nearly 80 miles.

A bit too much wine Saturday night, combined with sore legs and a 6:15 meeting time at the Morning Call made it hard to get out of bed, but of course I finally made it there and we headed across the Causeway to meet the Northshore riders to do a few laps of the Tour course. The plan was to ride the first lap easy so that Robin could paint arrows on the corners, and then ride the next two laps closer to race pace. There was a pretty big group - at least a dozen - that showed up for the ride.

Well, after the first turn Keith and I waited up for Robin but it took so long that we never got back with the group. Even at our slow pace, though, my legs were hurting on the climbs. This course is 16 miles of silky smooth asphalt and hilly winding roads. The terrain will be a challenge for most and it should make the road race stage pretty interesting. There are lots of opportunities for attacks and most of the course allows you to see only a short distance ahead, so it will be easy for a break to get out of sight early. After regrouping at the start of the second lap things started out fairly fast. About halfway through the lap things started to come apart on the climbs and pretty soon it was just Jay, Charlie and me. Jay was attacking all of the climbs and my legs were killing me. When we regrouped again to start the third lap, a lot of people decided they had had enough. When we finally rolled, it was just Keith, Jay, Charlie and me, but Charlie turned back after a couple of miles. We went fairly hard for about half a lap and then eased up for the last half. By the time we got back it was pretty hot and I was pretty toasted.

A Spot of Rain and a Manhunt

Ahhh, Friday morning! With my legs finally feeling more like normal and my head feeling like I'm getting a cold, I rode out to the levee under overcast skies today, a little bit excited by the marginal chance of rain. The clouds were doing nothing to keep the temperature down, however, and I guess it was around 81 F and very humid when our small group started out. The typical Friday ride, at least when there are more than three of us, is a double paceline with opportunity for conversation. Sometimes that includes a recap from the Tuesday and Thursday rides with a detailed analysis of who chased down whom after who surged where and how long he stayed away and why does he do that. You know, the usual stuff. Today was no different and Dan and I were tooling along at the front somewhere upriver of the Country Club when up ahead of us in the road was a rather nicely appointed runner stretching on the bike path. Ordinarily, we might be irritated at the audacity of someone plopping down in the middle of the bike path to stretch, but in this case the scenery was well worth slowing down to safely circumvent the attractive obstacle, all the time keeping a watchful eye on her just in case. It was only a short time later that an oncoming rider said something to us as she went past and it took us a while to figure out that she had said something about having to turn around up ahead. Sure enough, as we came around the next bend there were two low-flying helicopters hovering between the levee and Jefferson Highway and up ahead we could see two police cars blocking the bike path. We eased up and decided we'd coast up to the police cars and see what was going on. Well, they were having none of that. When one of the policemen spotted us he jumped in his car, drove onto the bike path, and accelerated in our direction. "OK, we get he point." When we stopped to turn around I asked him what was going on and he just said that they were looking for a murder suspect. He was excited but it wasn't the usual excitement you get from a Jefferson Parish policeman when he finally gets to be involved in a genuine manhunt. I wondered why until I got home and saw on the news that the guy they were looking for (drug bust gone wrong) was from Texas and had already shot one police officer, broken into a home and tied up its occupants, stolen a car, shot and killed a police commander, wrecked the car and fled on foot. The caught him eventually when he surrendered. Of course in the "good old days" of Jefferson Parish he probably would have been "shot while trying to escape." Anyway, that was part of the morning's excitement.

Back at home I stepped out of the shower to hear an unfamiliar sound. RAIN!! It was actually raining outside. Of course it was just one of those little summer rainstorms that just lasted fifteen minutes, but hey, I'll take it. I hung around the house until it ended so I wouldn't have to ride to work in the rain.

The Peugeot city bike project is coming along. Last night I had to resort to ill-advised brute force just to get the cotter pins out of the old steel crankset. I have never seen cotter pins that were in so tightly in my life! I probably did some damage to the bottom bracket cups (which I will need to reuse since they're unobtainable French thread), but after some not-so-gentle work with a ball-peen hammer I finally got them out so I could remove the crankset which, BTW, must weigh two pounds all by itself. Tonight I'll see if I can get one of the old Stronglight, Nervar or Campi axles I think I have lying around somewhere to fit. If that works then I can install my old 165mm Stronglight Model 49 crankset with its TA chainrings, using the inner 44 tooth one for the single-speed setup I'm hoping for. If all else fails, well then there's always Sheldon Brown and Harris Cyclery, but of course the whole objective here is to use up some old stuff and not spend a lot of money. The other challenge will be finding a freewheel remover for that old French freewheel. If nobody has one of those, then it'll just have to be a 5-speed! Likewise if it's a French threaded freewheel. The old plastic Simplex front derailleur cracked and disintegrated the minute I tried to use it. Down the road, there's always the option of building up a couple of proper wheels using some old Campi 5-speed hubs from old tubular race wheels that are still hanging in my basement and lacing them up to some inexpensive alloy rims. We'll see.....

Summer Haze

It's hot and hazy in New Orleans today as the "extreme drought" that we've been in since October continues with no end in sight. This morning at 6:15 when I met up with the group, the first thing I thought was "man it's hot and humid today." We rolled a bit late this morning, just as Realdo arrived, and the pace, for the most part, stayed reasonable. Of course we eventually picked up Howard, and of course he took a few pulls at pace + 5 mph, but nobody bit and things stayed together all the way out. It was pretty uneventful except for when Howard and The Donald were toying with each other. The rest of us watched in bemused silence. For some reason I'm just not feeling too energetic lately and although I know I need some intensity and especially some sprint work, I am nonetheless content to sit in the paceline. It will pass, I'm sure. When we do the long ride like today, the paceline usually starts to disintegrate about half a mile from the turnaround. Some people just soft-pedal the last bit to get a little recovery, and they often turn around quite a bit earlier than the handful of riders that goes all the way to the end of the asphalt bike path. Today was no exception. Typically the pace is very slow for the first couple of miles after the turnaround, and I guess it was then that Howard and VJ rolled away. I never saw 'em, which is strange because after a while I figured it was time to get the group going again so I went to the front and tried to gradually lift the pace. For a while I was alone, but eventually the rest of the group caught and the pace got back up to where it needed to be. Still, I never realized anyone was off the front until somewhere around Kenner when I saw Howard on the side of the bike path like he'd been waiting for us - which is probably exactly what he was doing. Apparently he and VJ had been a couple of minutes ahead of us the whole time. Anyway, Howard turned off for home and the rest of us continued our paceline with the speed gradually inching up ever so slightly. By the time we rounded the Country Club curve we could see VJ up in the distance. I wouldn't say that there was an actual chase, but having him up there probably kept the pace from slacking off. Just before we reached the playground a couple of guys sprinted ahead so they could officially catch VJ before he turned off.

So I'm waiting on some parts for The Wife's commuter project bike, and perhaps I will be able to make it rideable, if not "finished," this weekend. The one thing I really want to do is get one of my old alloy cranksets on there. I'm sure it will require some significant field engineering and perhaps a hunt for a square-taper axle of the appropriate dimensions, but if I can make it work I'll just need to track down a single-speed freewheel for it and perhaps some brake levers.

At the Space Academy

Man, I have been a Space Cadet all day today! My head's been a little stuffy and it must be affecting my brain because I have been in a fog since I woke up this morning. Hopefully I'm not coming down with something, because my stomach wasn't real happy this morning either. At least I didn't space out during the training ride. It was a typical Wednesday morning ride up on the levee with everyone taking longish pulls at sustainable speeds. My legs still don't feel quite recovered, though. I spotted Realdo coming back from his ride this morning, so I can confirm that he's back from French Guyana, although I haven't yet gotten the 411 on how the races went.

So first thing I do when I get home this morning is decide to change out the leaky rear tube on my commuting bike so that I won't have to pump it up every morning. After that I headed upstairs and checked email, and while I'm sitting there I hear a loud explosion. The tire blew off the rim. Geez. Did I mention I was in a fog? So now I've got to do it all over again, which is starting to mess with my morning timetable. Running a bit late I decide to stop by the bank ATM to make a deposit and have to wait in line (on my bike) behind some idiot who is apparently attempting to conduct some sort of high-level financial transactions. She finally moves on and I go through the whole thing and then the machine tells me it "temporarily" can't handle deposits. The half-mile detour to the bank and the wait have now put me even farther behind my usual schedule, although I'm pretty sure nobody will be missing me this morning at the office. Unfortunately, I've got a box bungie-corded to my rear rack that I need to drop off at the UPS place on the way, but by now I've given up trying to rush and have decided to just go with the flow. I finally arrive at the office well after 10:00 nice and sweaty and the first email I read is telling me that, basically, Tulane is getting the short end of the stick again (funding-wise) because we acted quickly and got things fixed and operational after the hurricane, so now we don't appear to be as "needy" as certain other institutions of higher education that haven't done jack s*#t. Never mind that little matter of debt service on $150,000,000. I'll get down from the soapbox now, thank you.

Around noon I decide to retrieve the spreadsheet I had mailed to myself last night and do all the cutting and pasting to update the LCCS rankings on the LAMBRA website. This little process takes me a solid hour or so. I finally upload it all and get back to work until the emails start coming in about 45 seconds later telling me, basically, that they are all screwed up. Sure enough, I didn't do a final sort for some of the categories. Did I mention I was in a fog? Hopefully there aren't any other huge problems, but under the circumstances I wouldn't put money on it.

Downriver Headwind

The monkey wrench was dropped into the works around 4:30 yesterday when a 10:00 a.m. staff meeting got moved up to 9:00, leaving insufficient time for me to do the Tuesday long levee ride. Perhaps it was the Training Gods taking pity on me, trying to enforce another needed recovery day. Well, it didn't quite turn out that way. Despite staying up until 1:00 a.m. formatting the Giro d' Rankin Results for uploading to the USCF Results and Rankings database, I was out the door this morning in plenty of time to meet the 6:15 start. I was figuring that I'd hang on until maybe the parish line and then turn around and ride back easy. Yeah, right.

There was a pretty big group by the time we got rolling, and the pace was just beginning a smooth and steady upgrade when Chad punched through the front and proceeded to take it from 22 to 28 in about 200 meters. Geez! Of course it caught a lot of people by surprise and the paceline was immediately stretched pretty thin and long with gaps forming all over the place. It was quite windy this morning and luckily there was a decent tailwind component along that section, so after some chasing here and there the line got back together just in time to make the curve at the country club where it changed to more of a crosswind. With the pressure still on at the front and the twelve foot wide bike path only able to accomodate an eschelon of four or five, it was inevitible that the pack would split. It did. I started out on the wrong end of the split and was on the rivet for a while as I made the bridge to the front group. Things stayed fast and along the way Rob said he also had an early meeting and would need to turn back. We were going pretty fast as we approached the parish line and when I looked at my watch I figured I could stretch it out to the "dip" before I'd have to head back home. Rob and I traded pulls all the way back, which was mostly headwind and crosswind, and so although I cut out maybe ten or twelve miles today, my "perceived effort" for the ride was still way up there. It was kind of a long ride home, and then an even longer one to work.

Jason wrote up a nice race report on the Giro d' Rankin that I put up on the website this morning. I haven't started working on updating the LCCS rankings yet. Since it's essentially three races, it will take a while to do.

A Slow Recovery

Man, I guess I hadn't really realized the full extent of the damage yesterday because when I went out for a nice easy recovery ride this morning I was definitely still feeling the effects of the weekend races. I met Joe and Bob at the usual spot and later we picked up Ben (who by the way has no excuse for not becoming a regular on these rides). Even at a relatively leisurely 19-20 mph my legs felt tired and heavy and just a bit sore in spots - specifically those spots that cramped up in the Road Race. Hopefully they will feel measurably better by tomorrow, but I've come to learn that the older I get, the slower I recover. Pisses me off, too. So anyway, I did decide to use the SpeedCific wheels with the Michelin Pro Light tires for the criterium yesterday since the surface was mostly quite good and I figured I'd need all the help I could get. They worked out just fine, although I don't guess I was really able to capitalize on whatever miniscule benefit they may have provided.

The weather here is still hot and dry with no relief in sight. Water pressure throughout the city is low and the grass on the neutral grounds is turning brown. This must be a tough time of year to be a roofer in New Orleans, although I guess the large amounts of money they're making is probably some consolation. Meanwhile, The Daughter is complaining that it's too cold in Iowa City lately.

With the Tour de Louisiane now less than three weeks away, we will be busy making sure all of our bases are covered for that event. I'm expecting a pretty good turnout this year. Hopefully we won't get any surprises on the logistics end.

Rankin Crit

Sunday morning we headed back to the Jackson area for the criterium. It was a fast and fairly non-technical course with turns in both directions and a nice road surface. When I saw the long, straight and wide run-in from the last turn to the finish, though, I knew I would have trouble. I've never been too good at those kinds of drag races. We arrived at the course early enough to see the end of the Juniors race where Andrew finished, I think, 4th. The Masters race was pretty aggressive today, although the people being aggressive weren't the ones from yesterday. I spent a lot of time and energy chasing down breaks, and it was clear that there were a few fresh legs in the pack today. It seemed like there was an attack every couple of laps, and for the most part that kept the speeds fairly high. My legs were not too happy, still suffering the effects from Saturday's long effort, and I probably would have been well-advised to sit in at the back, but that wouldn't have been much fun. Near the end of the race there was one solo attack that nearly got away, but it was finally pulled back, largely by James M from Tupelo. Then David H, who had won the Road Race, came to the front. I was hoping that he would ramp up the pace an keep it from turning into a huge pack match sprint, but David is clearly uncomfortable on the turns and it didn't work out that way. The last couple of laps had a lot of new faces showing up fighting for position. I was able to hold onto a spot around 5th wheel as we rounded the final turn, but considering the condition of my legs, I knew I couldn't get out into the wind too early. From the final turn to the finish was a good three and a half blocks and I figured I probably had no more than two blocks worth of sprint in my legs. As I expected, though, the sprint started as soon as the leaders straightened out after the turn. I was holding my own and about ready to jump when a bunch of four or five, including Jaro, came flying by on the left. I ended up 5th, which was a little disappointing, but Jaro won! Yesterday's double winner finished out of the points, so GC got pretty shuffled around. Jaro came out in 2nd overall and I was 4th, so that was not too shabby at all, I think. David H. who had absolutely clobbered all of us on Saturday, winning both the Time Trial and Road Race, dropped all the way down to 16th or something on GC after the Criterium. These points-based stage races are really funny that way.

The Cat. 4 race that followed ours had Jason and Brooks A. in it. Like ours, it finally came down to a big bunch sprint. Jason had been maintaining good position near the front throughout the race, but Brooks was struggling and eventually came off the back toward the end. Coming into the final turn there was a crash, but luckily Jason was one wheel ahead of it and able to finish 4th. I think he ended up in 2nd overall, so that was a great result for the weekend. Edward K., who, as it turned out, had won the Road Race yesterday in a close sprint and had also won the TT for the Masters 50+ Cat. 5 race won the overall for that class (they didn't have a criterium for that group).

So the NOBC team had a pretty good showing up in Jackson. I found that my sprinting was clearly lacking, which shouldn't be much of a surprise considering the lack of racing I've done so far this year. I could really use a local training race series!

Ridden Hard and Put Up Wet

Greetings from Vicksburg, Mississippi where I'm staying with Jason and his mother's place for the Giro de Rankin. Today were the Time Trial and Road Race and both were hot and hard. Temperatures at the start of the Road Race were probably around 95 F today, as riders huddled in the shade awaiting their starts.

The morning time trial was a one-way 4 mile affair over a moderately hilly route. I think my speeds varied from maybe 32 on some of the downhills to probably 16 on the uphills. My legs were feeling pretty good, or so I thought, and I got a good enough start, but somewhere around 2 miles into the TT I kind of lost my motivation, along with a couple of mph, for a while. The last mile and a half had some nice climbs and I actually enjoyed that part much more than the rest. Still, I thought my time was pretty lousy and was later surprised to find that it was the third fastest in the masters race, so I picked up a few omnium points for that. I was also surprised that my legs didn't feel very sore afterward, probably because I didn't really go hard enough. The winning time of the day was fully a minute and a half faster.

The road race was on a nice hilly course, and the combination of the hills and the heat made for a rather brutal experience for many. The masters race had, I guess, 25 riders, and the first lap was really fast. A 3-man break got off the front about mid-way through the first 20-mile lap. My teammate Jaro was in there so I hesitated to chase. Jaro is a very good sprinter. This break was being powered by a very strong rider, though, and they were really motoring. I was beginning to get concerned that Jaro would have difficulty handling the pace, considering the hills, the heat, and the 45 miles remaining in the race. Most of the pack seemed very reluctant to chase, so there were just a few guys who were pulling, but eventually the break got out of sight on the narrow, winding country roads. Finally one of the riders surged up a hill. I went with him and we quickly had a big gap. He looked back and said something like "those are some lazy riders back there." We increased our pace for a long time and eventually pulled out of sight of the pack. Four or five miles before the end of the first (of three) lap we started wondering if we were making a mistake. It was really hot and we had been going quite hard. About that time, however, we spotted the break in front of us and it was clear that we were inching our way closer to them. Around the end of the first lap, we saw that Jaro had been dropped by his two breakaway companions. We started to chase even harder, but we weren't making up ground very fast. For the next nine miles we chased the 2-man break that hovered a tantalizing 20 seconds ahead, and then finally we closed the gap. The four of us decided to work together, as we had no idea how far back the pack was or what was happening back there. As we finished the second lap, I knew I was in trouble. I was starting to skip pulls and in fact spend a few miles at the back trying to recover a little bit. Half-way through the last lap I was starting to feel my legs cramping up, and began wondering if I was going to be able to keep from being dropped. The last ten miles were sheer agony. Finally we reached the 1 Km to go sign and the strongest rider attacked. Neither of us even attempted to go with him. We were both cooked. The other rider sprinted at the 200 m mark and when I stood up and tried to sprint three or four muscle groups in my legs cramped up. "Game Over." I limped across in 3rd place. Jaro ended up coming in 6th. In the Cat. 4 race Jason got 2nd and in the 50+ race, Mark was "either first or second." After the race I felt like I'd been ridden hard and put up wet. My legs still hurt. We had to drive back to Vicksburg after the race, so I haven't any idea how the omnium points turned out.

Tomorrow's criterium will be tough.

Weekend in Sight

The Friday morning easy ride was just that today with only Joe and myself at the start. A rider in town from Dallas (Andrew) had said he'd meet us today, and we waited a couple of extra minutes, but eventually we rolled because when you go slow you get home late anyway. After a couple of miles I detected a third shadow and, sure enough, it was Andrew, so we chatted all the way out, eventually picking up Elliot as well. Since Andrew is a high school teacher, we took the tour through Tulane's campus on the way back. A little recruiting for Jesuit students never hurts!

Jason has kindly offered to drive across the lake to pick me up after work today so we don't get to Vicksburg, MS (staying with family) too late. I packed a bag last night - shoes, helmet, jersey, shorts, socks, a couple of T-shirts, some HammerGel, a couple of Powerbars, clip-ons for the TT, and a handful of allen wrenches. I decided to go ahead and try out the SpeedCific wheels that are now sporting a pair of new 190g Michelin Pro2 Light tires (which I wish were just plain black instead of blue). As if the 30 gram weight savings will really make a difference. If the road surfaces don't look real good, I'll probably use my regular Rolfs with the Michelin Pro2 Race tires anyway because the "Light" ones are light mainly because they have less rubber. I rode them this morning and they felt fine at 18 mph!

I started working on the Pugeot mixte bike that I want to build up into a commuter for The Wife. The photo is kind of what I'm going for except that this one will have fenders and the original blue paint. Being an older French bike, virtually everything is incompatible with modern stuff. I had a nice old semi-flat (guess you'd call them "risers" nowadays) handlebar and a classic old GB quill stem, but had to take sandpaper to the stem to take off a mm or so to get it to fit into the French steer tube. I'll probably set it up with a single-speed freewheel and will definitely need to buy some stuff, though, including 27" tires, rimstrips, grips, saddle, new cables, maybe brake levers, etc. Perhaps I will experiment a bit and see if I can get an old stronglight/TA crankset I have to work if I can find an old axle and make it all work with the existing cups. If not, I guess the existing steel crankset will have to do. I will also want to find a home for the other bike that came with it. It's a cheap off-brand French bike from the Bike Boom of the 70s, but could probably be built up into a nice city bike. Looks like about a 23" frame. I'll get a pic up next week and see if there's someone who's looking for a challenge. That one has rusty wheels and seems to be in relatively worse shape.

Shufflin' Along

Well, after being off the bike all day yesterday you'd think my legs would have felt fresh this morning. Not quite. In fact, they felt tired and stiff and it took a long time for them to loosen up today. I just wasn't feeling too sharp today all-around and kind of shuffled my way through the training ride and work. Maybe it's the dull ache in the tooth that the dentist patched up the other day. It's going to need a crown so it's just got a temporary filling in it right now. Maybe it's just the hot and humid weather. Who knows? The ride this morning started out with a fairly big group, but quickly devolved into three or four guys hammering away at the front and everyone else, including me, hanging on. By the time we got back, the group was down to six.

So I click on the CNN website today and there's a video report entitled "New Orleans getting whiter and richer." Now there's an irresponsible piece of reporting. Or perhaps just intentionally misleading? The information is based on data from the Census bureau back around January. Trust me, things are totally different now. Totally.

I'll be on the road this weekend at the Giro de Rankin up in Mississippi. I expect it will be hot and fast, and considering how little I've raced this season, it will undoubtedly be painful. How hot is it around here? Well the water temperature in the Gulf of Mexico is currently 84F. It's after 10 p.m. right now and the temperature is 80F with 73% humidity. Feels like summer. I guess I'll be more or less in "training" mode for the races this weekend. This will be a typical weekend stage race, except that the overall will be based on points rather than time. I expect that there will be a good-sized masters field, which is good because I'll need all the help I can get! Should be interesting.

"Water, water, everywhere . . .

but not a drop here." I had a morning meeting up in Baton Rouge today, so I figured I'd take the day off, riding-wise. I'm planning on making it up to MS for this weekend's "Giro de Rankin." This will be a points-based stage race with the typical weekend of TT, RR and Crit. Anyway, getting up there may be a challenge since the other guys who are going are all on the northshore as far as I know, so somehow I'll have to find my way over there Friday afternoon. Can't say I feel particulary "in shape," but regardless, I need a bike race fix.

The morning meeting at the Board of Regents was the usual frustrating mix of politics and common sense. As usual, politics came out on top. Yesterday the weather guys on the news were saying that we are officially under "severe drought" conditions. No kidding. The back porch has sunken about four inches in the last couple of months as it always does when the ground dries up like this, and I've actually resorted to watering the plants which is something that, deep down, I just feel shouldn't be necessary around here. So I was glad to see the dark clouds building overhead as I drove back from B.R. around 1 p.m. By the time I was 20 miles from New Orleans it was pouring down rain hard enough to slow traffic on the interstate to 45 mph. I was hoping that it was raining in New Orleans too, but the closer I got, the lighter the rain became. About the time I hit the parish line, which is maybe a mile and a half from my house, the streets were dry. Damn! Here we are living at or below sea level in a town that was recently completely inundated, with a lake on one side, a river on the other, and the Gulf of Mexico knocking at our door, and the plants are dying for lack of water. When I was half-way home I got a call from The Wife. She said not to bother going to the office because they had just shut down the building and sent everyone home because there was no water pressure! Geez.

This evening I stopped by the home of one of our faculty members who had emailed me a few days ago because he had a couple of old bikes to get rid of. His wife, also a researcher at Tulane passed away about a week after they returned following Katrina and now he's probably going to get a job at another university. So anyway, I picked up a couple of old 1970's vintage 10-speeds. One is practically a department store 10-speed and will probably just be good for a few parts. The other is an old Peugeot "mixte" frame with steel rims and steel cranks, but I think I can build it up into a nifty single-speed city bike for The Wife. Just need new tires, a single speed freewheel, a set of fenders, a saddle, and it should be good to go.

The More Things Change . . .

. . . the more they remain insane. Yesterday as we approached the house after work I hit the brakes. "Oh my god!!" Gone was the babbling brook sound to which I've grown so accustomed. The Sewerage and Water Board had actually, finally, come out and fixed the neighbor's dramatically leaking water pipe. A little while later I strolled along the block, a glass of "Red Bicyclette" in hand, to survey the work. The event drew four or five of the neighbors out of their houses to celebrate. As I stood chatting with them, the owners of the house in question came around the corner in their car. I lifted my glass. "Congratulations!" Nancy looked knowingly out the window and with a big smile said "Thanks!" It's remarkable how we now get all excited about things like street repairs being done or elevators that actually work. Now there's one house left on the block that is under reconstruction with a big pile of debris out front and a yellow portable toilet that's been sitting on the sidewalk since before Katrina.

So this morning was probably the last relatively cool (i.e. mid-70s) morning we'll have for a while, and it attracted a lot of riders to the morning levee ride. It also attracted a lot of walkers, joggers, runners, dog-walkers, and recumbent riders. As we raced out to the turnaround at a tailwind-assisted 27 mph, it was like negotiating an obstacle course. At some point I took a pull and then dropped to the back of the long paceline. It turned out to be a mistake because someone up nearer the front was short-circuiting the rotation and I was stuck back there for a long time before I got up the energy to move closer to the front. I figured I'd just do more work on the return trip, and as it turned out, I did. It wasn't exactly like I had planned though. The paceline barrelled down the "dip" and over a stretch of street-level bike path that is always covered with big rocks. I don't know why they can't ease up through there 'cause it's freaking dangerous. Anyway, no sooner had we gotten back up on top of the levee did I hear a couple of people yelling "flat!" I relayed the message myself, but everyone in front of me pretended not to hear and kept going. I couldn't leave someone way out there to fight a headwind all the way back with only a small group, so I stopped to assist. We got a good paceline going all the way back, but with the head/crosswind a lot of it was at 23-24 mph. Pretty nice workout though.

Arrived home to find that the commuting bike had a flat tire. Fixed that, and as I'm riding to work The Wife calls to tell me that the car window wouldn't go back up after she rolled it down to get into the garage at work. It's been getting flaky lately, so I knew this was coming. After five minutes sitting in the car pushing the "up" button, it finally came back to life. Of course, now the wife is pushing for a new car. To me, that just sounds like a $20,000 window repair job . . . plus interest.

Meeting tonight at my place to get our act together for the Tour de La. Online registrations are already coming in, especially from the Cat. 5s who always have to worry about that 50-rider field limit. I hope my dentist appointment preceeding the meeting doesn't hurt! I hate going to the dentist. It always ends up costing a lot of money because the lousy teeth I apparently inherited from the Irish side of the family are about at the end of their useful lives.

Planning on riding the Giro de Rankin this weekend, assuming I can remember how to race a bicycle. Hopefully I can find a ride up there so The Wife can drive around town in the heat with the car window stuck in the "down" position. In the meantime, I need to get the LCCS rankings updated now that I have most of the necessary results information from S'port.

Work and Play, in that order . . .

So I didn't make it to the track Saturday night, which I knew I wouldn't, and Sunday was on the schedule for work around the house. Fortunately, being married to someone who used to race bicycles herself, Sunday morning's priorities have remained intact, and getting in 60 miles or so is still at the top of the list. Still, I had to opt for another Giro ride rather than the long drive up to Enon for what I'm sure was a good training ride with the northshore guys, assuming all of the triathletes stayed upright.

Sunday's Giro was a little odd this week. Things started out pretty mellow as usual and wound up on Hayne as usual, but once we got going down Chef Highway a couple of guys got off the front. That's pretty usual too. The unusual thing was that it seemed, at least to me, like the six or seven guys at the front of the group had completely forgotten how to ride a paceline. It was bizarre. I'd take a reasonably hard pull, give a little "I'm pulling off now" signal with my hand or elbow, pull over and nobody would come through. The pace would slow down, and then someone would go blasting past about three mph faster. Everyone would have to accelerate again to catch the wheel, and then when the guy would pull off, of course nobody had anything left to come through with. It went on and on like that as the 2-man break hovered ahead close enough that four guys working smoothly could have caught them easily within a couple of miles. Eventually it got just a little more organized until finally Howard surged through and closed the deal shortly before turnaround. When we got back to the parking lot on Lakeshore Drive there was cold watermelon!! I rode home with a happy but bulging stomach!

The Track Omnium in Baton Rouge seemed to go well Saturday night. As I expected, they ended up combining the Cat. 2 and Cat. 3 riders. There were a number of Cat. 5s who showed up and a few I think were riding road bikes for the TT. Anything to get some bodies on the track! Will has some photos and results on the TCF blog.

I spent most of Sunday trimming foliage around the house, and then, instead of finishing off the garage roof, I decided that the 2-foot diameter, 20-foot high palmetto that's been growing on the fenceline between the houses had to go. I fired up the new electric 16" chainsaw and went to work, finally bringing it down without hitting anything. It'll probably take me a month to finally dispose of the trunk! I'm thinking it will be a lot easier to cut up once it dries out a little, though.

Homework

A little mini cool front drifted through 'round here Friday night, making Saturday morning a bit less humid than usual. So I had a nice ride out to the lakefront this morning to meet the Saturday Giro ride. The first part of the ride seemed kind of odd, though. For some reason the pace seemed inconsistent. Perhaps it was just that I was hanging around closer to the back than the front. It took a long time to get my legs going, but by the end of Hayne they were feeling a lot better. The pace got fast on Chef Highway as usual and when the sprint started Howard bridged me up to Tim, where I stayed for the duration. Soon after we started the return trip, Tim, Donald and I rolled off the front a bit since the group was moving in slow motion. After a while our pace picked up and the gap widened. At some point Tim vocalized what we were all thinking. The goal today was to stay ahead of the group to the end. So it was a 3-man time trial that eventually evolved into a 2-man somewhere on Hayne. Since we didn't get caught, it was fun!

Back on the home front, today was a work day. This being the first free weekend we've had in a while, there was a long list of things that needed to get done around the house. I spun the roulette wheel and the ball landed in the "fix the garage roof" slot. Working mostly with random scraps of lumber I replaced a bunch of rotten wood and replaced a couple section of corrugated metal roofing that had blown off during Katrina. Along the way, though, The Wife somehow bent the lawnmower blade rather dramatically, so we ended up making a trip out to Sears where I finally broke down and bought a small chainsaw. A couple of stops later and I had acquired a 10 foot 2x6 that, amazingly, just barely fits completely inside the Volvo, along with various nails, screws etc.

I'm tired, so I'm going to bed.......

Midweek Drag

It was a routine ride this morning, except for the occasional surges, some might say "attacks," by a couple of the guys. I was pretty much on auto-pilot today, both on and off the bike. At work the city has been busy digging up the curbside lane and sidewalk in front of my building, making it dificult to find a good spot to lock up the bike. The inside "bike room" isn't officially open yet, but yesterday I looked in the room and saw that they had finished installing the new floor and that there was a couple of bikes in there, so this morning I breezed past the security guards with my bike and locked it up in the bike room. First time since last August!

I had to smile last Monday when Jack, while lifting my bike to put it into his car out at Red Bluff, commented about how heavy it is. Granted, being a steel frame with standard Campi components and regular old 32-spoke wheels it's easily a couple of pounds heavier than most current racing bikes. The question is how much that actually matters. Not that I wouldn't like to be on a 16 pound bike, but unless I'm racing up a long mountain pass I'm not really feeling very handicapped in that department. It just amazes me how much people spend on bikes and equipment. Ah well, I guess if you've got it, you may as well get the good stuff!