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.....