A little cool front came through last night and although it didn't make too much of a dent in the daytime temperatures around here, the drop in humidity was a very refreshing change. I rode out to the levee with flashing lights, front and rear, enjoying the little change in the weather. Of course, with change comes wind. It's been quite a while since we started the morning ride heading into a northwest wind, and it was a gentle reminder that summer is starting to wind down. It'll be months before we get anything you could call "cold" down here, but a little break in the relentless humidity is always welcome.
I was near the back of the paceline when the pack split today. A few guys on TT bikes rolled off the front fairly early and whoever was behind the break made no effort to stay with them. By the time I realized what had happened, the gap was too big for my taste. One or two in our group seemed to want the gap to widen, and they were consistently slowing the pace when they would get to the front. Even with the headwind, we could have handled 24-25 mph, but every time I'd get us up there and then pull off, the pace was back down to 22 by the time I hit the back. Oh well. When we got near the turnaround I turned early and got in with the first group for the ride back. It was much better! We eventually got rolling pretty good and my legs were hurting by the time we got back. Never saw the rest of the group, though.
So I got a new car key today. The Wife had to make an appointment with the dealer service department so they could program the computer to recognize the key code. All for the bargain price of $407, of which $176 was for "programming and software." Now that's just flat-out highway robbery.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Change of Routine
The Wednesday levee ride started out fairly routinely with seven or eight riders and a moderate pace. We picked up a few additional riders along the way, and then just after the turnaround met up with Brady and Wes who had arrived a bit late and were chasing us the whole way out. About half-way back I got another flat - this time it was my front tire. You know these things come in "threes," right? Since The Wife was getting a ride to an early morning meeting, I had to take the car in to work today, so I figured I'd ride back the long way through Audubon Park and Tulane's campus.
Once I got to work things got very busy and by the time I had a chance to come up for air it was already around 1 p.m. The not-quite-final draft of our pre-proposal for the Department of Education's "Hurricane Education Recovery Awards" program was emailed to the appropriate people in the university for comment, and although the deadline is on Thursday, I figured I'd give them a couple of hours to look it over before I pulled the ripcord on it. Just about then The Wife called to get the car key because she had to drop some papers off uptown, so we took the chance to slip over to Whole Foods for lunch. It was a nice break to sit outside under the umbrellas on Magazine St. and watch the crazy shop owner across the street chase the grocery store shoppers out of his parking lot. Ended up with a long 6 p.m. meeting back on the uptown campus.
So The Daughter's city bike is essentially finished now, and since it will be a long weekend we're thinking of driving up to Iowa City to drop it off and visit. It would also serve as a nice shakedown trip for the new car. Anyway, I will probably add some fenders to this bike, which is a collection of various nearly compatible parts. It's got 700C wheels, although it was designed for 27", and the rear wheel is an interesting Shimano Exage 7-speed squeezed into a narrow 6- speed frame. The shifters are classic Campi from the 70s, while the pedals are big grippy mountain bike style. If I were building it for use here in New Orleans, I would have ditched the shifters and derailleurs and gone single-speed for sure, but I.C. has some pretty significant hills and The Daughter specified that she wanted the derailleur. The original drop bars and brake levers got replaced with a cheap generic flat bar and equally cheap mountain bike levers. The front brake caliper's cable attachment is on the left side, unlike most modern brakes, so I set the brakes up so that the right-hand lever controls the front brake. That's how my racing bike was set up for a long time until I got the Cervelo, and I kind of prefer it that way, actually. Somehow it all seems to work, though. I had to force myself to leave well enough alone and not transfer over a set of classic Shimano BioPace cranks and chainrings over to this one. Today I installed the 25mm tires with Slime tire liners to cut down on flats, and re-greased and cleaned up the hubs.
As it happens, there's a little local criterium scheduled about 20 miles from Iowa City on Sunday. Hmmmm. If I'm going to be driving for 24 hours over the 3-day weekend, I should at least try and get in a little ride, eh?
Once I got to work things got very busy and by the time I had a chance to come up for air it was already around 1 p.m. The not-quite-final draft of our pre-proposal for the Department of Education's "Hurricane Education Recovery Awards" program was emailed to the appropriate people in the university for comment, and although the deadline is on Thursday, I figured I'd give them a couple of hours to look it over before I pulled the ripcord on it. Just about then The Wife called to get the car key because she had to drop some papers off uptown, so we took the chance to slip over to Whole Foods for lunch. It was a nice break to sit outside under the umbrellas on Magazine St. and watch the crazy shop owner across the street chase the grocery store shoppers out of his parking lot. Ended up with a long 6 p.m. meeting back on the uptown campus.
So The Daughter's city bike is essentially finished now, and since it will be a long weekend we're thinking of driving up to Iowa City to drop it off and visit. It would also serve as a nice shakedown trip for the new car. Anyway, I will probably add some fenders to this bike, which is a collection of various nearly compatible parts. It's got 700C wheels, although it was designed for 27", and the rear wheel is an interesting Shimano Exage 7-speed squeezed into a narrow 6- speed frame. The shifters are classic Campi from the 70s, while the pedals are big grippy mountain bike style. If I were building it for use here in New Orleans, I would have ditched the shifters and derailleurs and gone single-speed for sure, but I.C. has some pretty significant hills and The Daughter specified that she wanted the derailleur. The original drop bars and brake levers got replaced with a cheap generic flat bar and equally cheap mountain bike levers. The front brake caliper's cable attachment is on the left side, unlike most modern brakes, so I set the brakes up so that the right-hand lever controls the front brake. That's how my racing bike was set up for a long time until I got the Cervelo, and I kind of prefer it that way, actually. Somehow it all seems to work, though. I had to force myself to leave well enough alone and not transfer over a set of classic Shimano BioPace cranks and chainrings over to this one. Today I installed the 25mm tires with Slime tire liners to cut down on flats, and re-greased and cleaned up the hubs.As it happens, there's a little local criterium scheduled about 20 miles from Iowa City on Sunday. Hmmmm. If I'm going to be driving for 24 hours over the 3-day weekend, I should at least try and get in a little ride, eh?
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Bike Room
It's another hot and sweaty day in the Crescent City. On today's 40-something-mile levee ride I went through almost two water bottles and arrived back home soaked with sweat. The temperature really doesn't seem so high, but the humidity, well, that's another story altogether. I was not really ready for prime time this morning, having stayed up way too late last night working on The Daughter's city bike, and when Eddie and Howard started bumping up the pace on the way out I quietly retreated farther back in the paceline. I just didn't seem to have much power today and my legs still felt kind of stiff, so I decided I'd better stay off of the front lines until things improved. Things slowed down quite a bit after a few folks turned back at the Dip, and on the way back I was starting to feel a bit better right about the time that I flatted.I hate having to fix a flat on a summer training ride. The minute you stop the sweat just starts pouring off of you, making your hands wet and everything kind of slippery and dirty. Anyway, we got it fixed pretty fast and for some reason the group was slow to really get rolling after that. Eventually a couple of guys caught up with me and then it was just Ronnie and me, with Ronnie doing most of the work. Finally the group caught back up toward the end.
On the way to work this morning I rode over to Tulane's uptown campus to use the ATM machine (which is the only really reliable one around lately) and pick up some coffee at the campus PJ's Coffee Shop. Couldn't resist getting a Granita for myself while I was there. It makes the ride downtown seem a lot cooler. Although I think classes have started in my building for the Public Health students, the bike room is much less crowded than I expected. I guess the combination of fewer students and fewer apartments mush be keeping the number of bike commuters down or something. There are always some interesting bikes in the bike room, though. There are usually two different types of bikes. First, there are the new, modern commuting or comfort bikes, and then there are the old - sometimes very old - bikes in various states of disrepair. Today there is a fancy retro-style Trek with an enormous derailleur setup to accomodate a gear low enough to scale mount Everest. There's another bike that I see in there all the time that has been completely covered with clippings from magazines and then clear-coated. A new arrival today is a vintage 70's Peugeot 10-speed with the brake levers in a wierd place but otherwise almost completely original.
Monday, August 28, 2006
A Year Ago
It was a quiet and steady ride on the levee this morning. When I arrived at the start I was surprised to find Lorenzo there. I hadn't seen him in well over a year. He's a kind of odd sort of fellow from the Dominican Republic who has been racing off-and-on for a long time and sells art in the French Quarter. Turns out that he recently got married (!!) and his wife works at Ochsner. It has indeed been a strange year.
Anyway, it was 26 miles at a steady 20 mph this morning with Joe and Lorenzo sitting on. I am starting to feel pretty sluggish for some reason. Perhaps it's just the heat and humidity, or perhaps it's the heat and stupidity, around here. Regardless, my legs still feel stiff from last weekend's thrashing at the Giro rides.
A year ago today I was en route to Dallas, evacuating from New Orleans ahead of Katrina, worrying mostly about what kind of wind damage I would have when I returned later in the week. Late the night before I had written "Looks like the big one . . ." Little did I know at the time that it would be nearly a month before I could return and two before I could move back home. It seems like yesterday.
The state of the city defies description. The differences between the various areas of town are still so enormous that it is meaningless to give any sort of "overall" or "average" description. Uptown from my house all the way to the river, and all along the river to downtown, you would hardly know that there had ever been such a disaster. Ten blocks toward the lake there is a fair amount of rebuilding and a small percentage of people back in their houses. Farther into Mid-City many areas look essentially just like they did a month after the hurricane. Likewise much of the East and Lower Nine. Tulane's Fall enrollment is depressingly low, largely due to the understandable tendency of folks in other areas to make broad assumptions based on narrow news reports that naturally tend to focus on the negative. Tulane draws most of its students from outside Louisiana where people are entirely dependent on the national news for information about the city, so you can imagine how hard a sell it is to the prospective parents, particularly the ones who are paying full, or even partial, tuition out of their own pockets. On the other hand, I think that this year's freshman class will turn out to be a very special one. In fact, it already is -- just by definition.
Anyway, it was 26 miles at a steady 20 mph this morning with Joe and Lorenzo sitting on. I am starting to feel pretty sluggish for some reason. Perhaps it's just the heat and humidity, or perhaps it's the heat and stupidity, around here. Regardless, my legs still feel stiff from last weekend's thrashing at the Giro rides.
A year ago today I was en route to Dallas, evacuating from New Orleans ahead of Katrina, worrying mostly about what kind of wind damage I would have when I returned later in the week. Late the night before I had written "Looks like the big one . . ." Little did I know at the time that it would be nearly a month before I could return and two before I could move back home. It seems like yesterday.
The state of the city defies description. The differences between the various areas of town are still so enormous that it is meaningless to give any sort of "overall" or "average" description. Uptown from my house all the way to the river, and all along the river to downtown, you would hardly know that there had ever been such a disaster. Ten blocks toward the lake there is a fair amount of rebuilding and a small percentage of people back in their houses. Farther into Mid-City many areas look essentially just like they did a month after the hurricane. Likewise much of the East and Lower Nine. Tulane's Fall enrollment is depressingly low, largely due to the understandable tendency of folks in other areas to make broad assumptions based on narrow news reports that naturally tend to focus on the negative. Tulane draws most of its students from outside Louisiana where people are entirely dependent on the national news for information about the city, so you can imagine how hard a sell it is to the prospective parents, particularly the ones who are paying full, or even partial, tuition out of their own pockets. On the other hand, I think that this year's freshman class will turn out to be a very special one. In fact, it already is -- just by definition.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
What a Difference a Day Makes
You know that Tropical Story that just yesterday was heading for Louisiana and expected to become a Category 3 hurricane? Well, by noon today it was supposed to be making a sharp turn to the north and heading right into Florida as a Cat. 1 by Wednesday. Who know what will ultimately happen? Anyway, for now we'll breathe a little easier, albiet with one eye on the weather.
My legs were still a bit stiff when I rode out to the lakefront this morning to partake in my second Giro of the weekend, picking up Brooks B. along the way. As usual, the Sunday group was a bit smaller and the pace more erratic. Brooks rolled off the front on Hayne and he and another rider stayed out there almost all the way to the turnaround at Venetian Isles. The group caught them at one point and then kind of let them go again. Finally on Chef Highway we got the whole group into a big circular paceline that was rolling pretty smoothly at 26-27 for a few miles. Eventually someone got impatient, though, and surged the pace up a notch at which point most of the group stopped pulling and the paceline kind of devolved into four or five riders at the front. We caught them a couple of miles before the turnaround after a short 31 mph effort that splintered the paceline completely. I was feeling pretty dragged out by the time I rode back home.
Later in the afternoon The Wife and I rolled out the city bikes and took an easy little tour through Lakewood South and then north past the 17th street canal break and then back through Lakeview and Mid-City, ending with a stop at Williams' snoball stand. Things still look fairly bleak in these areas, some of which had at least eight feet of water. Lakewood South is (was) a pretty exclusive little subdivision right up against the canal where a lot of doctor types lived. There's a lot of work going on in there, but not too many houses are occupied yet. Man, if those people are still not able to get their houses back in shape, imagine how hard it must be for people with fewer resources. Lakeview and Mid-City are also really spotty as far as the level of recovery. We rode past Laura and Brian's old house (I think they sold it a while back) and it's pretty beat up. Like most of the houses in the area, nothing has really been done to it since the hurricane a year ago. As we rode through Mid-City there was a Coast Guard helicopter circling overhead really low. Probably giving somebody a tour. Lots of politicians will be in town over the next few days to take advantage of the photo opportunities and get in on the anniversary hype.
My legs were still a bit stiff when I rode out to the lakefront this morning to partake in my second Giro of the weekend, picking up Brooks B. along the way. As usual, the Sunday group was a bit smaller and the pace more erratic. Brooks rolled off the front on Hayne and he and another rider stayed out there almost all the way to the turnaround at Venetian Isles. The group caught them at one point and then kind of let them go again. Finally on Chef Highway we got the whole group into a big circular paceline that was rolling pretty smoothly at 26-27 for a few miles. Eventually someone got impatient, though, and surged the pace up a notch at which point most of the group stopped pulling and the paceline kind of devolved into four or five riders at the front. We caught them a couple of miles before the turnaround after a short 31 mph effort that splintered the paceline completely. I was feeling pretty dragged out by the time I rode back home.
Later in the afternoon The Wife and I rolled out the city bikes and took an easy little tour through Lakewood South and then north past the 17th street canal break and then back through Lakeview and Mid-City, ending with a stop at Williams' snoball stand. Things still look fairly bleak in these areas, some of which had at least eight feet of water. Lakewood South is (was) a pretty exclusive little subdivision right up against the canal where a lot of doctor types lived. There's a lot of work going on in there, but not too many houses are occupied yet. Man, if those people are still not able to get their houses back in shape, imagine how hard it must be for people with fewer resources. Lakeview and Mid-City are also really spotty as far as the level of recovery. We rode past Laura and Brian's old house (I think they sold it a while back) and it's pretty beat up. Like most of the houses in the area, nothing has really been done to it since the hurricane a year ago. As we rode through Mid-City there was a Coast Guard helicopter circling overhead really low. Probably giving somebody a tour. Lots of politicians will be in town over the next few days to take advantage of the photo opportunities and get in on the anniversary hype.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Tim's Wheel
There's a Tropical Storm approaching the Gulf of Mexico this morning and together with the forecast of rain this weekend I though I should check the weather radar before I headed out to meet the Giro ride today. Just out of habit, I also checked my email. That was a mistake. The prez had been up at 3 a.m. asking me for some stats about university research. Bottom line: I didn't leave the house for the 7 a.m. Giro Ride start until 7 a.m. I knew that if they didn't start too fast, and I did a 7 mile time trial, I had a chance of meeting them somewhere around Hayne Blvd. Nothing like hopping on the bike first thing in the morning and stepping on it right out the door. So I raced down Wisner and out Leon C. Simon and up the Seabrook bridge. As I climbed the Casino bridge I looked back and saw the first few Giro riders coming over the top. Whew!Today's Giro ride sure seemed fast. I remember thinking "who the hell is on the front" as I was closing yet another gap at 30 mph on Chef Highway. We must have been about a mile from the turnaround sprint when things really started to disintegrate. It seemed too early and the lead riders were already pretty far up the road, so I figured I'd just follow wheels. I found myself on Tim's wheel and I could tell from the way he was looking ahead that he was going to make a run for it. He gradually accelerated through the group as it fell apart with me just barely hanging onto his wheel and finally caught Matt right at the end. I think we maxed out at only about 33 mph, but then Tim had been towing me at 30+ for at least a mile. Then, on the way back, I ended up on Tim's wheel once again. I really had to dig deep to stay with him over the Casino bridge and finally blew up at the top of the Seabrook bridge. Anyway, it was some much-needed intensity and, better yet, we didn't get rained on! I was trying out some new handlebars today. My trusty old ITMs were getting pretty corroded and I was seriously afraid they might break at an inopportune time. I decided to try out some Deda 215 shallow-drop, traditional bend bars. The non-anatomic bend really did make it easier for me to reach the brake levers! Otherwise, not a whole lot of difference.
Last night I picked up a free 7-speed from someone who had put an ad in the paper. The wheels should work for The Daughter's city bike that I'm building, but I think the 21" frame will be too big.
Today is move-in day for the Tulane dorms. Last year at right about this time they had to stop everything and tell all the students to evacuate. This year, at least we'll have a few more days before Tropical Storm Ernesto can cause too much trouble. Don't need another hurricane around here right now f'sure.
Friday, August 25, 2006
$1,885,037.60
That's how much of the $30M that the U.S. Department of Education, using a secret formula not susceptible to analysis, allocated to us in response to our request for $7M. It wouldn't sting so much if it weren't for the fact that Xavier got $5M and Dillard got $4.6M. To put it another way, Xavier's students are apparently worth $1,257 each, Dillard's are worth $2,268 and Tulane's are worth only $179 each, at least to the DOEd. Basically, this allocation was "fixed" and I am rather "pissed," although, sadly, not particularly surprised.
So let's see. Thursday's long levee ride was pretty good. Fast enough without being too fast and mostly steady paceline. This morning we had anywhere from four to six riders depending on where we were at the time, and again it was nice steady paceline, mostly in the 20-23 mph range. Good ride for a Friday. Despite the thick humidity, the air was surprisingly cool this morning, which is to say it was maybe down to 80F at sunrise. I guess tomorrow I'll do the Giro Ride but Sunday is up in the air. There will certainly be some pressure to work on the kitchen at home, I'm afraid, but I sure would like a long ride in the country!
Kenny B found the link to the Tour Cycliste de la Guyane so we can keep up with Realdo and his team. They're wearing mostly red jerseys, BTW. There's a closeup of Realdo in one of the Stage 2 videos, but my French comprehension is nonexistent, so I can't follow the commentary.
I'm trying to build up an old Schwinn as a city bike for The Daughter. I think I have about everything I need, but I'm kind of struggling with the wheel issue. Both of the wheels on the bike are hopelessly "tacoed" and so I'm looking for an old 6-speed road bike or a pair of old 6-speed wheels that I can get really cheap. I could rebuild the wheels myself, but the cost of new (27") rims and spokes alone seems kind of crazy for this project. So maybe I'll make the rounds of flea markets tomorrow and see if I can come up with something that will work. And then there will be the challenge of getting it up to Iowa! Yeah, I know it will end up costing more than a new bike from Wal-Mart, but some of this is really about recycling an old bike rather than dumping it in the trash. I was going to ride over to Plan B yesterday to see if they had anything, but it was pouring down rain all afternoon so that didn't happen. They're theoretically open on Saturday afternoon, so maybe I'll be able to get there eventually.
So let's see. Thursday's long levee ride was pretty good. Fast enough without being too fast and mostly steady paceline. This morning we had anywhere from four to six riders depending on where we were at the time, and again it was nice steady paceline, mostly in the 20-23 mph range. Good ride for a Friday. Despite the thick humidity, the air was surprisingly cool this morning, which is to say it was maybe down to 80F at sunrise. I guess tomorrow I'll do the Giro Ride but Sunday is up in the air. There will certainly be some pressure to work on the kitchen at home, I'm afraid, but I sure would like a long ride in the country!
Kenny B found the link to the Tour Cycliste de la Guyane so we can keep up with Realdo and his team. They're wearing mostly red jerseys, BTW. There's a closeup of Realdo in one of the Stage 2 videos, but my French comprehension is nonexistent, so I can't follow the commentary.
I'm trying to build up an old Schwinn as a city bike for The Daughter. I think I have about everything I need, but I'm kind of struggling with the wheel issue. Both of the wheels on the bike are hopelessly "tacoed" and so I'm looking for an old 6-speed road bike or a pair of old 6-speed wheels that I can get really cheap. I could rebuild the wheels myself, but the cost of new (27") rims and spokes alone seems kind of crazy for this project. So maybe I'll make the rounds of flea markets tomorrow and see if I can come up with something that will work. And then there will be the challenge of getting it up to Iowa! Yeah, I know it will end up costing more than a new bike from Wal-Mart, but some of this is really about recycling an old bike rather than dumping it in the trash. I was going to ride over to Plan B yesterday to see if they had anything, but it was pouring down rain all afternoon so that didn't happen. They're theoretically open on Saturday afternoon, so maybe I'll be able to get there eventually.
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
New Wheels
Plans change and things move ahead, and lately I just feel like I'm hanging for dear life onto the proverbial tiger's tail. With some early morning uptown meetings on my calendar today, I got up extra early with the intention of getting in 25 miles or so before 7 a.m. As I dragged my sleepy lycra-clad self into the kitchen I heard it -- the unmistakable sound of car tires on a wet street. Still reeling from the fiscal bloodletting of yesterday's car purchase, I was in no mood for a dirty, wet ride on dark and slippery streets, so I activated "Plan B."
I had left my commuter at Tulane's uptown campus yesterday to avoid making the hot and sweaty ride downtown at mid-day, so in lieu of a training ride this morning I walked the mile and a half to campus and rode the bike back so The Wife could take the "new" car without having to drop me off. The air this morning was so warm and thick and humid you could smell the mold spores.
Yesterday's used car buying experience went OK, but could have been smoother and less aggravating. Granted, when it comes to car dealers, I set my expectations very low anyway. It took a lot longer than I expected for them to get all the paperwork together, the car wasn't very well detailed for us, and there was neither an owner's manual nor a second key. We had to stop in at the Volvo dealer in N.O. to order the extra key, which set me back something like $150. That was a cruel twist of the knife after I had already, however reluctantly, sprung for around two grand for the extended warranty that The Wife insisted upon. Apparently she would rather have insurance than money, and all manner of calm and rational analysis of cost/benefit and alternative strategies just fell on deaf ears. Just another in a long series of painful compromises in the name of domestic harmony. Now I'm hoping that the transmission burns up some time soon so I will feel like it wasn't a waste. I also miss the old days when a key was just a key and you could get them made at the local hardware store for about fifty cents. So anyway, now we have a white Volvo V70 and I'm hoping the clips on my Saris roof rack will work on this one too.
I see that Hincapie's spate of bad luck this year continues unabated - as if the train wreck at Paris-Roubaix hadn't been bad enough. It was bad enough to crash in the sprint of the last stage, but then to lose the GC by one second to the guy who caused the crash was really cruel.
I had left my commuter at Tulane's uptown campus yesterday to avoid making the hot and sweaty ride downtown at mid-day, so in lieu of a training ride this morning I walked the mile and a half to campus and rode the bike back so The Wife could take the "new" car without having to drop me off. The air this morning was so warm and thick and humid you could smell the mold spores.
Yesterday's used car buying experience went OK, but could have been smoother and less aggravating. Granted, when it comes to car dealers, I set my expectations very low anyway. It took a lot longer than I expected for them to get all the paperwork together, the car wasn't very well detailed for us, and there was neither an owner's manual nor a second key. We had to stop in at the Volvo dealer in N.O. to order the extra key, which set me back something like $150. That was a cruel twist of the knife after I had already, however reluctantly, sprung for around two grand for the extended warranty that The Wife insisted upon. Apparently she would rather have insurance than money, and all manner of calm and rational analysis of cost/benefit and alternative strategies just fell on deaf ears. Just another in a long series of painful compromises in the name of domestic harmony. Now I'm hoping that the transmission burns up some time soon so I will feel like it wasn't a waste. I also miss the old days when a key was just a key and you could get them made at the local hardware store for about fifty cents. So anyway, now we have a white Volvo V70 and I'm hoping the clips on my Saris roof rack will work on this one too.
I see that Hincapie's spate of bad luck this year continues unabated - as if the train wreck at Paris-Roubaix hadn't been bad enough. It was bad enough to crash in the sprint of the last stage, but then to lose the GC by one second to the guy who caused the crash was really cruel.
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Tuesday News
This morning I finally had to clip my little flashing tail light onto the spare tire bag because it was still pretty dark when I left. So I get outside and push the button and there's nothing but a barely perceptible flash. Guess it's battery time again. I was running a bit late so there was not time to hunt for fresh batteries, so I headed out anyway at a faster clip than usual. Out of the saddle to beat a truck as I turn onto Carrollton, and then I take the turn onto Willow at criterium speed. I'm halfway down Willow when I hear the train whistle. It's too close. Moments later I can see the engine crossing Willow so I ease up and coast to the crossing to wait. I stand there, already dripping sweat, watching the railroad art rumble past and then sprint for the bike path before the traffic has a chance to move.
Big group for the long Tuesday levee ride today. As usual, a big group means a fast pace. Once it picks up the group strings out into a long line. I take a few pulls and then drop back a little farther for a rest. They're not calling out the oncoming bikes and pedestrians very well this morning and I'm surprised by a couple of them. A bit head-on collision with this group would not be good for the future of the bike path. The levee district police would probably be out there the next day with radar guns trying to write tickets. Anyway, at the dip a bunch of people turn back, so the group gets smaller and, for a few minutes, the pace slackens. It doesn't last long, though, and soon we're back up to speed and closing in on the turnaround fast.
After the turnaround, it was a while before anyone wanted to go fast again, so there was some time for conversation before the inevitible. Rob was keeping a low profile today, for the most part, but some of the other instigators, VJ, Donald and Howard, for example, weren't quite so quiet. Somewhere around Kenner I saw Luke turn around just ahead of us. As we went by I looked down at the computer. 28 mph. Luke was still out of the saddle accelerating. Somehow he latched on, though. Made the mistake of riding back home down Pine St. and again got tangled up in the school drop-off traffic.Heading across the lake to trade off the old car for the new(er) one later today. Hope it all goes smoothly.
Monday, August 21, 2006
A Very Long Weekend - revised
First off, just a reminder to keep other riders' pedals out of your front wheel during a sprint at Nationals. Ouch. And contrats to Shontell for making the podium. The Texans will claim her, but we all know where her roots are. Likewise Gina V. got the job done for her Cheerwine teammates with Kelly taking a respectible 9th.
By Saturday afternoon the die had been cast and it is looking like the old Volvo will soon be replaced by a newer version of itself - white instead of grey and 7 years younger, but otherwise just like the one we have. This sort of thing is always kind of hard on me because I always seem to bond with mechanical devices, especially after they have exceeded their warranty periods and are needy, and so trading in a car is like sending an aging relative off to a nursing home. Anyway, this will be a strictly utilitarian purchase since I just can't get too excited about buying a used station wagon. Can anyone?
Shortly after that decision had been made, I was off with Robin to mark the TT course in LaPlace. Although I had carefully marked the 20k turnaround for the 40k 2-man TT earlier this year, we now needed to also mark the 5K and 10k turnarounds that we'd need for the Juniors and some of the Masters on Sunday. Since we had arranged the 40k course with offset start and finish lines (always a good idea), that meant we had to measure the distance between the start and finish, find the mid-point, and then measure 5k and 10k from that spot in order to come out with the correct final distances. So I set my bike's computer to kilometers and motorpaced behind Robin's van in order to make the marks. They were pretty close to the marks someone else had recently made (lack of communication rears its ugly head again), except that it looked like the other marks had been made from the start line and were therefore a bit short. Then I was up late cleaning up the results spreadsheet and adding the code so that it would populate the rider information from the current USCF rider database. That worked out pretty well, BTW.
Arrived at the TT start well before dawn on Sunday to set up and provide breakfast for a few thousand hungry mosquitoes. I can probably blame my lackluster TT performance later that morning on the resulting decrease in hematocrit! Fifteen minutes before my start I abandoned my USCF Official post, fought my way into a skinsuit inside my car, and headed out for a quick warmup. I would be the first masters rider to start, which means I would have no minute man other than a few of the faster women. Although there didn't seem to be much wind before the start, by the time I was three miles down the road my speed had sunken from 27 mph to 24-25 mph and I was already having motivational problems. The light headwind was taking its toll and combined with my lack of motivation I was clearly not on track for a very good time. So I trudged on more for the exercise than for the race, arriving at the turnaround with, I guess, an average speed of well under 25 mph. Heading back I could see that the rider behind me had already made up at least 30 seconds on me but at least there was a little bit of a tailwind now and if I really wanted to, which I apparently didn't, I could hold a speed in the 27 mph vicinity. As it was, my speed was fluctuating from 24-27 all the way back as my unfocused mind wandered around from car payments to thinking about how I'd be working on the TT results when I finished. About five miles from the finish my minute man passed me and at least that gave me something to focus on. I found that I was easily able to pick up my speed by the 1 mph necessary to hold the gap steady, and then with about a mile left to go was surprised when he rather suddenly slowed down and I passed him. As I did I told him it was only a mile to go and tried to get him to get back up to speed, but I guess he was about done. So I put in a big effort for the final kilo and crossed the line in 59:19, which was nothing to write home about but at least it was good enough to avoid major embarassment.
As soon as I got back I set up the computer and for the next hour and a half we typed in the start and finish times as they trickled in from the judges and eventually got all of the results sorted out and posted. It was kind of strange this year in that most of the Cat. 1 and 2 riders were away at other races (mainly in Memphis), but all-in-all things went as smoothly as can be expected. However, we are definitely thinking about having mandatory pre-registration next year so that start lists and times can be sent out and posted the day before the race. Back at home I spent another hour or two cleaning up the results, building the web page, and adding links on a few other web pages, finally posting everything around 4 p.m. Now I just have to reformat the results for upload to the USCF database, work out the LCCS points (which will be rather complicated in this case), and write up the post-event paperwork for the USCF.
By Saturday afternoon the die had been cast and it is looking like the old Volvo will soon be replaced by a newer version of itself - white instead of grey and 7 years younger, but otherwise just like the one we have. This sort of thing is always kind of hard on me because I always seem to bond with mechanical devices, especially after they have exceeded their warranty periods and are needy, and so trading in a car is like sending an aging relative off to a nursing home. Anyway, this will be a strictly utilitarian purchase since I just can't get too excited about buying a used station wagon. Can anyone?
Shortly after that decision had been made, I was off with Robin to mark the TT course in LaPlace. Although I had carefully marked the 20k turnaround for the 40k 2-man TT earlier this year, we now needed to also mark the 5K and 10k turnarounds that we'd need for the Juniors and some of the Masters on Sunday. Since we had arranged the 40k course with offset start and finish lines (always a good idea), that meant we had to measure the distance between the start and finish, find the mid-point, and then measure 5k and 10k from that spot in order to come out with the correct final distances. So I set my bike's computer to kilometers and motorpaced behind Robin's van in order to make the marks. They were pretty close to the marks someone else had recently made (lack of communication rears its ugly head again), except that it looked like the other marks had been made from the start line and were therefore a bit short. Then I was up late cleaning up the results spreadsheet and adding the code so that it would populate the rider information from the current USCF rider database. That worked out pretty well, BTW.
Arrived at the TT start well before dawn on Sunday to set up and provide breakfast for a few thousand hungry mosquitoes. I can probably blame my lackluster TT performance later that morning on the resulting decrease in hematocrit! Fifteen minutes before my start I abandoned my USCF Official post, fought my way into a skinsuit inside my car, and headed out for a quick warmup. I would be the first masters rider to start, which means I would have no minute man other than a few of the faster women. Although there didn't seem to be much wind before the start, by the time I was three miles down the road my speed had sunken from 27 mph to 24-25 mph and I was already having motivational problems. The light headwind was taking its toll and combined with my lack of motivation I was clearly not on track for a very good time. So I trudged on more for the exercise than for the race, arriving at the turnaround with, I guess, an average speed of well under 25 mph. Heading back I could see that the rider behind me had already made up at least 30 seconds on me but at least there was a little bit of a tailwind now and if I really wanted to, which I apparently didn't, I could hold a speed in the 27 mph vicinity. As it was, my speed was fluctuating from 24-27 all the way back as my unfocused mind wandered around from car payments to thinking about how I'd be working on the TT results when I finished. About five miles from the finish my minute man passed me and at least that gave me something to focus on. I found that I was easily able to pick up my speed by the 1 mph necessary to hold the gap steady, and then with about a mile left to go was surprised when he rather suddenly slowed down and I passed him. As I did I told him it was only a mile to go and tried to get him to get back up to speed, but I guess he was about done. So I put in a big effort for the final kilo and crossed the line in 59:19, which was nothing to write home about but at least it was good enough to avoid major embarassment.
As soon as I got back I set up the computer and for the next hour and a half we typed in the start and finish times as they trickled in from the judges and eventually got all of the results sorted out and posted. It was kind of strange this year in that most of the Cat. 1 and 2 riders were away at other races (mainly in Memphis), but all-in-all things went as smoothly as can be expected. However, we are definitely thinking about having mandatory pre-registration next year so that start lists and times can be sent out and posted the day before the race. Back at home I spent another hour or two cleaning up the results, building the web page, and adding links on a few other web pages, finally posting everything around 4 p.m. Now I just have to reformat the results for upload to the USCF database, work out the LCCS points (which will be rather complicated in this case), and write up the post-event paperwork for the USCF.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Typically Friday
It was a typical Friday morning ride today with a few of the regulars rolling at an easy pace through the thick morning air. Tim rode down the river and rode with us for a while. He was heading up to Memphis today to do battle against the MMW guys on their home turf at their big stage race. They had a good race last weekend over in Meridian. It looks like it will be a great race up there. I wish I was going too, but duty calls on the home front. I'll be at the district time trial just up the road in LaPlace trying not to embarass myself too much on the bike and then trying not to screw up the results too badly afterward. Maybe that aero helmet that Courtney kindly dropped off on my front porch will help? I can't quite figure out exactly how that thing should be positioned.
Meanwhile at work the Dept. of Ed. finally got the announcement for another big Katrina-related round of funding into the Federal Register bright and early this morning. As usual it referenced a website and forms that weren't available until late this afternoon, so we basically lose three days on some internal data collection that we need to do by Sept. 1. They also had two different dates in there as the deadline for the final proposal, so I had to call them up and set them straight. Come to think of it, maybe I was the reason that the website went up so late. Naturally the final deadline is the day after I'm supposed to be relaxing with a little vacation in Florida. Also, naturally, it looks like I'll be working while I'm there. This always seems to happen. I distinctly remember typing the almost-final version of my Master's thesis (on an electric typewriter, no less) in a Florida hotel room while everyone else was out on the beach getting sunburned. "A Partial Denaturation Map of Bacteriophage Ø29 DNA." Totally obsolete information with the advent of DNA sequencing a few years later. Threw out my only copy with the rest of the flooded stuff from my basement last October.
Now The Wife is on a new car kick, emailing me $22k used car ads. I find the prospect of borrowing large amounts of money to buy big, safe, boring cars more than a little bit depressing, actually.
Meanwhile at work the Dept. of Ed. finally got the announcement for another big Katrina-related round of funding into the Federal Register bright and early this morning. As usual it referenced a website and forms that weren't available until late this afternoon, so we basically lose three days on some internal data collection that we need to do by Sept. 1. They also had two different dates in there as the deadline for the final proposal, so I had to call them up and set them straight. Come to think of it, maybe I was the reason that the website went up so late. Naturally the final deadline is the day after I'm supposed to be relaxing with a little vacation in Florida. Also, naturally, it looks like I'll be working while I'm there. This always seems to happen. I distinctly remember typing the almost-final version of my Master's thesis (on an electric typewriter, no less) in a Florida hotel room while everyone else was out on the beach getting sunburned. "A Partial Denaturation Map of Bacteriophage Ø29 DNA." Totally obsolete information with the advent of DNA sequencing a few years later. Threw out my only copy with the rest of the flooded stuff from my basement last October.
Now The Wife is on a new car kick, emailing me $22k used car ads. I find the prospect of borrowing large amounts of money to buy big, safe, boring cars more than a little bit depressing, actually.
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Train Ride Home
The morning levee ride group was a bit thin today. I think we had about ten at one point, but a few turned back early at the dip. VJ was up there on his TT bike but on the way out he hung back just off the tail end of the paceline so he could ride his aero bars in the wind in peace. The district TT championship is this Sunday, and so all of the aeroheads are starting to obsess about it. Personally I prefer to downplay its significance. I'm sure it is no coincidence that I'm not a very good time trialist.
So we arrived at the turnaround with a small group of maybe six. The group usually starts back at a slow pace so that everyone can sit up, drink and recover a bit. When I turned around, VJ was already heading back. One other rider caught up to him and latched onto his wheel, so I picked up the pace a bit as I waited for the group to come up from behind. Although he wasn't doing more than 2o mph for sure, VJ was starting to pull away and when I looked back I found myself in no-man's-land between the break and the group. I decided to catch VJ rather than wait for the group to catch up. So VJ's still up in front with two of us in his draft and the speed gradually ramped up to 26 mph. I felt like the caboose, just hanging onto VJ and taking the express train back home, and just like a big diesel train engine, VJ towed us at a steady 26 mph all the way back to Kenner when he finally pulled over to let us each take a pull or two. Luke and his son latched on somewhere around Kenner, adding a couple of cars to the train, and soon VJ was back on the front. Even on his TT bike, VJ is tall enough that I felt like I was missing out on a lot of his draft that was mostly about a foot above my head.
On the way home I ran into what must have been the first day of school traffic at the local school, Lusher Elementary, with which Tulane has recently partnered. Confused parents in SUVs were clogging up Pine street and I nearly had to unclip at one point when one of them just randomly stopped in front of me. They'll all eventually figure it all out, of course. A couple of blocks farther down I saw Adam of Adam's Bicycle World walking (with his bike) down Pine street with his kids on their way to school. Adam and I will be the USCF officials for this weekend's Time Trial. I spent an hour or so last night sorting out leftover race numbers so we can use them for the TT after Robin called and asked if I had any. I'm afraid it will be just a little bit confusing for the riders because the number sequences don't start at "1" and there will be a break in the sequence for the Cat. 5s. Hopefully we'll be able to generate some sort of start list, but time will be short since there's no pre-registration. I have to set up the registration and results spreadsheet tonight.
Got home yesterday after work and turned on the kitchen faucet which proceeded to sputter and spit and spurt out dirty water. Yeah, the Sewerage and Water Board must have been fixing yet another broken water pipe nearby and managed to inject a ton of dirt into the water supply line. I had to clean out the aerators which were all clogged up with those tiny little rocks that constitute the larger components of dirt. Then this morning I had to disassemble the fill valve in the toilet because it too was so clogged up that it would have taken half an hour to fill the tank. I don't even want to think about what the bottom of the water heater must look like. .... and we drink this stuff!
So Spike Lee showed his new and obviously political documentary about Katrina to a smaller-than-expected crowd in New Orleans yesterday. Wouldn't want to miss such a great opportunity to point fingers and try again to make it all into a racial issue. Yeah, those white folks went out there in the middle of the hurricane and blew a hole in the industrial canal levee. So who blew the hole in the 17th street canal?
So we arrived at the turnaround with a small group of maybe six. The group usually starts back at a slow pace so that everyone can sit up, drink and recover a bit. When I turned around, VJ was already heading back. One other rider caught up to him and latched onto his wheel, so I picked up the pace a bit as I waited for the group to come up from behind. Although he wasn't doing more than 2o mph for sure, VJ was starting to pull away and when I looked back I found myself in no-man's-land between the break and the group. I decided to catch VJ rather than wait for the group to catch up. So VJ's still up in front with two of us in his draft and the speed gradually ramped up to 26 mph. I felt like the caboose, just hanging onto VJ and taking the express train back home, and just like a big diesel train engine, VJ towed us at a steady 26 mph all the way back to Kenner when he finally pulled over to let us each take a pull or two. Luke and his son latched on somewhere around Kenner, adding a couple of cars to the train, and soon VJ was back on the front. Even on his TT bike, VJ is tall enough that I felt like I was missing out on a lot of his draft that was mostly about a foot above my head.
On the way home I ran into what must have been the first day of school traffic at the local school, Lusher Elementary, with which Tulane has recently partnered. Confused parents in SUVs were clogging up Pine street and I nearly had to unclip at one point when one of them just randomly stopped in front of me. They'll all eventually figure it all out, of course. A couple of blocks farther down I saw Adam of Adam's Bicycle World walking (with his bike) down Pine street with his kids on their way to school. Adam and I will be the USCF officials for this weekend's Time Trial. I spent an hour or so last night sorting out leftover race numbers so we can use them for the TT after Robin called and asked if I had any. I'm afraid it will be just a little bit confusing for the riders because the number sequences don't start at "1" and there will be a break in the sequence for the Cat. 5s. Hopefully we'll be able to generate some sort of start list, but time will be short since there's no pre-registration. I have to set up the registration and results spreadsheet tonight.
Got home yesterday after work and turned on the kitchen faucet which proceeded to sputter and spit and spurt out dirty water. Yeah, the Sewerage and Water Board must have been fixing yet another broken water pipe nearby and managed to inject a ton of dirt into the water supply line. I had to clean out the aerators which were all clogged up with those tiny little rocks that constitute the larger components of dirt. Then this morning I had to disassemble the fill valve in the toilet because it too was so clogged up that it would have taken half an hour to fill the tank. I don't even want to think about what the bottom of the water heater must look like. .... and we drink this stuff!
So Spike Lee showed his new and obviously political documentary about Katrina to a smaller-than-expected crowd in New Orleans yesterday. Wouldn't want to miss such a great opportunity to point fingers and try again to make it all into a racial issue. Yeah, those white folks went out there in the middle of the hurricane and blew a hole in the industrial canal levee. So who blew the hole in the 17th street canal?
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
Unsettled
An unsettled stomach and restless sleep made it easy to decide to skip this morning's ride. I don't know if it was the undercooked chicken at lunch or the (very) leftover gumbo at dinner that did it, but things are still not quite right. The workday was just as unsettled, culminating in a cell phone call received en route to a meeting on the uptown campus telling me that the meeting had been cancelled after it had already been rescheduled once today. I guess it's time to throw my hands up and surrender, after all, tomorrow will be another day!
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
A Tuesday in August
August always seems like "the dead of summer," but don't let it fool you. This morning I marked a seasonal milestone as I popped the clear lens into my Oakleys. At 6 a.m. it is now a bit too dark for the sunglasses, and although I'd love to be wearing them for the ride back when the rising sun is in my eyes, I'd rather be able to see the potholes on my trip over to the levee and not have to pick bugs out of my eyes first thing in the morning.
Today's group was smaller than usual for the long Tuesday levee ride - a combination of the delayed sunrise and a moderate wind, I guess. There were a few people on TT bikes this morning, and we weren't even to the dip before the group quietly split leaving Rob and me to suck the wheels of two TT bikes. I guess most of them turned around at the dip because we never saw most of them again. Eventually VJ caught us toward the end of the outbound leg. The return trip was easier thanks to a moderate tail/crosswind, but as usual the speed just gradually increased the farther we went. Elise jumped in after the dip on the way back, at which point Howard ramped the pace up to about 30, and Luke jumped on at some point around that time. A couple more surges before Howard went home splintered things pretty badly, though. Approaching the Huey P., we had just four riders left and we were going pretty hard when I dropped back and didn't realize that we had lost one of them. With VJ on the front and the unexpected missing wheel, the surprise gap opening quickly, so I decided I was close enough to the end for few extra miles worth of cool-down and rode in the rest of the way solo. Soaked to the skin with sweat as usual.
So on the home front, the telephone and DSL are finally working again, so last night I uploaded the Meridian results to the USCF database, but still haven't started working on the LCCS points updates. Meanwhile, Robin finally got in touch with the Levee Board to confirm the Rocktoberfest course and found out that those jokers have not renewed their liability insurance, which explains a lot, but also means we won't be able to use the otherwise perfect road for the race. I have no idea what their problem is. Anyway, we're investigating another nearby course and there are a couple others that are possibilities, so the race will happen. I'm just pissed that it won't happen on Lakeshore Drive. We're also helping out with the District Time Trial this Sunday which should be a fun event, but there's much to do between now and then. I'm planning on helping with setup and registration, riding, and then helping with results.
Today's group was smaller than usual for the long Tuesday levee ride - a combination of the delayed sunrise and a moderate wind, I guess. There were a few people on TT bikes this morning, and we weren't even to the dip before the group quietly split leaving Rob and me to suck the wheels of two TT bikes. I guess most of them turned around at the dip because we never saw most of them again. Eventually VJ caught us toward the end of the outbound leg. The return trip was easier thanks to a moderate tail/crosswind, but as usual the speed just gradually increased the farther we went. Elise jumped in after the dip on the way back, at which point Howard ramped the pace up to about 30, and Luke jumped on at some point around that time. A couple more surges before Howard went home splintered things pretty badly, though. Approaching the Huey P., we had just four riders left and we were going pretty hard when I dropped back and didn't realize that we had lost one of them. With VJ on the front and the unexpected missing wheel, the surprise gap opening quickly, so I decided I was close enough to the end for few extra miles worth of cool-down and rode in the rest of the way solo. Soaked to the skin with sweat as usual.
So on the home front, the telephone and DSL are finally working again, so last night I uploaded the Meridian results to the USCF database, but still haven't started working on the LCCS points updates. Meanwhile, Robin finally got in touch with the Levee Board to confirm the Rocktoberfest course and found out that those jokers have not renewed their liability insurance, which explains a lot, but also means we won't be able to use the otherwise perfect road for the race. I have no idea what their problem is. Anyway, we're investigating another nearby course and there are a couple others that are possibilities, so the race will happen. I'm just pissed that it won't happen on Lakeshore Drive. We're also helping out with the District Time Trial this Sunday which should be a fun event, but there's much to do between now and then. I'm planning on helping with setup and registration, riding, and then helping with results.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Disconnection
The home phone, and of course DSL, mysteriously went dead Thursday and here we are on Monday and I am still disconnected. A technician finally showed up on Saturday, verified that there wasn't a problem at the house, and then disappeared. So now they're saying it *might* be fixed from the central office some time today. Not holding my breath though.
Friday I hit the "SEND" button at around 4:45 for the $7M proposal and headed off to a nice dinner and a bit too much vino at a nice little place in the French Quarter. Went for a short spin on the levee Saturday morning before getting picked up by Mark D. to make the 3-hour drive up to Meridian, MS for the Meridian/Cuba Challenge Omnium. This was a nice 2-day event with city Crit on Saturday and a "hilly" road race on Sunday.
The masters didn't start until 5 p.m., but it was still plenty hot. It was a very aggressive race on a nice course through the old downtown area. I really liked the fast downhill leg that shot you through a wide right-hander onto the long finish straight. Halfway down the finish straight, which was alongside the local prison, you could here the prisoners banging on the windows as you went by. We watched the Cat. 4 race where Jason M. was looking great and poised for a top-3 result with a lap to go. We watched the sprint in anticipation and, surprise!, no Jason. He had gone down in a crash on the last lap, but had landed relatively softly in the dirt and was thankfully uninjured.
In the masters race, I did a ton of work chasing down breaks in the early part of the race, then there was a counterattack after we had reeled one of them. Well, one of those guys got away. He was slowly gaining ground on the pack and had just gotten far enough ahead that he was around the next corner when we finally saw his jersey coming back. Most of us thought he had been caught, but it turned out that it was actually one of his teammates who we were lapping! (I'll have to remember that little trick!) So anyway, he snuck away while the rest of the pack started to set up for a sprint. With a bit over a lap to go, David H. attacked and got clear while all the sprinters, including me, were looking at each other hoping someone else would start the chase. Now, I should have known that David would go for a flyer at the end, and so I should have been ready to go with him. What was I thinking? Flying down the last downhill and into the final turn at 30+ mph I was maybe 5th or 6th wheel, which was a couple of wheels too far back for sure. As soon as we straightened out everyone jumped for the line. As Jaro, who was a few bikes ahead of me, jumped, his right foot unclipped. Somehow he got it clipped back in, jumped again, unclipped again, re-clipped again, and still finished 2nd in the pack sprint. He said he thought he would have been able to catch David, who was still dangling just off the front, if he hadn't unclipped, but anyway David made it to the line first for the win, so Jaro was 3rd and I was 4th (which was 3rd in the 45+). It was a fun criterium.
The Cat. 1,2,3 race had a good field and was pretty aggressive. Eric M. showed up for this one and was kept busy the whole race up at the front since he had no teammates with him. Near the end of the race, the pack split in two. Debbie Milne (Tupelo), who had won the women's race earlier in the day, was in the second group and attacked hard down the home stretch in an all-out attempt to bridge the gap. She was flying and the crowd really got into it when they realized who it was. I mean, this 98-pound woman shot out of the pack like a rocket and everyone on the sidelines jumped up to cheer her on. She lasted a couple of laps without making contact and was finally caught by the second group. Up in front, it came down to a sprint and Eric nipped Frank B and Tim R at the line for the win. It was a pretty good race to watch.
Sunday's road races were surprisingly hard and predictably hot. The masters were doing only 46 miles and although the road was almost all rolling hills with a fairly rough surface, I was surprised how much it took out of me and, as far as I could tell, most everyone else. Right from the start it got really fast and we probably spent the first half hour at 25+ mph. Finally Keith D. and another rider got a gap and things kind of settled down for a while. Eventually they were reeled in while we were still on the first lap and by then a lot of riders had figured out they couldn't keep hammering in the heat and hills and expect to survive to the finish, so the pace slowed down. Then old Miroslav from Alabama Masters attacked and started rolling away pretty fast without much of a response by the pack. Keith went again with another rider and that duo hovered up ahead for a long, long time as Miroslav rolled out of sight. David H. then went to the front again and just stayed there like a diesel truck towing the pack for five or six miles until the duo was caught. I swear, David spent at least 70% of the entire race on the front. Meanwhile, riders were just dropping off the back by attrition due to the heat and hills. By the time Keith was caught Miroslav had over a minute and with only ten miles or so to go the race for first was over. Apparently there were some in the pack who, again, thought that everyone had been caught at this point. Mark launched a few attacks along the way and between Keith and Mark they succeeded in making some of the Alabama guys (who outnumbered all of us) work a bit. Jaro and I were trying to save a little for the sprint, and although I hadn't been feeling too sharp from the start I figured if I could just get to the 1K mark I'd try and pull something out of my hat.
About a kilo from the finish there was a little uphill as the road went over the interstate, and that was followed by a longer, but not too steep, climb that topped out right about at the 200M mark. After quite a bit of jockeying around for position, the sprint started in earnest as soon as we hit that last climb and I was surprised that I didn't see Jaro in front of me. Then I heard him passing everyone in the gravel on the right edge of the road. He'd gotten boxed in a bit, but that wasn't enough to slow him down too much. The last 200 meters was just a flat-out 4-abreast drag race for the line and the best I could do was 4th, which was 5th overall since Miroslav had finished solo ahead of the pack. Although it was good enough for 3rd in the 45+, I still dropped down to 4th on the overall, so that was a little disappointing.
The Cat. 1,2,3 race had a 2-man break with Frank Moak and John McLauchlan (Memphis) putting a couple of minutes on the pack. It looked like John just blew Frank away in the final sprint up the hill. When what was left of the pack finally arrived, Tim R. won the pack sprint with Eric M. bringing up the rear. Still, when the points were totaled up, Eric ended up tied with Frank B., and since the tie was broken in his favor, he made off with the overall.
Friday I hit the "SEND" button at around 4:45 for the $7M proposal and headed off to a nice dinner and a bit too much vino at a nice little place in the French Quarter. Went for a short spin on the levee Saturday morning before getting picked up by Mark D. to make the 3-hour drive up to Meridian, MS for the Meridian/Cuba Challenge Omnium. This was a nice 2-day event with city Crit on Saturday and a "hilly" road race on Sunday.
The masters didn't start until 5 p.m., but it was still plenty hot. It was a very aggressive race on a nice course through the old downtown area. I really liked the fast downhill leg that shot you through a wide right-hander onto the long finish straight. Halfway down the finish straight, which was alongside the local prison, you could here the prisoners banging on the windows as you went by. We watched the Cat. 4 race where Jason M. was looking great and poised for a top-3 result with a lap to go. We watched the sprint in anticipation and, surprise!, no Jason. He had gone down in a crash on the last lap, but had landed relatively softly in the dirt and was thankfully uninjured.
In the masters race, I did a ton of work chasing down breaks in the early part of the race, then there was a counterattack after we had reeled one of them. Well, one of those guys got away. He was slowly gaining ground on the pack and had just gotten far enough ahead that he was around the next corner when we finally saw his jersey coming back. Most of us thought he had been caught, but it turned out that it was actually one of his teammates who we were lapping! (I'll have to remember that little trick!) So anyway, he snuck away while the rest of the pack started to set up for a sprint. With a bit over a lap to go, David H. attacked and got clear while all the sprinters, including me, were looking at each other hoping someone else would start the chase. Now, I should have known that David would go for a flyer at the end, and so I should have been ready to go with him. What was I thinking? Flying down the last downhill and into the final turn at 30+ mph I was maybe 5th or 6th wheel, which was a couple of wheels too far back for sure. As soon as we straightened out everyone jumped for the line. As Jaro, who was a few bikes ahead of me, jumped, his right foot unclipped. Somehow he got it clipped back in, jumped again, unclipped again, re-clipped again, and still finished 2nd in the pack sprint. He said he thought he would have been able to catch David, who was still dangling just off the front, if he hadn't unclipped, but anyway David made it to the line first for the win, so Jaro was 3rd and I was 4th (which was 3rd in the 45+). It was a fun criterium.
The Cat. 1,2,3 race had a good field and was pretty aggressive. Eric M. showed up for this one and was kept busy the whole race up at the front since he had no teammates with him. Near the end of the race, the pack split in two. Debbie Milne (Tupelo), who had won the women's race earlier in the day, was in the second group and attacked hard down the home stretch in an all-out attempt to bridge the gap. She was flying and the crowd really got into it when they realized who it was. I mean, this 98-pound woman shot out of the pack like a rocket and everyone on the sidelines jumped up to cheer her on. She lasted a couple of laps without making contact and was finally caught by the second group. Up in front, it came down to a sprint and Eric nipped Frank B and Tim R at the line for the win. It was a pretty good race to watch.
Sunday's road races were surprisingly hard and predictably hot. The masters were doing only 46 miles and although the road was almost all rolling hills with a fairly rough surface, I was surprised how much it took out of me and, as far as I could tell, most everyone else. Right from the start it got really fast and we probably spent the first half hour at 25+ mph. Finally Keith D. and another rider got a gap and things kind of settled down for a while. Eventually they were reeled in while we were still on the first lap and by then a lot of riders had figured out they couldn't keep hammering in the heat and hills and expect to survive to the finish, so the pace slowed down. Then old Miroslav from Alabama Masters attacked and started rolling away pretty fast without much of a response by the pack. Keith went again with another rider and that duo hovered up ahead for a long, long time as Miroslav rolled out of sight. David H. then went to the front again and just stayed there like a diesel truck towing the pack for five or six miles until the duo was caught. I swear, David spent at least 70% of the entire race on the front. Meanwhile, riders were just dropping off the back by attrition due to the heat and hills. By the time Keith was caught Miroslav had over a minute and with only ten miles or so to go the race for first was over. Apparently there were some in the pack who, again, thought that everyone had been caught at this point. Mark launched a few attacks along the way and between Keith and Mark they succeeded in making some of the Alabama guys (who outnumbered all of us) work a bit. Jaro and I were trying to save a little for the sprint, and although I hadn't been feeling too sharp from the start I figured if I could just get to the 1K mark I'd try and pull something out of my hat.
About a kilo from the finish there was a little uphill as the road went over the interstate, and that was followed by a longer, but not too steep, climb that topped out right about at the 200M mark. After quite a bit of jockeying around for position, the sprint started in earnest as soon as we hit that last climb and I was surprised that I didn't see Jaro in front of me. Then I heard him passing everyone in the gravel on the right edge of the road. He'd gotten boxed in a bit, but that wasn't enough to slow him down too much. The last 200 meters was just a flat-out 4-abreast drag race for the line and the best I could do was 4th, which was 5th overall since Miroslav had finished solo ahead of the pack. Although it was good enough for 3rd in the 45+, I still dropped down to 4th on the overall, so that was a little disappointing.
The Cat. 1,2,3 race had a 2-man break with Frank Moak and John McLauchlan (Memphis) putting a couple of minutes on the pack. It looked like John just blew Frank away in the final sprint up the hill. When what was left of the pack finally arrived, Tim R. won the pack sprint with Eric M. bringing up the rear. Still, when the points were totaled up, Eric ended up tied with Frank B., and since the tie was broken in his favor, he made off with the overall.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Curve Balls
I was out this morning for a smooth ride on the levee with just a few of the guys today - the usual Friday ride. Just after we started I switched the computer over to cumulative miles and watched it roll over another thousand miles - it was either 56 or 57k, I forget. Mark was out this morning so we made plans, such as they are, to head up to Meridian, MS on Saturday for the Meridian/Cuba Challenge. I'm not expecting to be lighting any fires up there, as my head's been elsewhere the last couple of weeks and the legs are clearly showing the effects. But hey, it's a race within driving distance so we're there!
When it comes to grant proposal preparation, I always fully expect everything to come down to the last possible minute, and the one I've been working on will be no exception. I had planned to work on it last night at home, but the phone company threw me a little curve ball. No phone service. Nothing. Nada. Dead air. Since I use DSL at home, that meant I was completely incommunicado. So naturally I called them up from the cellphone and went through the voice-recognition menu tree torture to report it. Did you know that if you get angry and use four-letter words the sweet female synthesized voice calmly tells you "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that?" Anyway, I finally got though to a human, albiet one with a heavy foreign accent, who politely told me that I could expect someone to take a look at the problem "some time between now and 7 p.m. on Saturday." Saturday?? I laughed when I heard it and from across the room The Wife added "I want a refund for the three days of no service." I didn't need to repeat the four-letter words this time, I think she got the picture anyway, not that it was likely to help.
So this morning I'm in a conference call with the senior VP, who is away on vacation, and my VP, who is leaving town this morning, and the President, who is away on vacation, and the Prez throws another curve ball and now I get to make a bunch of fairly significant changes to this proposal that has to be submitted, thankfully via email, today. Oh well, Situation Normal (or as they say in the Army, SNAFU)! C'mon guys, it's been over eleven months now. You'd think that, at the very least, the phone company and the U.S. post office would be back to normal. Well, they're not, and BTW normal wasn't so great to begin with. Then again, we're in New Orleans, and as a friend who had moved here from the midwest once said, "It's easy to excel here."
Meanwhile on the home front, the big dumpster containing my old roof and lots of the neighborhood trash was hauled off this morning, so the roof project is officially fini just in time for the new hurricane season.
When it comes to grant proposal preparation, I always fully expect everything to come down to the last possible minute, and the one I've been working on will be no exception. I had planned to work on it last night at home, but the phone company threw me a little curve ball. No phone service. Nothing. Nada. Dead air. Since I use DSL at home, that meant I was completely incommunicado. So naturally I called them up from the cellphone and went through the voice-recognition menu tree torture to report it. Did you know that if you get angry and use four-letter words the sweet female synthesized voice calmly tells you "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that?" Anyway, I finally got though to a human, albiet one with a heavy foreign accent, who politely told me that I could expect someone to take a look at the problem "some time between now and 7 p.m. on Saturday." Saturday?? I laughed when I heard it and from across the room The Wife added "I want a refund for the three days of no service." I didn't need to repeat the four-letter words this time, I think she got the picture anyway, not that it was likely to help.
So this morning I'm in a conference call with the senior VP, who is away on vacation, and my VP, who is leaving town this morning, and the President, who is away on vacation, and the Prez throws another curve ball and now I get to make a bunch of fairly significant changes to this proposal that has to be submitted, thankfully via email, today. Oh well, Situation Normal (or as they say in the Army, SNAFU)! C'mon guys, it's been over eleven months now. You'd think that, at the very least, the phone company and the U.S. post office would be back to normal. Well, they're not, and BTW normal wasn't so great to begin with. Then again, we're in New Orleans, and as a friend who had moved here from the midwest once said, "It's easy to excel here."
Meanwhile on the home front, the big dumpster containing my old roof and lots of the neighborhood trash was hauled off this morning, so the roof project is officially fini just in time for the new hurricane season.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Colliding Deadlines
I'm glad I got in a nice ride on Wednesday, because there will be no riding for me today. A cosmic multiple deadline alignment of astronomical proportions has kept me in front of computer screens pretty much nonstop since early yesterday and it's not looking like there will be a deus ex machina dropping down to rescue me any time soon. Truth is, Deus is probably laughing his celestial head off at me. I was up till the wee hours last night making scant progress on a very squishy proposal that demands large helpings of unlikely justifications, budget figures pulled out of thin air, and impossible projects held together with masking tape, all neatly sandwiched between numerous government forms like the ever-popular SF-424b and equally famous ED-524, not to mention a few unintelligible documents regarding assurances, certifications and, my personal favorite, our response to the General Education Provisions Act. This is a lot like trying to nail Jello to the wall - Frustrating, messy and liable to stain your pants. All of that to meet a deadline of 11:59 p.m. on Friday. Now tell me, just what is the Department of Education doing setting a submittal deadline for midnight on a Friday. How many federal employees do you think are going to be there on Saturday morning? Just to emphasize their incompetence, despite multiple emails reminding us of the deadline on the 11th, the website to which they refer us to for the forms and guidelines clearly states, in more than one place, that the deadline is the 15th.
At least I finally got the OK to send off the $13M proposal that for the last two weeks has been bouncing back and forth between me and a bunch of paranoid contract analysts up at the state's Office of Community Services.
Looks like the roof will finally be wrapped up some time today, so I can finally check that one off my list. It was just last week that I finally took the thick "Katrina - Allstate Insurance" folder that I'd been carrying around since last October out of my messenger bag. Eleven months and counting. It sure doesn't feel like it's been that long.
I'm hoping to make it to a couple of races in Mississippi this weekend, although right now I feel about as sharp as a soggy burrito.
At least I finally got the OK to send off the $13M proposal that for the last two weeks has been bouncing back and forth between me and a bunch of paranoid contract analysts up at the state's Office of Community Services.
Looks like the roof will finally be wrapped up some time today, so I can finally check that one off my list. It was just last week that I finally took the thick "Katrina - Allstate Insurance" folder that I'd been carrying around since last October out of my messenger bag. Eleven months and counting. It sure doesn't feel like it's been that long.
I'm hoping to make it to a couple of races in Mississippi this weekend, although right now I feel about as sharp as a soggy burrito.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Psssssssssst!
A smallish group at the start turned into a more normal 15 person string this morning. It was warm and especially humid up on the levee and for the most part my mind was elsewhere. Thanks to the light wind it was easy to loiter near the back of the group as the pace ebbed and flowed - a nice way to say it was particularly erratic. I guess my legs were still feeling a little bit of the weekend today, as I wasn't feeling particularly energetic. Just as things were getting fast approaching the turnaround, I felt that all-to-familiar squishiness that signalled a soft rear tire, so I dropped out of the paceline as the group sped past and took my time changing the tube out. I almost cut my finger checking the tire, as there was a quarter-inch long shard of rock that had penetrated the casing. The group surprised me a bit and so I only got about 50 psi into the tire before I had to roll. Missing the group way out there by the turnaround would have meant a long, lonley ride home f'sure.
Back at the house I discover that the commuter has a flat tire too, so I had to patch a tube and change that one out too, by which time I was running pretty late. There were no roofers in sight, and in fact they still haven't returned to finish up the last little bit of roof. I guess they don't really need my check too badly. Work today felt like nothing but spinning wheels and getting nowhere. Some of the information I need in order to put together this last-minute proposal for the Dept. of Education, which will probably amount to something like $7M, is starting to get hard to come by because there is now all this pending litigation and the attorneys have gotten themselves in the middle of everything. Basically it just means more phone calls and more delays and more stomach acid.
So there are a couple of things I'm getting really tired of. One are the daily "action reporter" segments about people who are having trouble with their FEMA trailers. The other is the endless, yet uninformed, banter about Landis.
Time to move on, boys and girls.
Back at the house I discover that the commuter has a flat tire too, so I had to patch a tube and change that one out too, by which time I was running pretty late. There were no roofers in sight, and in fact they still haven't returned to finish up the last little bit of roof. I guess they don't really need my check too badly. Work today felt like nothing but spinning wheels and getting nowhere. Some of the information I need in order to put together this last-minute proposal for the Dept. of Education, which will probably amount to something like $7M, is starting to get hard to come by because there is now all this pending litigation and the attorneys have gotten themselves in the middle of everything. Basically it just means more phone calls and more delays and more stomach acid.
So there are a couple of things I'm getting really tired of. One are the daily "action reporter" segments about people who are having trouble with their FEMA trailers. The other is the endless, yet uninformed, banter about Landis.
Time to move on, boys and girls.
Monday, August 07, 2006
Muscle Memory
As I rode out to the levee this morning, it was clear that my quads remembered Sunday's ride. Late Saturday night I had decided to get up early and join the club's 7 a.m. Northshore training ride. After a few weeks of exclusively flatland riding, I was in need of some "relief," so I got up at 5 a.m. in order to make it all the way up to Enon where the ride would start. We had about a dozen for this ride, which worked out to be something like 67 miles. The route was rather circuitous, to say the least, with a good twenty turns and numerous country dogs along the way, and most of us were relying on route arrows that had been painted on the roads some time earlier. Despite all of the intersections and turns, this was a fairly brisk training ride on really smooth roads that offered only a few stretches of flat. Early on, the group size dropped down to 9 riders and although a few were yo-yoing off the back we were regrouping at most of the intersections until we stopped at a store in Pine. After that, I think the horses would smell the barn and as the pace picked up we lost a few more riders, not all of whom managed to get back to the cars without riding a few "bonus miles." It was a good training ride with some sections that felt almost race-like, and although I wasn't feeling particularly sharp, I was happy to be finishing with the first group.
So anyway, this morning the levee seemed particularly quiet. There were just Joe and I, and so I spent the whole ride cruising at 19-21 mph with Joe on my wheel. I could definitely still feel Sunday's ride in my legs. We didn't see many other riders at all, though.
Sunday evening I was standing on a 5th floor balcony looking southwest over the Mississippi. Down on the levee someone with a lawn mower was cutting the grass in a big square amidst the usual evening crowd of dogs and people at the de facto dog park. As usual, the city has fallen behind on basic maintenance. Out in the river a big heavily laden ship slipped its way downstream as a tug pushing a string of barges muscled its way in the other direction. Things looked pretty normal from that distance.
Well the roofers pretty much finished up the main roof on Saturday, and a couple of hours later we got to test it out with a big rainstorm. They've still got to replace a small section of shed roof on the back of the house, but everything should be wrapped up by tomorrow, so now we'll move on to painting ceilings and stuff. Meanwhile at work we've got two proposals that will be on serious fast tracks thanks to federal agencies that have waited until the last minute despite knowing that they will need to make the awards before the end of the federal fiscal year, Sept. 30. We just got the deadline of Aug. 11 for one of them, and since I won't know what we will be requesting until after a 4 p.m. meeting today, there will be only three days to pull this one together. Ah well, I guess that's where all that last-minute race organizing experience comes in handy.
So anyway, this morning the levee seemed particularly quiet. There were just Joe and I, and so I spent the whole ride cruising at 19-21 mph with Joe on my wheel. I could definitely still feel Sunday's ride in my legs. We didn't see many other riders at all, though.
Sunday evening I was standing on a 5th floor balcony looking southwest over the Mississippi. Down on the levee someone with a lawn mower was cutting the grass in a big square amidst the usual evening crowd of dogs and people at the de facto dog park. As usual, the city has fallen behind on basic maintenance. Out in the river a big heavily laden ship slipped its way downstream as a tug pushing a string of barges muscled its way in the other direction. Things looked pretty normal from that distance.
Well the roofers pretty much finished up the main roof on Saturday, and a couple of hours later we got to test it out with a big rainstorm. They've still got to replace a small section of shed roof on the back of the house, but everything should be wrapped up by tomorrow, so now we'll move on to painting ceilings and stuff. Meanwhile at work we've got two proposals that will be on serious fast tracks thanks to federal agencies that have waited until the last minute despite knowing that they will need to make the awards before the end of the federal fiscal year, Sept. 30. We just got the deadline of Aug. 11 for one of them, and since I won't know what we will be requesting until after a 4 p.m. meeting today, there will be only three days to pull this one together. Ah well, I guess that's where all that last-minute race organizing experience comes in handy.
Saturday, August 05, 2006
On the Giro
With no races nearby, it's a Giro Saturday today for me. The group was a little strange today. Well, at least stranger than usual. I never could quite put my finger on what it was though. First, someone had a flat when we were still on Lakeshore Drive. The group slowed down for maybe a minute, but never stopped, so basically whoever it was, and whoever stopped to help, were left for dead, because by the time we hit Hayne Blvd, we were flying. I was sitting behind VJ along Hayne and had little motivation to move up since were were spending most of our time up around 28-30 mph. The pace never really eased up all the way out to the turnaround, and although I didn't technically "sprint" for the turnaround sprint, I kept myself on the wheels that were moving forward and since so many people blew up I was pretty close to the front by the end. After the turnaround, the group was really sluggish and Steve and I rolled off the front just out of boredom. Finally Howard and a couple others blasted by just off the front of the main group. I jumped after Howard slowed down just for fun, and then Tim came flying by along with a few people who had been chasing him, so it stayed fast until the Goodyear sign sprint. Another flat on the service road that everyone waited for (except Courtney and Howard who volunteered to pace her back to her car because her kids were flying in from Tampa and had arrived early) took the wind out of everyone's sails and the group soft-pedaled the rest of the way in while a couple of us dangled off the front. Back at the parking lot there was cold watermelon (thanks Ed!), and after stuffing myself with it, I headed back uptown right into some really, really dark clouds. Somewhere around Mid-City I got a cold downdraft that felt like I had just ridden right into a refrigerator, but it never rained.Good thing, too, since the roof work is still in progress. We're also in the process of stripping and repainting the kitchen cabinets. I'm doing my best to avoid it, but I'm about to go get my hands dirty.
So it was no surprise to see that Landis' "b" sample was the same as his "a" sample. It was also no surprise to read:
"Lab head Jacques De Ceaurriz said the isotope testing procedure was "foolproof." No error is possible in isotopic readings," he told the AP.
Let me just say that any time someone pretending to be any sort of a scientist says something like "no error is possible" you've got a problem. Certainly it's very unlikely that there could have been any error in the procedure itself and I doubt there was, but to say that no error is possible is just something a scientist would just never, ever say. Anyway, Floyd's on his own now. I wish him luck, because he didn't win because of his E/T ratio.
Thursday, August 03, 2006
On the Roof
Yesterday I came home from work, fixed up a big plate of Pasta Puttanesca, downed a couple of glasses of Little Penguin and indulged in some real Binge Sleeping. I'd been running pretty low in the sleep department for a while and I was long overdue for full night's sleep. So this morning I hopped out of bed, still groggy of course, swung a leg over the Cervelo, and rolled over to the levee. Thanks to this morning's haze, it was almost too dark to see with my Oakley's on. Almost. I had tweaked the new saddle position a bit yesterday, Tilting the nose just slightly lower and sliding the seat a few mm farther back. This saddle is longer than my old one, and I'm still searching for that "sweet spot." I'm not really convinced there is one, though. There were just a few people waiting on the levee this morning, but eventually we picked up more, and although it got fairly fast, it never went supersonic. Pretty typical Wednesday ride. I was rather distracted by the thick humidity and the unfamiliar saddle, though. The change in saddle angle was putting more weight on my hands and making me slide too far forward, so I guess next I'll tip the nose up a touch and see how that works. It seems that these newer saddle designs put more pressure on smaller areas rather than spreading it out like the older designs did. I guess that's both good and bad. Whatever, I think it will take a little while for me to either get used to this new saddle or give up altogether.
I was still in the shower when I heard the first loud crash and felt the house shake. The roofers were here! Mixed emotions, for sure. The contractor had called yesterday morning to say they would be starting today or tomorrow, but I was expecting the dumpster to show up first. Instead, a bunch of guys with Latin accents climbed up there around 8 a.m. and started enthusiastically tearing the roof off. This re-roofing thing is really stressful. There is some kind of deep-seated need most of us have for a "home," and at the core of that instinct is the need for a roof over our heads. Suddenly having a bunch of strangers tearing it off is just a little bit disconcerting, especially when it's been raining practically every afternoon. So anyway, I'll be working out of the house today just to kind of keep an eye on things. Every now and then I hear one of those old cement-asbestos shingles slide down the slope and land on the sidewalk alongside the house. Hmmm. Not good. Of course there's also the ever-present possibility that one of them will come right through some rotten spot in the roof or slide off the edge or something.
I was still in the shower when I heard the first loud crash and felt the house shake. The roofers were here! Mixed emotions, for sure. The contractor had called yesterday morning to say they would be starting today or tomorrow, but I was expecting the dumpster to show up first. Instead, a bunch of guys with Latin accents climbed up there around 8 a.m. and started enthusiastically tearing the roof off. This re-roofing thing is really stressful. There is some kind of deep-seated need most of us have for a "home," and at the core of that instinct is the need for a roof over our heads. Suddenly having a bunch of strangers tearing it off is just a little bit disconcerting, especially when it's been raining practically every afternoon. So anyway, I'll be working out of the house today just to kind of keep an eye on things. Every now and then I hear one of those old cement-asbestos shingles slide down the slope and land on the sidewalk alongside the house. Hmmm. Not good. Of course there's also the ever-present possibility that one of them will come right through some rotten spot in the roof or slide off the edge or something.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Saddled
It was shocking how dark it was this morning when I rode out to meet the levee ride. We meet at 6:15 and sunrise is now back to 6:20, and although there would normally be ample light at 6:00 when I leave home, some big clouds in the east this morning kept us in the dark.
Last night I did something that I haven't done since about 1983. I put a saddle on my bike that was not a San Marco Concor. Foolish, I know, but I thought it was about time to try something new and find out what wonderful improvements have been made in the last twenty years. So anyway, last night I removed the old Concor Light with its rusting rails and peeling leather and clamped on a shiny new San Marco Aspide Arrowhead Titanium, chosen mainly because it was light and on sale. In order to get my 66 cm "spindle to saddle" setting right, I had to raise the seatpost nearly a centimeter, and I'm still not sure I've got the angle or setback quite where they belong. Anyway, it certainly looked nice. If I were Italian and the saddle was red and green, that would probably be all I needed to know.
This morning as I headed out the door I slipped an allen wrench into my jersey pocket just in case I felt the need to hurl the thing into the Mississippi and ride home on the bare seatpost. Yeah, I was a little skeptical about the dense padding and the cutout, and since this particular saddle has pretty minimalist padding anyway I wasn't expecting it to feel like an easy chair. Add to that the fact that after 20 some years and probably a 150,000 miles it is entirely possible that the anatomy in my "crotchular area," as Donald likes to put it, has changed to accomodate the curve of the Concor.
The fast long Tuesday ride seemed like a good road test, although I will reserve final judgement for at least a couple of weeks. My initial impression was that, sadly, little progress had been made in the saddle area in the last 25 years. This saddle wasn't noticibly more comfortable than the Concor, which is to say it was merely tolerable, and as far as I can tell, the cutout has no effect whatsoever. Toward the end of the 44 mile ride I still found myself standing up to relieve the pressure as usual. So we'll see how it goes over the next few weeks, but I wouldn't be surprised if I end up trying one or two more saddles before settling (pun intended) on one. In the meantime, I will say that it is certainly light, doesn't interfere with my pedaling motion at all, and is most definitely more comfortable than either a brand new leather Brooks Pro, with which I have had some personal experience, or an unsanded 2x4 (same difference)!
Last night I did something that I haven't done since about 1983. I put a saddle on my bike that was not a San Marco Concor. Foolish, I know, but I thought it was about time to try something new and find out what wonderful improvements have been made in the last twenty years. So anyway, last night I removed the old Concor Light with its rusting rails and peeling leather and clamped on a shiny new San Marco Aspide Arrowhead Titanium, chosen mainly because it was light and on sale. In order to get my 66 cm "spindle to saddle" setting right, I had to raise the seatpost nearly a centimeter, and I'm still not sure I've got the angle or setback quite where they belong. Anyway, it certainly looked nice. If I were Italian and the saddle was red and green, that would probably be all I needed to know.
This morning as I headed out the door I slipped an allen wrench into my jersey pocket just in case I felt the need to hurl the thing into the Mississippi and ride home on the bare seatpost. Yeah, I was a little skeptical about the dense padding and the cutout, and since this particular saddle has pretty minimalist padding anyway I wasn't expecting it to feel like an easy chair. Add to that the fact that after 20 some years and probably a 150,000 miles it is entirely possible that the anatomy in my "crotchular area," as Donald likes to put it, has changed to accomodate the curve of the Concor.
The fast long Tuesday ride seemed like a good road test, although I will reserve final judgement for at least a couple of weeks. My initial impression was that, sadly, little progress had been made in the saddle area in the last 25 years. This saddle wasn't noticibly more comfortable than the Concor, which is to say it was merely tolerable, and as far as I can tell, the cutout has no effect whatsoever. Toward the end of the 44 mile ride I still found myself standing up to relieve the pressure as usual. So we'll see how it goes over the next few weeks, but I wouldn't be surprised if I end up trying one or two more saddles before settling (pun intended) on one. In the meantime, I will say that it is certainly light, doesn't interfere with my pedaling motion at all, and is most definitely more comfortable than either a brand new leather Brooks Pro, with which I have had some personal experience, or an unsanded 2x4 (same difference)!
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