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.