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?