Practically Summer

It's practically summer today in New Orleans, and the nice weather attracted a good-sized group this morning for the long Levee Ride. I guess we must have gotten up to fifteen riders once we finally got rolling. With the temperature around 70F and just a light breeze, only a few of us even bothered to pull on the arm-warmers. It sounds like we'll have another couple of days of warm temperatures, although the rain will be moving in ahead of the next cold front that is supposed to drop us down into the upper 30s by Friday. Today, the warm and humid air made for some nice fog along the river, and occasionally the river-cooled air would spill over the levee so that it felt like you were riding past a great big freezer with its door open. The pace got going pretty good, especially on the way out where there was a slight tailwind, and we still had a reasonable percentage of riders left when we hit the turnaround. Jeff and I led the group as we headed back, or so we thought. After a mile or two spinning at maybe 20 mph, we looked back to find the rest of the group maybe a minute back. We decided to just keep going, however, knowing they would eventually catch us, which finally happened a bit after the "dip." The ride back was moderated a bit by the wind, although for the most part we were cruising at 23-24 mph.

The LAMBRA annual meeting is scheduled for this Sunday and although I'm hoping it won't turn into a really long marathon, I'm expecting it will run a couple of hours at least. First, we have to get the initial La/Ms calendar worked out so that there aren't any big date conflicts. Then I'm sure there will be the usual discussion about the LCCS points series, which usually results in changing around some categories or age groups or points schedules. Points series are always problematic like that, since everyone has a different take on them. We'll have a few new clubs next season - at least three - so that should make things interesting. I'll be picking George H from the USAC up from the airport that morning, and it will be great to have him there to give us the latest on the goings-on in Colorado Springs and in the other nearby regional associations.

I guess it's getting to be time for me to renew my USAC licenses, my NOBC membership, order my team kit for '07, etc. Guess I'll wait until after pay-day, though! This can get kind of expensive. Anyway, I still need to get the online membership set up for '07. After wandering around the SportsBase Online website a bit, I think I'll probably stick with Active.com for another year for the memberships. The fee is a little higher, but the website is a lot more attractive, it's really easy for me to clone the prior year's membership setup, and the total number of online memberships isn't so great that we're talking about a big difference in total fees. For the Tour de La, however, it may be between SportsBase and Bikereg, because for that the difference in fees is a significant number of dollars.