Back to "Normal"

(First, you might want to look at this article on doping in sports from the LA Times)

Much warmer this morning, but being a Monday there were only a few for the levee ride. Ronnie and Joe F. decided to do a long ride, so after the turnaround that left just Donald and me. Donald happily pulled all the way back. He just loves that for some reason, and I could find no cause to complain about it, myself, so I spun along behind him taking in the scenery and mulling over the two big events of the weekend. Anyway, it looks like the weather for the next week or so will be fairly normal - maybe even a bit warmer than normal.

The first was yesterday's Saints game. I'm not much of a football fan, and even less of a fan of disappointment, so I've never followed the Saints very well. Past teams always seemed to be playing football more because they had to than because they wanted to, and they had a particular knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory at the last moment. Well, something's changed. These guys were in shape, well-trained, and playing for keeps and it was a beautiful sight to behold, once you got past the tatoos and greasy dreadlocks sticking out from under the helmets.

The other shocking thing I witnessed this weekend was the re-election of Representative Bill Jefferson in what Donald aptly described as "another OJ verdict." Indeed, there was no rational reason to re-elect the guy. His record on the Hill is dismal IMHO, and then there was that little matter of the as-yet unexplained $90,000 in his freezer that the FBI happened to stumble across in the course of a bribery investigation in which two of Jefferson's buddies have already plead guilty. This was a case of that certain segment of the metro area (his district is quite gerrimandered) again pissing on the "system" as they did when they re-elected the Mayor, who, BTW, has been pretty hard to find since that election. Of course, it didn't help when the Jefferson Parish Sherrif (part of that parish is included in Jefferson's district) raised a big fuss because Jefferson's opponent in the runoff, who was pretty damned weak herself, when interviewed in the infamous Spike Lee "documentary," accused his police department of being, basically, racist when they stopped the refugees from crossing the Mississippi River bridge after the hurricane. That pretty much took away the suburban votes. I won't be too surprised when Congress slams the door on Louisiana next session. All I know for sure is that Jefferson sure doesn't represent my interests. Anyway, looks like more of the status quo unless the FBI finally has the nerve to come down on him.

Back on the home front, some good news about the Rouge-Roubaix road race. The promoter who had been doing it the last few years really didn't want to take it on again. Luckily, one of the guys on the Baton-Rouge based Delta Racing/ Raising Cane's Racing club stepped forward to continue this classic. Better be ready for the first weekend in March!