The city was socked-in with fog again this morning, and as I sit here looking out the window on the 25th floor, all I can see in all directions is misty white nothingness. Down at street level, though, it's now more of a light mist than a fog and I guess it will be another hour before my pant legs dry out from the commute in to work.
Earlier this morning I was determined to ride, regardless of the fog, perhaps a bit motivated by a midnight call alerting me to the unexpected death of one of the Neurology faculty members. Life is short. It was just like riding in a cloud this morning. Water droplets accumulated quickly on the leading edges of everything, and my clear glasses didn't make it three miles before I had to pull them off and put them in my pocket. With both lights flashing I arrived at the levee to find only Joe, but after we got going we picked up first Jeff and then Keith. All the way out to River Ridge the combination of darkness and fog kept our speed down to 20 or so, and even so there were a few spikes in the heart rate monitors when we came around the curve at the pipes to find a Jefferson Parish police SUV cutting the curve and heading straight for us. In fact, the most dangerous things up there today were the police cars. Once we got out to Kenner the fog was much thinner and I was finally confortable turning off my light. Since we were so few of us, we turned around at the 'dip' today. It wouldn't have been a bad day to do the whole long ride, but we weren't going fast enough to get everyone back on schedule. The return trip was a couple of mph faster, thanks to the improved visibility, and we saw Eddie C on his unlit TT bike looking kind of concerned and obviously going more slowly than usual. Somewhere along the way we lost Joe, but I'm sure he eventually found his way home.
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