Blacklisted!

It was wild and windy this morning for the long levee ride. A fairly good-sized group eventually coalesced in the winter morning darkness and by the time we were five miles down the road it was clear that today would be a hard one. Matt, Howard, Rob, and a few others were pushing the pace and the only problem was that we were a 15-person eschelon on a 6-person road. Howard surged up to 27 mph at one point, things got disorganized, and the group split. There were already a number of guys at the back who wanted to (a) go slower; (b) turn around early; or (c) both of the above, so I think most of them were cool with that. By the dip, we were down to six or seven and my vest was in my pocket. In the crosswind the seventh guy was basically in the wind much of the time, but as long as the rotation kept moving, at least it wasn't for too long.

The return trip today was harder, with more of a headwind component, but the pace had more or less settled down to 21-23 mph. We caught a couple of the guys who had turned around early and they filtered into the paceline. For a couple of pulls I was starting to think my legs were dying until finally I could feel the mushiness in my rear tire. It seemed like a fairly slow leak, and we were only a few miles from the playground, so I went and sat on the back and hoped for the best. Well naturally that didn't work out and just before the Country Club the tire started to bottom out and I had to drop off the back for a fix. Luckily, Donald came along shortly thereafter and ended up pulling into the headwind all the way back to the playground. Still, despite the flat, it was a good ride today. Well, that is until I looked in the mirror at home and found a dried road worm stuck to my face. Yeech. There were worms stuck all over the bike too, of course. Must have been while it was still dark, because I never saw them. Since I was already running late, it was a mad dash on the commuter to the office. The temperature had actually dropped a few degrees and since I had to lug the laptop and a bunch of other work stuff with me today, the Broad St. overpass presented an unwelcome obstacle today. Sometimes, I swear the ride to work feels harder than the training ride.

So Tulane's anti-spam software has apparently blacklisted my yahoo email ID because any time I try to send anything from the office using that ID, it bounced back with "554 5.7.1 This message has been blocked because it is from a RBL/ORDBL IP address. Please call the Tulane Help Desk at (504) 862-8888 for further assistance.(connection black ip )" Probably not coincidentally, The Wife's actual Tulane ID seems to be suffering the same fate right now. I'm running scans on my computers as I write, but I doubt they'll find anything. Damned spammers! Anyway, I've gotta run to Baton Rouge for a fun meeting with the Board of Regents folks, and then the rest of the week should be nonstop frenetic work. I'll have to get past the bottom-level tech service drones in order to get the blacklist issue resolved, and I'm not seeing where I'll have much time for that today. Such is life.