Throwed Roll

There was some action up on the levee today, but not of the type you'd really want. There were more than a few guys ready to go this morning, and although most were regulars, a couple were not. As we headed out in the darkness I noted that one of the guys who doesn't ride with the group often looked particularly nervous. So naturally I ended up riding behind him, and he was riding behind the other guy. We were rolling along fairly well about five miles out when the rider in front of me went to shift and dropped his chain. As he slowed down, I eased up and rolled up alongside, and a gap opened ahead of him. Nothing serious, as we weren't going all that fast -- maybe 20 mph. He fiddled with the shifter as we coasted along and finally got it back up onto the chainring. At just that moment, the rider who was ahead of us dropped his wheel over the right edge of the road. That is never a good thing. Instinctively, he tried to steer back onto the asphalt. That is an even worse thing. I've seen it a hundred times. As soon as the front wheel tries to climb up onto the asphalt, the edge catches it and turns it. Usually, the rider goes down hard and fast. This time, though, he didn't fall -- at least not at first.

What happened was that his bike made an immediate, 20 mph, 90-degree left turn, throwing him hard across the narrow bike path and slamming right into Ronnie. Ronnie went flying, rolling and sliding down the hard concrete levee apron, finally coming to rest near the bottom. He must have hit with some significant speed in order to throw Ronnie like that because Ronnie has a lot of natural inertia, and as we all know, p=mv, f=m*a, and Ronnie's m is a lot larger than mine. If I had video, it would be the most popular thing on youtube today. Well, Ronnie was pretty shaken up, but not so much not to be royally pissed off. I was just thankful that (a) nobody broke anything, and (b) the guy in front of me had dropped his chain and opened a gap. Otherwise, both of us would never have escaped going down too. If you know Ronnie, then you know that this tumble down the levee probably damaged $300 worth of Assos' finest stuff. Well, anyway, both of the downed riders headed home and the rest of us continued on for an abbreviated long ride, albiet with a significantly heightened degree of caution. The second photo, taken with the flash off, a slow shutter speed, and an unsteady hand, shows Ronnie still on the ground with some of the other riders assisting. The first photo was taken with default settings and shows how dark it actually was at the time.

So today was just nonstop manic action all day getting things ready for tomorrow's NSF Day, for which I will have to be on campus around 7 a.m. Despite my best efforts, arrangements are a lot more sketchy than I'd like. Since the Center just opened a couple of weeks ago, they still don't have all the kinks worked out. For example, we will be doing seven concurrent sessions in the afternoon, and for each we need a separate conference room, an LCD projector, and a screen. Well, first off, only five rooms are available. When I did a walk-through this afternoon, they were still assembling furniture in one of the rooms, and in the other they were working on some sort of electrical problem. The did somehow manage to scrounge up five LCD projectors and verify that they all work. I'm not holding my breath, though. The guys from the National Science Foundation will surely arrive with fancy lightweight Macs with nonstandard video outputs and no conversion cables. As it turns out, all of these rooms were supposed to have nice electronic video screens, but after Katrina the construction costs went through the roof and stuff like that got cut out of the budget. Sort of like the little $17 million shortfall that we are now looking at for the Primate Center BSL-3 lab for which the groundbreaking ceremony is also tomorrow and also being organized by our office. Man, today I was really missing the two staff members that we lost because of Katrina.