The Unexpected

I was none too happy crawling out of bed this morning when I felt the soreness in my legs. They were obviously still unrecovered from the weekend, and now I was about to subject them to the long Tuesday ride. Of course my coach would tell me to skip the group ride today, but luckily I don't have one of those. It is still a little on the dark side at 6 am, so I clipped on my tail light, but left the headlight on the table since I was running a little late and it's kind of a pain to clamp it onto the bars.

Heading out to the levee, it was fairly warm and windless, and as I turned onto Freret St. and hopped the streetcar tracks I was looking forward to the ride and thinking we'd have a pretty good group. Way down the road, though, something looked wrong. It was fog and it was completely unexpected, at least by me. There had been not a trace of fog at my house, but by the time I hit the levee it was really thick. My glasses were immediately rendered useless and spent the rest of the morning in my pocket, and by the time we were a mile down the road my arms and legs were wet and there was a steady drip coming from the front of my helmet. I was already wishing I had taken the time to put the headlight on the bike. Luckily, there were a lot of riders today, many of whom had lights, but few were willing to ride very fast given the lack of visibility. I was pretty sure the unexpected fog was going to force us to cut the ride short because our reduced speed would get us back too late. Somewhere past the Country Club -- I don't know exactly where because it was so foggy -- Big Richard suddenly dropped back mumbling something about his crankarm coming loose. By the time the riders in the back of the paceline got up to the front to tell the riders up there to slow down, Richard was already lost back in the fog. We couldn't tell if he had stopped, turned around, or just slowed down. Robin had a multi-tool, so he turned around to find Richard and quickly disappeared into the mist as well. The group waited there on the levee for maybe three or four minutes, and then decided to ride and let them catch us on the way back. Eventually the fog started to lift and the pace picked up, but most of the group turned around at the first 'dip' and headed back.

When we met back up with Robin and the other rider who had gone with him, we found out that they had never found Richard. I guess he was still able to pedal reasonably well and had just booked it on home on a "crankarm and a prayer." Anyway, most of the way back there were just a few of us rotating at the front and then a bunch of people tagging along behind. I didn't look back but I wouldn't be surprised if The Donald was back there pulling the group while staying four or five bike-lengths back. He does that, you know.

So I get to work after making stops at the bank ATM machine and the Post Office, and after a while I hear the sound of a really big and low helicopter. I look out the window to see a huge 'copter with "United States of America" on it, flanked by two other Army-green ones. The news had said that the President was supposed to be down here around Thursday, but who knows? This helicopter made a loop over the city and then headed over to the area where the tornado had touched down, so maybe the prez was making an unexpected early visit?