Falling Behind

One of the big New Orleans based cruise ships heads out from port every Thursday afternoon, and yesterday I happened to catch it as it made its way down the Mississippi past the French Quarter and prepared to round Algiers Point. Behind the cruise ship in the photo, on the other side of Algiers Point, you can see the newly commissioned $1.3 billion USS New Orleans tied up a the Naval Support Facility there. I was thinking how much I'd like to be on one of those ships, although for two entirely different reasons.

Perhaps it was the wine at my niece's birthday party last night, but I didn't sleep well last night at all, even though I stayed up until around 1 a.m. to put some photos from Rouge-Roubaix up on the NOBC website. Malcolm Schuler did his usual magnificent job of documenting the event and got some great shots of the lead groups. I also read Michael Olheiser's writeup on the Memphis Motor Werks website. Damn, I almost went down too when I rounded that same sharp sandy turn. Of course at the time I was probably already over twenty minutes behind him!

So this morning I overslept and didn't get out the door until almost 7:00. Then, just to twist the knife, I caught a train at the end of Willow Street. I basically just threw in the towel at that point and took a little ride through the 'hood while I waited for the train to pass, after which I just spun easily down the levee waiting to meet up with the group on its return trip. As it turned out, the group was going fairly fast, at least for a Friday, so although I didn't get in many miles today, at least I did get my heart rate off of the couch for a few minutes. Back at home I made the fatal mistake of checking my email before I left, which but me a bit behind schedule, and then I got a LAMBRA-related phone call that put me back by another half-hour or so. The result of all that is that I feel like I'm really falling behind on a lot of stuff both at work and at home right now. I think I'm depressed about the $550 that The Wife just spent on tickets to Harrisburg, PA for the upcoming Big Ten gymnastics championships where I'll be sitting on my butt instead of racing in the NOBC 2-Man Time Trial. Man, sometimes life just seems like a never-ending string of compromises, doesn't it?

There's been some chatter on the email lists around here lately about the ever-popular topic of masters age groups and which categories and classes should have separate races. There are basically two approaches to these things. There's the "if you have it, they will come" side, and then there's the "show me the riders, and then I'll have it" camp. Classic chicken and egg thing. Which comes first: separate Cat. 3 races, or enough Cat. 3s to have separate Cat. 3 races? You can replace Cat. 3 with Master-45 or Master-55 or Master 40, or whatever. Around here it's always a bit of a roll of the dice from the promoter's standpoint as to which and how many separate races he can have without the whole event becoming really boring and fiscally and promotionally unstable.

Tomorrow I'll be doing a 2-man TT up in Baton Rouge with Keith D. It should be painful, probably more so for me than him, though. Tonight I'll clamp on the antique aero bars, remove the bottle cages, and put the TT helmet in the bag. Voila! Instant time trial bike.