Bump in the Road

It is a damp grey day here in the Crescent City, but at least the roads were mostly dry as I rushed to meet the 6:15 group up on the levee bike path. Thursday is typically a "long" day when the group goes all the way up the river to the end of the bike path, logging something around 42 miles in the process. Thursday is also typically more of a smooth paceline day compared to Tuesday, and the group tends to stay together better. As the pace gradually crept up to speed this morning, I gradually slipped into auto-pilot mode as my mind wandered through a long to-do list. Then, as we approached the "dip" where there's often a lot of gravel and sand down at street level, Donald looked over at me and issued a warning that there might be more gravel than usual because of all the rain we've been having. I was sitting on Mark's wheel at the time, but as we coasted down the levee to ground level I eased up just in case. Mark didn't. The gravel, as it turned out, wasn't bad at all, but since the rest of the group had slowed down too, I waited for everyone to regroup before continuing back up the levee. By then, Mark was pretty far down the road, and when Howard took off after him on his Cervelo P3, the rest of the group hardly seemed to notice.

A few miles later, all hell broke loose. As we came up to one of the many roads that cross the levee, the lead riders suddenly noticed that someone had ground out a foot-wide swatch of asphalt, leaving a nice sharp and unavoidable bump across the bike path. It wasn't there yesterday. We were rolling pretty fast at that point and it was way too late for anyone to do much about it by the time we saw it, so the entire paceline plowed right over the thing as expletives flew in every direction. In front of me Richard's bike launched its big water bottle and I watched as it twirled around on the ground, wondering where it would end up. Well, naturally it ended up right in front of me, but luckily I hit it neatly at a right angle and didn't go down. I rolled up to Richard and said "I think I killed your water bottle." Of course, everyone coasted for a little bit to regroup and it wasn't long before I heard Lawrence say "shit!" Actually, I was surprised he was the only one who had pinch-flatted on that thing. So we all stopped there, a couple of miles before the turnaround, while he fixed it. Howard and Mark were still out ahead of us somewhere, but then Luke got nervous about a big rain cloud nearby and we all turned around and started the ride back. We never saw Howard and Mark again.

So the car's still in the shop and naturally the repair estimate is $432 with a $500 deductible. What are the chances that the little old lady with the expired license and no insurance will cough up the cash? Meanwhile of course I'm stuck with the bill. With the sky and my mood looking darker and darker, I headed off to work on the commuter in a light drizzle wondering why I had even bothered to put on clean clothes. I was a damp, wrinkled mess by the time I was two blocks from work and my rear time went catastrophically flat. I coasted another block as the last molecules of air hissed loudly out of what must have been a big hole and walked the last block as the drizzle turned to rain.

Ride, Rinse, Repeat

It rained hard through the night and when the alarm went off I held out little hope of riding. I could tell the streets were soaked without looking, but I ventured a glance out the window anyway. Hmmm -- not actually raining. I stumbled to the computer to check the radar. It looked like the worst of the rain had just passed through, so I figured I'd saddle up the old Rain Bike and repeat yesterday's ride. I hadn't gotten far before the misty drizzle turned to outright rain. I turned off my regular route, preparing to make a run back to the house as I considered the options. It was cool enough that a long ride in serious rain would turn my lips blue for sure. I ambled along slowly for a second and then, as quickly as it had started, the rain eased up again. A sign from the rain gods. I reset my sights on the levee. There was a light drizzle for most of my ride today, just like yesterday, and just like yesterday I occasionally indulged my inner child by splashing through the little puddles on the bike path. I did so with relative impunity thanks to the Pennine's full fenders. There were just two of us, eventually, for the ride today, unless you count Chad who I saw going the opposite direction as I arrived and who we saw again just after the turnaround. He must have been doing a long solo ride today because if he'd turned around at the usual place he would have caught us for sure.

So the Volvo is in the shop today having a little body work done compliments of the 70-year old lady who couldn't negotiate the handicapped parking space at Whole Foods and didn't have a valid driver's license because they wouldn't renew it due to her eyesight and who didn't have insurance because she didn't have a driver's license. Just like Paris Hilton, though, that didn't keep her from getting behind the wheel of her big Buick. Luckily the damage was quite minor, so I guess we won't be pushing for jail time!

More kids with automatic weapons killing each other around here lately. The drug wars continue as the police department runs around after them writing up their reports. Our dense police chief (how is he still police chief after what happened after Katrina???) says "the problem seems to be predominately among the young men. Five of this weekend’s six murders had victims that were black men between 18 and 25 years of age." Duhhhhh. No kidding? You think maybe drugs are involved too?? Meanwhile our virtually absent mayor keeps encouraging these people to "come home" and is about to spend $100k to hire a PR firm to try and convince all of his unemployable displaced drug-dealing voters to get back here in time for the next election: "Mayor C. Ray Nagin's administration is poised to spend $100,000 to hire a marketing firm to help the city distribute information about the status of the recovery to displaced residents as well as those who are back home." Never mind the fact that most of our firefighters are still working out of FEMA trailers. I think I need to stay away from the local news for a while.....

Anyway, I was glad that the rain was elsewhere by the time I had to ride to work, although I was not happy about the fact that the only coffee we had at the office was that wimpy Starbucks Breakfast Blend. N e e d m o r e C a f f è V e r o n a !

Rain Bike Day

The steady drone of the window unit faded as I closed the bedroom door behind me, but instead of the usual peaceful silence of the morning it was replaced by the sound of car tires on wet pavement. It took a few seconds for it to sink in because I wasn't expecting rain, but a look out the window confirmed my fears. I wasn't ready to throw in the towel, though. The temperature was warm and there was only a very light drizzle falling, so I dusted off the Rain Bike, slipped into my old Sidi shoes, which are now my Rain Shoes, and headed out to the levee. I had looked at the radar and figured I could get in an hour without drowning. The levee, of course, was quiet today. There were a few walkers and runners and in twenty miles I passed only two bikes. One was that guy on the Snow Bike who wears a full-face helmet. The other was a guy with a five-gallon bucket hanging from each side of his handlebars; no doubt he was on his way to his favorite fishing spot on the river. The ride was nice today. I had the levee pretty much all to myself and could ride with my head down for long stretches. Although the light rain continued the whole time, it was never heavy enough to really soak my socks, and thanks to the fenders on the old Pennine I was nice and comfortable the whole time. By the time I was back heading back to the house I was already craving a cup of coffee. There is obviously some sort of addiction-related neurological connection in my brain between rain and hot coffee, and I happily indulged it upon my return. The Wife's doctor has given her an alcohol and caffeine-free diet because of an elevated cholesterol level, so that means all the wine and coffee is for me right now!

So I'm sitting here at work watching the live Giro coverage on cyclingfans.com. I could open another window and listen to commentary in English, but you know, the Italian is just such a beautiful language that I'd rather listen to it even though I can't understand it very well. You can still tell when something important is happening from the announcers' tone of voice, and it's easy to pick out the names of the key riders. It is looking like an interesting race in the mountains today and I'm watching Garzelli working his way up one of the last climbs of the day off the front of a break and a couple of minutes ahead of the "grupo maglia rosa." He just passed one of the Specialized Angels. I know it's kind of a corny publicity thing, but I like the Angels anyway. The CyclingNews live commentary put it particularly nicely, I think, writing "Garzelli hands off his long-sleeved jersey. Now he passes into heaven. There is a special blonde angle at the side of the road." Heaven indeed.

On the way to work every day I pass a little row of old shotgun houses that was flooded pretty badly in the hurricane. They were gutted long ago and I've been wondering if they will get fixed up or torn down. Today I noticed that most of the siding had been removed from the fronts of them, which is not very encouraging for their future. I was a little surprised to see that these houses were built entirely with studs rather than barge-board. A lot of these houses were build with thick solid boards salvaged from the barges that used to be floated down the river with merchandise and then broken up when their loads were sold. Even though these were cheap little houses built on tiny 30-foot wide lots, somethimes smaller, you can still see that the basic construction was pretty solid.

Morning Call

The Morning Call parking lot was quiet at 6:30 am. I took another sip of coffee and stepped out of the car. Quentin had already spotted me and was walking over. I told him to put his stuff in my car and looked up at the sky. "It's going to be a good day for a ride," I said. For some reason I was really looking forward to a nice training ride in the hills north of the lake. Missing two weekends of racing in a row will do that, especially this time of year. We headed across the long causeway, zipped through Mandeville and Covington, and arrived at the Lee Road school a little bit early. There were a few guys already there and by the time we were on the bikes we had a nice group of 13 riders for the morning's 65-mile ride.

Indeed, it was a good day for a ride. The air still felt cool as we headed north and met the first of the low rolling hills. Steve was there with his brand new carbon Cervelo superlight, having recovered from his recent crash that smashed the top tube of that bike's predecessor. There were some early signs that this ride wasn't going to stay under control. After about an hour there was a little attack that split the group. I ended up on the wrong side of the gap and Jorge, Shane and I started working hard to close it. I think we finally made contact shortly before the next intersection where we waited to regroup. There were a number of efforts like that today, and I have to admit I was enjoying every one of them, even though I did miss a couple of the sign sprints. After the usual stop at the Enon store, we headed south toward the Watchtower hill and I warned a couple of the guys who were new to this route that it might get hard. As we approached the climb I watched carefully from the middle of the paceline to see who was going to jump first. Surprise! Nobody did. We rolled over the top completely intact, which almost never happens. I guess that left a little extra in the tank, because by the end of Tung Road I was pushing the pace and soon it was just Keith, Steve and me. We kept the pressure on all the way back to the cars. Nice ride.

So after I got home I finally broke down and hopped on the commuter with my discount coupon to get a quick haircut. It was a beautiful day with a nice breeze and occasional clouds to keep things from getting too hot. I hate getting haircuts, and pretty much never like the outcome. Today was no exception. As I was waiting my turn I was watching a guy get his head shaved. His daughter, who was bald from chemotherapy, was with him. Wish I'd taken a picture, but somehow it just seemed too personal a moment to interrupt.

Big Hairy Giro

With a temporary lull in the local racing scene this weekend, combined with nice weather and the usual summer training surge, the Giro Ride had a big group today. I guess the regular Giro group numbered around 50 at its peak, and that's not counting the "Bovine Paceline" group that had started out earlier or the Triathlete group that we passed en route. I was planning on doing a group ride on the northshore on Sunday, so was trying to avoid burning all my matches today. As always happens this time of year, the slow stretches of the Giro Ride are getting fewer and farther between. Also, the number of riders who stay with the group has been going up each week. My only really hard effort today was a sprint up the Casino bridge at the end, but that's not to imply that I didn't get a workout. Even sitting in this time of year takes a lot of work. When the turnaround sprint came up today I somehow found myself on Rob's wheel when he lauched past the front. I stayed there for a while, but finally dropped off before he made it to the finish, wherever that is. I hung around the parking lot for a while today, and so ended up riding home alone.

Tulane Day Hack

Yesterday was Tulane Day at the state legislature, which meant a long day and no training ride for me. I spent most of the day in what they call the "rotunda" of the State Capitol Building. This is a very non-rotunda rectangular room separating the chambers of the House and Senate. Why they call it the rotunda I haven't a clue. Anyway, it's an odd sort of event where we set up a bunch of displays and have people stand around them all day just in case someone important happens to stop by. In the midst of all this were at least a dozen groups of school children taking end-of- semester field trips, a big rally by the AARP, and various tourists. Concurrently we have our president and some of the senior staff and faculty running around to scheduled meetings with various elected officials. Finally around 4:30 we folded our tents and headed off for a glass of wine, or whatever, before the 6:00 pm start of the reception, which was held at the Old Capitol Building. There we had our traditional Tulane-Tini's (green martinis) and handed out cute little stuffed monkeys wearing Tulane T-shirts as part of our effort to get some additional funding for the Primate Research Center construction project that got about $10M more expensive after Katrina. I'd have liked to have stayed longer, but I had to split around 7:30 so I could lend some assistance to my father. That worked out OK because The Wife's flight was delayed and so I was able to pick her up from the airport. Finally made it home around 10:30. I get to drive back up there tomorrow for a meeting.

It's still plenty windy around here! I knew the levee ride was going to be a little bit hard when I saw that a bunch of guys were on their TT bikes. As it turned out, it was almost as disorganized as it was hard, though. A few of us rolled ahead of the group at the start, and apparently just as our pace picked up someone back in the group flatted. We didn't know until Howard came up to us, also on his TT bike, to tell us. That didn't stop him from going to the front and surging up to 29 mph or so. Seeing as how I was severly out-numbered by the TT freaks, I decided not to play the "my bike is faster than your bike" game today and so a few of us let the others go. I'm glad we did, too, because the ride back felt just hard, hard, hard to me. We were fighting a steady headwind and struggling to hold 24 mph, often dropping down to 21-23. Right after the turnaround we got mixed in with a little group of triathletes. It eventually got kind of scary. One of them kind of started a little battle with Rob, which pushed the pace up pretty high a few times. By the time I got home I felt totally wasted. Apparently a dinner of cocktail shrimp and wine isn't good preparation for a hard training ride. Who knew?

So this morning I discovered that one of the little websites that I built on the Tulane webserver had been hacked! It's a fairly inactive site nowadays, so I hadn't noticed until I went looking for a link that I knew was there. Luckily, all my files were there, they had just added a bogus index.html file. I called our Tech Services folks and they're "looking into it." Whether I hear from them or not, I guess I'll wait to fix it until tomorrow, but you'd think that they would have at least reset my FTP password by now, wouldn't you??

Dinner and a Hammer Session

Home alone. After work yesterday I went home and took care of a few things that were needed to insure that the house wouldn't burn down, I wouldn't starve to death, and I'd have clean underwear today. Installation of a new smoke detector went smoothly enough as my pasta sauce simmered and the washing machine churned. I even had time to sit out on the porch with a glass of wine and read the front section of Science Mag. All of which constituted a rather boring evening that I capped off with a couple of hours of updating LCCS rankings and once again signing the annual Homestead Exemption card. You see, we have this interesting Homestead Exemption down here that basically means that you don't have to pay property taxes on the first $75k of your appraised value. However, in order to get that tax break you have to sign off each year on a little card saying that you actually live there. The local tax assessors, who of course are elected based on their promises to do as little as possible to actually collect or, heaven forbid, raise taxes, always take the opportunity to include a "personal" letter that includes a nice photo of themselves, lest you forget who it is who is making sure you don't have to pay more taxes. This year, there was a special card for people whose houses are still vacant but who "promise" to return and live there within the next FIVE years. Big Easy is right, eh? But I digress. With few consumables in the house and little desire to brave the after-work hourdes at the supermarket checkout lines, I rustled up some pasta sauce with whatever wasn't growing mold in the 'fridge. By the time I put the pasta on, I'd already had a couple of glasses of Merlot, so naturally I overcooked the spaghetti. It was pretty good anyway. Almost anything tastes good to me if it's got enough garlic, olive oil and wine in it.

So this morning's long levee ride got off to a fast start thanks to a gradually building tailwind. We spent a long, long time up around 28-29 mph, although at some point I dropped back too far and kind of got stuck back there. Up ahead was Rob on his Argon TT bike with the handlebars down below the headset thanks to one of those adjustable stems. Lucky for us he didn't have his full-out time trial wheels on there too. Anyway, it was a pretty fast and hard ride both coming and going today and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Tomorrow morning is looking kind of sketchy for me because I have to be up in Baton Rouge for 10:30 to shuffle around the lobby of the capitol building where we'll have a bunch of displays set up for "Tulane Day." Afterward will be a reception at the "Old" Capitol Building, so it'll be a late night for me and The Wife will have to take a cab back home from the airport. The old capitol building is one of the most out-of-place and, for its time, over-the-top structures I know of. Mark Twain got it right when he said "It is pathetic ... that a whitewashed castle, with turrets and things ... should ever have been built in this otherwise honorable place." Still, it's a great place to have a party!!

Things are a little hectic around here today what with the usual last-minute problems. Situation normal.

OK for a Monday

There's a south wind blowing the humidity in from the Gulf of Mexico, but this morning there was still a remnant of coolness as four of us rode up the river on the levee bike path. The light but strengthening breeze made the ride out to the turnaround feel easy, and that was perfectly OK for a Monday. After a fairly decent amount of riding over the weekend, my legs felt pretty good, probably thanks to the fact that I hit the sack rather early last night. That, in turn, was probably related to the three glasses of wine I'd just had at my father's house. Let me tell you, you just haven't lived until you've given your own father a bath! I hightly recommend three glasses of wine for both parties. Anyway, the morning ride was nice and easy, as it should be, with steady conversation and school zone speeds.

So I got the results of yesterday's Time Trial up onto the website and then uploaded them to the USAC database. That was the easy part. Now I still have to update the LCCS rankings with the results of the three Giro de Rankin stages plus the time trial from yesterday. We're also hoping to put together a nice, but long overdue, club meeting some time in the next couple of weeks.

Yesterday they demolished the old Ye Olde College Inn on Carrollton Avenue. They had moved the restaurant to the building next door quite a while ago, but anyway it was kind of sad to see another local landmark bite the dust. Apparently my father and his Tulane fraternity friends used to routinely steal the LSU tiger that they had there. The new place is really quite nice and much more "upscale" than the old place was. In fact, it's upscale enough that I haven't gone there yet because there's always a crowd outside waiting to get in.

That damned head cold of mine has now successfully invaded my upper respiratory tract. I hate that. I'll probably be coughing up all sorts of stuff for the next month. Meanwhile, The Wife's over in San Diego at a meeting since Saturday, so hey, I guess I'm available for dinner! I'll bring the wine.

Chief Liar

Decisions, decisions, decisions. When I headed out to meet the Giro Ride on Saturday I could feel the beginnings of some chest congestion from that head cold that's been slowly working its way southward for the last week or so. I could also feel the strong wind. I would have expected it to have calmed down by Saturday, but it had not. The resulting Giro Ride was kind of strange. Riding out on Hayne Blvd. at the beginning of the ride, nobody seemed willing to pull into the wind and for a long time the pace stayed pretty slow. Realdo and maybe a couple others had long since rolled off the front and were already way down the road by the time things really got going. Even so, there seemed to be a general reluctance to work back in the pack. Perhaps it had something to do with the riders who were planning on doing Sunday's time trial over in Lafayette. Well, the group can be lazy sometimes when there's a headwind, but there's one thing you can always count on. When the group gets a good tailwind, it will get very fast. Indeed, such was the case on Saturday as we came back down Chef Menteur Highway where, by the end, my computer showed a maximum speed of 37.5 mph. Probably would have been a little slower if I hadn't tried to close that gap to the leaders at the Goodyear Sign Sprint.

So by Saturday afternoon, I was seriously thinking about going up to Baton Rouge for their spring Century Ride. I had already pretty much decided not to make the trip to Lafayette for the 20 mile time trial because of the time, cost, and fact that it was such a long way to go for 20 miles of unrewarding suffering. I'd just be lying to myself to think that I'd get much out of it except maybe a case of bronchitis or pneumonia anyway. A few of the local guys were going to do the Century and it sounded like it might be fun. It's probably been ten years since I've done an official organized Century Ride. Things didn't quite work out, though, which was probably a good thing, considering. By nine o'clock I was feeling a lot of chest congestion and I started to doubt the wisdom of doing a 100 mile ride that would require me to get up at around 4:30 a.m. Then, for some reason, I just wasn't sleepy. I ended up watching two movies on TV back-to-back and not going to sleep until well after 2 a.m. Strange. Anyway, on a weekend where I had a choice of a Time Trial in Lafayette and a Century Ride in Baton Rouge, I ended up settling for the lowest common denominator and set my sights on the Sunday Giro Ride -- again.

Sunday morning the weather was looking spectacular. The wind was, at least initially, calm and the temperature nice and cool. Dead tired, I took off for the lakefront to log another Giro, meeting Brooks along the way. Lately, some of the Giro riders have been rolling down the road early. They usually loop around the fountain and ride back to meet the main group. Well, we got in with that group and then I had to convince them to do some loops of the fountain because I knew there must be another group that had started at the correct time. After a few minutes, they were still nowhere in sight and our group got impatient and rolled. Damn, I wish they would just wait and start with everybody else at 7:00 and not screw things up like that. As it turned out, we had left a whole group behind and they didn't get back together with us until after the turnaround. That really sucks. Anyway, my legs were feeling pretty good for some reason, and even though I knew my lungs were not particularly happy I did pretty much work today, especially on the way out, and I put in a decent effort for the sprint at Venetian Isles. The turnaround there is just before the bridge over Chef Menteur, which means "Chief Liar." There are a number of theories about how that body of water got its name, most of which involve the local native Americans.

The return trip stayed pretty fast today, which is uncharacteristic for a Sunday, especially one on which a number of the strong guys were off at the time trial. I ended up getting in a pretty good workout that included a really long solo chase effort. Afterward there was a nice group heading back uptown, so I did a loop of Audubon Park and then Brooks, Diego and I rode down the levee for a few miles. I think I ended up with around 80 miles. It was a good day, but by the time I got home I was tired and hungry.

Work to Bike Day

Way back last December I renewed my racing and official's licenses. Yesterday I got my hard copy of the official rulebook. I think USAC was thinking about not sending any of them out unless they were specifically requested, but finally relented and sent them to all of the officials. Riders, by the way, can request the printed versions if they want. I suppose that if I hunted around I could probably come up with twenty-five years of them, more or less. The real treasure, though, is that one at the bottom, printed in 1969 back when the organization was called the Amateur Bicycle League of America. I don't even remember how I got it, but it must have been around when I first started helping organize the Tour de La. It looks like the pages were hand-cut, punched, assembled in Ernie Seubert's basement. For all practical purposes, it contains no road racing rules and only a smattering of track racing rules. The one rule that always floored me was the track racing rule that said that if someone attacked the rider who was on the front was obligated to chase for at least a certain distance, and then each rider behind him was likewise obligated to do so in turn. Things have changed a little, eh? Anyway, we (aka LAMBRA) need to organize an official's clinic around here some time this summer. I'd also like to have an end-of-year LAMBRA event and get some discussion going about funding an incentive program for Juniors. Plus, we need to see if it's feasible for LAMBRA to help subsidize the cost of photofinish expenses or officiating for LCCS races. First, however, we'll need to put together an actual budget!

So today is National Bike to Work Day. I know because Mark D. mentioned it to me this morning. Locally I have heard absolutely nothing else about it, of course, nor did I encounter a single other soul riding to work this morning. Considering this morning's strong north wind, though, it felt more like Work to Bike Day to me. For most of the morning's ride it was just Mark and me, and we were going to great lengths to take it easy. It was hard to do on the way back with the wind in our faces, though. I was just happy to have made it over the Broad St. overpass on my commute to work without having to get off and walk! That's a tough little climb on the single-speed commuter with a bag over your shoulder and a strong wind in your face. I could feel the pedal cage right through the leather soles of my Bass Weejuns!

There's a little 20 mi. time trial over around Lafayette this Sunday, but I'll be playing it by ear this weekend because my father is supposed to be released from hospital on Saturday and that always seems to be a very long and involved process. Then, of course, I expect there will be some issues getting him home and getting the house set so he can get stuff done with minimal use of his right hand. So I guess I'll just have to wait and see how that goes. I'm not likely to make the drive over to Lafayette alone just so I can get clobbered in a time trial, but if somebody else is going and things on the home front are cool, well, it might be good to try out those new clip-ons I got recently.

Almost There

Man, the little cool front that came through last night made such a difference this morning. It wasn't by any means chilly, but the humidity was noticably lower and the temperature was probably in the upper 60s, so it felt really nice except for one thing. Yeah, you guessed it. The wind was blowing pretty hard. I guess I wasn't really paying attention to the time this morning, and when I looked at my watch en route to the levee I was surprised to see that I had only five minutes left. I stepped up my pace, but it still took me seven minutes. Luckily, the group was waiting for me and so I never even had to put a foot down when I got there.

Looking at the group and considering the brisk wind, I figured we'd have a fairly easy ride today, and as usual I was sadly mistaken. There were a few of the guys who were intent on setting a pretty good pace all the way out, and that, together with the crosswinds and general paceline skill "diversity" made for a rather hard ride. The paceline kept fracturing with gaps opening every few minutes so that the speed kept fluctuating. It wasn't terrible, just occasionally annoying. Along the way we met up with Tim who had been out since 5 a.m. when, judging by his long-sleeved jersey, it must have been snowing or something! It wasn't really that cold, but Tim is definitely one of those riders who doesn't like being cold. We also picked up Mark G. on his TT bike, so along with Chad and a few others, there was always someone to keep the pace fast. As we approached the St. Charles Parish line, I heard some loud voices coming from the back of the group. It was Ronnie screaming something, but we couldn't quite make out what it was, so everyone stopped pedaling for a while. It turned out that he was saying "pull through" because some of the guys were staying on the front for a long time, leaving the back of the group without much of a draft in the crosswind.

Toward the end it got even faster and as usual a number of the guys dropped off to soft-pedal the remaining mile to the turnaround. I was already feeling kind of spent myself even though I hadn't been spending a whole lot of time up front. We probably weren't half-way back when a little gap opened and I heard someone say "let them go." So naturally I went around and bridged up to Mark G. and another rider on a TT bike. They were pushing pretty hard and I was getting a nice little workout just trying to stay in the draft behind them. I took an occasional pull, but of course mine were the short little pulls you take when you're in a breakaway, not the mile-long pulls that guys on TT bikes like to take. The other guy dropped off pretty soon, leaving just Mark and me to negotiate the mostly headwind return trip. At one point Mark dropped back and I took a pull that was about 2 mph slower and so Mark came around, ramped the pace back up, and just stayed there for miles and miles until he finally split off to go home just before the Country Club.

Keep going or sit up? I knew that the whole stretch from the other side of the Country Club to town would be directly into the wind, so I had to think a little bit before deciding to keep going solo rather than wait up for the group that was a minute or two behind. It was good that I spent the time riding into the wind alone. I should probably do more of that, even though I wasn't going very fast.

Yesterday I discovered that Charlie D., whose wife just had their first child, was at the same hospital as my dad, so I dropped in for a little visit while I was there. All was well and Charlie was sitting on the couch with a baby bottle while his sister-in-law (I think) was trying to keep track of how much the baby was eating.

As I rode back home through the Carrollton neighborhood I checked the cumulative odometer on my computer. It was getting really close to 65,000 miles, but I didn't think it would roll over by the time I finished. It got almost there, but when I stopped it read 64,999, and I'm just not quite obsessive enough to ride around in circles for that one additional mile. Tomorrow...

It looks like my dad may be released from the hospital on Saturday, so he was kind of excited to be almost done with the hospital. Earlier in the day the PT folks had him getting in and out of a car that they keep up on the 8th floor of the hospital for just that purpose. He's a little bit concerned about going home where he won't have a nursing staff readily available, but I think we will be arranging for some sort of home care for a while anyway, so not to worry.

Smooth and Steady Progress

One thing I love about this time of year is not having to guess at what to wear. Any shorts, any jersey, any socks. It shaves literally ten minutes off my morning prep time, which usually means that I get to the start of the training ride early rather than late. I must admit that I do have the occasional day when I pay more attention to my cycling ensemble than usual. For example, since the Tuesday ride is usually both well-attended and fast, I will typically try to wear shorts and jersey that more or less go together. For me, that's usually something like the team kit from a couple of years ago. You know, the green years. For a Giro Ride, where it's essential to properly represent, I will even pull out the current year or last year's kit if I'm not racing the next day. On the easier days, though, like Monday or Friday, I tend to use the really old stuff from many years past, but since the shorts never last as long as the jerseys, I'm usually not very well coordinated on those days.

So this morning I headed out to the levee in the green kit, revision #2, from a few years ago. It was a pretty smooth and steady paceline ride for a Wednesday -- a bit slower than usual -- and I found myself taking longer pulls and, toward the end, intentionally riding in the wind at the back to provide a little more workload.

On the hospital front, The Dad has been making good progress the last few days. Yesterday they were talking about releasing him from the hospital on Monday, which resulted in a major improvement in his attitude, and then this morning they were talking about maybe pushing that up to Saturday. Of course significant at-home assistance will still be needed, but in general it's always better to be out of the hospital sooner rather than later.

So today I'll be trying to figure out how the State and the LSU system and the La. Board of Regents managed to avoid awarding a single penny of $20 million that they had for the "Post-Katrina Support Fund Initiative" to Tulane despite the fact that we submitted SEVEN research proposals from people like the Director of the Gene Therapy Center, the Associate Director of the Cancer Center, the Chair of the Department of Physiology, etc. They all seem to be able to write successful research proposals to NIH, but I guess they're not good enough for the Board of Regents? Add to that the outright insult that the half of the funds for this "Post-Katrina" initiative, that was originally pitched as a program to help insititutions affected by the hurricane, went to LSU-Baton Rouge and La Tech in Ruston (although I kind of like the fact that La Tech got away with something). Meanwhile, the state is literally pouring additional funding into the state university system (well, mainly into LSU-BR) because as a result of the hurricane they have a huge surplus in the budget. Yes, I said that the state has a huge surplus. The city of New Orleans doesn't have enough money to fix the seawalls or fill the potholes or pay the fire department or fix its public school system, but LSU in Baton Rouge will likely get a hundred million for new construction in this session, while the University of New Orleans will be lucky to get five. OK, I have to step down from this soapbox now before my blood pressure gets out of hand...

It Was Fast

By the time we hit Williams Blvd. the speed had been holding steady at 29-30 mph for a while, although the number of riders still in the rotation was starting to dwindle. We had a big group for today's training ride and it was a fast one. Staying in the paceline was one thing, matching the long fast pulls of some of the guys at the front was quite another. As usual, the group got carried away with the light tailwind it had on the way out, and also as usual some of its riders paid for it on the way back. Anyway, it was a good fast training ride and so I definitely got in a workout. I just wish some of these guys would learn to take it easy when they blast past unsuspecting pedestrians because eventually these rides are going to get legislated out of existence. Long day. I'm tired...........

Race Report Day

The morning levee rides start about 200 yards from a cluster of batture houses that I've always found facinating. When I was younger, there were a lot more of these houses -- back then they were little more than shacks -- built on pilings between the levee and the river. Originally, these houses were built by poor squatters since the batture land isn't officially part of the city. When the river gets very high, which happens every few years, some of them are partially flooded. Over the years, most of them have disappeared, but there is this one cluster that has stuck and somehow now has acquired electricity and an arrangement with the Corps of Engineers that has allowed them to stay in their tenuous locations. Most of the houses have been fairly well fixed up now, and one is currently undergoing a big expansion. The one in the photo is fairly typical of the batture houses. Just below the sign for the UPS delivery man, you might be able to make out the goat standing on the walkway which is itself lined with various vegetable plants. You can see right through the windows to the river behind.

We had a nice Monday morning recovery ride today that included an appearance of Ben Schuler! Along the way I got a race report from Courtney who had done the bike leg of the Gulf Coast triathlon in Panama City along with Vivian who did the swim as part of a relay team. Although Courtney took about fifteen minutes out of the next fastest relay team woman, the winning team had a really fast runner and they were able to manage only 2nd. When I got to work I had a few reports from the Giro d' Rankin weekend up in Jackson. The Cat. 5 guys did great, except for Patrick who crashed in the Road Race, but did send the photo over there of Rolan and Quentin on the line for the Criterium. Quentin missed his TT start by about 30 seconds but still finished 4th, while Rolan won the TT. Quentin tried his had at a solo in the Road Race, but got chased down shortly before the finish and finished 8th, but with a good finish in the criterium he ended up 5th in the Omnium. Rolan got 3rd in the Omnium, finishing 5th in the road race and 3rd in the criterium. Sounds like the 5s learned some good stuff this time and got in some solid experience too. The masters had a fast road race that resulted in a break that included Keith. Then in the criterium there were a lot of early attacks and then a counter-attack following a prime that separated Keith, Eddie, Jaro, John Mclachlan, Donald Davis and Mike Hurley. They almost lapped the field by the finish where Keith finished 6th and ended up 7th overall. Jaro won the crit and Mclachlan won the overall. I'm not sure how the other NOBC folks ended up as I haven't seen the results yet.

Sounds like it was a lot of fun.

Unfinished Business and Compromises on a Lazy Sunday

The sun is coming up earlier and earlier now, and as often happens this time of year I got an early start for my ride out to meet the Sunday Giro Ride. The sun was already up but the air, for the moment at least, clung to its vanishing predawn coolness. A clear blue sky and light wind had me already feeling rather lazy as I spun down Carrollton Avenue toward Bayou St. John, barely cracking 15 mph and enjoying the quiet streets. My trip out to the lakefront takes me along old Bayou St. John on Wisner Blvd., sandwiched between City Park to the West and the bayou on the right. Bayou St. John, once a busy shipping shortcut between Lake Pontchartrain and the Esplanade Ridge, is now a long quiet pond, with no access to the lake, save a few pipes under Robert E. Lee Blvd. Along the east shore of the bayou are lots nice homes. I stopped to take a photo of the bayou, looking more or less south, where it splits to go around a tiny little island, Park Island, before continuing into town where it once petered out into the swamp that is now drained and called Mid-City. I always thought Park Island would be a neat place to live.

So the Giro Ride group was kind of a typical slightly smaller Sunday group that finally came together along Lakeshore Drive. I cannot even begin to imagine why the Levee Board has done nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, to repair the damage to the seawall and the scoured-out dirt behind it, since the hurricane nearly two years ago. Why is this business still unfinished?? That seawall was built as part of the works projects administration that also filled in the marshland behind it, creating what ultimately become some of the city's most desirable property. You would think that by now they would have at least filled in the eroded areas with dirt. I guess that's what you get when you put a bunch of politically appointed contractors on a board that has responsibility for something as important around here as levees. At least the last elections reorganized the levee boards, so there's hope.

Today's Giro Ride turned out to be pretty fast here and there with Brandon and Rusty and a few others keeping things brisk. Of course, most of the group was feeling rather lazy and wasn't too interested in getting out into the wind. There were enough, though, to make for a nice paceline at the front that kept things interesting.

Much to do today. A little mother's day thing at The Sister's place, some hospital duty, and a new ceiling fan to think about installing. That task will, of course, be far more complicated than advertised thanks to the eighty year old wiring and related complications. One thing's for sure. There will be compromises.

Meager Consolation

There was a surprisingly big Giro Ride group this morning, considering that there are three races this weekend within driving distance. With Reo and Bain up in Arkansas for the Joe Martin stage race, along with some of the local masters riders, I was a little surprised to see Tim out on the lakefront. When asked, he said something about mother's day, which was, in fact, a popular complication today. Every year I tell myself I'm going to do Joe Martin and every year something comes up that weekend, so I guess I shouldn't be critical of the other guys. After all, there I was in the Saturday Giro Ride group myself on a weekend with a major stage race in AK and a nice Omnium in MS.

The Giro Ride got going pretty early today and was relatively interesting with little groups off the front for much of the time. Tim, in fact, had no interest whatsoever in going slow and had a lot to do with the fast pace of the ride. With the warm temperatures and light tailwind I was feeling pretty good myself as the group rushed out to the turnaround. Coming up to the turnaround sprint I saw Tim roll up on my left and look down to check which gear he was in. He gave me a quick "get on my wheel" glance and launched. I sat on his wheel as he pounded, out of the saddle, up over 30 mph. By the time he started to slack off, though, my legs were pretty much toast too and I hesitated to come out of his shadow for a moment. Just then I heard Rob come rocketing past us on the right to take the official Giro sprint prize. The ride back got back up to speed pretty fast today, which is how I like it, but when I tried to drop back a bit for a rest I ended up stuck all the way at the back of a very long line of riders for a while. Finally, the pace eased up just a touch as we started to near the Goodyear Sign sprint and I took the opportunity to move way up toward the front, arriving just in time for the pre-sprint surge. We still had a long way to go, maybe half a kilometer or better, when I saw Tim get stuck out in the wind on the front. I was right behind him and still carrying a little momentum, so I went past to give him some draft and started to accelerate. We had a little gap and I thought I could get him pretty close to the finish before blowing up. Well, maybe not quite. I started to bog down earlier than I'd hoped and had to leave him out on his own again with a good 300m still to go. I think maybe it was Matt or somebody who came past before the sign. Next thing I know there's a little group off the front again, so another chase started pretty soon. Everything came back together, though, by the time we made the turn onto Bullard, but it didn't last long. A small group started to roll off the front as Charlie said "why do you guys keep letting these gaps open?" A few of us started to chase, but for the most part the pack was done for the day and by the time we hit Hayne there were just two of us chasing a group of four or five that was a good 20 seconds. The best I could do was 24-25 mph, but I still ended up chasing alone well before the two bridges and although I got pretty close by sprinting up the Casino bridge, it opened up again and I never could bring it back until they sat up on Lakeshore Drive.

It was a good workout today, albiet meager consolation for missing some good racing this weekend. The photo is from the parking area on West End Blvd., where the Giro Ride starts and finishes, looking north toward the lake.

Any Summer Friday

On almost any summer Friday the morning ride along the river is a very low-key affair with it's own special character. If there's a race that weekend, then you know the guys planning to race probably won't show up, and if they do they'll sit on the back and spin. On the other hand, the guys who don't usually race and for whom the faster Tuesday ride is more of a challenge get a chance to train at a more manageable and consistent pace where they can work in the paceline more.

Today we had six riders, which is pretty typical for a Friday morning, and among them were Joe F. and Bob P. who rarely try to stay with the big studs on the fast days. Often, on the faster days, I'll drop back and find Joe telling me to get into the paceline in front of him. He'll do that with everybody as they drop back from the front of the paceline, and until the pace starts getting up around 27 or so it allows him to stay with the group. Considering that he's 77 years old, that's still pretty impressive. Today when I dropped back he held his spot and said he'd be OK today as long as the pace stayed like it was. So it was nice to have everybody rotating through today at a fairly steady speed that afforded those at the back the luxury of looking at the scenery a bit, or in my case fiddling with the camera at the back. The top photo shows the paceline just starting to come around the big bend in the river at the country club as it heads back into town. That's Joe taking his pull at the front.

The river winds around so much that the wind always seems to be shifting. In fact, you never really realize quite how much the direction changes while you're riding, but if you look a the route on a map you quickly see the rather dramatic curves. The short 24-mile ride that we do on Fridays starts out going almost due north for a little bit, then makes the curve at Ochsner hospital and ends up going southwest all the way to the country club where it curves back to the north- northwest before gradually easing back to the west as it approaches the airport.

As I have every day this week, I spent a few hours at the hospital yesterday evening keeping my father company and helping out with little things like pillow placement and bed adjustments. He's been getting a couple of hours of physical therapy each day and it's been coming along pretty well thus far. He's able to get in and out of bed and stand or sit without much assistance, and his speech and right arm strength seem to be improving. I expect it will be another week easily before they are comfortable releasing him, but anyway that's progress I guess. A big part of the challenge is keeping him from being too depressed about the whole thing. I'm not feeling like I'll be up for a mad dash to make the race tomorrow, though, so I'll probably skip this weekend. C'est la vie...

Summer Haze

This is the view looking down Canal Street toward the river in New Orleans from the roof of the Tidewater Building. On the left is the edge of the French Quarter and on the right is the "American Sector" aka the Business District. The French didn't really care for the Americans when they started to move here and pretty much kept them from buying property in the old French Quarter, so they all ended up on the other side of Canal Street. Lots of the big business long ago moved a few blocks upriver to Poydras St., so Canal has become a permanent downtown development project. When I was a kid, though, you dressed up for shopping trips along Canal St. where all the big department stores were before the suburban shopping malls and parking lots drew everyone away.

I didn't think it was very windy this morning. Scott did. Scott was right. As the group slowly started its morning training ride ritual today, Scott and I rode at the front for a while at an easy warm-up pace. I finally started to notice the moderate wind in our faces. Once we reached the bridge Scott said something about it being time to pick it up or something and he surged forward. I dropped in behind him and the morning discussion group quickly thinned out into the morning paceline. Somewhere around the country club we picked up Howard, riding his TT bike. He quickly rode up to, and off of, the front, looking behind every now and then to see if he had successfully instigated some action. The group wasn't too interested today, though, and he hovered out there for a long time by himself as the rest of us worked a paceline at around 24 mph.


I remembered the sand at the last possible moment. Tuesday I had been surprised by some deep sand across the road at the "dip" where there are usually a lot of rocks and stuff that has washed down from the levee. For some reason there had been a short stretch of rather deep sand on Tuesday. It was enough to elicit a surprised "Oh S#!t!" and you went through it, but it was short enough that you were back on solid ground before you could get yourself into any real sideways type trouble. Well, I did the exact same thing today as we blasted through that section and back up the levee on the other side. By the time we got to the turnaround, I noticed we had lost a few people, including Robin who earlier had been acting as the unofficial paceline coordinator. When we went through the "dip" again on the way back, I realized where he had gone because a three-foot wide section of sand had been pushed aside leaving a nice path of asphalt. As the river curved a bit to the south we started to pick up a nice tailwind and I started to up the pace a notch. When I pulled off, Jeff rolled past and asked if I had an early meeting today or something. I just told him "no, but I have a nice tailwind!" It was a good ride coming and going today, but I got home still somehow feeling kind of sleep-deprived. I think I need a long quiet vacation or something.

I wandered out on the roof today and snapped some photos through the summer haze that makes the horizon little more than a grey smudge between land and sky. Here's a photo of St. Louis Cemetery #1, sandwiched between the partially occupied housing development below and the municipal auditorium above. You can take tours through this cemetery, which lies just outside of the French Quarter. If you do, say hello to my maternal grandfather and the Feraud side of the family.

Just Coasting

After being tired all day yesterday, I decided it was a good day to take a break. No pedalling for me today, just kind of coasting and trying to give myself a chance to recover from whatever it was that had me feeling so bad. I stayed up late last night to crank out the update for the LCCS rankings after coming home from the hospital, but at least I got in an extra hour of sleep this morning.

It's back to summer weather down here. The wind's out of the south and the temperature is 86F, and that means the humidity can't be far behind. Right now, though, we're showing only 28% relative humidity which is quite low. I sent out the official event announcement for the Tour de Louisiane this morning, along with instructions for club members to NOT register online since they're getting to race for free. Only 45 slots left in the Cat. 5s already! I don't expect we'll see many entries until the week before the race, though. I'm trying to get some of the Red Bull girls for the Tour criterium in Covington. Still a lot of details to handle before the race date in late June. It all depends on whether we get thrown any curve balls on the courses, but right now everything looks cool.

So I had to weigh in on a long discussion about the center line rule on the TXBRA website. It all seems so simple until you've actually had to try and officiate a road race and deal with it. I guess what still surprises me is that some riders just don't seem to understand that it's really all about not getting riders killed and making sure that the best rider wins. Most officials really hate it when they have to relegate or DQ somebody for a centerline violation because they always come back and argue that there were other guys who did it and didn't get caught, which is usually true. The officials do what they can, and usually if the ding you for a centerline violation it's because you did something pretty blatant, like attack over the centerline or move up at a point where it was really, really dangerous. I think most riders would really benefit from reading part 2 of the USAC Official's Manual. In a way, it's better than reading the rulebook because it puts the most common problems in context and provides examples.

Sounds like we will have a number of people going up to do the Giro d' Rankin this weekend. I guess my own chances of making it to the RR are only 50/50 at best right now. It's a good road course and not too far away, so I'll hate to miss it, but sometimes family responsibilities just push their way to the front.

Life is a compromise sometimes.

Weary of Fatigue

I'm really getting tired of this feeling of fatigue that seems to have descended upon me today. Perhaps it's just the lingering soreness from the weekend, or this nagging head cold, or the hours sitting in a hospital room trying to be cheerful. Whatever it is, I was really dragging arse this morning on a day when, ordinarily, I should have been ready for a good hard training ride. Ready or not, though, I was there with a half-eaten powerbar in my pocket for nutritional support. It was much cooler this morning -- refreshing, in fact -- and with a little breeze at our backs and a pretty big group I was expecting a fast start to the 42 mile long Tuesday ride. For some reason, though, the group remained quite civilized for the first few miles as I rode alongside Tim at the front bemoaning our mutual difficulties with getting to this weekend's Giro d' Rankin. Tim had already been riding since about 5 am, so he was on his way home as we were heading out at 6:15. We dropped to the back after a mile or two, expecting the pace to surge, but things remained calm for a while longer. Eventually, of course, it did get fast. Rob was out on his TT bike, and we had Eddie and Matt and Howard and Mark, so you knew it couldn't stay easy for long. About halfway out Rob zipped past the paceline on the left and when he did, the front riders latched on right away, pushing up the speed a couple of mph. Somewhere in the middle, though, a big gap opened and Mark, Howard and I (and maybe some others?) had to spend a pretty long time at 29 mph in order to close it. I guess the group kind of split at that point. It stayed pretty fast the rest of the way to the turnaround with a big surge at the end. The ride back featured a lot of headwind and although the pace was slower, it didn't feel any easier, at least not to me, and toward the end I was taking really short pulls because I just didn't seem to have any power left at all.

It's funny how you never quite know how you'll feel on the bike from day to day. Sometimes you'll do a couple of hard, fast training rides and the next day you feel fast and sharp. Other times you'll do the exact same thing and it takes three days to recover. I must admit, though, that I don't recall too many 3-day recovery periods being needed back when I was younger!

So now it's early afternoon and I am still feeling dragged out, and this scratchy throat isn't exactly helping either. Perhaps it's time for an easy solo ride tomorrow? For now, I'll just make myself a cup of high-octane coffee and get back to work on this African Energy Security Institute paper that I've been dragging out for the last week or so, and wonder if Basso really didn't transfuse and if Bill really didn't inhale or have sex with that woman. I guess if Basso is actually being honest about all of this, I have to respect him for taking the better path. Maybe that's what is making me so weary...

An East Wind

I got to the levee a few minutes early this morning. Something was amiss. A strong southeast wind is rather odd around here. Up above the sky was grey and off to the east a big black cloud was raining on part of the city. Bob P. rolled up, looked at that cloud, ruminated about it for a minute, and decided to head home rather than risk getting wet. I didn't think it looked quite so ominous, though, and so when Bob B. showed up we headed off with a nice little tailwind, spinning easily and complaining about our sore legs. Of course, I knew we'd have a bit of a battle once we turned around. We stuck to our "recovery day" plan, though, and rode back side-by-side at about 15 mph. I knew what the wind was up to, and I wasn't going to play into that game this time! I was glad to have gotten in a nice spin this morning because when I woke up I very nearly blew it off altogether. I've got stuff stacked up pretty high here at work, and elsewhere, right now. Those few hours I'm spending every day in a hospital room without internet access seem to be causing a backlog. After I got back from my training ride this morning I fired up the computer and spent a couple of hours working on a paper, already overdue, intentionally resisting the urge to check my email until I was done.

So Tulane sent out a press release today about it's expected Fall 2007 undergraduate enrollment and it was very encouraging, albeit the "percent increase" headline was a bit over the top considering that the prior year was such a disaster. I mean, a 56% increase in first-time enrollment would be spectacular if it was 56% of a normal year and not 56% of a year that was about 50% of what it would have been without the hurricane. Are people really dumb enough to fall for that kind of "statistic?" Anyway, the reality is that it will get us back up to around 1,375 freshmen which is a nice jump from the meager 882 we had this year, but still not quite up to the 1,600 or so that we would have expected without Katrina. Still, it's solid movement in the right direction, and the fact that so many of them are from other states says a lot about Tulane's recruiting and public relations effort. It also speaks volumes about the improving national image of the city. Sometimes I guess and East wind blows some good.

Unexpected

Just as I approached Carrollton Avenue on my way out to the Lakefront this morning I saw Bob zip past. It's rather unusual for me to have someone with whom to ride on the way out to the Giro ride, so I caught up to him so we could ride together. A little later we came upon Realdo as well. It was an unexpected treat to have company for the otherwise boring ride out to the lake. Being a Sunday, the group was smallish and although it's been a while since I made a Sunday Giro ride, I was expecting a relatively easy paceline ride. Well, it didn't quite turn out that way. Somewhere at the beginning of the Chef Highway stretch a few riders went off the front. The rest of the group organized a nice double paceline, with Robin keeping everyone in check, and for a while we started to pull the riders back, but when the break lifted its pace, the group failed to respond in kind and started to deteriorate. I briefly considered trying to make the bridge, but the gap was already too big.

So after the turnaround when everyone was going slowly I rolled off the front just to try and keep the pace up. When I looked back a few minutes later, the group was a good 45 seconds back, so I figured I'd do a little solo effort and see how far I could get before I started to crack. I wasn't exactly setting any land speed records, rolling along at 24-25 mph, and finally eased up when I got to the first stoplight. I looked back under my arm and could see a group coming up to me, so I eased up to 21 mph. Much sooner than I'd expected, I heard the sound of wheels approaching fast from behind. It was Brett and a couple of other guys who had pulled away from the main group. I latched onto the back and looked down to see 29 mph on the computer. Brett then proceeded to tow us at a steady 29 all the way to the service road. Later, on Hayne Blvd. it was again Brett, Realdo and me off the front (not that the group was actually chasing), with Brett and Reo taking pace and me practicing my emergency drafting skills at the back as they held the pace at 28-29 all the way to the bridge and still kept the pressure on until we were back onto Lakeshore Drive.

As we rode back uptown by way of Jeff Davis Parkway to accomodate Brett's distaste for the Carrollton interchange, I was noticing that my legs were really starting to ache. That was about when Reo calmly announced that he thought he'd ride for another hour or so. Luckily, I had a lots of perfectly good reasons why I couldn't join him for that. Although I hadn't expected it, Sunday's ride felt harder to me than Saturday's. By the time I got home it was really feeling like summer. The inside of my glasses was spattered with sweat, I had almost finished off both water bottles, and I was craving something cold to drink. There's something I like about that...

Giro Against the Odds

The sore throat that's been bugging me the last few days was finally better this morning, so I headed off to the lakefront for the Saturday Giro ride with a warm and humid breeze at my back. From the start, it looked like it would be an unusual day. When I hit Lakeshore Drive, there were already two small groups heading out. It was still five minutes early, so the main group hadn't even started yet. I turned around and got in with the second group and then eventually we all looped around the fountain and rode back until we met the main group. So at least we were all together. It was a big group today and they were having their usual trouble staying in one lane. We were still going slow when we got the the East end of Lakeshore Drive where yesterday's storm had washed some dirt, rocks and miscellaneous other debris onto the roadway. I was right behind Rusty when he reached down to wipe his tires. Next thing I knew, he was careening off to the left. It seems that he hit a big rock just as he was looking down at his tire with one hand on the bars. He went down pretty hard, but since we were going slowly, he was soon back in action with some minor road rash and torn up handlebar tape as souveniers. That was crash #1. What were the odds we'd have another today?

So the rest of the way out to the turnaround was pretty typical. A couple of guys snuck off the front on Chef Highway, but were eventually caught. The pace was fast for a while, but nothing unusual. There was a sprint up there somewhere, but I was too far back at the time to do much about it. As is typical, the pace slacked off after the turnaround as riders regrouped and then very gradually started to climb back up to normal. Just about then we came upon a section of road where the right lane had apparently flooded yesterday. There was a line of tall orange pylons that angled their way from the right edge of the road out to the left edge of the right lane and then back again, forcing everyone into the left lane. The flooded area was dry now, so a few of us cut through the gaps in the pylons because the back was getting kind of tight and there was traffic coming up from behind. That's about when Steve plowed right into one of the pylons. Unfortunately, he didn't walk away from it as easily as Rusty. His new carbon frame had a smashed top tube where the handlebars had slammed into it. He had hit pretty yard with his head, and was sporting cuts and bruises all around his eye socket. We also thought he may have broken his collarbone, so a pickup was flagged down and Robin and a few other guys got him eventually to the hospital and recovered his car from Lakeshore Drive. Naturally, I had decided not to bring my camera today. Damn! Conveniently, it was the same hospital where my father is, so as soon as I got home and cleaned up I went over there for a little double visit. I was glad to find that Steve's injuries were all minor. His collarbone was intact and the CAT scans and x-rays were unremarkable, so he was out of there and on his way home by around 1:00. Unfortunately, his bike was admitted to the Bicycle Connection emergency room.

After Steve headed home I visited my father, and some of his friends who happened to be there. The physical therapist showed up and got him up on his feet with a walker and had him shuffle out into the hallway and back. It looked like it was very hard for him to do, but on the other hand it was encouraging that he could. Baby steps.....

What May Brings

May in New Orleans. One thing May always seems to bring to New Orleans is street flooding from huge rainstorms. This May did not disappoint. Around 3 am the deafening cracks of thunder and lightning started, then the power went out -- a few times. Of course, it woke me up just in time to see the numbers on the bedside clock fade to black. That was also about the time I realized I'm definitely coming down with a head cold. Crap! By dawn the weather had eased up considerably, and it didn't get really bad again until early afternoon when a deep and slow-moving line of thunderstorms dumped 4 or 5 inches of monsoon-quality rain on the city, flooding some local streets and making things messy for the folks out at the Jazz Festival. Streets were closed here and there, especially the underpasses that always flood. The drainage pumps were struggling to keep up and obviously failing in some spots. Nonetheless, a few idiots still tried their luck getting through. Some made it, some didn't. Why would you drive your car through water that is clearly three feet deep, especially when you have to go around a barricade and National Guard truck to do it? Anyway, it's a good day for rain since I'm feeling under the weather and am certainly not inclined to go out for a wet training ride. I guess tomorrow is kind of up in the air for me too. Just as well, since I've been taking cold medicines and haven't gotten much productive work done today. Guess I'll have to bring some homework with me this evening.

My dad should be moving to rehab some time in the next day or so. His speech problem has been changed from "moderate to severe" to "moderate to mild" which means he can say the words for maybe 70% of the pictures you show him, which seems to be an improvement. Not so much recovery is apparent on the motor skills however.

Bad Day All 'Round

Tuesday afternoon I got a call from my VP with an urgent need for someone from Tulane (aka "me") to be at a 7:45 am meeting up in Jackson MS. The Medical Center and the city are trying to get a Bio-Agro Defense Center, to be built by the Dept. of Homeland Security, located there and Tulane's National Primate Research Center is involved. This was to be a site visit by the site selection team, so we had the Governor and various city officials at the meeting, along with the Univ. of Mississippi Health Sciences folks. They are up against some significant competition on this one, including Research Triangle Park, Texas A&M, etc., although I'd have to say that they do have some rather important political leverage. So anyway, rather than drive up at night I decided to set the alarm for 4 am (again) and make the drive in the relative peace of the wee hours. I actually love driving that time of night when the roads are virtually all mine. This time, though, I was surprised to see so many people commuting in the other direction, toward New Orleans, around 5 am. I guess there are still a lot of people living up around Hammond and driving in to work every day.

So I get to the meeting in downtown Jackson, just a block from the old Tour le Fleur criterium course, and sit through the presentations, all the while feeling a worsening sore throat and queasy stomach. I was thinking I was having a bad day, but as I was to soon learn, that's all relative. There were no questions from the team about Tulane's participation, so basically I ended up just being a warm body representing one of the partner institutions. The team then went off to catch a helicopter for a tour of the potential physical sites, and I headed immediately for my car to drive back to New Orleans. I was in kind of a hurry because I had gotten some very disturbing news via cellphone halfway through the meetings telling me that my father had suffered a stroke. And I thought I was having a bad day.

On the drive home I started to get some details, and to make a long story short, it was apparent from the symptoms that we were dealing with a left hemisphere, frontal lobe ischemic stroke that had caused some significant aphasia, a major loss of motor function to his right arm, and significant weakness to his right leg. Complicating this whole scenario was that he was in the hospital at the time having a catheter inserted into his bladder because of a urinary blockage, so I'm guessing it was probably a little embolus or something, though I'm sure nobody will admit to that. So naturally I ended up at the hospital until late at night, especially since the neurologist who had gotten the referral, and apparently only a very sketchy history, didn't show up until about 10 pm. She had, at least, seen the CAT scan from earlier that day, and ordered an MRI and various other tests for the morning, a couple of which, like the carotid ultrasound, I had to tell her had already been done. She did a quick assessment and was fairly positive about the ultimate outcome. Looks like the next few weeks are going to be long...

By 10:30 last night my two sisters and I had worked out a rough schedule and since I didn't have the first "shift," I was able to make the morning training ride. Needless to say I was a little preoccupied and still rather tired, but it was good to be on the bike. As I was getting ready to leave for work I turned on my Palm Pilot to check email and it for some reason decided it needed to download 173 messages. I fell asleep waiting for it to finish. I guess I really was tired.

Almost Summertime

Air-conditioners hummed through the night as we sought a compromise with the warm and humid air that's been around here lately. It's just a reminder, perhaps more of a warning, that it is almost summer. I've already stopped checking the outside temperature when I wake up in the morning, and most of the winter riding clothes are stashed deep in the closet. Over the next few weeks the typical morning temperatures will climb from the upper 60s to the lower 80s, and doubtless the electricity bill will touch the clouds.

So this morning's long levee ride was pretty fast. Howard, Todd, VJ, Rob, Matt, Mark, and a few others kept the pace pretty high both coming and going. I always feel better when it's warmer, and so I dipped into the intensity pool myself today. There was hardly any wind, so the paceline's momentum tended to snowball, usually levelling off somewhere around 27 mph until someone's surge would push it temporarily up to 30 or so and then it would crash back down for a moment before edging back up once again. The legs feel fairly well recovered from last Sunday's race, but the sore back I got from doing yard work on Saturday still hurts. One might argue that I should be doing more yard work training so as to avoid such a situation. Yeah, right. Anyway, it was a good training session this morning that got me back home a few minutes earlier than usual. I even got a ride to work today because The Wife, who had gone to get a brake tag (aka inspection sticker) for the car after an early morning meeting, got stuck with an extra $2 fee for being 1 day late and had to come back to the house to get the two bills from me.

So yesterday I got an email from NOBC alumna Gina V, who had a pretty good racing weekend in Georgia. First, she did the Women's Cat. 1,2,3 race at Athens Twilight where she crashed into someone who went down in front of her, took her free lap, got put back in at the back of the field, worked her way back up to the front, and finished in the top 20. After that, she spent the night in the ER with a friend who had crashed and suffered a concussion in the Pro/1/2 bloodbath later in the evening. The next morning she did the Roswell NRC criterium and finished top ten, then she went home and started working on a powerpoint presentation for a lecture she had to give on Monday to her residency panel. As far as I can tell, sleep does not figure into her routine at all. BTW, it anyone is looking for a small size bike, she's looking to sell an aluminum Blue RC5 road bike (xs) with Chorus 10, a Blue cross bike (xs) with DA9, an Orbea Starship AL/carbon road bike with DA10, a Cheerwine AL/carbon road frame & fork, and an Mt Fuji MTB (xs). If I had the cash I'd by the Blue road bike myself! (She's got the carbon version being shipped to her right now.) Nice inventory, eh? I feel so inadequate....