When it Rains ...

... it pours. Seems like last-minute tasks are popping up around here like earmarks in an election year.


There was no riding for me this morning. Instead I was rushing up the river to Baton Rouge for an 8:30 am meeting that I didn't know I had to attend until a couple of days ago. I got on the road shortly before 7:00 and things were going smoothly on the interstate despite the big speed trap (five patrol cars, radar, laser, and an airplane -- which I spotted in time to dial it down from 80 mph) until I hit Baton Rouge's rush hour traffic. How do people do this every day? It's no wonder they occasionally go postal out on the road.


I finally got to the Board of Regents' meeting about ten minutes late. Of course, I myself would never be so rude as to schedule an 8:30 am meeting that I expected people from Baton Rouge to attend. So anyway, it was a pretty decent initial meeting of their Master Planning for Research workgroup, although I didn't get out of there until nearly noon. I stopped by the local Whole Foods to get a sandwich and check my email and of course there was a fresh email about some rush work that needs to be done (i.e. by me) for testimony concerning the Veterans Administration Hospital in New Orleans that's due July 5 and about which I will be learning a lot over the next few days. Meanwhile I have a monitoring meeting coming up tomorrow with someone from the state's office of community services tomorrow for the $13M we received last year. At least that one's in the afternoon so I'll be able to ride tomorrow morning. The real question is whether I'll actually climb on the bike this evening after work. I already feel fat. We shall see...


I was up late last night updating the LCCS rankings with the results from the last two races, but since I didn't finish that until around 1 a.m., I still haven't uploaded any of it to the LAMBRA website. Maybe tonight. I've been pretty busy lately, and when that happens it always has a negative effect on my already marginal bike maintenance habits. On yesterday's ride I noticed that my old Campi shifters (the thumb shifters) weren't engaging the little toothed wheel all the time. That always happens after I've been dripping sweat on them for a couple of weeks and the corrosion starts to build up. The fact that the return spring on the right-hand one has been broken for the last three or four years doesn't help. So yesterday I got that cleaned up, and I also lubricated the chain with some nice fresh Prolink that I picked up at The Spokesman last Friday night while we were doing Friday registration for the Tour. While I was there, I noticed that they also had Rock-n-Roll too, so I picked up a bottle of that also. Good stuff. So now my shifters work again, more or less, and my chain is nice and clean, but the rest of the bike is still pretty nasty. Maybe I'll do a good cleaning job this weekend. Or maybe I'll just wait until I get caught out in the rain again, because this time of year, when it rains...