Complications

I had a nice easy Friday ride this morning, largely alongside David from UNO who is working on getting back in shape after a post-Katrina hiatus. Despite our comfortable pace of 16-20 mph, none of the other guys threatened to come to the front, so I think everyone was of the same mind today. It was good, too, that it took my mind off of all of the little complications that have sprung up for this weekend.

Tomorrow morning, very early, I'm heading off to Ft. Walton Beach, FL for my father's 80th, along with The Daughter and her friend who will be flying in to N.O. tonight around 11 pm. My brother and two sisters, and most of their families, will be in Ft. Walton as well for the Bastille Day bash. The plan, up until yesterday, was simple, since The Daughter needed to be back in Iowa on Monday:

• 5-hour drive on Saturday
• Eat, drink and be merry
• Eat, drink some more
• 5-hour drive on Sunday

"Best laid plans" and all that... Well, yesterday it turns out that The Daughter can stay until Monday, so the flight plans got changed. The new flight plan was a couple hundred dollars less, since she's now staying over a weekend, but the $100 last-minute change fee took a pretty big bite out of that. OK, so now I really need to bring my bike with me and can probably get in a nice ride Sunday morning before the rest of the clan awakes. Then, last night, we get a call from Baton Rouge and find out that my mother in law took a fall at the nursing home (despite having a full-time sitter who had stepped out of the room for just a moment...) and has broken her hip. So she's in the hospital awaiting surgery that was originally going to be this morning but has now been pushed back to "whenever I get around to it." The Wife may be making a trip up to B.R. this evening, but will need to be back in time to pick up The Daughter, or at least in time for us to depart for FL around 5 or 6 am tomorrow. Meanwhile, I'm expecting a request for information preliminary to a request for proposals from the Department of Education to be announced in the Federal Register on Monday (it was supposed to be today but for some reason didn't appear), when I was originally supposed to be back in the office, but will now probably be on the road from Florida, although The Wife hasn't actually clued me in yet as to when The Daughter's new flight out of N.O. will be.

Too bad I'll have to miss the track races this weekend, though. They look like they will be fun and besides, I have a bag of about 90 USAC championship medals to give to Will up there so he can distribute them to the dozen or so riders who won them. Yeah, maybe we should use an omnium format for some of those track championships next year, eh?