Designated Driver

It was 10:30 pm last night when I remembered I'd had a flat that morning. So I trudged down to the basement to fix the tire. Of course, once I took a good look at the bike I realized that the chain was a gunky mess, there was crud all over the jockey wheels, and the chainrings were a real mess. Now you have to understand that the chain didn't really need to be cleaned. It needed to be tossed into the garbage can and replaced. Being the middle of the night, though, I took it off and dropped it into a pan of mineral spirits and spent the next hour cleaning the whole nasty drivetrain.

So finally I put it all back together and get around to the reason I'd gone down the stairs in the first place, which was to fix the flat tire. I find the tiny shard of glass that had caused the slow leak, pry it out of the tread, replace the tube and proceed to pump the tire up to 120 psi. Then I decide it's time to clean up the rim and spokes that are full of dirt and crud from the road. I'm leaning over the wheel with my head about three inches from the tire when the damned thing explodes right into my ear! I was lucky I didn't blow out an eardrum! Anyway, once the ringing in my ears stopped I finally got it all fixed up and ready for the Friday morning ride.

There were just a couple of us up on the levee this morning, although we did pass a few of the guys who were going the other way on their TT bikes. When I got home I had to rush a bit because I had to drive The Wife to a retina specialist out at East Jefferson Hospital. When I got there and learned it would take at least two hours, I promptly abandoned The Wife and headed over to CC's Coffee where I could get a free internet connection for my Palm Pilot. I hung out there until after 11:00, awkwardly handling my email, before I finally returned to the eye doctor's office so I could drive her and her dilated pupils back to the office. An hour later The Wife finally emerged with news that the retina is basically fine, so the mystery remains. By the time we stopped for lunch and got to the office it was around 2 pm. I may as well have just gone home, because on a Friday afternoon ahead of a long weekend, the university tends to have a remarkable similarity to a mausoleum. Little was accomplished. I finally got home around 6 pm and promptly got into the leftover chicken and andouille gumbo and a bottle of Kilikanoon Shiraz. I needed it, too, after getting a form letter from Allstate saying that they were going to increase the special "hurricane deductible" from the current $500 to *** 5% of the total policy!! Man, one bad hurricane in 30 years and they take the opportunity to screw you big time, even for those of us with minimal damage who have been faithfully paying their premiums since the Nixon administration without a single claim until Katrina.