Moving Forward

Yesterday I got a reply from Wayne Stetina. I had asked him to clear up a little mystery that's been in the back of my mind for, oh, 27 years or so. Sure enough, he remembered the race and the bike exchange with his brother. I think perhaps we all remember the details of every race we've ever ridden. Well, at least the ones where we finished well. Here's what he had to say:

That was me. Fortunately the fork steerer was cracked nearly 80%, causing the steering to stick so badly I could hardly turn. Good thing I didn’t make one more pass down the hill… With my brother Joel’s strange bike that wouldn't even engage the 13 top gear, & a 1cm higher seat position I had to get a 5 mm allen key handed up after a few laps to lower, I finally wound up getting cramps the last few laps, & Dale had to talk me out of quitting. But considering the circumstances, I was more than pleased to come away from Bisbee 2nd behind Dale.

Wayne is still racing, by the way, in the same masters age group as I, and he's still faster. In fact, he added another stars and stripes jersey to his collection this year. It's kind of cruel twist of fate that the guys who were clobbering you when you were 21 always seem to stick with racing so they can continue to clobber you for another thirty or forty years.

This morning's long levee ride got a little disjointed, it seems, even though it really never got really blazing fast. With last Tuesday's memory still fresh, everybody was being particularly cautious around the pedestrians - perhaps a bit too cautious. A couple of times the whole group practically came to a stop. I'm not quite sure if that's a good thing or not, because when it happens the back of the group just naturally tends to mushroom out, which makes the oncoming rider/runner slow down even more, and it's surely confusing for whichever pedestrian behind whom we bunch up. It would perhaps be better if we could slow down more gradually and still continue moving forward, but like I've said before, it's a tough call sometimes, and you never know if the back of the group will get the memo from the front of the group. Just before the turnaround today Howard flatted, and when I finally made my U-turn I was surprised to find how much smaller the group had become. I guess a lot of people turned around early, and perhaps a few stayed with the rider who had flatted early in the ride and told us to go on without him. A lot of riders are already spending a lot of time on their TT bikes because of the upcoming LAMBRA championships.

At least it was substantially cooler today. I'm sure it was below 80F when the ride started, and although we had a little bit of sunshine, by 11 am the sky was overcast and there was rain on the horizon. As I rode home down Short Street I stopped at the house on the corner with Willow that had been knocked off its piers by last year's tornado. Over the last week or so they have basically dug their way underneath it, inserted long steel I-beams and hydraulic jacks, and lifted and levelled the whole house about three feet off the ground. I'm impressed. You can still see their Christmas decorations around the front door. Anyway, I'm glad to see that work moving forward, and equally glad that they were able do avoid demolition.

Tomorrow it will have been two years since Katrina. The politicians are falling all over themselves trying to get their faces on TV. The mayor, who actually believes that it was God's plan for him to rebuild the "chocolate city" is no exception. Personally, I'm about done with the looking back part of all this and wish there was more focus on moving forward (and less on moving out). Well, except for the homeless people who have all seemed to find their way back to the city and who the city seems perfectly content to have living on the front lawn of City Hall.