Wind and Water

It was a windy day today, perhaps offering a little hint of Fall. I was up rather early and took so instead of the usual mad dash to the lakefront to meet the Giro ride, I was indulged in an easy relaxing seven mile commute out the Lakeshore Drive. As I passed Elysian Fields, I noticed a rider in an unfamiliar team kit sitting on the side of the road. I asked if he was OK as I went by, and when he said he was I continued on my way, thinking he must have been waiting to meet someone. As it turned out, he was a new rider from Colombia, Jose, here for a month or so taking classes at Tulane's Business School. Somehow he had gotten confused about the start location for the Giro, but luckily the next rider who came along set him straight.

So the Giro ride was a little more tame than usual today. Mike W. was again out on a fixed gear TT bike, despite the serious wind. Also on hand today was Dan Bennett and Chris Harvey, both blasts from the past. I didn't get a chance to talk to Chris before the pace sped up, but spent a fair amount of time riding with Dan who was in town from NM for a friend's wedding. Because of the wind, riders were reluctant to stick their noses out in the wind on the way out today, and so the group stayed together with only a handful taking pulls at the front. Of course, on the way back there was a big tailwind and so eventually the speeds ramped up pretty dramatically. At one point a gap opened up and I took off to make the bridge before it got too big. When I glance down at the computer, it read 36 mph. After the Goodyear sprint Dan and I rode together off the front for a few miles until the pack finally chased us down. It was actually a pretty good ride today, and I was a bit surprised that my legs weren't feeling much of an effect from yesterday's team time trial. I rode back uptown with Jose, who seems to be a pretty good rider. Halfway home, we rode right into a big rainstorm, so I arrived back at home soaking wet. I hope my shoes dry out before tomorrow morning!

Later in the afternoon I checked my email and found a typically short note from NOBC alumna Dr. Gina Voci, casually mentioning that she'd just gotten back from Las Vegas where she placed 14th out of the 54 women who finished the "USA Cirts" final. Shontelle Gauthier, a Cajun Cyclists alumna, placed 3rd. Not too shabby, I'd say. You can read about it on Cyclingnews or Velonews. A 1 km parking lot criterium course with 6 turns --- at night! It's always neat when you know some of the riders in those high-profile races.

Musical Saddles

The five o'clock alarm launched me out of my much-needed slumber and soon I was out in the dark, clamping the roof rack to the car and loading up for Saturday's Team Time Trial. I picked up Roy right on time, and by the time we were an hour down the road I figured out there was still time for a stop at the Starbucks in Gonzalez. It would have been perfect except that they were out of brown sugar. Once we arrived at the start of the time trial we needed to track down our two teammates. As we were waiting around the registration desk we learned that the organizer had forgotten to bring along any USAC release forms, so everything was delayed for half an hour or so while some unlucky soul made a frantic trip to the nearest copy machine. At some point during this time my teammate Francis showed up looking to get onto a team. Not wanting to kick anyone off of our team at the last minute, he and I cajoled another team that was missing a rider to take him on. A few minutes after they registered we discovered that our own last-minute addition had unknowingly committed to two different NOBC teams! So now we were short one rider again, and it was too late to get Francis back. It was starting to resemble a game of Musical Saddles! So Roy, Branden and I are standing around trying to figure out what to do when Branden finds an orphaned triathlete who's looking for a team. We finally get registered and head off to get in a few miles riding together to see if we're liable to knock each other down or not. As it turned out, everyone was nice and stable and smooth, so no worries there.

We arrived at the start right on time. As the starter is giving us the ten seconds to go warning, the course monitor behind us is announcing that one of the early teams is about to come through the start/finish at the end of its first of three laps. So we end up starting just as one of the Masters teams comes flying past. Adding to the confusion, one of their riders drops off at this point and as they slow down to figure out what's going on, we pass them and get up to speed, which in this case was around 27 mph. It was a very windy day out on the course, and with the early tailwind we were soon rolling at 27-30 mph. Over the next five miles or so, the team we'd passed got its act together (sans the rider who dropped off) and we played leapfrog a few times until they finally started to gradually pull away. It worked out nicely, though, because for the next lap and a half they hovered from 15-45 seconds ahead, providing some nice motivation. Unfortunately, we lost Roy around the end of lap 1. I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised since he was the biggest rider and also the only one without a TT bike or even aero clip-on bars. The three of us who were left, though, were pretty smooth and I could already tell we'd have a respectable time. I'll admit I was pushing the pace a bit every time I'd come to the front, but Branden and Sean were riding really well and handling the changes in speed smoothly.

The last half of each lap was mostly headwind, and as we neared the end of lap 2 we could see the 3-rider Midsouth Masters team still about 45 seconds up ahead, and another 4-rider Midsouth team that they were about to pass. Well, I'm not exactly sure what happened, but around when they went past the 4-rider team there was a crash and Jaro took a pretty hard fall. Since they had only three riders, the other two had to turn around and get Jaro back on the bike. Of course, we came blasting through the area while they were still scattered all over the place, and since there was a support vehicle coming the other way we had to slow down to 22 or so as we passed. They were only a few miles from their finish, although we still had a whole lap to go, so Jaro toughed it out and finished. Looking at the results, I'd have to say that fall almost certainly cost them the gold medal in the 35+ race as well as what would have been the 2nd fastest time of the day, because we were a good 45 sec. behind when it happened, yet we finished that lap well ahead of them.

Our team kept the pressure on pretty well for the last lap, finishing with a respectable time that was 4th fastest for the day (OK, it would have been 5th fastest but for the crash) and would have gotten us silver medals in the Cat. 1,2 race if Sean hadn't been racing on a one-day license. So I thought that result was pretty good for such a ad-hoc team.

Interestingly, the women had the largest number of teams today. Courtney's team posted the fastest time, but like ours they didn't all have annual licenses so they didn't qualify for the medals. The full-NOBC women's team came in 3rd, so I think they took home the silver!

All-in-all, I really enjoyed the race. Next year, though, we'll need to start organizing the NOBC teams a lot earlier!

Coming Up for Air

It's 12:30 at night and I'm just coming up for air after a busy couple of days. In less than five hours I'll be on the road to Baton Rouge for the annual Team Time Trials and Tribulations. Things started to stack up on Wednesday when I realized that the stuff I had to have finished on Friday would actually need to be finished on Thursday because of an office "staff retreat." So I stayed up way too late Wednesday working on a paper involving three of the University's Schools, five oil companies, and the African continent. I did get in a ride on Thursday morning, although I cut it a bit short so I could work on the paper some more before going to the office. Thursday, then, was pretty heavily involved with collecting suggestions and edits from four people to whom the draft had been sent, and finally hitting the "send" button at 4:58 pm.

This morning I went out early to log a quick 20 miles and was lucky to meet up with John R., who filled me in on his recent excellent vacation to the Virgin Islands, which made me just a bit jealous but was a welcome diversion. Back at the house I finally lined up our 4th Team TT rider (nothing like waiting until the last minute, eh?) and made a few other early phone calls because the rule at the office retreat was that all cellphones and blackberries had to be checked at the door. Then I headed off for a very pleasant ride down to the French Quarter. The retreat was being held at the apartment of one of our state lobbyists, which was in the Pontalba Building overlooking Decatur Street. It was really, really nice being in the French Quarter on this nice September morning.

After walking over to Cafe' du Monde to pick up six cups of Cafe au Lait and a handful of sugar packages (for me) from the take-out window, our meeting got underway. This was the usual type of semi-structured brainstorming session, complete with whiteboards and color-coded post-it notes. It went pretty well, as did our lunch at Muriel's. Then it was back to the Pontalba Building for more brainstorming, and then, finally, we broke out the wine and booze and kicked back on the balcony. There's really nothing like being on a balcony in the French Quarter watching all of the interesting people and things down on the street. Since the Tulane-LSU football game is tomorrow (unfortunately at the same time we'll be finishing up our team time trial) there were a few more people around than usual, one of which had two big poodles who had "LSU" and "Tigers" carved into their fur. I hear that they are from Baton Rouge and are regular football fans.

I finally rode the commuter back home, after three glasses of wine, not surprisingly thoroughly enjoying the ride through town just as the sun went down. By the time I got home, the wine there was already open, there were two people on the front porch, and a flank steak waiting for me to throw onto the grill. In the meantime, Ed Novak stopped by to pick up a pedal wrench for the TT bike he'd borrowed for tomorrow's race and Ed Kendrick called to say he was going to have to back out of the team he had spent two weeks painfully putting together because of a medical problem involving his daughter. Then the dishwasher went "poof!" and blew the circuit breaker, emitting a puff of that unmistakable burned wiring smell, so I spent some time on the floor figuring out what had happened, fixing some wiring, and reassembling it. Finally, it was time to head down to the basement to bolt the aero bars onto the ol' Cervelo Prodigy and fix the flat tire on my racing wheel. So here I am, after midnight, wondering why I'm not sleepy...

Levee Drills

Things haven't been going too smoothly today. Right out of the gate this morning I found my rear tire had gone flat overnight. Since I was already running behind schedule, I grapped my racing wheel and took off, hoping I wouldn't do any damage to the relatively expensive, and thin, Michelin Pro2 Race Light tires. The group was ready and waiting when I finally arrived, and on my approach someone said "keep rolling" and the rest of the guys clipped in. We still had a nice tailwind on the way out, so we were going pretty well until we got out around River Ridge. Every year or so the levee folks check on the levee's integrity by drilling into the middle of the levee and, I presume, extracting cores for analysis. This morning we encountered a couple of big crates of drilling pipe blocking one lane, and the finally the actual drilling rig itself which provided a nice little cyclocross opportunity. Unfortunately, by the time we got to the turnaround, my rear tire -- the expensive one -- was flat. Sure enough, there was one of those tiny but surgically sharp flints embedded in the center of the tread. I don't know what kind of recycled stuff they used to make the bike path's asphalt surface, but these things have plagued the levee rides for years. Anyway, we had a good workout on the way back, and when I got to the house I decided I'd better go ahead and put a new tube in my training wheel right away, because otherwise I'd probably forget about it until the next morning. So I took a tube out of my stash of patched ones and put it in, pumped it up, and five minutes later found it flat. The clock was ticking, though, so it will have to wait until tonight. Then I stopped at the optometrist to pick up my new expensive progressive lens glasses which are sitting on my desk right now because there is no way I can use the computer with them on and it's even difficult to read with them. They said I'd have to "get used to them," but I'm not optimistic about that right now as I work with my scratched up $15 drug store reading glasses.

Soooo, I think that Brandon and I will team up for the TTT, providing we can come up with a couple more riders. We'll have to ride as a Cat. 1,2 team, though. I'm currently swamped at work with deadlines looming and an afternoon of meetings on the calendar, so the search may have to wait until tonight. It looks like there will be a criterium in Alexandria and another one in Mobile the last weekend in October, which is nice except that they are on the same day!

Reasons Unknown

Lifting one slat of the Levolors I peered out into the darkness looking for a sign. The prior night's forecast had been bleak, and rather than an internet radar check I thought today I'd rely on a look out the window. Although it was still a bit too dark to discern the degree of cloud cover, there was one thing I was looking for that would tip the balance. Aha! One bright planet and a couple of stars twinkling in the predawn sky provided ample information to get me out on the bike for the morning ride. For reasons unknown, my legs were feeling good today. Go figure. With a brisk tailwind and a handful of riders working the front we flew out to the turnaround with speeds in the upper 20s, occasionally nudging above 30. Sitting in the paceline felt easy today and when we finally turned around I was surprised to see that half of the group had dropped off the back and eased up a couple of miles earlier. Nonetheless, we all came back together eventually and the return trip into the wind was then broken up by delays for two flats. A few sections of the bike path had been wet from recent rain showers, and that's all it takes to guarantee a flat or two. As we approached the end of the ride the air, already thick with moisture, started to get a little foggy and I could feel my soaked clothes sticking to my skin. It was another bad day for the camera, so it stayed safely in its ziplock bag.

Once again I dodged the raindrops on the commute to work, spending the day looking out the window at a grey sky and occasional rain. I've got a lot of stuff to do at work today, so......

Riding in the Dry Spots

The radar this morning wasn't very encouraging, but even to my 6 am groggy brain I thought it was worth a shot. Arlow was the only person to show up on the levee, which wasn't surprising, so we headed out side by side with a light tailwind and thick clouds looming in the distance. When we got near Williams Blvd. the occasional light mist started to turn into genuine raindrops, so we turned around. Somehow we managed to avoid actually getting wet, so it turned out to have been good call. Of course, there still remained the problem of getting to work, and when I checked the radar again it wasn't looking too good. I rushed through my morning shower and took off on the commuter, arriving at work with only a few little raindrops to show for it. An hour later it was raining pretty hard and it's stayed wet ever since. Whether I'll be able to ride tomorrow morning is anybody's guess.

Meanwhile, my prospects of finding a team for next weekend's TTT aren't looking so good.

Storm Formerly Known as TD10

Well, the big storm drifted a bit north toward Mississippi Friday evening and completely disintegrated, leaving us with quite a nice weekend for riding. Unfortunately there weren't any races around here, leaving me to fend for myself with a couple of Giro Rides. Saturday's ride started out with me getting a flat before we'd even gotten off of Lakeshore Drive. Then, as the pace started to ramp up on Chef Highway, there was another flat. This time it was Courtney. Nobody really wanted to stop because we'd just picked up a nice tailwind and rest of the ride out to the turnaround was going to be fun, so I told them to go ahead and a few of us turned around to help. Once we got going again we got a little paceline together, finally turning around to join back up with the group on its way back. After the Goodyear sign sprint, we were rolling down the service road at a pretty nice clip when we passed a big chunk of something on the road. I was still trying to figure out if it had been a crumpled piece of paper or a rock when I heard a commotion behind. This time Courtney's sister Heather had a flat. I'm guessing that what I'd seen was indeed a rock and that she clipped it. Anyway, at that point about half of the group continued on and the rest of us had a nice mellow ride back.

So Sunday I'm planning to hit the Giro again, but I oversleep and don't get out of the door until about 7:05 (the ride starts at 7:00 about 7 miles away). Ordinarily, I might have just bagged it and headed out for a solo ride, but for some reason this morning I decided to take a shot at catching the group by riding through town, down Broad St., and out Chef Menteur. I figured there was at least a chance I'd meet up with the group around when it turned onto Chef. Well, I was close, anyway. About a minute and a half up the road I saw the group turning onto Chef. Damn!! So close, but so far away. I knew they'd be flying, so I just put my head down and continued plodding along until I finally saw them on the way back. I made a quick U-turn and got onto the end of a small group that was already going pretty good. Once I got over the shock of going from 20 mph to 27 mph, I looked up to see who was there. Mike Williams on a fixed-gear TT bike with nothing resembling handlebars, Howard, Jay.... Hmmmm. I figured I'd better stay out of trouble and hang out on the back for a while. Sure enough, Howard was lifting the pace into the 30s when he's hit the front and Mike was taking random flyers down the side of the paceline. One of the NOBC women's TTT teams went by in the other direction along the way, and eventually I took a couple of pulls, but with that level of disorganization we were finally caught by the rest of the group before the Goodyear sprint where I tried too late to give Brandon a little leadout. Then, as we crossed under the interstate on the service road my front tire went flat...again. (Sigh!) Maybe it's time to put those new tires on. Anyway, that delay pretty much took the wind out of our sails and we cruised in the rest of the way, except for those who hadn't stopped, of course.

It's looking like it might be wet around here tomorrow (it's raining now). Oh well, no worries. I have fenders... How come I never see bike commuters like this around here??

TD-10 Weekend

It was still relatively cool this morning, but with a slightly stronger wind out of the northeast thanks to the approaching "subtropical low" that, later in the day, was upgraded to an official Tropical Depression, now called "TD-10" unless and until it gets strong enough to be designated a Tropical Storm, at which point it would get a name. Depression indeed! Since it's looking like the whole weekend might be a wet one, it's certainly got me depressed. The tracking on this one seems to be rather ambiguous, so much will depend on whether its elusive center goes north or south of the city. Right now, though, the sun is out and the temperature is only 85F, and as long as we continue to get that nice northern air streaming in, it should remain fairly pleasant. Although the local government agencies are all excited at the opportunity to exercise their new improved disaster plans, I'm not really expecting this storm to cause much trouble. The University has already sent out a few email and telephone updates via its new emergency communication system, and the governor has declared a state of emergency and has evacuation busses at the ready (which might be needed down near the gulf coast if the tides get too high). Still, I think there's still a chance we could get in a ride in the morning if we're lucky, although I guess Yom Kippur will keep some folks at home where they'll be busy not eating. As a kid growing up in a predominantly Catholic town, I always found it funny that we were supposed to not eat meat on Fridays, but that fish had been officially declared "not meat." As a result, the Friday "fast" usually consisted of a big family, or multi-family trip to a local seafood restaurant where we stuffed ourselves with fried catfish and french fries, and played with the claw machines, while our parents feasted on raw oysters and Jax beer. Most of the smaller local restaurants in town still have special seafood dishes like seafood gumbo on Friday. Then there's also the traditional red beans and rice on Mondays because that was wash day and red beans and rice was cheap and easy to prepare and could simmer slowly for hours unattended. You can bet that virtually any little business lunch restaurant or cafeteria will have RB&R on Monday and Seafood Gumbo on Friday. But I digress...

Although there were just three or four of us on hand for this morning's levee ride, the speed somehow kept creeping up to 24 mph despite both the relentless crosswind and my best efforts to take it easy. It was OK, though, because with only three guys in the rotation it's easy to find a good draft in a crosswind, even on such a narrow strip of asphalt. Anyway, I'm guessing I might have a tough call to make in the morning about whether to head out to the lakefront or not for the Giro Ride.

Morning Lights

For the past couple of weeks it's seemed that every morning it has been noticeably darker at 6 than the day before. It always feels that way this time of year, and it always brings me down a bit. The basement door faces southeast, and when I opened it this morning the brightest light, aside from the amber streetlamps, was the planet Venus. With blinky lights flashing, I started off in the direction of the levee, but there was something different today. My hand reached for my jersey zipper and I realized it was actually, legitimately, "cool." OK, so I knew it wouldn't last another hour, but even so, it was the coolest it's been since Spring for sure. As I approached the meeting spot on the river I could see all of the other blinky lights as they converged from every direction. You know, it's amazing enough that I manage to drag myself out of bed so early in the morning on a regular basis, but it's even more amazing that so many other people do too and that most of them have to get up a lot earlier than I.

So the long Thursday ride was pretty good today. I guess we had upwards of fifteen riders for much of the distance out to Ormond, and with a little bit of a tailwind, the pace going out there stayed rather brisk. On the way back we were really feeling the effects of a crosswind, which always makes for a difficult ride on the narrow and unprotected bike path, especially when there's oncoming traffic and we have to yield to the centerline rule.

It was a busy day at work today and I felt like I spent most of it putting out little fires and basically spinning my wheels. Deadlines that didn't exist yesterday loom overhead and overdue reports are being postponed. The one interesting thing was an email from a rider in D.C. named Lothar who will be in town for a few days in November (naturally I will be out of town -- in D.C. -- at the same time). He's a "Randonneur," that odd breed of cyclist obsessed as much with distance as the racers are with speed, although both seem to share the same sick relationship with suffering. They all seem to like wearing vintage style jerseys and riding in the dark. His wife, who is an MD,Ph.D, is considering a position at Tulane and I presume she'll be in town for interviews and meetings and also to see if its a place where they would want to live. That's always a big consideration for prospective faculty these days. It's only natural for people, and especially the media, to simplify their images of the city, and so for every story you read about the unique and wonderful atmosphere along, for example, Magazine Street or St. Charles Avenue, there are twenty about the lagging recovery of the 9th ward, the murder rate, or retold stories of the immediate aftermath of the hurricane. I'm certain there are people who think there's still water in the streets. Anyway, this guy did Paris-Brest-Paris this year, which is the holy grail for long-distance riders. You should check out the photos and ride report and consider whether you'd take on the challenge of riding 1,227 km in the rainy French countryside with a 90-hour time cut hanging over your head.

Yeah, I heard about the Landis decision. I can't say I was surprised. I'm disappointed on many levels. Take it from someone who has lived his whole life in a city often referred to as a "banana republic;" there's a heap of big ego political crap going on in the background among UCI, WADA, USADA, and much of it falls into the "personal vendetta" category. Surely they must realize that their chest-thumping and bickering is setting the stage for the emergence of an entirely new rival pro racing organization.

On the local scene, there are a bunch of photos from last weekend's time trial, and Kenny sent me a few more of the Herring guys, none of which I've had a chance to link to from the websites. I've still got to update the LCCS points as well and make the police arrangements for Rocktoberfest, but at least the post-event reports will be in the mail tomorrow, the results have been uploaded to USAC and posted to the websites, and I've inventoried the medals to make sure I have enough for the TTT. The team time trial is in a week and a half and everybody I've checked with is either already on a team or unavailable. That's the thing I hate about team time trials. Nobody ever wants to ride with the short guy!

Impatient Driver

Although our mid-day temperatures have remained fairly high, the mornings lately have been really nice around here. Since I'd gotten a bit more than my usual five hours of sleep last night, I was on the bike a few minutes early today, so I allowed myself the luxury of an easy spin out to the levee in the cool morning air. The Wednesday group started out pretty small, but we picked up a lot of people along the way, easily doubling in size. As things started to pick up, I finally pulled off the front and dropped all the way back to the end of the line, latching onto Bob Perrin's wheel as we cruised up the river at a nice 23 mph. Bob then started letting the other riders, who were coming back from taking pulls at the front, ahead of him. Ordinarily, I would have gone around him to keep myself in the rotation, but this morning I just moved over out of his draft every now and then and basically took my pulls at the back. After the turnaround, things got a little bit faster despite the wind, and taking a pull at the front began to resemble actual exercise, which was, of course, a good thing. At some point we picked up Lenny, who I hadn't seen on a bike in quite a while. When we were still out near the turnaround and the pace was easy he told me that he'd just gotten engaged. Richard was alongside at the time and immediately came back with "when's her due date?" Those lawyers sure are quick!

So on the way back I took a few upside-down shots of our little paceline since it was such a nice day and also to document seeing Lenny in his Brooklyn jersey on his bike! That long shadow in the first one is mine.

We were almost all the way back when my cellphone rang. I sat up and fished it out of its plastic bag as the group rolled off into the distance. It was the sister-in-law letting me know she'd dropped her cat off at my house because the house-raising folks were going to move her FEMA trailer this morning so they could get started, finally, with the job of restoring her home. So I rode the last couple of miles alone.

After releasing the visiting cat from his crate (he ran straight to the relative safety of the dark space underneath the living room couch) and scarfing down some breakfast I hopped on the old commuter bike for the trip to work. It's not quite cool enough yet for me to ride in to work with my dress shirt on, but it's getting close. As it was, though, it was quite pleasant as I made my way quietly down Fontainbleau, and I was feeling very sedate and relaxed when a car pulled up alongside. As it passed, the woman who was driving screamed something unintelligible at me through the open window and past the somewhat embarassed man sitting in the passenger seat. I looked over as she passed and said "What??" So she hits the brake, and as I come alongside again screams at me that she almost hit me because I didn't give her enough room. I'm sure it was at the spot where I have to navigate around a pile of crushed rocks left by our city's infamous "pothole killer" truck, which comes just before a bunch of un-killed potholes that I also have to avoid, but of course I'd still left plenty of room for a car - at least one with a normal driver - to pass on this residential street with its 25 mph speed limit. All of this was still kind of sinking in as the woman hit the gas again and I was left wondering what her problem was, at least until I saw the license plate ... Texas. No further explanation necessary.

K-Ville

The Tuesday levee ride. It was harder than I'd expected, largely thanks to Matt and Todd who were pushing the pace a bit. Every time they'd come off the front, we'd slow down a couple of miles per hour. It was a good workout nonetheless. For some reason I spent the rest of the day totally dragged out. Perhaps I'm coming down with something. I dunno.

So right now I'm watching the first episode of K-Ville. The only thing good I can say about it is that they at least didn't have all the actors speaking with fake Cajun or Atlanta accents. The rest of the plot is pretty much pure bull. You should never watch a movie company's version of something that's supposed to be shot in your own city because you notice all of the things that are wrong - like car chases that start in the French Quarter and end two minutes later on the westbank without ever crossing the river. Suffice it to say that I am not impressed. The plot is terrible. The acting, however, is not too bad. The fact that everybody seems to have a Cajun last name, however, is just stupid. Basically, it's just another show that goes to great lengths to perpetuate the stereotype in order to sell advertising.

Meanwhile, the sister-in-law's contractor is finally ready to get to work on the very first step in restoring her house on Willow Street. They have to get a few steel I-beams under the house so it can be raised a few feet. In order to do that, they will need to move the FEMA trailer in which she's been living for the last couple of years. So the bottom line is that her cat will be visiting for a day or so until they get that done. The Wife is up in Boston for a couple of days at a meeting, so this evening I'm finishing off a bottle of Clos du Bois merlot and putting off the many items atop my long to-do list, not the least of which is a summary of Tulane-LSU interactions for an upcoming meeting between the President of Tulane and the recently appointed President of the LSU system. When I ran into one of our senior administrators in the elevator today, he suggested I just find a photo of a bunch of LSU football players piling-on atop a lone Tulane football player. That's kind of how we feel sometimes. Well, OK, it's how we feel most of the time.

On the plus side, it's exciting that they are finally moving forward on fixing up the house that was flooded from the bottom and then had roof damage too. Add to that the fact that she had to sue the insurance company to get them to pay for the damage caused by the roof, and the fact that her husband died of lung cancer about a year before the hurricane, and the fact that everything she owns is currently in my basement, and you can understand why it's exciting to see some movement on the house repairs!

Hinting of Fall

Down here in New Orleans, Fall can be a very fickle season; and I use the term "season" in its loosest sense. What usually happens is that we get random two or three-day doses of beautiful Fall-like weather spread out over October and November, interspersed with a gradually cooling mugginess. In a way, it makes those brief hints of Fall weather even better. You know, like the way you feel better when you stop beating your head on a brick wall, or the way the guys in Boulder feel when it stops snowing for a few days in January. Sometimes, we even get a little hint of Fall in September, as we did yesterday and this morning. By now, though, it's all but gone, albeit leaving in its wake welcome highs that are, at least, under 90F.

This morning's levee ride consisted of only Arlow and me. It was a shame, because it was nice a cool, with a more moderate breeze than yesterday and a nearly deserted bike path. I suppose that the weekend's weather was so nice that most people spent the whole time outdoors riding bikes, running, walking, and not repainting kitchens, so by Monday morning there wasn't enough fitness guilt to get them out of bed early. So anyway, the two of us did a nice easy two-abreast ride as I passed on dubious cycling wisdom to another unsuspecting victim. Actually, I think the guy's got some real racing potential. I'll have to remember to get some contact info (like his actual name?) from him because apparently he doesn't have a computer and probably would have done the time trial Sunday if he'd had the information and registration had been more readily available.

This morning I checked on Young Dan's blog to see if he had made his first post from Austin. It looks like he is still successfully resisting suburban assimilation as he lingers porchless in the land of 2-car garages and dead-end streets with names like Willowbrook, waiting for his new house to be finished. I hope his resistance will not prove futile.

Forty K Day

I'm not exactly sure when kilometers went from being Km to simply K. If I said I'd give you 40K you'd think I meant forty thousand, right? Somehow, though, when you're talking about a race distance, K=kilometers. Doesn't make sense, but hey, I can live with it. So today was the La/Ms state time trial championship, conveniently being held about half an hour from home. Since Courtney had graciously lent me her Cervelo TT bike, I figured I couldn't escape riding this one. So yesterday morning I'd gone out and ridden 30 miles or so on it, solo. For those who might be just now tuning in, 30 miles does not a time trial training program make. Then again, I can't remember any time in the last 35-plus years when I actually trained for a time trial. I've always considered them necessary evils. Sort of like getting a rather painful medical test that usually confirms that you're in worse shape than you'd hoped.

A little cool front had come through on Saturday, so Sunday morning when I arrived at the TT location to help with registration (I was also the Chief Ref for this one), it was a little cooler and trier than usual and a whole lot windier. Any hopes I'd had for a personal best were blown right out the window for sure. Fortunately, I didn't have any such hopes, so no worries there. Registration went exceedingly smoothly since there actually wasn't any. Pre-registration had been required for this event, so people just had to pick up their race numbers and a few of them had to get one-day licenses. I wandered over to the motor home that was serving as Midsouth Masters' headquarters to set up the computer so it would be ready for results when I finished riding.

The time trial felt pretty hard - harder than my lackluster time of 59:01 would suggest, anyway. There was a pretty stiff headwind all the way out, although for the first mile or two it was more of a crosswind. The starter said "go" and off I went. The first time I glanced at the computer it said 27 mph. I thought that seemed a little high, but I also thought how nice it would be if I could keep it in that general vicinity. By the time I hit two miles I was down to about 25 and already questioning why I was doing this. Luckily, my minute man was teammate Jorge Perera, who was going just the slightest bit slower than I, which is the best kind of minute man to have, I think. So all the way out I battled the headwind, just barely edging closer to Jorge. When I hit the unprotected area about midway out, the wind hit me like a wall and my speed dropped down to 22 mph for a little while. That was pretty depressing, and I struggled to maintain speeds of 24-25 most of the rest of the way. After the turnaround, though, the tailwind was noticeable and it was easy to hold 27. I probably should have, could have, gone faster, but it had been so long since I'd done a TT, I really had no confidence, so my speed fluctuated between 26 and 30 all the way back and I ended up coming across the line one second behind Jorge. So I came in 3rd in the 50-54 age group, which was only 5 seconds out of first, but wasn't even in the same zip code as the fastest time of the day, which was Bain Foote's 52:49. I have to admit, although I might be able to dream of a 40km TT time of something like 57 minutes, I cannot even relate to the sustained speed and power needed to turn in a sub-53 minute TT on a day when the trees were bending in the wind.

I headed for the water cooler, dumped a cupful of water over my face, changed out of my antique skinsuit and headed to the motorhome to start on the results. It turned out to be a lot more confusing than I'd hoped because they hadn't been writing down the actual start times, which meant that as I was switching between fifteen or so separate spreadsheets in the results workbook I had to make sure I was getting the start times right. Luckily some of the riders in the motorhome knew their own times and I could use that as a crosscheck to confirm that I hadn't gotten off by a minute one way or the other. We got everything wrapped up around 1:00 and I headed home where I spent the next few hours setting up the results website, uploading results to the USAC Results & Rankings system, etc. After a long break for dinner at my mother's place that included ice cream and cake in celebration of my niece's birthday, I came home and filled out the post-event paperwork, fixed a couple of minor problems on the website, fired off a few emails, and so here it is almost midnight and I still haven't taken a shower. Maybe I should do that now...

Yesterday's News

With a tropical storm pounding the Texas gulf coast, the weather forecast for New Orleans was not looking so good Thursday morning, but it wasn't raining (yet) so I pushed the little buttons on the blinky lights and headed off the the rendezvous on the levee. Attendance was a little bit below normal, but not by much, and although there was a little sprinkle of rain along the bike path, it thankfully came and went while we were still way upriver. So I got back to the house without being rained on, which was good, but a few minutes later the skies opened up and a rather severe rainstorm came through, complete with gusting winds and torrential rain. I checked the radar and saw that it was fairly isolated, and that the big band of rain associated with the tropical storm was still a good hour away. Once the rain stopped I packed up the messenger bag with my dress shirt, adding a pair of socks just in case I got wet during the commute. As usual, I threw in a cold coke wrapped in a paper towel to cool me off after I arrived at work. The streets were wet but when I got to work I was pleased that I'd successfully slipped in between thunderstorms without getting wet. When I reached into my bag to pull out my shirt, however, I had a surprise. Somehow the coke can had punctured and half the coke had leaked out, only to be absorbed by my shirt. On the plus side, since the shirt had soaked up all the coke the rest of the bag was dry. On the minus side, I spent all morning at work wearing my "Racing Rapides" T-shirt until I could get the car from The Wife to drive back to the house for a replacement. By then it was storming big-time and I ended up getting that fresh shirt wet anyway.



When I checked the GeoVisitors button at the bottom of the blog yesterday I noticed there had been a visitor from the middle of the Indian Ocean, a few hundred miles east of Madagascar. It looks like Realdo must be up and running over there in Mauritius!



This morning I'd planned on taking Courtney's TT bike out again, but it looked like it might rain (it didn't) so I rode the road bike instead. There were just a few of us up there today and we had a pretty easy spin, although things did ramp up a bit toward the end. Somewhere on the way back Russell Bernard slipped into the paceline on a nice Cervelo. I'd heard a rumor that he had recently bought a new bike. Russell's in this photo from 1984, taken in front of his house as we got the team van loaded up for the Race Across Louisiana.

Test Pilot

With the La/Ms Individual Time Trial Championship coming up this weekend, I thought I should probably actually take a test ride on the TT bike that Courtney lent me. Ordinarily I'd just bolt a set of aero clip-ons onto my road bike about half an hour before the start, remove my water bottle cages, and go for it. I figured that the transition to Courtney's Cervelo P2 might require a little more acclimation, however. Since the bike has almost the exact same saddle height as my road bike, all I needed to do was take the pedals off the road bike and put them onto the TT bike. Naturally, that was a problem. My pedal wrench is so beat up and worn out, and my pedals so well welded into my crankarms after being bathed in sweat for six years, that they didn't want to come off, so, pending a trip to the bike shop for a new wrench, I went to Plan "B" and installed my antique Shimano/Look (aka "Lance Armstrong") pedals. They don't mate quite properly with the more modern "red" Look cleats that I use, but they're close enough for a training ride.

The first thing I noticed was that I couldn't read the stem-mounted computer without moving my head down, which of course means sticking the tail of my TT helmet up in the wind, so I'll have to move that onto the aero bar somewhere because without a computer to keep me honest my time trials tend to turn into sightseeing tours. The only other thing I noticed was that the saddle is tilted down a bit too much for me. I must say, I really liked being able to shift without getting off of the aero bars! That was a whole new experience! I thought it was interesting that I didn't really notice any difference with the non-round Rotor Q Ring chainring (or whatever brand it is) or the 650c wheels. Anyway, I'm sure that once I put on the TT wheels I'll go faster, if only in my own mind...

The current issue of CityBusiness has a short article on the proposed bike paths along with one of my levee ride photos. I thought it was funny to read that they think that they can put a striped 4-foot bike lane down Magazine Street! Who are they kidding? You can *barely* drive a car down Magazine Street. Of course if they eliminate parking, that would make for the necessary space, but with all the businesses on Magazine and no viable alternative parking, the chance of that happening is about the same as a snowball's chance in hell. I noticed that the reporter ditched all of my negative comments about the city's previous abortive attempts at metro bike lanes that mostly represented innovative ways of reprogramming federal funds to other uses (or pockets). That's OK. I understand the motivation to keep the spin positive.

Some more photos from Pepper Place. Damn, I look so friggin' old.

Getting Dark on the Levee

It was a bit cooler and a lot darker this morning when I met the 6:15 group. By the time we head out the lights are almost unnecessary, but I know that within a couple of weeks that won't be the case and I'll be anxiously awaiting the end of October when we ditch Daylight Savings Time and get that extra hour of partial light in the mornings. There was a good number of riders today and although the pace going out was quite respectable, it wasn't one of those flat-out, sweat dripping off your nose kinds of days. That was a good thing because despite two whole days off the bike (I totally overslept yesterday) my legs were still feeling a little tired from Saturday night's punishment.

A lot of riders, maybe half the group, turned around early this morning, and although the pace stayed fast out to the turnaround, the return trip was mellow by comparison. With a light headwind we spent most of our time in the 24 mph neighborhood, at least until Keith flatted. When he did, he dropped back down the left side and for some reason caught some of the riders in the back by surprise. Anyway, just a handful of us stopped, as often happens when someone flats on the return trip. It kind of looked like a class on flat-fixing there for a while as everyone stood there watching and offering suggestions like "put the tire label where the valve hole is." It was kind of funny. Despite all the advice, the flat got fixed and we were on our way pretty quickly.

After that I was on my way to an eye doctor appointment that was about five years overdue and ended up dropping about $600 on the exam and a new pair of glasses since I'm now in bifocal territory. I mean, if they have Ti frames, how can I settle for anything else? Anyway, the outrageous price really stings and I guess I'll be eating a bit more rice for the next month or two. Hopefully these will hold me for a few years.

Meanwhile, folks are getting ready for next weekend's La./Ms. Time Trial Championships and a couple of sets of photos from the Pepper Place Criterium have begun to surface:

(One set; Another set). I don't think the results have been posted anywhere yet, though.

I'm a Pepper

An easy 5- hour drive got Tim and me to Birmingham, AL for the Pepper Place Criterium on Saturday. For a first-year event, these folks had the area pretty well set up, although for some reason they'd set up the judges tent on the left side of the finish straight, across the road and half a block away from the registration and results desk. Tim spotted a good parking spot that offered a bit of shade and I sauntered off to register for the 4 pm Master's race. I had just replaced my badly worn out chain and cassette the night before and as I warmed up I couldn't get over how much smoother everything felt. The Masters race had a good-sized field for the 45-minute event and I pulled up to the starting line alongside Woody, the only other New Orleans rider there. The race started out pretty fast with a number of attacks, helped along considerably by the extraordinarily liberal sprinkling of $100 and $75 primes being announced every few laps. We weren't very far into the race when one of the prime sprints caused a bit of a gap to open up between the sprinters and the pack, and from my ever-vigilant perspective back in the group it looked like they might make a run for it. I took off in pursuit, diving through turn #1 and bouncing through #2, and as I closed in on them I could see they had already eased up. Not wanting to have wasted the effort completely, I rolled past and kept the speed up, joined by only one rider. The pack seemed reluctant to chase and within a couple of laps we had a little group of four and a growing gap. When the announcer rang the bell for a $100 prime, Jim Brock took a quick survey and we decided to split the prime and keep working together. Our break started working together pretty well and the gap continued to grow. Then, for some reason, one of the riders in our break suddenly sat up and waved us by. I never knew exactly what had happened there, but I guess he was suddenly feeling bad. Anyway, at that point it was just Jim Brock (Alabama Masters, Birmingham), Darrell O'quin (BooKoo, Birmingham) and me. When we got down to the last few laps I could tell Jim was starting to shorten his pulls in anticipation of the sprint. Personally, I was just happy that I wouldn't be able to do worse than third. On the last lap Darrell did most of the pulling with Jim on his wheel casting frequent glances over his shoulder at me (as if there was any chance I was going for an early sprint!). The finish straight was a four lane wide, 300 meter long drag race that Jim won handily with me and second and Darrell in third. Since Darrell was the youngster in the group, he won the 35+ race.

The next one was F A S T. The Pro/1/2/3 race didn't start until 8 pm and with a field of maybe 40 or 45 riders, a prizelist of over $1,200, and a bucket load of serious cash primes, I was already braced some brutal punishment as I rolled up to the line. The officials announced a special $460 prime that had been collected in memory of a young cyclist, and we were off into the darkness like we'd been shot out of a cannon. On hand, among others, were Tim and Scott from Herring, Eric Murphy and his teammate, a few of the Myogenesis guys from GA, etc. My strategy was focused entirely on survival for this one. Within 45 seconds we'd rounded turn #2 and when I glanced down at the computer it read 32 mph., which is pretty much where it stayed for the first five or six laps. On the second lap they rang the bell for a $100 prime. Way, way up ahead, I saw Tim take that one. A lap or two later they rang the bell again for the $460 prime. Tim and Scott were up there going for it and I think it was Scott who won it. Cha-ching! Another prime a couple of laps later and a group of 5 was suddenly off the front. Meanwhile, I was way back near the end of a two block long line of riders and just completely and totally on the rivet. At every corner I'd have to brake, round the corner, and stand up and literally sprint. The accordion effect was in full force and I knew if I stayed there too much longer I'd get whipped off the pack for sure. Finally there was a little lull as it became apparent that the break was not going to be caught and I took the opportunity to move up near the front on the long back straight. Finally I could swing through the turns more smoothly without having to sprint after each one. We were still going plenty fast (our average speed for the hour-long race was a bit under 28 mph) and I could recover a little bit. My focus now was on staying up in the front ten or twelve riders, and it was by no means an easy task. There were a number of attacks and little breakaways the whole time and despite my best efforts, every now and then I'd get streamed by a bunch of riders and go from the front dozen to back dozen. Then I'd have to fight my way back up near the front. Around mid-way through the race Scott crashed between turns three and four, but he was back in the pack after taking his free lap. Finally I saw the 3-to-go card go up. For about a lap I was in a great spot about six riders from the front, then with with a lap and a half to go we were swarmed and I spent half of the bell lap trying to get back up near the front along with about twenty other desperate riders. In the pack sprint that, for me, topped out at around 36 mph, I ended up a bit ahead of mid-pack even though I had deployed the dreaded 12-tooth cog, which got me the last paying place, 20th. Tim's 5-rider break had a couple of Pro riders in it and Tim was rather frustrated when, on the last lap, they let Jon, the Myogenesis rider, roll off the front forcing him to chase. Tim ended up 4th, which was pretty excellent by my standards, but he was a little disappointed because his legs had been feeling really good and he thought he would have done better if they hadn't eased up during the last few laps to keep from lapping the pack.

As I was cooling down I rolled past the start-finish and spotted Gina V, who had ridden in the Cat. 1,2 women's race (which had only 10 riders despite a $1,200 prizelist and probably another thousand in primes). Somehow I'd missed seeing her in that little field as we were warming up for the Pro/1/2/3 race. I think Debbie Milne probably took most of the prizes home all by herself. So anyway it was nice to catch up with Gina since I hadn't seen her since before Katrina when she moved to Atlanta. Sounds like they are working her pretty hard at Grady Memorial, but you know she's really enjoying it and somehow at the same time still racing.

Results took a long time and we didn't roll out of B'ham until nearly 11 pm, which meant a long but smooth drive back to NOLA, arriving around 4:30 am. It was a fun race and I was really glad that Tim had called me and offered the ride. I think Tim and Scott probably took around $900 home from that one, and I was pretty happy with a bit over $200 to cover that new cassette and chain and a tank of gas!

Oh, and the reason the title of today's blog is "I'm a Pepper?" Well, Pepper Place is a city development project centered around the old Dr. Pepper bottling plant near downtown Birmingham.

Verona

Summer rain tapping on my window in the pre-dawn hours was all the excuse I needed. As I drifted off back to sleep I was already planning a morning stop at the local Starbucks and hoping they were brewing my favorite dark roast, Cafe' Verona. A few hours later, my official stainless steel travel cup in hand, I was rewarded when I saw it on the chalkboard. Verona always reminds me of my two months of Katrina exile in Jackson, LA. We would travel all the way in to Baton Rouge to get coffee to make at the house in the mornings before work. It was one of the few real luxuries we allowed ourselves at the time, and even now that first sip takes me back to the house on College St. and the basement office the hospital. Two years later they've just started to rebuild my local bank branch office and the local news is still dominated by Katrina-related stories, but on the university front things are definitely looking up. Fall freshman enrollment at Tulane, and indeed at most of the area universities, exceeded expectations, and faculty recruitment, although challenging, no longer seems such an impossible task. Research funding at Tulane for FY '07 was up - much better than expected - although considering the lag time involved and faculty loss we're a little worried about what this fiscal year will ultimately look like. The bottom line, though, was that even with a significantly smaller faculty size, Tulane's research community has been able to not only sustain, but actually increase the amount of research funding (i.e. grants) it can attract.

I got an email from Tim a little while ago offering a ride up to the Pepper Place Criterium in B'ham, and I'm thinking I will go. He'll certainly need some company for the long drive back home after the 8 pm Cat. 1,2,3 race. It seems like forever since I've raced. Last night I decided to set the saddle height on Courtney's Cervelo TT bike she's lending me for the upcoming LAMBRA time trial, so I broke out the old metric tape measure and was surprised to find that her saddle height was precisely the same, down the the millimeter, as mine. Granted, I may ultimately need to make some adjustment because of the steep TT bike seat tube angle, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's not necessary.

So anyway, I seem to be feeling kind of optimistic this morning. It's probably just the Verona.

Curve Balls

So the conversation last night went something like this. "Can you take me to the airport tomorrow morning?" "Sure. What time do you need to be there?" "Five." "A.M.???" "Can you set the alarm for 4:00? Don't worry, you won't have to get up until 4:30."

Oh, and I was sleeping so soundly when the alarm sounded this morning! Half-asleep I drove out to the airport on the deserted streets, dropping off The Wife at the appointed time, and arriving back home around 5:30. With a good 45 minutes to kill before the Wednesday levee ride, I fired up the laptop and bought a ticket to Colorado Springs for the annual USA Cycling Local Associations' Meeting in November. It was not cheap even with two months of lead time. Another curve ball.

The sun hadn't come up yet and I could already tell I was losing my grip on the day. My quads were sore for some reason and they took a long time to loosen up, but the ride was nice today with a light tailwind all the way out to the turnaround.

We're half-way back and my cellphone rings. The wife's at the airport and Courtney is supposed to drop off her TT bike after the ride for me to try out, so I pull out of the paceline and fumble for the plastic ziplock bag holding the incessantly ringing phone. By the time my sweaty hands get the ziplock open it's already either gone to voicemail or the caller has hung up. I don't have my sunglasses with the reading lenses in them and I can't tell who the caller was, except that I can make out that the name is too long for it to have been The Wife. I stuff it all back into my pocket and sprint back up to the group. I immediately get stung by a wasp on my shoulder. As I'm riding back through the neighborhood to the house I return the call and find out it was the neighbor who had hit the wrong speed dial button.

Back at home I have about fifteen minutes to remove the bee stinger from my arm, shower, shave and get dressed before Courtney shows up with her Cervelo TT bike. It looks like it will fit pretty well, but I don't have time to deal with it, so it finds a place in the hallway as I throw a wrinkled shirt on the ironing board. Before I leave I make a quick check of my email and there's a note from Keith about the arrangements for the Rocktoberfest race in City Park. It's basically going to cost us close to Four Grand to use our own public park for this event. We can swing it, barely, thanks to a donation from Cox Communications, but we could really use another sponsor or two to be on the safe side. We could also use City Park to cut us some slack. I mean, the course is nice but some of the road surface is in disrepair, to say the least, so we're going to be paying also for the privilege of fixing the park's street too. I'm quite certain that some years back we shut down a square mile of the French Quarter for half a day for that amount. Back at work and I'm still trading emails about the race and insurance and stuff when another curveball comes my way. I get an email from Laura about an article that someone is writing for CityBusiness about bike routes in New Orleans. That turns into a long telephone dissertation on the evils of bad bike route design, web searches for various documents like the Regional Planning Commission's Bicycle Master Plan (into which the bike club had some significant input), and finally a trip downstairs with my camera to snap a couple of photos of the bike rack in front of the building as today's free-lance photographer so they'll have something for their 5 pm deadline.

In the midst of all of this I get the following depressing news from the folks in Mobile, AL:

I was not sure if anyone outside of the Mobile area had heard of the recent deaths of 2 cyclists here in our area. They were hit Monday morning around 9:00 am by a 19 year old driver who was drunk and went around a turn on a rural road in Baldwin County and struck both cyclists killing them. The 19 year old driver was charged with Manslaughter 2 years ago for hitting and killing another cyclist in Fairhope. He is now being charged with 2 counts of murder for the deaths of these two cyclists. We are having a "Ride of Silence" honoring these guys Saturday at 3:00 pm over in Baldwin County. We are trying to gather as many people as possible to come ride to support not only these families but the movement to make the roads here safer. I know it is a good drive for much of the LAMBRA guys and girls but just in case your were going to be over this way Saturday, i felt i should post this. Thanks for the support.

Nineteen years old and he's killed three cyclists. He kills a cyclist two years ago and he's back on the road? Maybe this time they will get the message and lock him up somewhere. We can only hope.

That bee sting is still killing me, too. Be careful out there...

Compromise

I awoke just a few minutes before the alarm, as I often do, and briefly contemplated the start of another work week and the Monday training ride. It dawned on me rather quickly, though, that this particular work week was beginning on a Tuesday, which meant a long ride and an early start. After three long morning rides in a row, I'd have to think about this one. Somehow it just didn't seem worth the effort of rushing off in the semi-darkness today, so instead I decided on a compromise, and stayed in bed a few minutes longer. Eventually a plan came together and I headed out the door half an hour after the ride had started. When that little voice inside tells me to take it easy and enjoy the morning I sometimes actually listen.

So I spun the small ring up the river at fifteen miles per hour, happily ringing my little bell at the pedestrians who seemed genuinely grateful for the advance warning. Indeed, the sound of a bicycle bell is infinitely less threatening than a loudly shouted "On Your Left!" A few rough calculations told me that I should be seeing the group on its return trip somewhere near The Dip. Before that, however, three or four of the guys, who I assume had started with the group, passed me going the other way. Presumably they had turned around early. For a moment I wondered if maybe only a handful had showed up for the ride and that the group I was expecting didn't actually exist. Then, rather suddenly, I spotted the long single-file line heading my way. I could tell by the way they were strung out that they were going at a pretty good clip, so I made an early U-turn and gradually ramped up my own speed. I've learned that you need to be going at least 22 mph to avoid being streamed by a paceline like that and subsequently spit off the back. By the time they overtook me I was going just the right speed to slip smoothly down the side of the paceline and into the draft. Isn't it great when a plan comes together like that? Of course, as I was dropping back half of the guys had to remind me that I'd been late. I guess I should just be thankful that none of them attacked as I was caught!

So it was a nice smooth ride back in to town and I arrived home feeling like I'd given the Recovery Gods their due while still respecting my own obsessive-compulsive disorders.

What I Needed

When Keith called me Sunday evening to let me know there would be a little Northshore training ride on Monday, I thought, "That's just what I need." The prospect of three Giro Rides in a row was a little daunting, for any number of reasons, and I was only too happy to have a viable alternative dropped in my lap. And so Monday morning found me at Starbucks ordering a small dark roast and a cranberry scone for the trip across the causeway. I put the car on cruise control, sipped my coffee, and watched the sun rise over the water.

With only six of us on hand, the ride was brisk but smooth and although my legs were most definitely feeling the effects of the prior weekend's back-to-back Giro Rides, it was a nice treat to be out in Pine Tree territory for a few hours. I guess it's been quite a few weeks since I had a nice ride out in the rolling hills north of the lake, and so it was particularly nice. I must say that I was a little bit concerned about the town of Abita Springs. They're in the process of putting in a fancy-schmancy traffic intersection, complete with concrete curbs and turn lanes. I'm sure for them it's a sign of progress, but for me it's a sign of impending urbanization. Change is hard...

Since we rode fewer than 60 miles today, I was back home rather early, so I decided to do a little plumbing, which somehow seemed rather fitting for Labor Day. The kitchen sink drain was starting to leak a bit, so I removed the whole disintegrating thing and headed over to Harry's Hardware. Well, Harry had almost everything I needed except for the odd reduction compling that mated the 1.5 inch drain pipe to the 2 inch waste pipe. Just to make it more interesting, none of the various pipes was level or plumb, or even lined up with each other. The fact that it took this plumbing abomination so many years to actually leak is a minor miracle. So anyway, after two trips to Harry's and finally a trip out to Lowe's I came up with a rubber and hose-clamp coupling that did the trick, which was nice since the alternative would have been a day or two without a functional kitchen sink.

Sunday News

It's quite quiet in the neighborhood today. I suppose a lot of the students, as well as the regular residents, are off on little labor day vacations of one sort or another. For me, though, it was just another Sunday and another Giro Ride. I'd thought that, under the circumstances, today's ride would be really mellow. Indeed, the group was relatively small and the pace was mostly within reason, but nonetheless it was most definitely not an easy day. I hate it when I have it in my head that it will be an easy ride and it's not. It makes it really hard to get into the ride. I kept alternating between working and sucking wheels. Mostly the latter. As often happens on these kinds of rides, I was more motivated toward the end of the ride than the beginning. Somewhere between Venetian Isles and home the old odometer passed 69,000 miles. Six and a half years is a long time for a bike computer to survive, so now it's become more of a science experiment than a computer. Unless some disaster befalls it, it'll surely make 70k miles well before the end of the year. Anyway, although the ride today generated a few little breakaways and had its share of fast sections, the bulk of the group stayed together to the end for a change. It probably helped a bit that we started out with overcast clouds that kept the sun off our backs for an extra hour or so before the sky finally cleared. As I was riding back uptown with Big Richard he commented how unusual it was that he hadn't run out of water yet.

I was pretty wasted by the time I arrived back at the old homestead, and after refilling the tank I took to the couch for a couple of hours of R&R. After that, though, it was a few hours of painting. I've been repainting the old kitchen cabinets, most of which -- the doors and drawers at least -- are down in the basement. After stripping, sanding, priming, and painting, I think I'm almost done with the damned things. Sometimes its a challenge to keep the sweat from dripping into the paint while working down there. By the time I'd finished today I had a headache, probably from a combination of dehydration and toxic fumes.

So tomorrow I'm going across the lake for a badly needed ride in the country. Hopefully my legs still have enough life left in them to handle a long ride in the hills.