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...