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!