Into the Headlights

Slowly, tortuously, kicking and screaming, it seems that Fall is finally inching its way south. Granted, the New Orleans riders are still at least a couple of weeks away from needing to hunt for their long-lost arm-warmers, but there's a little bit of a chill in the air just before dawn right now. It will be a month or two before it starts to stick, though, and until then the morning temperatures will wander between brisk and muggy as the early northern cool fronts collide with the moist Gulf of Mexico air. Today it was just cool enough to think about zipping up the jersey on the way to meet the levee ride. Waiting up there with the group in the darkness was Dan Bennett who said he'll be in town until Saturday. I would have taken a photo, but he turned around early while it was still a bit too dark.

The ride today was not without incident, though. With official sunrise somewhere around 7 am right now, it was still fairly dark on the way out this morning, and we had to negotiate a couple of drilling rigs as has been the case for the last few days. We were rolling along at a reasonable clip when, up ahead, we could see that there was a truck stopped on the right side of the bike path. Although we were riding right into the headlights, which made it difficult to see anything else, we could tell that the left lane was clear. Of course the pace slowed down as we approached and started past on the left. Then, just as the rider ahead of me cleared the headlights, I saw a head with a safety helmet suddenly poke into our lane about a foot off the ground! Brakes were applied, warnings were issued, and I felt a big "thud" on my rear wheel. The thud turned out to be Arlow hitting the dirt. Luckily, he appeared to be uninjured and we were soon on our way again, but you know, about the last thing you expect to see is someone's head at about the level of your bottom bracket. It was actually a guy who was filling in one of the bore holes left by the drilling rig, and I guess he heard us approaching and wanted to see what was coming. Lucky for him it wasn't the last thing he ever saw.

So anyhow, we had a pretty good ride today. Now I have to go delete the fu*&^ng Spammer comment that just arrived about condos in Costa Rica!