Two Whole Days

My schedule was packed with meetings and other work both Thursday and Friday, and both days found me heading to work early too early to squeeze in a ride. On the plus side, I spent much of the time on the uptown campus enjoying the marvelous weather. So basically I spent two whole days completely off the bike, which I suppose wasn't such a bad thing. The cool front that came through brought a Saturday morning temperature of about 60F, which felt positively chilly to me as I headed out to the lakefront wearing arm-warmers for the first time since Spring.

With a race tomorrow morning, most of the guys on the Giro ride were taking it pretty easy. I, for one, spent most of my time near the back and out of trouble. I was just glad to be getting back into my routine and was looking forward to getting everything sorted out and ready to go for tomorrow's Rocktoberfest where I'll be racing and officiating. The best part of the ride was when Rob "if you had Tuffys you wouldn't get a flat" Konrad flatted and had to endure a few comments from the peanut gallery because at it turned out, he didn't have Mr. Tuffys in the tire that flatted! I took a picture, in fact, but of course it's in New Orleans and I'm not. On the way home I rode once around the City Park course to check out all of the road repairs that Robin had made. While he was at it, he also made some repairs to Hayne Blvd and the Service Road for the Giro Ride. So once I got home I finished updating the LCCS rankings and posted them on the LAMBRA website, downloaded and printed out all of the release forms for the pre-registered riders, built the results spreadsheet for the race, made a few calls, etc. Then I plugged the radios into the charger and was just about to kick back and relax a bit when the phone rang.

The Wife's mother was at the Emergency Room in Baton Rouge, presumably with a serious UTI and who knows what else. Being an Alzheimer's patient, it's hard to figure out exactly what's going on, but she seemed to be pretty unresponsive as well. So anyway, I'm sitting here in the ER at OLOL waiting room right now (it's 7:30 pm already) where they actually have free internet! The last hour of so was the most surreal emergency room experience I've ever had, and it didn't have anything to do with the patients. It was the last quarter of an LSU football game and they had it up on the big LCD screen in the waiting room. Once the game went into overtime, the whole room was focused on the game. Presumably they all had sick relatives here, or were themselves sick, but you wouldn't have known it. They were cheering and talking loudly and generally acting like they were down at the local pub. Anyway, it was kind of strange. So anyway, the regular doctor still hasn't shown up, but we're sure the mother-in-law is going to be admitted, so I'll be heading back to New Orleans soon solo, leaving The Wife here with her sister for the night. I'll need to be at the race by 6:30 am, since the first start is at 7:30 (sunrise is at 7:00 -- what were were we thinking?