Behind Us

Something woke me up at 4 a.m. this morning. No doubt it was the people living in the apartment across Pine Street from the house. I'm convinced the current residents are bartenders, bouncers or musicians, because there is always a lot of action there around 3 or 4 in the morning - car doors closing, people talking, car alarms, those sorts of things. Anyway, although I tried to go back to sleep I wasn't all that successful, but of course when the alarm went off I didn't exactly leap out of bed. It was warmer this morning, but very humid and a bit foggy, which made it difficult to decide on the proper dress code. I ended up having to ride pretty fast out to the levee to meet the group. I needn't have rushed. Today's group seemed particularly lackadaisical for some reason, and we were a few minutes late by the time we finally rolled out. Behind us, the sun was just coming up, momentarily setting fire to the hazy sky. The pictures never do it justice.

With neither Chad nor Rob to crack the whip, the pace stayed in the low 20s for most of the ride. My legs are still not feeling quite right, but the relatively even pace made it easily manageable anyway. At the turnaround almost everyone stopped for a little break, which is kind of unusual too, and then on the way back when someone needed to stop at the little girl's room (the only "facility" along the length of the bike path), I offered to wait. I was surprised that the whole group actually soft-pedaled until we caught back up.

Amazing.

So on Sunday we have a choice of group rides. There's a northshore training ride that I'll be doing, and then Kenny is doing his tour of New Orleans ride again in town. Meanwhile, the LAMBRA race calendar is coming along slowly and I hope we'll be able to have something reasonably stable to post some time late next week. Personally, right now I feel like I need a two-week vacation, alone, somewhere I can't be found.