Diffuse Lighting

Woke up to a 6 am starless sky, and in consideration of our recent meteorological uncertainties headed straight for the computer to check the local radar loop. It showed lots of small scattered showers, but nothing alarming enough for a day off, so I rolled out for a routine Wednesday ride on the levee. Just after I arrived, Elise rode up. Viv was under the weather, so she'd gotten up a bit earlier to meet the group. Ronnie was there today as well, albeit on his mountain bike. That would turn out to be more of a problem for those behind him than for himself, because a few miles down the road we could it was quite wet from a recent shower. I was reading somewhere, just the other day, that the entry fee for winter rides in Belgium it the purchase of fenders and tire liners because without fenders nobody will ride with you and without tire liners nobody will wait for you.

So the ride today seemed particularly dreary with cooler temperatures, wet asphalt and a diffuse grey light that made me want to curl up in the corner of a couch and eat potato chips. There was a crosswind for much of it, and the sky remained cloudy throughout, but at least we didn't get any rain. Although we weren't really pushing the pace very hard, a few people ended up off the back both coming and going, probably because of the crosswind and shortage of asphalt on the downwind side. I had to laugh at one point when Elise was dropping back after taking a pull. She had been behind me in the paceline for a couple of rotations, and when she started dropping back, Ronnie, who had been staying out of the rotation, told her to get in behind me. Elise replied, rather loudly and with great clarity, "NO!" It seems she'd had enough of trying to get a draft off of my wheel. I chuckled and said, "I've heard that before!"

I thought I had a couple of meetings on the uptown campus this morning, but once I arrived I discovered I'd gotten the day wrong for one of them. I hate it when that happens! You would think that the fact that my Palm Pilot didn't beep at me this morning would have been a clue. On the other hand, it had allowed me time to ride over to Starbucks to fill my travel mug, carefully selected because the handle fits over my handlebar, with some hot Verona and three packs of sugar. As I was walking back to the bike rack after my meeting I noticed a little photo shoot in progress on the steps of the architecture building, and thought they were lucky to have the nice diffuse lighting today. It looked like they were taking some "happy student" photos for an admissions brochure or website, and I wondered if the upside-down bicycle was a prop or simply somebody's transportation.

So it's apparently official now that Alabama has its own Local Association, called the Alabama Cycling Association. There's not much up on the website yet except a calendar, but it will be interesting to see how it develops. This morning a "Lance Alert" went out because his honor is supposed to be in NOLA Jan. 28 for a President's Cancer Panel seminar.