On the Shoulder

It was around 9 pm Saturday night when I picked up the phone and called Ed N. We'd just returned from a nice dinner at Vizard's, a small restaurant that recently relocated from St. Charles Ave. to Magazine Street. It was a little crowded and the food took a long time to arrive, but it was really good. I'd been kicking around the idea of going up to Baton Rouge to help out with the Raising Cane's time trial and I figured Ed was a good bet for a ride. Sure enough, he had an empty seat in his borrowed Cadillac SUV (his trusty BMW's transmission recently bit the dust), so he picked me up around 6:30 Sunday morning for the drive up to Baton Rouge.

Turnout for the time trial was typical for this low-key event and I made myself useful helping with registration and we finally got things rolling about fifteen minutes late. There was some sort of blowup by New Orleans rider Jay J. where he demanded his entry fee back and took off. I haven't the faintest idea what that was all about but it seemed a little over the top for this sort of thing. Anyway, with only one fully functioning arm, I got number-caller duty for the start. Once everyone was off, I wandered over to the finish line about a quarter mile away where I walked upstream a hundred yards or so and spent the next hour or so standing on the shoulder of the road calling out rider numbers with the megaphone as they went by.

Afterwards I scarfed down some Raising Cane's chicken and a bit of Cabernet provided by the promoter as we waited for Shane to finish up the results. Ed had to get back sooner rather than later, so once the preliminary overall listing was posted, we headed back to NOLA. That was pretty much my day today. The collarbone is still hurting and I'm just generally uncomfortable anyway. By the time I got home I had a dull headache so I spent the rest of the day eating comfort food, which didn't really help much. Guess I'll spend some time on the trainer tomorrow. Can't wait.....