Pain and Preparations

I just got a call telling me that the University will close at noon tomorrow and, depending on the ultimate course of Hurricane Gustav, and probably won't re-open until Thursday of next week. Indeed, three or four of the forecast models are still indicating landfall somewhere along the Louisiana coast early on Tuesday. So at this point everyone is making serious preparations. Hell, even the Mayor is coming back to town! The Wife has sent out an email to the Psychiatry Yahoo Groups list that we created right after Katrina to "reactivate" it, and I expect that normal work around here will be replaced with hurricane preparations this afternoon and tomorrow. I'll have to take a look around the basement back at home and make sure the important stuff is up off the ground in case we get any flooding from this one, and then I'll probably send in the second-to-last mortgage payment on the house. Friday afternoon I guess we'll start talking about what we'll do if we have to evacuate. Assuming the hurricane continues as predicted, the Mayor will call for a "mandatory" evacuation on Sunday, which basically means "if you want to stay you're on your own." The city's 311 phone number is finally getting a lot of calls because anyone who might need transportation to evacuate has to call in to that system. There will be no open doors at the Superdome this time.

So with the backdrop of impending disaster, a pretty big group assembled on the levee this morning for the long ride. VJ was there on his TT bike, along with Tim and Woody, so I knew it would get both fast and painful. My own legs were not too happy today and would load up quickly every time I took a pull. Of course that didn't stop the pace from going up pretty high on the way out, especially after a little break rolled off the front. By the time we got to the turnaround I was just completely drenched with sweat. In fact, all the sweat dripping all over the bike for the last couple of months has really started to do some damage. I had to drip a little lube onto the little thumb shifter gear on the brake levers last week, and this week the front derailleur (probably the cable) has gotten gunked up enough that it's shifting rather reluctantly. I actually had to reach down and push the front derailleur after the ride this morning to get it to shift onto the small ring. I don't even want to know what the aluminum handlebars look like underneath the sweat-soaked tape!

At the turnaround, Tim said, "Did you see the armadillo?" Well, just before the turnaround out at Ormond there had been a little armadillo nosing around in the grass alongside the bike path. As we started back, I stopped for a moment to take a rather blurry photo, at which point Donald jumped off his bike and tried to catch the little critter. It ran. Donald ran. I should have gotten video! I guess he could have caught it if he'd really wanted to find out how sharp its claws were, but we started riding back, so he jumped back on his bike without the armadillo. I have to admit, it reminded me of that commercial with Armadillo Man.

The ride back got pretty fast pretty quickly with Tim and VJ pushing the pace. Then it got faster. At one point I found myself behind VJ, just hanging on for dear life as he pulled me for a couple of miles at around 28 mph. I think a lot of us were relieved when Woody flatted and we all got to stop for a few minutes. Anyway, back on the road things started to get disorganized and riders started to die, and for a while we were going 28-30 into a light headwind. I started thinking, "I can't keep this up much longer." There was a big surge and a gap opened up a few riders ahead of me. When I saw the two riders behind the gap ease up, and then turn and look at each other, as if to say, "You gonna close that?" I knew we were in trouble. I went past and gradually ramped it up to 30 mph and closed about 75% of the gap, and when I pulled off I was expecting there would be a nice little paceline where I could get some rest. As it turned out, though, there was just Mark D. As he came past me he gave me that "you coming?" look, but it was too late for me. I'd eaten my last cookie. The well was empty. He made it up to the break but the rest of us didn't. Fortunately, it was getting close to turn-off time for some of the guys in the break, so they eventually eased up and most of the group came back together in time to watch VJ motor off into the distance. After that, nobody had much left and we rode back in relatively slowly. By the time we got back to the vicinity of the playground, the remnants of our group were scattered out along the bike path for what must have been three miles. I was kind of disappointed that I didn't have what it took to stay near the front today.