Three Flats and You're Out

I had to check the outdoor thermometer twice this morning just to be sure. The pre-dawn temperature was above 60° and there was a strong wind blowing out of the south. It's still February, right? Maybe it was the warm air, or perhaps the earlier sunrise, but the group up on the levee was just itching to roll this morning. In fact, they rolled a few minutes early, leaving Big Richard with a rather long chase before he finally caught up somewhere past the playground. Today's pace wasn't particularly fast, but neither was it slow. The real problem, though, was the gusty crosswind that made it hard to relax in the paceline. My legs felt merely "OK" today, and it was hard to resist the temptation to sit in the draft the whole time.

On the way back, David H. suddenly flatted, so a few of us waited around for him to fix it. We weren't a quarter mile down the road after that when his tire went flat again. David pulled the tire completely off the rim and checked it over carefully before installing the new tube. We got rolling again and things were going along just fine. I took a few long pulls along with a couple of other guys and then when finally went to drop to the back I discovered that most of the group, including David, was missing. I sat up, twisted around, and peered down the road behind us. They were nowhere in sight! I can only assume that David's tire had gone flat again. Had I known I would have stopped, but my the time I realized they were missing we were almost all the way back and running a bit late as well, so I figured he'd just have to deal with flat #3 without the questionable assistance of me standing around and watching.

Back at work, I had a noon meeting downtown, so I got a nice little tailwind ride from the office down to the Murphy building for a Louisiana Cancer Research Consortium board meeting. I was uncomfortably warm by the time I arrived, despite my the leisurely pace of my commute, so I was glad they had some cold drinks and sandwiches on hand.

So Mardi Gras celebrations are about to kick into gear around here. There will be lots of parades from now until Fat Tuesday, and I'm planning on checking out Muses tomorrow evening. On my way down Audubon today, in the course of six or seven blocks, I passed one house that was expertly decorated, two real Rex flags and one real Comus flag. These are the official flags that the prior Kings fly. You can tell them from the decorative imitations by two things. For one, the "real" flags have the year that the owner reigned sewn or embroidered into the corner. For another, they tend to be flying from really expensive houses. Although Rex gets all the press, I've always been partial to the Mistik Krewe of Comus, myself because, well, they're so Mistikal! I wish they still had their parade.