Didn't Crash

I was a bit surprised when I arrived at the levee this morning. There was hardly any wind at all, but there was definitely some fog along the river. The sky was overcast, so I'd stuck my sunglasses into the holes of my helmet for the ride out there, but after looking down the bike path I knew they would probably stay there for the duration. After hearing Woody's report on the Sunny King criterium (he'd actually raced two of them and gotten 5th in the Cat. 2 race), the pace started to pick up. When Woody and Chad rolled past the group, I was a little bewildered that nobody went with them. I had just taken a pull and was kind of boxed in, so I just watched as they rolled down the road. After a while our speed finally started to increase and we were rolling along at 25-26 mph. First Chad dropped off and then Woody sat up, so we were all back together four or five miles later. The pace stayed fairly fast all the way out to Destrehan, though.

On the way back, things were a little more subdued. There was a nice smooth paceline at first, but then as riders started getting tired it got a bit more messy. Still, we were moving along at a respectable pace. As we got closer to the Country Club we started picking up a lot of pedestrians and other people on the bike path so that there was a constant stream of "rider up" and "runner right." We were just about all the way around the Country Club bend when suddenly I see to of the guys go down in front of us. I was a few riders back, so all I saw was Scott sliding on the edge of the bike path and Tom grass-surfing down the levee. As we coasted to a stop so we could turn around and assist, Chad, who had been behind me, said that he had nearly plowed right into me. Whew! At least this time I didn't crash! What had happened was that there had been a runner on the right side and just as Scott, who I think must have been on the front, moved over to the left, Tom, who never saw the runner, started to pass him and they bumped handlebars pretty hard. Tom seemed none the worse for wear, having landed mostly on the grass. Scott, however, had landed quite a bit harder, and on the asphalt. By the time I got back to him the runner had already given him a towel to wrap around his hand which had some deep cuts. Luckily, Jeff was parked at the playground, just a couple of miles down the road, so we sent him off to get his truck so Scott could get a ride to the ER.

On the way to work I stopped by the bank so I could activate my new Debit Card and for some reason the card reader in the drive-through ATM didn't want to read it. Perhaps it was just really slow, but since I had a deposit I needed to make I decided to go ahead and interface with an actual human. As I walked into the bank I realized that it was the first time I'd set foot in there since they rebuilt it after Katrina. Anyway, after waiting in line for a little while I got everything straightened out with the carbon-based life form and finally made my way to work about an hour late.