A Slow Return

Monday was supposed to be pretty much of a wash-out with Hurricane Ida, or more likely Tropical Storm Ida, scheduled to roll into the Gulf Coast that day. So when I squinted at the tiny little image of the weather radar on my Blackberry, even before getting out of bed, all I really saw was a whole lot of green. Glancing out the window I could see that it wasn't actually raining, but I figured that between the wind and nearby rain, trying to get in a ride was a bad bet, so I opted for an extra hour's sleep. As it turned out, I'd lost the bet that day, because most of the rain somehow missed us. Ordinarily, missing a Monday ride wouldn't have bothered me a bit, but after three full days off the bike that included two days of ad libitum feeding, I was feeling like a slug and my joints were starting to rust. Just to compound the problem, we went out for a nice dinner at the Maple St. Cafe' that evening for my mother's birthday. I went to sleep early, but determined to ride in the morning come hell or high water.

This morning the alarm never quite went off. My antique clock-radio (red digits, mechanical tuner, and all) had been set on good ol' WTIX. Well, apparently the broadcast antenna for this little fly-by-night oldies station, which is located down in Galliano somewhere, must have gotten knocked off-kilter by the wind because they were essentially off the air. The result? I woke up at about 6:20 for the 6:15 ride. "It's OK," I told myself. A nice solo ride out to meet the group on its way back would be a good way to ease back into riding. Unfortunately, there was neither a group to meet nor any easy riding to be had. The wind was still blowing at 15 to 20 mph when I hit the levee. I looked down at the computer only to have it reach up and slap me right in the face with a 14 mph reading. Obviously, I was going to be making a slow return from my little sojourn in Colorado. So I did my best to get my legs back into the game, with the morning traffic on one side and some remarkably high water on the other. All of the rain up north has really swollen the Mississippi down here lately. The water was covering the batture in many places, and in general was at least five or six feet higher than normal. The only good thing about that is that you get to see a lot more wildlife when it's like that.

I was way out by The Dip when I saw Taylor coming the other way so I turned around to ride back with him. It wasn't a hard decision, since I'd been looking forward to a little tailwind for quite a while by then. I was also far enough out and late enough that I should have already seen the group on its way back, so I figured they had probably bailed out this morning because of the wind. Anyway, I rode back with Taylor listening to him tell his usual jokes (I think he must subscribe to the joke of the week club) and contemplating how caustic his sweat must be to have completely rusted his entire headset. Granted, he was riding his old beater bike. His carbon Trek had cracked and the replacement had just arrived at the shop the day before, so I guess the next time we see him he'll be on shiny a new Trek Madone. It's a good thing carbon fiber doesn't rust!

Tomorrow I am meeting with a small group at Country Day school about starting a cycling team. Should be interesting! Oh, by the way, at the request of USAC, I set up a LAMBRA Facebook page. Facebook is so confusing! So this is a "page" rather than a "group." I'm not exactly sure which is better for this, but I don't think it's a big deal one way or the other since we already have a website and a discussion list. We'll see .....