Eagle Scouting

Monday should have been a rest day. Really. My legs were still feeling the weekend when I awoke, so I pulled the covers over my head and quickly decided to skip the Monday morning ride. Nonetheless, 6:30 p.m. found me sitting outside the SPIN room at the Reily Center waiting for the 6:45 class with Jean, whose classes are always much more to my taste than most. If they'd just tone down the music.....I'm seriously considering bring earplugs. Anyway, I ended up doing a few pretty hard efforts during that class that I knew would be coming back to haunt me.

Tuesday morning was a mess. Since I hadn't ridden on Monday, my riding gear was scattered all over the place. I'd thrown a bunch of stuff in the wash the day before, so with only about five minutes left to get out the door I was still searching through the dryer for gloves and tights and stuff. Where the hell were my tights? I ran back upstars thinking I'd left them somewhere in the bedroom. No luck. I ran back downstairs and searched through my bag. Still no luck. I went back to the dryer and finally found them completely wrapped up in a bedsheet. By then there was no way I was going to get to the levee in time to meet the group, so I figured I'd ride easy and catch the group on the flipside. It was probably some kind of divine intervention, because the last thing I needed Tuesday morning (my legs were still a little sore) was a hard 40-mile jam session. So I rode up the river at a nice easy pace looking a the scenery. First, I saw Woody heading back - he'd obviously turned around early. Then, maybe half a mile from Williams Blvd., I saw Jon coming back too - I guess he's still working on that publication deadline. Just after Jon went by, I saw something big out of the corner of my eye, and looked over to see a bald eagle landing on the batture. He sat there for a while as I slammed on the brakes and fumbled around in my jersey pocket trying to get my camera out. I think I got off one unfocused shot before he took off, flying low through the willow trees lining the river. I lost sight of him and got back on the bike, but a moment later I spotted him way up on one of the tall steel power line posts. He was eating something fairly large, but since he was basically standing on it and was pretty far away I never could make out what it was. Anyway, I did my best to get a few photos, but at that range my little pocket camera is way out of its league. Even so, I was glad to have spotted an eagle because I hadn't seen one on the river in a year or so. I finally met up with the group and had a nice ride back to town, followed by a busy work day that included a drive across the lake to the Primate Center.

This morning went quite a bit more smoothly, but when I met the group and noticed that Rob had his new TT bike up there (sorry, but these new TT bikes still look pretty goofy to me), I figured we were in trouble. When Chad and VJ rolled up, I knew it. Woody was there too, but I think he was still trying to recover from the traditional Herring Gas team's training camp that, as per usual, was held under freezing cold and unnaturally windy conditions. I think Bob Breck actually changed his forecast for the weekend when he found out it was the Herring training camp weekend. Anyway, as I'd expected, Rob eventually went to the front and ramped up the pace, with Chad and VJ following suit. I just couldn't resist the challenge of trying to get a draft off of Rob on his TT bike where his hands are, I swear, even with the top of his front tire. So I ended up having a pretty hard ride all the way out, but at least my legs were feeling better today. Although I never looked back, I knew the group was coming apart pretty early when the rotation at the front dropped down to just three of us. Fortunately, the return trip, at least the first part of it, was relatively easy and I had a chance to recover a bit. I stopped off at Zotz on the way back down Oak Street to refuel, and then, as I crossed Carrollton, I couldn't resist stopping to take a picture of the random "Who Dat" sign on the neutral ground.