Crashes, Katrina Boats and Oil

I was rather surprised Tuesday morning when the speed increased and I finally had to put a little pressure on the pedals. My legs were still not quite fully recovered from the weekend's races. To be honest, they hardly ever feel fully recovered any more. Fortunately, there was a big group on hand for the Tuesday morning long levee ride, so I had lots of cover. Then, when VJ flatted, I was only too happy to stop and lend moral support while he changed the tube. During the ride I found out that there had been a crash at the Sunday Giro Ride that took four people down. One of them, Chip, is going to need surgery to fix his shoulder. He had been training to be on a relay team for the Race Across America. Rumor has it that Lawrence may fill in for him.

When I got home I rushed around a bit in order to be sure I could get down to the French Quarter in time to see Kenny give his speech at the unveiling of the new exhibit at the Presbytere museum that features the now-famous Katrina boat. I don't know what was more shocking. The fact that they actually recovered the boat and made it into a memorial at the Presbytere, or that Kenny was wearing a suit in the middle of the day. It was pretty hot down there in Jackson Square by the time the ceremony was over, and I was glad I'd taken the car instead of the bike because otherwise I would have been a bucket of sweat by the time I got to the office. I went out again after work for an easy ride, but we turned around early when we ran into some rain. Luckily we stayed ahead of the heavy rain all the way home, so although I got a little wet, I never got really soaked.

There's a lot of stuff going on in the academic research community right now related to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil "spill." We're assuming some federal funding will become available from various agencies, so the jockeying for position is already in high gear. As someone said today, "There's not just oil in the water, there's also blood." Nobody really knows how that will all work out right now, but we're pretty sure there will be some serious ecological and human health consequences, not to mention economic, regulatory and policy ones, that will take many years to play out. So anyway, this whole thing has certainly kept us busy at the office lately.

The Wednesday ride was a fairly typical one, except that the pace seemed to be surging every now and then. Jay was there wearing a lot of Tegaderm and telling his version of the story about the Giro Ride crash. I was still not feeling very sharp for some reason, so I wasn't taking any long pulls. On the way back I stopped at Zotz for a cup of dark roast and a few moments of caffeinated peace. Anyway, it's late and since I keep falling asleep in mid-sentence, I guess I should shut this thing down and go to bed......