Lemons and Raindrops

I had grand plans for last night. There were two gallons of paint waiting at home with my name on them and I figured I could knock out a good portion of the bathroom repainting project after work. I had already hastily painted around where the light fixture was so that I could re-install it when I got home and thus see what I was doing. Ahhh, the "best laid schemes o' mice and men ....."

Well this one went awry the moment I got home and was reminded that our neighbors across the street, who just moved to the D.C. area, had been brought back to town in connection with a oil spill fundraising effort that one of the kids (Lemonaid for the Gulf) had recently started while between homes in Alexandria. They were setting up their lemonade stand on the riverfront down in the French Quarter and were scheduled for a live interview with Anderson Cooper some time between 6:30 and 8:30. So along with some of the neighbors (the ones who are still here!) we went down to Woldenberg Park to offer our support and get in on the action. Naturally we soon learned that the actual interview wouldn't likely happen until around 8:30, so we headed over to the Crescent City Brewhouse on Decatur for a bowl of seafood gumbo and a big and badly needed glass of Black Forest beer. By the time I got back home the bathroom painting was definitely on hold until the next day.

So this morning I went out to ride and was almost surprised to find that there were clouds in the sky. It's been mostly just blazing sun around here lately with the pre-dawn temperatures in the 80s, so a little cloud cover was not entirely unwelcome. Interestingly, the group today was quite civilized, especially for a Tuesday, and I ended up just chilling out near the back of the paceline for most of the ride. Some days you just need to kick back a bit, and today seemed like a good day for that. As we rode up the river the clouds continued to thicken and build and I knew it was going to rain somewhere. Well, somewhere turned out to be between The Dip and Kenner. It started with a sprinkling of those huge raindrops that you can hear hitting your helmet, and then just gradually increased until it reached monsoon proportions. I was rapidly soaked to the skin and pretty soon I had to stop to stuff my camera into the ziplock bag that already contained my phone. Luckily, both survived. By the time I caught back up to the remnants of the group, well into Orleans parish, the rain had stopped. In fact, the streets were still dry, at least for a while. As I was preparing for work it started raining pretty hard at home, so I waited until it stopped before leaving. Before I did, though, I carefully positioned wet shoes, helmet and gloves in front of a fan down in the basement.