Teasing Us

Tuesday morning came up fast. Faster than the sun, it seemed. A bit before 6 am I opened the basement door and looked up at the eastern sky. It seemed a whole lot darker than it had just a week earlier, so I rummaged around and found my little headlight, fumbled for a while trying to get it clamped to the handlebar (for reasons I wouldn't discover until this morning), and headed off, safely enclosed within a bubble of flashing light-emitting diodes, for the levee bike path. My legs felt stiff and tired and I was reminded of the quote, "Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug." I was already sinking in to a state of depression due to the aforementioned reminder of the approach of the dark mornings of winter when I noticed that Woody and Rob were out on their time trial bikes again. So needless to say the ride went from fast to faster and I went from the front to the back. I just wasn't up for a fight, I guess, so I was happy to sit in well behind the rotation, not that it was all that much easier to do so.

There was a new rider with us on Tuesday. Zack is a Tulane student from San Francisco who had just gotten to town, put his bike together probably the night before, and rushed off down the streets of Carrollton in the dark to find the morning ride. The first thing he found a New Orleans pothole where he crashed, but still got to the ride on time despite some road rash and twisted brake levers. Considering the horsepower at the front of the paceline that day he'd unwittingly jumped right into the deep end, so to speak. He hung on pretty well for most of the way out and then jumped back in for a little while when we came blasting past on the way back. That evening I got a facebook message from him saying that his frame was cracked, so he'll be stranded until a replacement arrives.

Anyway, I was kind of preoccupied that morning because I planned on taking the car in to the Volvo dealer a much-needed control arm repair and a slightly overdue timing belt replacement. Taking a Volvo in to the dealer is always a traumatic experience similar to handing one's wallet to a guy wearing a ski mask and holding a gun to your head. I took the free taxi ride back home and rode in to the office only to later learn that the car would actually be ready by the end of the day, assuming I thought it was worth $1,200 in cold hard cash. So around 4:30 I called the cab company back for my free ride back to the dealer, waited about forty minutes for them to arrive, and picked up the car after commiserating with one of the Tulane faculty members who was picking up her own Volvo and was about to shell out $500 because she'd lost her fancy-dancy electronic "key." Now we all know that one can easily purchase a perfectly nice laptop complete with wireless and software for $500, so there is just no getting around the fact that $500 for a key fob, however electronic it might be, is just a high-tech way of holding a car for ransom. But I digress. The bottom line is that both The Daughter's car and ours are reasonably road-worthy again for the bargain price of around $7,500. The fact that this wad of cash might have been sufficient for the purchase of, ohh let's say a new 14 lb. Van Dessel Rivet decked out with Campi Record or Cervelo R3SL with SRAM Red has, sadly, not escaped my notice.

Anyway, that's just water under the bridge now, and I'm a creature of habit, so rather than drench my sorrows in cheap Merlot and sleep late, I headed out Wednesday morning for the usual training ride. The weather this morning was really teasing us. It was actually not hot. I mean, it must have actually been in the 70s for a little while, before sunrise. It felt absolutely spectacular. What didn't feel spectacular, however, was my front brake. I'd noticed it on the Tuesday ride. The brake lever had a lot more resistance than normal and I kept running through my head all the things that might have caused it. I was thinking that perhaps something, such as copious amounts of sweat, had gummed up the works, or that one of the cable housing ends had collapsed. Whatever it was, it wasn't getting better, so I reluctantly planned to take it all apart some time soon to investigate.

The Wednesday ride was a nice traditional one -- 23-24 mph, nice smooth paceline, long pulls, no surprises. It was just what I needed. I even got to the end without being completely drenched in sweat for the first time in weeks. As I spun my way back home through the neighborhood my mind came back to that brake lever problem. Suddenly a little light bulb (the incandescent type, of course) appeared above my head. I reached my hand around the bottom of the headlight mount that I'd installed on Tuesday. Yep. Sure enough, I'd gotten the blasted front brake cable *inside* the clamp, practically squashing it against the handlebar. I released the clamp. Problem solved! If only it was always that easy. An hour later I rode to work by way of the Reily Center where I signed up for the Sept. 11 CPR course. Tulane's club sports folks require a couple of people to have CPR training, and at the bargain basement price of $10, and considering my friend Stan's recent massive heart attack, how could I refuse? I rode through campus, which this time of year is filled with bright young students, and then to the office by way of Audubon Park where I spotted that moss-covered bike.