Woody

Thursday morning I went out as usual to the levee for the long Thursday ride. There was a pretty big group and I was expecting to get a little exercise during the 40-something mile ride. When I spotted Woody turning around to join us on his TT bike, all I could say was, "Oh, oh." Somehow, a few miles down the road, I found myself on Woody's wheel. In fact, Woody's rear wheel is pretty much all I remember about the entire ride. Of course, it's not surprising that I remember it so well since I probably spent ten miles with my nose about two feet from it. Once Woody got to the front, he settled in to a steady 28 mph pace and just kept going, and going, and going. When he finally pulled off I did about fifteen pedal strokes at the front and pulled off, looking for the wheel of someone with a little more of a draft. After the turnaround, guess what? Yeah, same thing. Woody went to the front and just rolled for miles and miles.

So the Tulane Cycling team kit prices are about ready to go and although the actual team members will get small discounts, and most will just place their orders in person at the first meeting currently scheduled for Sept. 1, everyone else can order from the BikeReg site. I think Murali will get the link up on the cycling.tulane.edu soon to be updated home page in a day or so. There will be a student activities expo on the quad on Friday the 27th where we'll have a table and hopefully someone riding rollers. Unfortunately, I will probably miss it because that's the Wave of Green day when I'll be doing the Habitat for Humanity thing somewhere in town.

Tomorrow I'm heading over to Meridian, MS for an afternoon criterium, followed by a road race the next morning in Cuba, AL at the Meridian-Cuba Challenge. This is one of those races that just keeps trucking along year after year. It may not be the fanciest race around, but it's challenging and consistent and the courses are good. It's a good 3-hour drive, but fortunately my race tomorrow doesn't start until 5 pm. I'll probably end up leaving before noon anyway so I can watch some of the earlier races, but at least it won't be another 4:30 am wake-up call. It looks like we have only a few teammates going this year, and for various logistical reasons I'll be going up alone and coming back accompanied by The Great White Box, the generator, and various other items of race equipment. The LAMBRA Time Trial Championship is the weekend after, so we'll need all of that stuff down here. It seems early, but the TT championship will mark the end of the local road racing season. Fortunately, there's a good stage race in Pensacola in mid-September that I'm hoping to make, and of course there's always the Six Gap Century Sept. 26. I really need to find a cassette with something bigger than a 25 this year!