Back to Brookhaven

Last night, while I should have been sleeping, I spend a couple of hours fixing up the big Excel workbook that will be used for this weekend's Mississippi Gran Prix stage race.  I'd forgotten that the Cat. 4/5 race was being run as an omnium, so I had to completely re-do that spreadsheet so that it would award points and calculate GC based on them.  Of course the promoters hadn't put anything in the race bible about how the points were to be calculated, so I used the default tables from the stage race points competition rules. I'll be on the road back to Brookhaven, MS in an hour or so in order to deliver the LAMBRA generator, flags, clock and miscellaneous other items that we used for the NOBC 2-Person TT. The only race on Friday is the Cat. 1/2/3 criterium at 7 pm, by which time I am sincerely hoping the rain has stopped and the tornado watch has been cancelled.  Since I'll be there anyway, I'll pitch in with the officiating where needed, which may or may not involve fixing whatever I screwed up on that aforementioned spreadsheet.  I'll be riding the masters race again and am disappointed that the usual criterium will be replaced this year by a long circuit race. A stage race with a TT and two road races is not exactly right up my alley, even if I was in shape, which I am definitely not.  Anyway, it will be nice to get away for the weekend and maybe avoid dwelling on the little contribution to the nation's deficit reduction that I'll have to send to the IRS on Monday.  And while I'm on my political soapbox, which as it turns out only raises me up to normal adult height, I might point out that Walt Leger just submitted to bills to the Louisiana legislature that would basically let the City of New Orleans ignore the constitutional property tax exemptions that all nonprofits in the state get. I guess once you've pushed all of the for-profit businesses out of the city you have to try and push the nonprofits out too.

So anyway, I did make it over to the levee this morning for an easy, but very windy, ride with John, Taylor and Dave.  Dave is heading off tomorrow morning for a 6 month tour of duty in fun summer spots like Afghanistan.  He just refers to it all as "the sandbox."  On the plus side, his wife who is an engineer finally found a job after being laid off last summer.  On the minus side, the job is in Virginia. Hopefully everything will work out in the long run.  After the ride we stopped off at Zotz for coffee before saying goodbye.  Now I have to ride back home and get my act together for the weekend.  I wonder if I have two fully functional sets of race wheels.....