Little Changes

There's a whole lot of hot weather still to come, but already I'm seeing those little changes that make me think of Fall.  All week, on my commutes up and down Lowerline and Pine streets, there were Tulane students with loaded-up cars and U-hauls moving into the many apartments around here.  On Tuesday I had finally broken down and put the headlight onto the handlebar for the 6 am ride out to the early levee ride.  Although the temperature hasn't really been noticeably cooler, the shortening days are becoming more and more obvious.  People are starting to think about the local MS Tour and our annual pilgrimage to Dahlonega for the Six Gap Century. Today is move-in day at Tulane, which means a steady stream of confused drivers with luggage on their roofs and foreign license plates on their cars.  Meanwhile, The Wife is working on making dinner for about a hundred students for the catholic center.  I spent some time yesterday evening on the start list and results spreadsheet for tomorrow's LAMBRA time trial championship.  It's looking like there will be about zero chance of rain, but a pretty good chance of a north wind.  Yes, I said "north."  With a big high pressure area drifting to the west of us and the big Hurricane Irene to the east, we're getting a little taste of drier air around here.

This morning I rode out to meet the pre-Giro coffee group with both lights blinking and my sunglasses in my pocket.  Since a number of the local riders are planning on riding the time trial tomorrow, including me, I was expecting a relatively civilized Giro Ride today.  Since I'll be both officiating and riding tomorrow, I'm not too focused on doing a spectacular time trial.  I'll be doing this one mainly for the exercise, and probably without much of a warmup, but since it looks like we'll have enough people on hand to handle the start and finish lines, I think I can get away with it.  Based on the Start List that I put up last night, I'll be starting about in the middle, almost an hour after the first rider.  Anyway, as I'd expected, today's Giro wasn't too much of a leg-crusher.  I spent most of the ride toward the back, and although we spent a fair amount of time in the 27-30 mph range, it was definitely a bit less aggressive than usual.  Now I just need to stage everything so I can get out the door by 5:50 or so tomorrow morning -- generator, clock, stand, table, chairs, traffic cones, clipboards, stopwatches, PA system, extension cord, etc. Then I'll need to get my bike cleaned up, tire fixed, and race bag packed.