Mechanicals

It all started Tuesday night.  Around 9:30, The Wife, who would probably be perfectly comfortable sleeping in a refrigerator with a fan blowing on her, announced, "It's 77 degrees in here."  Her tone made me feel like it was somehow my fault.  In fact, I quickly realized that the central a/c blower wasn't blowing.  Hoping it was something simple, I went down to the basement to check the circuit breaker, but alas, it was fine.  Something was broken.  Just a couple of days before this the icemaker in my freezer had stopped working and I'd ended up ordering a new one since the part I needed to fix it cost almost as much as a whole new one. Anyway, since the low temperatures around here have rarely been below 80F, it was a rather uncomfortable night despite the ceiling fan.  The next morning I called the a/c folks who had installed the unit just two years ago, and by 11:00 or so the technician arrived.  He spent at least an hour checking things and making phone calls, and finally narrowed it down to either the circuit board or the blower motor.  This did not surprise me, since those were really the only two possibilities.  The problem was that in order to run the diagnostic on the electronics he needed a testing device that, at the moment, happened to be on another job in Belle Chasse, so he took off to meet up with whoever had it, and returned a few hours later.  Then, after another hour or so of testing, he decided that the problem was indeed the blower motor, which, of course, they didn't have in stock since it's a variable-speed blower controlled by no fewer than sixteen colorful wires.  We'd have to wait until Wednesday afternoon for the part to arrive.  I stuck my little emergency backup window unit into the bedroom window, cranked it up to high, and closed the door.  It was probably around 85F in the house by then.  Some time around 1 pm on Wedesday I got the call and headed back home to meet the technician who spent another couple of hours installing the new blower and scratching his head.  In the meantime, the replacement icemaker showed up, so I installed it.  Things were looking up.  Eventually he got the blower working, checked the compressor, checked the air temperature, and took off with my check for $300. Luckily, the motor itself was still under warranty, so that was just for the labor. I was never convinced that he really knew what he was doing, however. By then it was really hot in the house, but I wasn't planning on sticking around long since there was a team time trial out at the Lakefront that I'd agreed to ride.

I'd actually been looking forward to this little Team Time Trial, since I knew I wasn't going to be able to ride in the district championship one this weekend, having, in a weak moment, volunteered to officiate it.  So the night before I'd bolted on the aero bars.  By the time the a/c guy was gone I was running a little late, so rather than ride out to the lakefront wearing a geeky TT helmet after being stuck in a hot house all afternoon I figured I'd throw the bike in to the car. I got one of the last parking spots across from Kona Cafe, pulled the bike out and took off in search of Charlie.  As it turned out, Mark G. couldn't make it, so we were already one rider short, but we quickly recruited Diego who was there looking for a team.  We went out for a little warmup, since we were the 27th team to start and had a little time to kill.  I was feeling pretty good and the team of Charlie, Squeaky, Diego and me seemed to be really smooth. Finally our turn came up, and we took off, quickly getting organized and rolling along at 27-28 mph, which seemed like a good starting speed.  Well, we weren't a mile down the road when I heard the sound of air escaping from a tire -- mine.  Crap!  If you're going to flat in a team time trial, you don't want it to be in the first mile.  You want it to be near the end when you really need the excuse, hanging on for dear life and barely able to get onto the back of the paceline after taking a pull.  I pulled out of the paceline and told Diego I'd flatted. Feeling extremely frustrated, I changed the tube, pumped it up, rode back about 200 yards, and realized that it was going flat again. I ended up just riding the rest of the way very slowly on the flat front tire because I was just too pissed off to stop again and change it.  When I got home the house was cooler but it still wasn't down to normal.  In fact, it was still 77F at 10 pm.  This morning the a/c had finally caught up with the thermostat, but I'm a little worried that something got screwed up.  I guess I'll find out this evening when I get home.