Reptiles of the Trail

There seem to be a lot of reptiles hanging out along the Mississippi River Trail, aka the levee bike path.  On Monday I took my somewhat sore legs out for an easy recovery ride.  Along the way I passed a turtle that calmly watched me go by.  That evening, Kurt posted this photo of a little alligator who had apparently climbed up to the top of the levee.  Then this morning during the long Tuesday ride I was sitting on Max's wheel at the front of the paceline when he suddenly twitched and screamed like a little girl.  As I felt myself go over a little speed bump he said, "A snake.  I think I rolled over it."  Sorry about that little snake.  Actually, I never even saw it.  We were going pretty fast today.  The nice weather we had a couple of days ago has deteriorated into the more typical hot and humid soup through which we normally ride this time of year.  Fortunately, it hasn't had much of an effect on the turnout.  We had a nice-sized group this morning as we headed out into a moderate headwind.  I was still feeling some of the effects of the prior weekend, so my legs were loading up every time there was an acceleration, but eventually they loosened up enough to be tolerable.  I arrived back home pretty well drenched in sweat.  So basically it was a routine summer ride.

Last night I stapled and folded a couple hundred Tour de Louisiane Race Bibles as the first flurry of online entries started to arrive.  By noon this morning I knew that the Cat. 5 race was going to hit its field limit before the end of the day.  I think the last remaining spot got taken before I left work. We've never had the Cat. 5s fill up so far ahead of the race date. Forty-five minutes later I walked out of the office to ride home and was shocked to find that it was pouring down rain.  I sat there fiddling with my phone or the next half hour until it eased up a bit, then put on my rain jacket and took off into a light drizzle.  A couple of miles down the road I arrived at home to find the streets there were practically dry.  Such is the nature of the "scattered shower."  So the Tour de La registration stands at 124, so it's looking like we'll have some nice-sized fields this weekend.  I still need to organize the race number sequences, check on batteries, charge radios, and generally get all of our officiating and finish line stuff together.  Relatively speaking we're kind of ahead of the game right now, although as usual the Levee District has still not gotten us the stuff we need to sign for the privilege of using the road, despite the fact that the condition of Shelter #1 is basically an embarassment and the storm drains are now completely clogged up and non-functional.  I rode over there the other day, which was maybe two days after it had rained, and there were ducks swimming in the parking lot.  I'm guessing the criterium will have to be making a big U-turn on Lakeshore Drive rather than going around the shelter via the parking lot.