Blown Away

The Thursday morning storms washed away any chance I had for a ride yesterday, so I was out the door early this morning with some sort of vague idea of maybe putting in a few extra miles. Ha!  Well, that idea was quickly blown away once I got up onto the levee and felt the full force of the wind. It was dark and cold and extremely windy up there.  On the other hand, the place was deserted.  I rode the usual 26 miles out to the upriver end of Jefferson Parish at a low effort level.  That translated into speeds in the 16 mph range since most of it was headwind. I had already decided it wasn't worth killing myself today. As often happens when I ride alone on the levee, I spotted a bald eagle out around River Ridge and got yet another of my fuzzy out-of-focus Bigfoot style photos.  Anyway, tomorrow's weather should be nice and if one is looking for the opportunity to punish oneself, there's always the Saturday Giro.

Today is our last day at work until January, and other than a conference call at 10 am, it's been really, really quiet, probably because most people have already bailed out for the holidays. I rode over to Taqueria Corona for lunch with Kenny and then over to the Campus Recreation office at the Reily Center to drop off some paperwork, only to find the office closed.  I guess it won't matter one way or the other since that paperwork wasn't likely to move off of anyone's desk until January anyway. While I was there I walked over to the football field to watch them putting in the test piles for the new stadium.  In order to minimize the impact on the neighbors and judicial system they're pre-drilling the holes and then just dropping the pilings in. So I was just starting to feel like things were under control when I got a call from The Wife informing me they had just dropped the Volvo in to a deep enough pothole while parking off of Magazine Street to break the radiator.  Great timing.  So there's just enough time to get it towed to the Volvo dealer where it will sit until after Christmas while I pay for a rental car waiting to find out how many thousands of dollars it will cost me to get my car back.  This sort of thing always seems to happen around Christmas.