Mid-week Summer

It was anything but cool this morning as I rode out to meet the Wednesday ride group up on the levee.  I'd had to turn back early on Tuesday in order to comfortably make a morning meeting over at Gibson Hall, although by the time I dropped off of the group we'd already been dropped like a rock when a gap suddenly opened up a few bikes ahead of me.  It was just as well, I thought, as I peeled off my soaking wet jersey and stinky gloves.  Cycling gloves certainly do develop their own unique smell in the summer, don't they?  The morning meeting that disrupted my training ride was kind of a mixture of frustration and depression.  There were a couple of Google Fusion maps I wanted to show and discuss, but for some reason the data wasn't loading for one of them.  Together with the increasingly depressing federal and state funding situation and various other problematic issues, I can't say I left the meeting in much of a good mood.

We are in one of those "summer pattern" cycles right now, and around here that means it's around 80F in the morning, rising into the low-mid 90s during the day, with a 30% chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Status quo for summer. Down in the basement at home I keep a fan running most of the time in order to keep things from getting moldy.  There are other sure signs of summer.  Last night I went downstairs to lube the chain on the bike and noticed a big cockroach strolling along a nylon bag I had on the floor.  I grabbed the bag and gave it a shake but didn't see the roach fall to the floor.  A moment later I felt him walking across the back of my neck. After a little impromptu break-dancing I got him off of me and onto the floor where he met his demise.  I spent a little time after that spraying bug spray in the basement.

Tour de La

It was warm and humid this morning, but there was actually a pretty good-sized group up on the levee for the Wednesday training ride. The Wednesday ride is really quite relaxing.  The speed generally stays in the 22-24 mph range, but everyone takes really long pulls.  Often I get in only one pull on the way out, which is around 11 miles, I think.  The whole time I was irritated with my sunglasses which had fogged up the minute I had slowed down at the start and never really cleared up.  Speaking of glasses, I finally broke down and made an appointment for the end of the week for an eye exam and especially to talk about my options for prescription riding glasses.  When Kenny wrote on Facebook the other day that he'd pinch-flatted both tires on a pothole that he thought was just a patch of sand, it reminded me that I'm liable to do the same, or worse. So I guess we'll see, literally and figuratively, how that goes.  I'm thinking bifocal sport glasses of some type that will sit high enough on my face that the top frame won't be in my line of sight. My Oakley M-frames are the only glasses I've ever had that really worked for that, and I don't know what the possibilities are for prescription glasses like those. The "district" championship criterium, aka LAMBRA criterium championship, is next Sunday up in Alexandria on a course at the university there that I last rode some time in the 80s.  I have been feeling pretty sluggish on the bike lately, so I'm planning on heading out to the lakefront this evening to see if we can do a little training race. I could use the intensity.  I have been fooling around with Google Fusion lately in order to create some maps for work, and took a few minutes this morning to make a quick interactive map that shows where the Tour de La pre-registered riders came from.