Farther Upriver

I drove out to the Thursday levee ride early this morning.  There had been signs advising that River Road would be closed today about a mile farther upriver from where we've been starting lately and there was a good chance that the bike path would also be closed at that point.  They are getting ready to run some big drainage pipes under River Road and then across the levee there, and a closure of both River Road and the bike path is imminent.  Once that happens, my options will be severely limited.  Riding around the construction site will not be particularly convenient and as it stands now I'm about at the end of my rope anyway.  The drive time right now is costing me around half an hour of precious morning ride time, not to mention the hassle of loading the bike in and out of the car, changing shoes, etc.  I think I'll probably be riding out toward the lake every day soon.  It would be nice if we could get a group together that could ride out from someplace uptown at the relatively reasonable hour of 6:15 or 6:30.

So anyway, today's ride was fairly steady except when Robert and maybe Mark would surge at the front.  We are still enjoying slightly lower morning temperatures than normal for this time of year, which is to say it hasn't been above 80F. It doesn't last long, but it's nice while it does. With little to no wind today, the group stayed together despite the occasional surges, and the steady speed meant I was hearing that irritating creak starting to reappear down around my bottom bracket.  I can only surmise, based on the copious amount of grease I slathered around the bearings a couple of weeks ago, that it may be coming from the interface between the bottom bracket shell and the pressed-in BB30 bearing housings.  I really don't want to have to pull those, and it's been suggested that a liberal application of WD-40 might be worth a try, but in the meantime I'm just trying to ignore it.  We're hoping to get a northshore ride together for Sunday since there's nothing really on the race calendar until August.

On the Tulane Cycling front, getting the last little things wrapped up has been kind of like pulling teeth.  I need keys for three of the interior doors.  I've explained that to the architect months ago, the facilities services guys a month ago, and the locksmith a couple of weeks ago.  Today I get an email from the locksmith saying there are five interior doors and he doesn't have keys for any of them.  No kidding. So I go through the explanation again.  Keys for the three doors on the left.  Shouldn't this be a simple thing for a locksmith?  Then I'm trying to order twenty stack chairs.  The place from which I want to order them just drops them off from the back of the truck.  That wouldn't be too much of a problem except there's not an obvious place to do that at University Square, which used to be a small shopping center.  So I ask Purchasing if I can have them delivered to them and then transported over here.  I get a response that depends on the kind of truck they will be delivered from.  If I knew the answer to that question I wouldn't have had to ask in the first place. The signage for the door is on indefinite hold because the computer that they use to control the machine that makes the signs apparently got replaced with one that requires upgraded software that they don't have yet. Two steps forward, one step back.  Situation normal.

One little ray of light lately was the news that we finally got the NOBC's 501(c)3 tax-exempt status re-instated by the IRS after having it revoked because nobody was submitting tax returns when they started requiring that a few years ago for organizations with under $25k/year in revenue.  The tax return for us doesn't even include any financial information.  It's just like saying, "yeah, were're still  here and still not bringing in more than $25k per year."