Making the Best of It

Wet asphalt, worms and solitude on the levee this morning

It was a dark and stormy night.  Really.  It was.  What it wasn't, however, was the kind of life-threatening storm that the media had been hyping. Basically, there was a lot of intermittent rain and a fair amount of wind, but it was, in a way, disappointing. The power flickered once and that was about it. Still, the forecast was for nothing but rain and I saw no reason to doubt that part was accurate, so when the alarm went off at five-whatever in the morning and I could hear the cars on the wet streets outside, I shuffled off to the kitchen and made some coffee. Outside, it looked like the rain had practically stopped, at least temporarily. I drove The Wife over to the shuttle stop on campus around 6:15, and on the way looked up to see a little patch of blue sky through a gap in the thick cloud cover. I was already making plans as I drove home. I could probably get out the door around 6:45 on the rain bike so perhaps there was hope. A quick check of the radar confirmed that the city was in-between rain bands and would probably be that way for at least a couple of hours. I threw on some riding clothes, pumped up the Pennine's tires, stuffed a rain jacket into my pocket, pulled on shoe-covers, and headed for the levee. The streets were wet but whatever was falling from the sky was could hardly be called rain. I ended up getting in a perfectly fine twenty-two miles, thankful that I had a rain bike with full fenders as I rolled through puddles and over the stretched-out bodies of the hundreds of earthworms that covered parts of the levee bike path. It wasn't a hard workout or anything, but I was glad I'd made the best out of that little lull in the weather.

Soon after I got to work this morning -- yes, I took the car -- it started storming again, and later in the morning my phone lit up with a tornado warning. The sky is still dark and the streets still wet and the rain is still falling, but I got in a ride today when I'd have bet money I wouldn't have. The Volvo place still hasn't called about the tail light they were supposed to order, although I did have some fun on Monday when someone from the dealership called to check on how nicely I'd been treated and whether everything had been done to my satisfaction. It would be nice to have a right turn signal again, but I have to admit I'm not all that anxious to deal with the hassle of getting the car out to Metairie and all, so I'm good with waiting for now.

Keith emailed that the latest kit order had arrived. I had ordered a second pair of shorts and a second jersey, so now I'll just have to figure out how to get over to his office now that mine isn't so conveniently located any more. Unfortunately, the next reasonably nearby race isn't until August. I've been thinking about looking for something outside of LAMBRA next month, but it seems like promoters in the south are afraid to put on anything big in July because of the heat. There's a weekend of races in Crockett, TX. I had to look up the location on Google Maps to find out it's kind of halfway between Houston and Dallas, so around 6.5 hours drive time and no chance of winning enough to pay for lunch, and it's the weekend that Danielle comes in from Washington. There's something the following weekend up in TN but now we're talking about 9-hour drives.