After the Hurrication

Nice ride in a light rain on a day that could have been a hurricane day

Tropical Storm / Hurricane Barry was kind of a bust for us here in New Orleans, but the torrential rain and flooding that preceded it on Wednesday is still causing headaches. You wouldn't have thought that from watching the national news and weather channel, though. At least we got a nice little two-day hurrication out of it since the school closed down on Thrusday and Friday in anticipation of whatever they thought might happen. There were predictions of more heavy rain and street flooding, the Mississippi River overflowing the levees, Lake Pontchartrain overflowing the levees, etc. In the end, we had three days of somewhat rainy weather and a bit of wind here and there, but for the most part the bad weather ended up well to our west. The only excitement for us was on Saturday when a dangling static wire atop the phone pole in front of the neighbor's house got blown around in the wind and shorted against one of the secondary lines making for some sparks and ultimately breaking the secondary line, which remained hung up in the oak tree. None of us even lost power as a result and Entergy patched it up pretty quickly. The rest of the day was pretty boring since the tropical storm was just sitting out there in the Gulf. By Sunday morning it was clear we wouldn't be getting much of anything except light rain, and I eventually went out for a ride on the trusty old Pennine rain bike. Unfortunately I didn't take the time to pump up the tires since they felt "ok" to my thumb test, which apparently was entirely unreliable when dealing with those thick tires with Mr. Tuffy's in them. I rode a mile or so and decided to put some air in the rear tire, but all I had was a 40 year old Silca frame pump that did nothing but release more air. I ended up riding back home on the flat, pumping it up at home, and going back out for what turned out to be a pretty nice ride on the levee in a light drizzle.

Sundown just before the last race of the day on the lakefront on Wednesday

So although I missed riding on Saturday, things were pretty much back to normal on Monday. The ground floor of the Tidewater building on Canal St. was kind of a mess with sheetrock being torn out and blowers all over the place, but that's practically an annual routine nowadays. Before heading in to work I went over to visit Phil at Porche of New Orleans so he could mount tires on the wheels of the old GT-6 that's been sitting in the garage for about twenty years. I'd pulled the wheels off before the storm but figured I'd wait until things were settled down first. So now I just need to see how far I want to go down that particular rabbit hole. I guess I'll clean out the fuel system and carburetors, clean up the plugs and points, get a battery, and see if the engine will actually turn over. That will kind of determine where I go from there. If it looks like it's reasonably salvageable I'll then think about brakes, hydraulics, clutch, etc., etc. It would be cool to get it running again, but it's in pretty rough shape after all that time.

Yesterday was the last of the 4-race weekday Pontchartrain Beach Summer Series out at the lakefront. Race #3 had been cancelled because of the weather but the forecast looked fine for this one. I was scheduled to officiate with Michelle. Candy had to take the car to work for an early meeting, so I rode the bike to work and would then put the bike in the car, drive back to the house, load up all of the stuff, and drive out to the lakefront. Around mid-afternoon Townsend called to tell me someone had stolen his generator from in front of his house where he'd left if for a few minutes so the spilled gasoline could evaporate. Fortunately my generator was sitting in the basement full of gas. I left work around 4 p.m. and got out to the lake around 5:15, so that worked out OK. We got the first race done as a big black thunderstorm started building to the west. There was no telling if it would expand over us or not, but fortunately all we got was some drizzle during the second race. Guess I got home around 9 pm or so, ate half of a leftover frozen pizza, and put the results on the LAMBRA website after checking out the last 10 km or so of the Tour de France.