Hot Eventful Week

Look! My eye has an ID Card now!

I knew it would be a low-mileage week. Monday was nothing but rain, and besides I had a morning appointment to get a COVID-19 nasopharyngeal test over at Ochsner-Baptist. That was because I was scheduled for eye surgery on Wednesday to get the cataract in my right eye replaced with a shiny new plastic lens, aka Itraocular Lens Implant. That would mean that I'd miss riding on Wednesday, and would be doing an easy ride on Thursday. I did get to go out on Tuesday, although we didn't do the full ride since there were only three of us. Just as well, I guess.

Somewhere along the way this week I hit 100 k miles on Strava

So on Wednesday I headed over to the hospital again bright an early. I'd tested negative for SARS CoV-2 on Monday, and when I arrived I was screened for elevated temperature and asked a bunch of questions and finally cleared to go check in. This being my second such surgery, I at least knew what to expect. First there's a series of drops they put in your eyes, then eventually they plug in an IV, dose you up with something that doesn't quite put you to sleep, and wheel you into the operating room. The actual surgery takes maybe ten minutes. Then you hang around until the anesthesia wears off, and they send you home with a pair of gigantic sunglasses and instructions to sit around and take it easy for the rest of the day.

I actually got a fair amount of work done, updating my COVID-19 dashboard and sending it out to the senior administration. The news there, BTW, was not good at all. Apparently a lot of people decided this whole COVID-19 thing was over despite what the professionals kept telling them and went back to partying as usual a couple of weeks ago. So now the cases and hospitalizations are rising fairly dramatically, especially in some areas of the state where people were particularly fond of telling you it was all a big government hoax and that wearing a mask around other people was an infringement on their constitutional rights and such. Anyway, the entirely predictable result was that on Friday the Governor issued a mandatory "mask order" to go into effect Monday morning. It's sad that the best we can do about this right now is ask people to wear a mask around others and to try not to further the spread of the virus, but such is the case with novel infectious diseases.

Temporary buildings going up on campus

By Thursday morning I was dying to at least get on the bike for a while, even though I was supposed to avoid "strenuous exercise," which I guess means anything that might cause my eye to pop out of my head. My compromise on that was to go out a little later than usual in order to avoid being tempted to join the regular morning levee ride, and then to just do a short easy 25 mile ride that included a ride through campus to check out the new temporary buildings they're putting on the McAlister quad. As I got close to the house I saw the Sewerage and Water Board working on patching up the hole they had dug a few months ago when a water line on Pine Street had broken. I stopped and asked them when they were planning on fixing the huge hole not 100 feet away that had gone unrepaired for a year and a half, and counting. Perhaps I shamed them into doing something, because after they fixed the first hole they went over to the other one and shoveled out some of the rocks and dirt, dropped a couple of barrels in the street, and left (sigh).

It ain't pretty, but it'll have to do.

After that I had a post-op visit over at Ochsner that went fine. I was a little surprised that the eye was already providing 20/20 vision since the left eye took a while longer to get there. Now I just have another followup in a couple of weeks and then I'll probably go visit my regular eye doctor and figure out what glasses I'll need for the computer and reading.

By Friday I was feeling fat and sluggish, so I did a somewhat faster solo ride on the levee. It was nice to not have to put in a contact lens to ride. With no problems to report, I planned to do the Giro Rides on Saturday and Sunday, although I am getting more and more concerned about the COVID situation again. I'd really hate to have to go back to solo rides again, but it's entirely possible at this point. Anyway, later that day the S&WB came back with like three trucks and a backhoe and dumped some asphalt into the hole, rolled over it a few times with the truck, and called it a wrap. It is at least an improvement, but nobody will be mistaking it for a professional job.

A rare example of teamwork - pushing rob up the Industrial Canal bridge.

Saturday's Giro Ride started pretty fast. We were already under a heat advisory, but that didn't do anything to diminish what turned out to be an average speed of almost 28 mph for the 14 or 15 miles heading out to Venetian Isles. I think I spent the entire time on the drops hanging on for dear life as we spent most of the time at 30-31 mph. Fortunately the return trip was a little less intense, and then, on Lake Forest Blvd. everyone suddenly hit the brakes. Rob's rear derailleur had flown off onto the street. The lower jockey wheel bolt had broken, causing the chain to jam between the wheel and the cage. That locked up the chain which then broke the derailleur hanger as it came out of the cage. So there's Rob with what was left of his SRAM electronic derailleur in his pocket and the chain still on the bike but almost dragging on the ground, with another ten miles or so to get home. He eventually took the chain off and put it in his pocket after it kept getting caught between the cassette and the spokes. Although he kept trying to pedal, with some limited success, for the most part we pushed and pulled him all the way back to Lakeshore Drive and then over to Leon C. Simon where his wife met him with the car. I don't think I've ever seen a mechanical quite like that on a ride before.

Sunday's Giro was fast, but not quite as fast as Saturday's had been, but it was definitely hotter and more humid. I was feeling some of the effects from the prior day, but not really too bad. On the way back, Darren flatted as we turned onto Bullard (Lake Forest and Bullard are mine fields of broken, cracked, sinking concrete roads), so a few of us stopped while he fixed it. The rest of the ride back just got hotter and hotter, and by the end I was just hanging onto Darren and Woody and hoping to make it home before heat exhaustion set in. Good thing I'd decided to use my race wheels and put some electrolyte in my water bottle!