Under the Weather

It's been a very wet week around here, which happened to coincide with me getting some sort of mild but nagging stomach virus. I suppose that as COVID restrictions continue to be relaxed we'll all be catching up on those little infections that we've missed out on over the past year. Anyway, it seems like every morning this week it's been either raining or threatening to rain. I went out early Wednesday to ride the WeMoRi, where I felt less than great but not terrible. I'd skipped riding on Tuesday between the rain and the stomach queasiness, and then likewise skipped riding Thursday as well since there was a high wind and flash flood warning essentially all day. I could have gotten in a ride in the evening without getting wet but battling the 15-18 mph wind on the levee just didn't seem like a good idea under the circumstances. This morning I was feeling more back to normal, so naturally it was raining when I looked out the window at 5:30. I may try to get out for a few miles later in the day if the weather cooperates.

I did finally get my little internet range-extender set up as an access point so I now have much more solid wireless in the front of the house. That involved running Cat 6 ethernet cable from the back room to the living room, through the basement, and then a whole new learning experience about correctly wiring up the connectors. Turns out that how the pairs are set up is more important than I thought. It took me a few tries, some head-scratching, and some Googling to get that properly sorted out.

In the meantime, in-between rainstorms, the city's contractor has been tearing up the street right in front of the house. They're putting in the huge new concrete storm drain lines and related connections, which has not been without substantial collateral damage to, well, everything in the vicinity - curbs, sidewalks, trees, etc. This will be ongoing for probably another full year by the time the underground work is finished, the curbs and storm drains are replaced, sidewalks repaired or replaced, and finally the road re-paved.

With the Tour de Louisiane coming up in a couple of weeks, I'm planning on spending much of Saturday out on the road race course, marking turns, checking out the course, and hopefully patching some of the worst of the pinch-flat inducing potholes on the back side. Bill Burke is holding his Gran Fondo St. Francisville event this Saturday that I'd like to do, but I think the TdL course reconnaissance is going to have to take precedence and I don't think I can do both. 

Last week I experimented with some cold-patch asphalt on a pothole near the house and was a little surprised to find that a 50-pound bag didn't even fill what was not really a huge pothole. On the plus side, the tamper worked well and it's at least better than it was. I have a couple more bags in the basement, but for the Tour de La road course I'm thinking I'll need quite a few more just to soften the worst of the sharp edges. It would be a shame to have to find another road course just because of on particularly bad segment of asphalt out there. I can think of one or two other possibilities but they aren't really any closer or more challenging. It's too bad we can't realistically use the old 20-mile loop near Covington, but there's just been too much traffic around there since it all started to get built up a couple of decades ago.