Slippery When Wet

Slippery when wet!

We seem to be in the midst of some kind of monsoon season around here lately. Where and when it will rain seems to be entirely unpredictable, but the fact that it will rain somewhere, sometime, is an absolute certainty. Often the where and when coincide with wherever I happen to be.

It was like that last Saturday. I went out to do the Giro Ride rather than an 80-miler that was happening on the northshore because it looked like it might rain ... somewhere. Despite the almost useless weather forecast there was a pretty good crowd on hand for the ride and it turned out to be a pretty good ride. Well, that is until we got onto Hayne Blvd. and it started to rain. It wasn't too bad, though, and the pace remained pretty high as we went over the casino overpass and blasted across the dragstrip between that and the Seabrook bridge. By then I was well toward the back of a string of riders, and as we got closer to the bridge I called out, to nobody in particular, "don't forget about the grate!" referring of course to the steel grate on top of the drawbridge that has taken down more than a few riders. When it's wet, it's very slippery, and when you fall on it you don't slide. Well, my voice definitely didn't carry all the way up to the front of the group, and as I watched the first few riders sprinting to the top I said out loud, "Oh shit." Sure enough, the first couple of riders made it across but the third slid out right in the middle of the right lane and was very slow to get up. He had hit his head and done some pretty significant damage to his left hand. As we got him sorted out and riders started rolling down the overpass, he noticed that he'd lost his Garmin watch. It's probably at the bottom of the industrial canal now, because we couldn't find it. Anyway, Eddie D and I stayed with him all the way back to make sure he was OK. Back at home the streets were dry, of course. 

Monday was plumber day. The plumber came in the morning and replaced all the valves and plumbing for the tub and shower, which involved me cutting a big hole in the wall that I have yet to repair. On the plus side, you can actually turn the water all the way off now. On the minus side the wife hates the handles he put on, so I'll probably end up spending another hundred dollars for something different. I told the plumber I'd call him next week to set up time for him to replace the tub drain lines and trap since they have been fairly clogged up since we bought the house thirty years ago. I think the road work crew finally moved my water meter out from the roots of the oak tree the other day. Anyway, the road is still a complete disaster area but it looks like they are finishing up most of the underground work, so I guess next will be the curbs and such before finally getting to the re-paving part. 

Neighborhood kids and parents making the most of the dirt road after a rainstorm

On Tuesday the forecast was also pretty inconclusive and it was just Scott and me on the levee at 6 am. We learned that Charles, who had crashed at the Tour de La road race on a slippery wet turn, had finally gotten a good MRI done and was told he had, "Nondisplaced acute fractures of the left hemi sacrum, anterior wall of the right acetabulum, right inferior pubic ramus and right side of the pubic symphysis." Some of that sounds familiar, and indeed I had told him that I thought he had probably broken something like his pubic ramus based on the fact that his symptoms were so muck like mine were a year and a half ago.  In other words, he probably shouldn't have been riding with us the prior Thursday. Actually, since that injury was almost a month prior, it should be well on it's way to healing, so I guess he'll take another couple of weeks off to be on the safe side. We did a good ride out to the Big Dip and back, but it was not without incident. On the way back, Scott's rear tire went soft so we stopped to change it. Then, when he got back on the bike the chain came off and he tried to force it, which resulted in the chain getting lodged underneath the pin on the drive-side crankarm. You know, that pin that is supposed to keep the chain from getting stuck between the crankarm and the chainring. It took is about fifteen minutes to get it back out of there using a combination of multitools, four hands, and brute force. 

Yesterday I made it out to the WeMoRi which seemed to be a bit faster than usual, which felt good. Then I got rained on coming home from work. Then today there were just three of us at 6 am so we were talking about turning around early, but then we started picking up more riders along the way and were up to eight eventually, so we went all the way out to Ormond.

There are some races finally being planned. Jason F is putting on a criterium at the lakefront later this month, then there are criteriums in Mobile the following week. Robert L is working on a road race and criterium weekend up around Jackson for some time in September. I've been back in the office full-time as of Tuesday (I kind of was for a week prior to that), along with everyone else. It was nice to be here with other people and even nicer that they got the coffee maker fixed. We might be trying out a kind of flex schedule where we would take turns working remotely on Fridays. I'm not real sure what the benefit of that is in my case, but whatever.