Weekend Progress

The Sunday Giro heading out along Marconi. We picked up a few more along LSD.

I'd been back from the Sunday Giro Ride for half an hour or so when Candy came back from a trip to the grocery store and said there were trucks along Neron Place. Sure enough there was a guy in a bucket fixing the wire across from my neighbor's house that I'd been reporting to Entergy periodically for about fifteen years. It had been trapped below a branch of the Oak tree and gradually pulled down about ten feet from where it was supposed to be. A little while later they moved out, and then the power came back on for the other houses on the block. Generators stopped, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Collateral bike path damage from cars

On Saturday I had decided to do a ride on the levee out to the Spillway. I wasn't sure how the roads were along the Giro route, or whether anyone would even show up for that (as it turned out a few did show up and did the Saturday Giro). Somewhere out by the grain elevators past St. Rose there was a woman up ahead walking a dog. As usual, I called out "on your left," and was surprised to hear "Hi Randy!" as I went by. It was Sherri. I turned around and asked, "What are you doing way out here?" Turns out Judd's office is nearby and it's been in full operation since he works with river barges and stuff, so she's been staying there. I continued on to the Spillway where the little gazebo had been blown away and decided to go down to the spillway road to see how it was coming. I ended up in some soft wet red dirt that they had used to prepare a cut-out section for re-paving and made a bit of a mess of the bike. Back up on top of the levee the metal roof of the ranger station or whatever that is had been ripped off, but I found a little group that had been behind me composed of Jason, Keith, Chris, Hannibal, and a few others, so rode back with them. The levee bike path was in pretty good shape for the most part, although there were a couple of places where you had to duck under guy wires and another where the cars and trucks had collapsed part of the asphalt. Anyway, it was a nice moderately paced ride, although riding out the the Spillway and back always seems to feel harder than it should to me. 

Around mid-day FedEx delivered the LAMBRA medals I'd ordered for next weekend's road and criterium championships. They arrived in a nice clean box, but when I opened it I discovered the remnants of the original box that was a rain-soaked mass of damp cardboard and bubble wrap. The medals looked OK, although the ribbons were still quite damp. The box looked like it had been through a hurricane. Robert jumped in his car and drove down from Jackson to pick them up along with a few other things for the races. Saturday night we had some neighbors over for dinner and laundry. I left messages at a couple of electrical companies about getting someone to come re-attach my service drop to the house. I am not particularly confident I'll get a quick, or any, response to those under the circumstances but it was worth a try.

Sunday morning outage map

This morning I figured I give the Giro Ride a shot. I knew the Starbucks would be closed, so didn't leave home as early as usual. Riding down Carrollton I noted more places with power, including some gas stations, although it looked like only the Costco was actually pumping gas. Turning onto Harrison Avenue I saw that some of the streetlights were on, but it looked like only some of the businesses had power. The Starbucks was dark and closed, of course. We ended up with about a dozen riders for the Giro, and of those only two or three seemed interested in pushing the pace. That made for a moderately paced ride, albeit with a few fast sections (Matt was out on his TT bike). I was feeling tired from the start, so I was only taking pulls when there was a nice rotating paceline. 

So it looks like my immediate neighborhood should mostly have electricity now, which is great. Trash pickup doesn't seem to have started yet, and every now and then I catch a whiff of that familiar Katrina smell from garbage that has been sitting out in the sun for days. Hopefully trash and garbage issues will be gradually resolved over the next week or two as more workers become available.