I mean, what else is there? Last week was just one day after the other of suffocating humidity with pre-dawn temperatures in the mid-80s and apparent temperatures over 110°F. The complete lack of rain just made things that much worse. Every morning when I'd turn on the Garmin to ride I'd get yet another heat advisory warning. I even resorted to putting a little electrolyte mix in my weekday water bottles. Still, that didn't stop me from getting in the usual rides, although I think the general intensity levels were perhaps a bit lacking. The weekend Giro Rides had really small groups. Lots of the regular Giro riders have been doing the 6:30 am SaMoRi on Saturdays instead, just to avoid those last 30 minutes in the sun, I guess. Indeed, both Giro Rides, while quite fast on the way out to Venetian Isles, were slower than usual on the return trips, no doubt due to the combined effects of the heat and the small group size.
Yesterday, on the morning levee ride, our little group almost got taken out by someone in a car coming across the levee from one of the grain elevator docks. Luckily he saw us (probably finally looked up from his phone) at the last second and hit the brakes halfway across the bike path.
The miserable weather continued all the way until yesterday evening when a little cool front finally came through, bringing with it a little bit of badly needed rain. At least two plants in front of the house have succumbed to the heat and dryness already.
This morning the 80° temperature felt positively refreshing thanks to the much-lowered humidity level. Of course one doesn't get cooler weather around here without paying for it, in this case by having a 12 mph north wind. As north winds often do, the group had already been shattered along Lakeshore Drive by the time I jumped into what was left of the front group on Marconi. As usual, I was nearly redlined all the way down Wisner, barely hanging onto the back. Then on City Park Avenue a gap opened ahead of Joe Paul and when he put his head down to chase I just hung on to his wheel for dear life. We came around the corner onto Marconi and then when he stood up to accelerate his right foot unclipped and my life briefly flashed before my eyes. Fortunately we both remained upright and eventually closed the little gap. He later told me that he had been having trouble clipping into that particular pedal, which is a Giant-branded Look by all appearances. He thought that he hadn't fully clipped in after he had had to put a foot down at a stop light a bit earlier.
On the plus side, I got the replacement cassette body for my Campi Scirocco training wheels, so I put everything back together and was happy to find that it solved the problem. I had ordered replacement hub bearings but everything seems fine at the moment so I'll hold off on replacing those since that will require a trip to the shop in order to remove the old ones and press in the new ones (not that I haven't pressed in new bearings before using a socket, block of wood, and a hammer). The shifters are kind of on their last legs but I'll just live with that at least through nationals since fixing them will probably require rebuilding them and that's assuming I can actually get the parts for shifters that were superseded in 2014. Candy's Fitbit watch died a couple of weeks ago and after trying all of the suggested ways to fix it I finally called tech support, went through everything I'd tried, and got them to ship a replacement. We'll see how long this one lasts. Candy has a way of destroying electronic equipment that unparalleled. I've replaced the screen protector on her iPhone about four times and each time the old one has been practically shattered.
So the car. After going about ten days without a car I was happy to get a call from the collision center last Thursday that it was finally ready for pick-up. Of course that meant riding down Tulane Avenue again in the middle of the day in street clothes when it was close to 100° but I didn't want to be without a car for yet another day. Then on Saturday we discovered that neither of the keyless entry door handle buttons on the right side of the car, where the body panels had been repaired, would work. All the other doors worked fine, and those two doors would lock and unlock using the key fob, but the buttons on the handles were dead. So I brought it back in on Monday expecting it to be a quick fix on the assumption that somebody had just forgotten to plug some connector back in. I wasn't terribly surprised not to have received a call about it that day, but by late afternoon yesterday when I still hadn't heard anything I called. Turns out they can't figure out what the problem is and want to have their mechanic (i.e. no the body shop person) look at it. I suspect that there is some corrosion on the connector terminals, but I guess we'll see. I'll bet they want to replace both door handles and will try to come up with a way to make it my fault.
Speaking of things that need to be fixed, my block of Pine Street that they tore up a couple of weeks ago has again been abandoned leaving us with a dirt road and clouds of dust. They poured the concrete for the curbs on August 1, then disappeared. It's now August 16.
Wish I could say I was surprised.
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