Mad Potter Saturday

Realdo and I were halfway to Biloxi when it dawned on me that we were running late. We were on our way to the first two races of a weekend omnium near Biloxi, Mississippi, and it was becoming clear that my calculations had been somewhat optimistic. I pressed a little harder on the gas pedal, though, and we arrived to find a long line still at the registration table. The race would clearly be starting a little late, so although we were rushed, it all worked out. I was riding the master 35+ race that had 34 or so riders and a very high proportion of horsepower, and although the course was not particularly hilly, I was expecting a hard race.

At the start, I was lined up near the back, well out of range of the referee's megaphone, and was relieved when the race started at a fairly civilized pace. The course consisted of three laps of a 15 or 16 mile loop, plus a four of five mile stretch to and from the finish line, which was not on the loop. The first lap went smoothly and I quickly realized that the combination of narrow roads and large field would make staying at the back a very risky combination, so I started working my way up toward the front. It took the better part of half a lap, but finally I installed myself up in the front third of the group where I would at least have a fighting chance to react to any action. It wasn't until the second lap that things started to pick up and about mid-way through I was in a 3-man break to which the pack had granted a brief vacation leave. Soon enough, though, were brought back and I found myself about 10 seconds off the front. I stayed out there for a while, hoping to perhaps stimulate some action, and eventually a 6-man break materialized and started putting some time on the rest of the field. Our little group was working well together for a few miles and as we started the final lap another small group bridged up to us making for a break of about 10 riders. There was some confusion for a while, but eventually one of the guys put on his director sportif hat and started getting the group organized. We soon had a fast, if slightly disorganized, rotation going that again started putting time on the pack. It wasn't until the final seven or eight miles that things started to slow down as the riders started to smell a sprint. As we rounded the left-hand turn for the final 4-mile run into the finish, Tom Bain attacked and strung out the group, but the response was quick and he was brought back quickly. A few minutes later, he went again but this time it seemed like he eased up rather quickly. As it turned out, he had a flat front tire and the wheel truck was minutes behind us with the pack. I think that about half the pack had been keying off of Tom, so his sudden loss was a little disappointing. The finish was at the top of a fairly long but not too steep climb, so although the pace picked up a lot at the 1 km mark, it wasn't until we were inside the 200 meter sign that the sprint really started. As I started to come around Ed on the left, I heard the moto-ref blowing his horn behind me and suddenly wondered whether the center-line rule might be in effect for the sprint. It would be unusual, but since I hadn't heard the instructions at the start, I wasn't sure. Rather than take the chance of being DQ'ed, I eased up and went around Ed the long way, on the other side. As we came up to the line I saw him glance over his shoulder, and when he saw me coming he made a last-minute lunge for the line, but it was too late and I got past him to finish in 2nd spot.

A while later, Realdo, who had been in a 6-rider break in the Cat. 1,2,3 race, won his sprint to finish first, ahead of The Great Balded One. After three cold caffeine-loaded Red Bull drinks, we headed over to the nicely air-conditioned Palace Casino in Biloxi for something to eat and to watch the Tour de France on the huge TV screen. We hung out there until it was time to leave for the afternoon 3-mile time trial which started about an hour late. I guess I did a respectible time, but certainly not one of the best. I won't see the results until tomorrow at the criterium.

After the TT, we headed back to New Orleans where I went straight over to my mother's house because my brother and his family were in town. I gave Gina a call on the way back to see how things were going at Superweek, and it sounded like they are going super. She said that in today's race she was 3rd in the pack sprint behind a small breakaway and had moved up to 5th or 6th in the overall standings with one race to go. She's won over $400 so far, and will almost certainly take home a chunk of change for her overall placing as well. Isn't it great when you can take home a little bit more than you spent?

As I'm writing this it's already past midnight and I'm waiting for my jersey to finish drying so I can get my gear together for tomorrow's criterium. There is a dull ache in my legs, but it's not too bad. Tomorrow should be fun! I expect there are a few guys who will have something to prove in the criterium, so that should make it lively.

Storm Front - Friday the 13th (stage)

When the alarm went off this morning I knew something was not quite right. It was just a little bit too dark. As I rode through the neighborhood on my way to the levee, through the soft saturated morning air, I could feel the low carpet of grey clouds hovering above the treetops. There was a small group today for the Friday ride, and we rode a double paceline with each lead pair taking long pulls and chatting about the usual stuff. "Going to Biloxi this weekend?" For some, the question needn't be asked because they rarely travel to races. Others were still being evasive, not yet committed to doing the whole 2-day omnium or just a single race a la carte. I had already registered for the omnium yesterday evening, just minutes before getting a call from Reo looking to get together on the transportation issue. Biloxi is only about an hour and a half from here and we'll likely drive back to N.O. after Saturday's road race and time trial, only to turn around and drive back over the next morning. Definitely cheaper than staying overnight, anyway. I'm looking forward to it, even though I don't feel like I'm really in race shape lately. I've missed all of the training races the last few weeks because of conflicts with work, and although I've been riding consistently I know that the intensity has been lacking. Still, lack of fitness should never be used as an excuse for missing a local, or even regional, race. The racing itself is much better training than you'd get at the weekend group ride, and in this particular case the $45 entry fee for the weekend is quite reasonable. It looks like the weather on Saturday and Sunday will be good, which around here means a 30-40% chance of afternoon thunderstorms. The only issue for me will be to have a couple of respectable finishes and then to try and make it back to town early enough Sunday afternoon to avoid being too terribly late for my dad's birthday party.

Yesterday after we left work around 6:30, The Wife wanted to drive over to the big Barnes & Noble bookstore to get a book for my dad. As usual, it turned into an hour-long ordeal. Personally, I find big bookstores to be completely overwhelming and unless I know ahead of time what I want, I'd rather not go. Same thing for greeting cards, by the way. The Wife takes a completely opposite approach. If she needs to pick up a birthday card, for example, she will absolutely read each and every card on the rack before making a decision. Same thing goes for bookstores. I suppose it wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't been so hungry.

I was reading Martin Dugard's TDF blog a few minutes ago, and thought it was pretty clever of him to refer to today's stage as "Friday the 13th," since it's the 13th stage of this year's Tour. I had been at work for quite a while this morning before I suddenly remembered to check in on how today's race was going. When I pulled up Cyclingnews and the Eurosport live audio, I found that I had timed it just right. There was a 2-man break containing the amazing Chris Horner dangling just ahead of the peleton with only about 5 km to go. Chris and the other guy kind of blew it in the last 500 meters by starting to worry about the stage win and not keeping their momentum going. You just can't do that with the sprinters' teams knocking on your back door. They both got swallowed up within the last 300 meters or so, I think, and the day went to the sprinters as planned. Very gutsy move by Chris, though, and it's pretty cool to see him doing this stuff in his first year as a euro-pro after getting added to the Tour de France lineup at practically the last minute. He ended up 10th for the stage which is none too shabby anyway. Dream-come-true just to be there. A stage win would have been practically unbelievable.

I see that Gina finished pretty far down in the pack in yesterday's Superweek criterium, although she got 5th in one of the sprints, which I presume are like primes??? There's a special sprint points competition in addition to the overall competition. She's still 7th in the overall and 8th in the sprints with three events left, so that's pretty awesome. I'll bet she's the only med student in the top ten.

So I've still got a couple of unhappy Windows98 laptops at home. One will boot up fine and work fine for a while, even an hour, and then just randomly crash to the blue screen of death indicating a hardware or driver problem. I uninstalled a few things last night to see if that would matter, but it didn't. Good thing I usually rely on those old machines only for simple e-mail and web browsing. I'd just go ahead and reinstall Windows on one of them, but I don't know if I can find the original CDs that would make that oh so much less painful, but I'd still need to do the deed at work where I have a high-speed connection because the old version of Win98 would need major online updating at the very least.

Busy, Busy

Happy Bastille Day!

I added a photo album showing some of the landmarks for the morning Levee training ride, so if you've been wondering what it looks like out on the bike path, you can check it out on the NOBC website.

Last night was kind of rough, computer-wise. I've got two rather old hand-me-down laptops at home that I use and both of them had some serious problems last night. One would crash to a blue screen with some sort of cryptic message about a hardware issue, while the other would hang in the middle of loading Windows every time. I spent a lot of time in "safe mode," running complete disk maintenance utilities, defragging drives, etc. and one of them seems to be mysteriously cured while the other is still unhappy. It seems like I went through a similar situation a couple of months ago. Anyway, I was up until midnight fooling around with the blasted things. I sure wish I could afford to spring for a shiny new computer! Maybe even something that isn't running Windows98.

It's been a busy day today and cycling-related things have really had to take a back seat. Don't you just hate it when work interferes with your cycling?

I had a 9 a.m. meeting this morning, so went out to meet the Thursday long ride group already knowing I'd be turning back early. The pace today, at least while I was there, stayed pretty moderate. Although there was a pretty big group, a few of the usual instigators were absent and so the group stuck to a reasonable facsimile of a paceline all the way out to the St. Charles parish line where I turned back. I enjoyed the mostly solo ride back today, staying at a nice tempo around 22 mph, give-or-take. Along the way I picked up one of the guys who commutes in to Ochner and we chatted a bit after I eased up at Jefferson Playground.

I spent all morning in meetings and most of the early afternoon following up on meetings and didn't finally check the TDF results until well after noon. It looked like a predictable stage - a group of riders who were well down on GC was allowed to go down the road while the big fish kicked back a little bit.

I see that GiVo is still doing well at the Superweek races, finishing 17th and 11th in the last two races. Meanwhile Shannon Koch of Team LaS'port in Shreveport is heading to Austria for the Junior World Championships as part of the U.S. team following her recent victories at nationals. She'll be racing with the Cat. 1,2,3 guys in Biloxi this weekend as a warm-up.

Hump Day in the Big Easy and on the Galibier

There was a small crew out this morning for the Wednesday training ride, and that kept the pace quite civilized. On my way down to the basement to get the bike, I picked up my cheap little digital camera so I could snap a few photos of the ride for the website. It's always kind of difficult to explain to visiting riders exactly where the group meets, and I figure a few photos might help. As usual, I'm a little disappointed with the quality of the photos, but then what do you expect from a fixed-focus camera being used by someone riding a bike? My "real" camera is really too heavy and bulky to use while riding anyway. I ended up doing a couple of camera intervals, sprinting ahead of the group so I could slam on the brakes, whip out the camera and snap a shot or two as the group approached. I would then have to get going again and chase the group down. This is why I took pictures on a Wednesday when the pace is slower instead of a Tuesday when the pace is ballistic!

So I see that NASA had to delay the shuttle launch. That's a real shame. The folks here in New Orleans who built the new tanks must have been disappointed. Brian, one of our club riders, works at Lockheed-Martin. I don't usually know exactly what he works on, which is probably why I'm still alive. Suffice it to say that I'm quite sure the Space Shuttle fuel tank isn't the only thing they do out there.

The Tour de France was pretty interesting today. One thing I love about the Tour are the names of the mountain passes. I have a set of wheels named after the Sestriere, and you can have breakfast at La Madeleine here in N.O. (three locations, I think!). Today the TDF went over the Madeleine, Telegraphe, and Galibier, finishing after a nice downhill from the latter. I was surprised and impressed by Vinokourov and Botero, both of whom, I suppose, had something to prove today. Discovery seemed to ride a well-controlled race with most of the team working hard to keep Lance protected. In the end they narrowed the gap to the Vino/Botero duo to just over a minute and even set up a leadout for Lance to sprint for the 3rd place bonus (he ended up 6th though).

On the home front, I was all set to drive over to Ft. Walton tomorrow with my dad to sort out the hurricane damage at his house, but as it turned out he got someone over there to clean things up today so (a) we don't need to go, and (b) his birthday party will be here in town on Sunday afternoon, which means (c) I get to do the Biloxi races this weekend. There are no results up yet from yesterday's Superweek races, so I don't know how that went. I wouldn't be surprised if it rained up there, though. Speaking of rain, it looks like the new Tropical Storm will be moving into the Caribbean soon, if it's not already there, and we're all hoping it takes a more southerly track than Dennis.

Droppage? Beaucoup

Awesome. Lance pounded his fist hard on the Tour de France table today, silencing the critics, at least for now. As they climbed the final hill to the finish the droppage rate went through the roof. The Disco Boys gave everyone a lesson in teamwork along the way, pushing the pace early with Hincappie sheltering Armstrong until the final 12k and Popovich delivering the final coup de gras a couple of kilometers later that put the hurt on the rest and set Lance up for his final push to the finish. At 5k to go the group really starts to disintegrate as Lance puts in another surge. Only Valverde can hang on to the finish, and Lance gives him a nice long leadout to get every second they can and avoid any cat-and-mouse stuff, letting him shoot past to take the stage win. Rasmussen and Mancebo finish nine seconds later. Basso? A minute down. Kloden? 2:14 down. Ullrich? 2:14 down. So Lance takes the yellow with 38 seconds on Rasmussen and 2:40 on Basso. Still plenty of mountains to go, though, and it's a long way yet to Paris. There will be opportunities tomorrow for some.

Meanwhile back in the real world, there was a big group for the long Tuesday ride this morning. The group sat back and let a couple of the guys on TT bikes ride off into the distance, although eventually the pace picked up pretty well. The ride back was jerky, with only a handful willing to get to the front in the light headwind. The pace was all over the place and few of the riders were on the same page today, with many content to sit in near the back. I got home drenched with sweat. I'm still not sure how I'm going to work out this weekend. I really want to do the races in Biloxi, but it's my dad's birthday and he's invited everyone to his place in Ft. Walton. The same thing happened last year and I ended up doing only the Cat. 1/2/3 Crit. Sunday afternoon.

After trying to accommodate other races and various people, and moving the date of the Team TT twice as a result, Shane finally threw in the towel today and cancelled the Team Time Trial. He told me that he had never actually offered to put it on in the first place. "They" had simply assumed that he would and put it on the calendar in his absence, despite the fact that he is no longer a member of the club that promoted it last year. After he rescheduled it there was a fair amount of complaining, proving once again the old saying "no good deed goes unpunished." He's been all over La. and Ms. this year officiating and between that and his new children and all of the other work he does for LAMBRA, I guess that was the last straw. Perhaps someone else will pick up the event and put it on.

GiVo continues getting excellent results at Superweek. Yesterday she was 3rd in a long road race (I think she said it was around 70 mi.) and moved up to 3rd in the overall standings for the Pro/Cat.1/2/3 Women. There's another road race today and I think it may be in the rain thanks to the remnants of hurricane Dennis.

Rest Day?

While the TDF riders are licking their wounds and hatching the schemes that will play out on the slopes of the Alps next week, I've been kept rather busy today. The morning air was uncharacteristically cool and breezy this morning as the last remnants of the hurricane's circulation pulled some slightly drier air in from the north. I was out the door early today because I had left the commuter at work in case I had to stash the car in the garage to protect it from the hurricane. That meant I'd have to drive in with The Wife, so instead of waiting for the 6:40 group, I headed out earlier and got in a solid 1:15 of training alone, getting back in plenty of time to shower, change and get to work shortly after 8:00. It was quite nice, actually, and besides, I've been meaning to do more solo training rides anyway.

Back at the office I had to put a couple of computers back together, having moved a few of them on Friday in case there had been any wind or rain damage to our rooftop office. A steady stream of work, interrupted only by an interview with a job candidate from New York, kept me on my toes much of the day, although I did rush out for a plate of tasty but somewhat runny RB&R at the Med School.

I got a quick email from GiVo yesterday. She's currently up in Milwaukee at Superweek, aka the "International Cycling Classic." This is probably the oldest multi-day event in the United States, and one of the few that truly deserves to have the word "classic" in its name. Somehow I never made it up there. Anyway, she has been getting some great results up there, finishing 7th and 8th in the two criteriums she's done so far (there are 9 races for the Pro/1/2/3 Women). As a result she's currently in 5th place in the overall standings. The first criterium had 70 women in it, of which only about 30 finished. Now that's a huge women's field by any standards, especially for a criterium. I'll bet it was wild!

The hurricane didn't seem to do nearly the amount of damage that Ivan did last year, and initial reports from the locals in Ft. Walton is that my dad's place stayed high and dry. It looks like Navarre Beach got pretty well flattened, though. Now we can start worrying about the next hurricane that is starting to form out in the Atlantic.

Unsettled

I'm sitting here on the couch, coffee cup in hand, watching the Weather Channel as the gentle breeze from my 50-year-old Hunter Oscillating Fan fills the room. The hurricane is just a few hours from flattening Ft. Walton and Destin again, and the question now isn't whether my dad's place will be flooded, just how deep the water will be and where the boat will end up. Here in the relative safety of New Orleans, a 4-5 hour drive from ground zero, the weather is nonetheless unsettled, with gusty winds and overcast skies.

I have really been enjoying reading Martin Dugard's Tour de France blog, which he is writing for Active.com. While most of the other TDF blogs get updated long after the day's stage has ended, Martin, who writes for the New York Times, updates his within a couple of hours of the finish, and does so with real style. Where else to you get an insightful summary of a bike race laced with quotes like this:

It reminded me of our daily need for inspiration, and Saint-Exupery’s rant against society’s embrace of mediocrity. “You rolled yourselves into a ball in your genteel security, in routine, raising a modest rampart against the winds and tides and stars. Nobody grasped you by the shoulders while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught will you ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.”

The other interesting one is being written by 14-year-old Alex Trautwig who uses his dad's priveliged access to tell us about what kinds of swag are available to the spectators, how the team logos are put on the yellow jersey, and what it's like in the caravan.

The Discovery team, aka "The Disco Boys," at least stuck together today despite allowing two breaks to go up the road and giving away the yellow jersey. After the big climbs, they got together with CSC and pulled back a few minutes on the break. Perhaps it was a strategic decision. Perhaps not. In my little bike-racing world of short fast and flat races, a three-minute gap is huge, stage races routinely being won by just a few seconds. In the TDF world, though, the time gaps on a single mountain stage are usually far greater, with otherwise strong riders losing 15-30 minutes in a single day. Nonetheless, the situation in the Tour seems far more unsettled than in prior years, and the Disco boys have a real race on their hands this time. I sense that the other teams smell blood and absent the usual fear that paralizes the competition, they all seem quite willing to be agressive.

So this morning I decided to skip the Giro ride and instead do a solo ride along the levee. I left early and found the bike path mostly deserted all the way out to the end. I cruised along, occasionally sitting up to enjoy a bit of tailwind, but generally pushing an easy gear at a moderate pace. On the way back I ran into Reo who turned around and rode with me all the way back through Audubon Park before heading back to the bike path to put in another 20 miles or so. I may end up making a trip to Florida one day next week to survey the damage. We shall see. I don't think the hurricane will cause much of a problem in Biloxi, so next weekend's races there should be good.

Thanks Ben!

The minute that Ben S. cancelled this weekend's track meet, I knew we were in the clear. Indeed, as hurricane Dennis traversed Cuba it lost most of its punch, emerging into the Gulf of Mexico as a relatively mediocre Category 2 hurricane. Since then, the projected path has solidified and the consensus is that it will make landfall around Pensacola, which is a good 200 miles to the East. As a result, I'm expecting a relatively nice day tomorrow with a nice North wind and maybe even some slightly drier and cooler air. Bullet dodged! The only question now is how badly my dad's house in Ft. Walton will get hit.

When I got up this morning, I made a quick check of the Weather Channel, and headed out to the Lakefront for the Giro ride. Just as I got to Robt. E. Lee Blvd, a couple of blocks from the lake, I ran into Eddie. He said that Lakeshore Drive was closed and that the police had just run him off, so we headed down to the Casino bridge to await the group, picking up Jeff along the way. We waited for a long time up on top of the bridge before the group finally showed up. The group didn't seem too energetic as it worked its way down Hayne into a moderate headwind, but after turning on to Paris Rd. it picked up quickly and we hammered all the way down to Chef Highway. After a while I drifted back to toward the back of the group, but as we approached the last couple of miles I noticed that a small group had split off the front. There was a sporatic chase, a few solo attempts to bridge, but eventually the headwind killed everything off and it came back together before the turnaround. My legs, which had felt pretty dead earlier, seemed to be feeling better now and it wasn't long after the turnaround that the speeds started creeping upward. For once we got the green light and so the group approached the Goodyear sign sprint at full-bore. I was stationed near the front, not really committed to a sprint, when Howard looked back at me and patted his butt - the international sign for "stick to my wheel." About 200 meters from the line Howard took off with me glued to his wheel. By the finish he had taken us up to 40 mph and I had one of those rare occasions to check out the 12. It was a nice ride back, for the most part, and I sprinted up both of the bridges, but when I looked back at the bottom of the second one, there was practically nobody back there. A few of us rode back together, but we never saw most of the group again.

The Tour de France looked like it must have been pretty good toward the end. A couple of guys held off the pack by a few seconds, but Lance stayed with the small lead group. Unfortunately, Hincapie came off on the last climb and finished with the second group, moving him down to about 8th on GC. I'm sure that much will be said about how Lance ended up without any teammates on that climb.

Threat Response

hurricane Dennis continues to have a bead on the Gulf Coast, and the city is well within the "cone of probability," which is a nice way of saying it might hit here and it might not. In a city this size with only two ways out, that means decisions have to be made well before there is much certainty. So far, New Orleans hasn't issued a voluntary evacuation order but the University officially closed down about half an hour ago. Most of the locals I've talked to have not decided if they will evacuate yet, although a few have made hotel reservations in Texas just in case. The hurricane will certainly be at least a Category 4. Category 2 and 3 are pretty severe hurricanes. The ones that are Category 4 are best experienced by television from a hotel room a couple of hundred miles away. Dennis is a serious one and I'm a little worried that the most recent changes in its forecast path have shifted it farther to the West. It will be a long weekend, to be sure! Yesterday evening I climbed up on the extension ladder and rigged up the partially broken cable TV line so that I can get a signal again. The streets in my neighborhood are still piled high with debris from last weekend's tropical storm, and I'm hoping, but not expecting, that the city will be able to get all of that stuff picked up before Dennis arrives. Locally, the panic level has ratcheted up a couple of notches in the last 12 hours. The TV news stations have been running pieces explaining the city's newest evacuation plans, aka "Contraflow," in which they will completely shut off all inbound interstate traffic and instead use both sides of the interstate for outbound traffic. I really hope it doesn't come down to that. There is a certain intentional effort to create a mild level of panic at the earliest possible time in order to get people to make earlier decisions about evacuation. It works pretty well.

I rode early this morning because we're interviewing job candidates today and I needed to be ready to go earlier than usual. Once again, I was reminded that I need to be riding solo a bit more often. I mean, there's no need to go all anti-social or anything, but a couple of solo rides a week are good because you tend to focus more on how you are feeling, your efficiency, your limits. It is difficult to think much about cycling when your city is being threatened with annihilation, though.

The folks in our Data Systems department are a little worried about this hurricane since they just moved into a new building. Hopefully I'll have good internet access, at least until the power goes down. We shall see.

Detour

Today just seems to be one of those days full of obstacles!

The morning training ride group was big but a little lazy at first. I had gotten a call from John last night who wanted to warn me and the morning group about a support wire along the levee bike path. He and Realdo had been riding that evening and had come across support cable for a phone pole that had been snagged by a tree that had fallen during the storm. It was stretched across the bike path about eight or nine feet above the road, and they were worried that if it got any lower somebody was going to be decapitated! Luckily, it was quite high enough for everyone to ride under this morning. I was feeling particularly sluggish today as often happens when I have a lot of things on my mind, and every time the pace surged my legs were reluctant to cooperate. Maybe it had something to do with the extra glass of wine last night. Since we ended up with my sister, brother-in-law, and mother at the house last night for dinner (they were still waiting for their electricity to be restored), The Wife went out and bought a bunch of Shrimp on Steriods. We fixed them up with olive oil and seasoning and I slid them into our classic old O'Keefe & Merrit Stove with the "Grillevator" and we had a nice big dinner.

On my way to work on the commuter, which BTW has about 15 psi in the tires right now, I had to detour around two fallen trees on Fontainbleau that had still not been removed and were completely blocking the road. Just when I though I was in the clear and was flying down the Broad St. overpass, I noticed some trucks in the median and some water on the road ahead of me. Thinking it was nothing much, I continued on, only to find that there was a broken water main that was pouring tons of water across the road. It wasn't much of a problem, but I couldn't slow down fast enough to keep from getting my pant legs good and wet. I get to work and realize I've forgotten the key to the bike lock, but since the bike's in the "bike room," that shouldn't be too much of a problem.

So I get to work and my 11:00 meeting gets pushed back to 12:00 and then to 12:15 over lunch, so now I've got to go get some cash out of the ATM. I get on the phone to line up a service call from the cable company and after being on hold for 28 minutes I finally speak with a human who tells me the next available appointment is the evening of the 20th!! Damn, I'm glad I'm not paying for digital cable and missing all the good stages of the Tour de France on TV, 'cause I'd be really pissed about that. The cable got so stretched during the storm that it is currently held onto the house only by the copper core wire. The grounding sheath, insulation, etc. is all pulled back about an inch, so the chances that the thing will stay up there at all until the 20th are slim. Luckily I've still got antennas around the house, so we're back to broadcast TV for a while.

After the Storm

The Tropical Storm at blew through last night was quite a bit stronger than I expected! By midnight most of the neighborhood was without electricity and we were getting rain and wind gusts up around 50-60 mph. Luckily, there's only one oak tree between my house and the transformer, so we never lost power, although the TV cable line did break. The streets are littered with branches and leaves, but otherwise things are fine. I had to drive up to Baton Rouge early this morning and didn't get back until around 5:30 p.m. Both my sister's and mother's houses are still without power, which wouldn't be a big problem except for the heat and humidity, so they were happy to come over to our place for dinner and to spend the night in the minimal air conditioning our window units provide. Needless to say, I never got to ride today, but tomorrow should be fine. There's another Tropical Storm heading this way, though, so the weekend could be bad, depending on which way it goes.

Ben just rescheduled the track events for next weekend, so I guess that practically guarantees rain!

Tropical Rains Moving In

As usual, I forgot about yesterday's flat until 10 minutes before I had to roll out the door this morning, and the result was that I didn't actually hit the road until nearly 6:10. I knew I'd be late for the long Tuesday ride, and as I time-trialed my way to the Levee I noticed that it was much too dark for that time of the morning. There were already a lot of dark menacing clouds to the East and South blowing in from the big Tropical Storm out in the Gluf. The latest storm track puts it on a collision course with the city, which will mostly mean a lot of rain over the next few days. There's also another storm moving into the Gulf from the Atlantic that is likely to become a hurricaine over the next few days, so here we go again! The mayor of Grand Isle has already issued an evacuation order.

But for the moment, it was still dry and after chasing the group for a couple of miles, I finally made contact somewhere past the bridge. I hung onto the back for a while to recover and soon the pace started creeping up. A few riders turned back because of the threat of rain, but I figured I'd go ahead and ride today because tomorrow was looking like a real wash-out anyway. Before I knew it there were just Todd, Eddie and me and the pace was still going up. The rest of the group hovered half a minute behind us. When Eddie and Todd started taking their pulls at 29-30, I started skipping mine. A tailwind is nice and all, but I didn't want to be so blown up that I'd have to call a taxi to get me home from Destrehan. The pace eventually settled down into the 26-27 mph range, at which point I happily returned to the rotation. When we finally made the turn-around and the survivors regrouped, we took it pretty easy for a long time. In the distance, we could see nothing but black rain clouds hovering over the city. We were going to get wet. The only questions were how long and how wet.

It started as a light rain. By now we were cruising along in the mid-20s, fighting a light headwind and staggered a bit to avoid some of the wheel spray kicking up from the lead riders. By the time we hit the River Ridge area, though, the warm summer rain had turned into a heavy downpour. I could feel the huge drops stinging my thighs and there was a steady stream of water coming through the vents in my helmet. My socks were already soaked and after a while I stopped trying to avoid the wheel spray since there was nothing left to salvage. Thankfully, it eased back down to a steady drizzle by the time I got home where I stripped naked in the basement and threw the whole mess into the washer. I put the helmet and shoes in front of the fan for the day and then it was Fire Drill time to get cleaned up in time to walk the five or six blocks to catch the 9:00 shuttle for the Health Sciences Center. By the time I got there, my feet were soaked from wading through some flodded spots on the sidewalk, but I had a dry pair stashed in my messenger bag, so at least I wouldn't have wet feet all day at work.

I am supposed attend an important meeting in Baton Rouge tomorrow with one of my coworkers, and we just discovered that what we thought was going to be a 1-hour meeting is actually an all-day "retreat" starting at 9 a.m., so as far as I'm concerned, it can just rain like hell tomorrow because I won't be able to ride anyway! Right now the rain is pounding my window at work and showing no sign of stopping. Gotta love it!

There was a little drama at the Tour de France Team Time Trial this morning when the U.S. rider on CSC, Zabriskie, crashed just a couple of kilometers before the finish. CSC ended up finishing two seconds down on Discovery, and I'm sure they would have won if not for the moment of confusion caused by that crash. Zabriskie had won the Stage 1 time trial. Because of the way the TTT rules work, he now drops all the way back to 53rd, 1:28 down. That's gotta suck. I really like being able to listen to the live commentary via eurosport.com while at the same time reading the real-time updates on cyclingnews.com. Don't need no stinkin' digital Cox Cable secret decoder box, thank you.

Independence Day in the Country

Yesterday afternoon we clamped the bikes to the roof and headed a couple of hours North to stay overnight with Jim and his wife. Jim works at Tulane with The Wife, and they have bought a chunk of land and a couple of little run-down houses way out in the country. Cow country, to be specific. This place is far enough away from everything that you may as well just turn the cellphone off. They have been working on fixing up this little house, and have done a nice job with it. Nothing fancy, to be sure. The floors slope and the doors don't all latch, but the a/c works great and bed is soft and at night it is quiet. I mean, scary-quiet. For a guy who lives twenty feet from a six-lane highway, all that quiet takes a little "getting used to." So anyway, after we arrived we took the tour of the property. Along the way, the neighbor, who grazes his cattle on some of Jim's property, walked over with a little Catahoula Hound puppy, carefully working himself through the barbed wire fence. A bit later, his wife and their daughter walked across the pasture to join in the conversation. It seemed to mostly revolve around snakes. This guy's wife had been bitten by a copperhead a couple of weeks ago, and he had just killed a water moccasin (aka cottonmouth). So naturally, we immediately set out to pick blackberries, which is the one thing I know of that is always associated with snake bites. I guess it was just too hot for the snakes to pay us much attention, though, and we returned with a big pail of rather small blackberries (it's really late in the season for blackberries). That night, after half a bottle of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay, we hit the sack around 10:30. No fireworks, no gunshots, just silence. Spooky.

The next morning, The Wife and I headed out at 6:30 for a 40-mile ride. It's been a long time since we did a ride that long together. I had mapped out what I knew would be a really nice route, using most of the roads that we had ridden last winter on a training ride. Although we were two hours from New Orleans, most of the intersections had painted arrows on them from the Crescent City Cyclists' Century rides (or maybe just some Bob Hodges rides). Anyway, the roads up there were awesome. Lots of smooth asphalt and rolling hills and narrow tree-shaded country roads. I think we probably saw a total of ten cars in 40 miles. The Wife, riding her antique 5-speed Bruce Gordon with a low gear of 42x18, was definitely struggling on the steeper hills, but I resisted the urge to attack anyway. Just as we got to the last little hill, maybe 300 yards from the house, my front tire flatted. I was so close, I just wobbled in the rest of the way on the flat. Afterward, we helped staple up some classic country house ceiling tiles in one of the rooms they're working on.

So The Daughter went out and got new tires and a front end alignment on the Jeep to the tune of nearly $700, and that was with the tires on sale! Ouch. She paid for them herself, and we'll reimburse her, but it definitely won't be all at once!

The "Lance Effect"

I woke up just a bit late this morning and so I had to ride out to the lakefront at better than my usual casual speed. As I passed one corner where there is always a newspaper stand on Sundays, the guys there cheered as I rode by. 6:30 a.m. and New Orleanian newspaper salesmen are cheering a cyclist. Will wonders never cease? This incident was, no doubt, a direct result of "the Lance Effect." Every time the Tour de France makes the news in the U.S., this sort of thing starts happening. Anyway, the Giro ride turned out to be quite fast today, despite it being a Sunday, which usually means a slightly more civilized pace. Along the way I spotted Rob Konrad in the group and rode up to ask him how the track events went yesterday. He said they got in the morning session, but the afternoon session was rained out shortly after Tim Reagan crashed and broke his collarbone! Bad luck for Tim for sure. This happened in the sprints, and Rob didn't know what exactly happened. He said it looked like he just went down all by himself coming through turn 4. Maybe he unclipped?

Anyway, I'm off for a drive across the lake to spend the night at a friend's house up around Mount Herman, so I've got a copy of the map we used for one of our early Spring "Bob Hodges" training rides up there. Hoping to get in a little ride tomorrow morning.

I'm still trying to figure out how those guys in the TDF can average 34 freaking MPH for 19 km. Tailwind or not, I've never even been in a paceline that approached that kind of average speed. I wonder what the average speed of the guy in past place was. I'll bet it was close to 30 mph. Like I've said before, the pros are a whole different species. It's amazing they can interbreed!

Adult Snoballs & SuperPaceline

Last night's outdoor party ended early the same way many such parties end - with everybody running for cover. Fortunately, the rain didn't start for a couple of hours so there was plenty of time to scarf down a good portion of the goodies, along with a couple of Abita TurboDogs. I had just enough time for a nice Plum Street Snoball before the raindrops started to fall. The great thing about having snoballs at parties is that you get to add your own "special flavors." Yum! When it's hot and humid and you're way overdressed because you had to rush there straight from work, nothing quite hits the spot like a snoball.

So I completely wimped out on the track events. Realdo called me last night and tried to entice me to go, but I just couldn't drum up the motivation for some reason. Kind of odd. Anyway, that of course meant I was destined to do the Giro ride. There was a big group this morning, along with an uncommon wind blowing in from the west. As the group headed out with the wind at its back the pace went from fast to faster to fastest in a hurry. After things came back together following the initial adrenlin rush, I found myself in a long circular paceline. For a few miles, there must have been 30 people in the rotation with the speed in the 29-31 mph range. Eventually there were a couple of big surges (I had a max of 38+) that disrupted the paceline, but anyway it was fun. Of course, once we turned around, it was hard work all the way back, even at the relatively civilized pace the group was comfortable with. By the time I got home I was hot, tired and completely out of water. It's Summertime!!

I received a communique from Gina this morning who is presently enjoying the hills in Chattanooga, TN and looking forward to Superweek. Superweek is one of those true U.S. cycling classics, a collection of sometimes loosely organised but highly competitive races spanning two weeks in Wisconsin. This thing has been going on since the early 70s. Somehow I never managed to make it up there. It was one of the first "big" races I ever heard about in the U.S. when I started racing.

I checked Cyclingnews.com when I go home from the Giro, picking up the live reports from the Tour de France about half an hour before the favorites started. I was pretty impressed with ol' Lance. He smoked the course, missing first place by two seconds and putting 51 seconds on Vino in 3rd (and over a minute on Jan). Looks like this will be an interesting Tour!

Long Weekend Coming

I've been a regular on the morning Levee rides for the last couple of years, and like a number of the other regulars, I've got the timing pretty much down to a science. Usually, if you arrive three minutes early, nobody is there. If you arrive three minutes late, they're gone. Nearly everyone seems to appear within the same three or four minutes. This usually works out great, since I can savor every last minute of sleep in the morning, but if you throw in any sort of unexpected delay, however trivial, all bets are off.

I headed out the door this morning right on cue, and everything was going according to schedule until I heard the horn. As Willow Street closed in on River Road, the train running along the river and I were on a perfect intercept path. I was only about a minute from the crossing when I heard the horn sound. I sprinted for the turn at the end of Willow Street, but just as I came around the corner, the engine rolled across the road right in front of me. Luckily the train was a short one and the group was still hanging around on top of the levee watching me trying to find a break in the backed-up traffic on River Road.

Friday is always an easy day, and today was no exception. With the hot and humid mornings we've had lately, nobody seemed too energetic anyway, so we put in the miles, chatted a bit, and that was that. The path was wet with rain near the city, so we had just missed a little shower. When I made the sharp left turn off of the bike path, I felt a little squiggle under my rear tire and knew without looking what it was. I was running dangerously low on air but just really, really, really didn't want to stop and change the tube. It's only a couple of miles to the house from there, so I stood up the rest of the way to keep the weight off of the rear wheel and actually made it home before it went completely flat. I'll bet I forget to fix it tonight!

I'm still pretty undecided about going to the track meet tomorrow. My front track tire needs to be re-glued rather badly, so there's no way I would ride it. I could always substitute one of my clinchers, I guess, but somehow spending the whole day at the Velodrome - there are morning and evening sessions - getting my ass handed to me just isn't seeming like what I want to do. I guess I'm in some kind of a funk anyway because motivation is generally lacking all-around.

We're supposed to spend Sunday and Monday out in the country at a friend's summer house up around Franklinton, so I'll bring the bike and do a couple of long solo rides, I think, which means I'll miss the little group ride that the club is putting together to scout out the road race course for the upcoming Mad Potter's race. July is going to be a long hot month and I'm already feeling pretty tapped-out. At least I know it will be deadly quiet around the office today. The day before a holiday weekend at a University means that by 3 p.m. it will be a ghost town for sure. Should give me a chance to finish up that blasted Semiannual Lobbying Report that is already overdue. What a ridiculous waste of time!

Bit of a Hard One

Yesterday afternoon I had every intention of making it out to the lakefront for the Wednesday training race. Since I have to ride the commuter back home, change clothes, jump on the racing bike, and then ride the 8 miles out to Lakeshore Drive, it means that I have to leave work no later than 5 p.m. in order to make it out there for 6:00. At 5:45 I was ready to go, but when I looked out the window to the West there was a huge black cloud dumping rain on much of the Western part of the city. I checked the online Doppler radar, but it wasn't much help. These thunderstorms weren't moving, they were just appearing and disappearing at random all over the place. Looking out toward the lakefront from my 25th floor perch, it looked dry, but the thunderstorm was definitely threatening to expand in that direction.

So at 5:00 I decided to go. As I crossed over the interstate on the Broad Street overpass, I could see the line on the pavement where the rain started - maybe four or five blocks away. Sure enough, as I turned to the West onto Fontainebleau Drive the rain started. It was light at first, but as I got closer to the house it got heavier and by the time I was a couple of blocks away I was dripping wet and splashing through puddles. Ah, yes. This is why I have full fenders on my commuter! The rain continued for quite a while, and my 5:30 window for making it out to the lakefront in time slammed shut in my face as my thoughts turned to "what's for dinner?" As it turned out, there were about 15 people out at the lakefront and although they did get rained on, they had a good training race anyway. Dinner was chicken gumbo with okra, by the way. When I asked this morning if it had rained out there, Tim replied:

"It rained depending on where you were on the Lakefront. It pretty much rained the whole time, some spots were real windy and stormy, and some spots there was a slight mist. It actually was pretty fun, and we had a nice turnout considering the conditions. There were a few no shows. So Randy, since you didn't make it out yesterday evening to the training race, does that classify you as a fair weather rider?;)"

So anyway, this morning's long levee ride had a decent turnout too. Courtney and I stayed on the front at an easy pace until Rob couldn't take it any longer and went flying past after we passed under the bridge. Things ramped up quickly at that point and it was a pretty fast and hard ride today from my perspective. Toward the end, Donald, who had been conserving on the way out, launched a couple of little attacks, so that was a nice workout. With the combination of heat and early morning humidity, I went through my lone full water bottle before the end and arrived home thoroughly wet and dirty from the combination of sweat and water spray from the other bikes.

Checking the results of the USCF Masters National Championships, currently being held in Park City, Utah, I saw that area rider Frank Moak, aka "The Great Balded One" placed 20th in his age group, which is pretty impressive. It looks like it's a really hard course with some top-level competition. I'm sure he'll be riding the criterium later in the week too. I noticed that one of the Memphis Motor Werks guys made it onto the podium in his road race, and one of the Texas guys not only won, but got his finish line photo plastered all over the USAC website. All his jersey had on the front was "San Jose." I hope all of those potential sponsors who didn't sign up see that! Anyway, the USAC website has been ridiculously slow lately. I looked up the results from the 50-54 age group (mine) and saw a lot of familiar names. Some of these guys have been racing as long as I have, but at a consistently higher level. In the 50-54 field was Wayne Stetina and Kent Bostick, for example. I'm pretty sure they both have a whole box full of national championship medals. Bostick was on the Olympic team a few years back. George Heagerty finished pretty far back - I wonder what happened there. Tom Bain, with whom I shared the podium some years ago at Masters Nats, is George's teammate, and he was 5th. David LeDuc was in there too - I think he won nationals once or twice at least. Judging by the finish times, it looks like most of the group stayed together.

Ridin' and Railin'

This morning I tried to sneak in a few extra minutes of much-needed sleep and ended up leaving the house a few minutes late. Just as I hit River Road, I saw John climbing the levee and followed him up the access road maybe 30 seconds back. We were about two minutes late and the group was already out of sight down the road, so we rode a little 2-man Time Trial together at a moderate pace. Along the way we picked up a recumbent that tagged along behind in our draft as we took our long pulls at 22-24 mph, and when we slowed to meet the group on its return trip the lowrider guy thanked us for the ride. Throughout the ride there was a huge black line of clouds hanging low around the city, but somehow we avoided the rain.

As we got back to the pumping station I split off and started down the access road to River Road and then realized that there was a train at the railroad crossing heading the same direction I was. I shifted into my lowest gear and climbed back up the levee in the foot-high grass, but never quite caught the group again. Both they and I were racing the train, trying to make it to the next crossing first. As it turned out, the train slowed down considerably and I had plenty of time to cross ahead of it at the Corps of Engineers facility. The weather was still looking sketchy, and in fact I ended up riding to work in a light drizzle; an extra pair of pants in my bag just in case.

As usual, there's been some controversy about the LCCS points. The Tiger Cycling club in Baton Rouge had three junior women and one master 55+ rider at the district road races and one of them can't understand why they don't get LCCS points for that, despite the fact that there's no such class in the series. I wrote a long dissertation about how the LCCS worked, but I'm sure it went in one ear and out the other. The problem is that the LCCS just has a "junior" category that is not broken down by gender, but the USCF district championships are supposed to have separate races. Anyway, the bottom line is that under the current LCCS rules there are no points for junior women unless they decide to ride with the junior men. There are only three of them, all sisters, who as far as I know have never raced before. I think someone told them that if they all went out and bought USCF licenses and rode their races (basically all by themselves) then they would get a lot of points for their club. Somehow that doesn't seem quite right to me.

So the weather is looking like typical Summer around here. There are lots of big cumulus clouds scattered about and it's anybody's guess where, when and if it will rain. The weather forecasters are clueless when it's like this so they just rubber-stamp every day with a 30% chance of rain. I'd love to make it out to the lakefront for the training race this afternoon, so I hope the weather cooperates.

Much Mo' Bettah

Considering how sore I was Monday morning, I was a little surprised how good my legs felt today. They felt much better, although I still had some lingering lung issues. As often happens when I ride hard under very hot and dry conditions, every time I would take a really deep breath, my lungs would hurt and I would want to cough. By the end of the ride, though, even that seemed to have disappeared.

Trying to ignore the blatantly obvious lesson from last weekend, I have still not broken down and dismantled my shifters. One reason, of course, is that once I take them apart, it will likely be a few days before I can get all of the necessary parts for a proper rebuild, which means I won't be able to ride the bike for a while. I could always go ahead and order everything ahead of time, and in fact that's what I will probably do. In the meantime, though, I'll do what I did last night, which was to spray liberal amounts of Triflo into the blasted thing.

So this morning I started out with that lovely Triflo smell (amyl acetate, I think, aka "banana oil") wafting from my handlebars and little drips of it occasionally appearing on my fingers as it continually oozed out from the underside of the shifters. Anyway, they were working well enough. The smell of Triflo always reminds me of my graduate school days when I used a lot of amyl acetate to dissolve the plastic that I used to coat tiny electron microscope grids so I could get the bacteriophage DNA to stretch out nicely on them. I still miss being in the lab.

The long Tuesday training ride was missing a few of the usual workhorses today, and as a result the pace was rather civilized. Fast, to be sure, but under control. Matt C. flatted on the way out and Robin and I stopped to assist so the group wouldn't have to stop. Robin got it fixed pretty fast and we rode moderate paceline until we met the group just as they were getting going after the turnaround. Although I was still being cautious, I was pleased that my legs seemed to have recovered quite a bit from last weekend's punishment, and I was having no problem taking my pulls as the group motored along at 26-27 mph. There was a near-disaster this morning as the group made the swing down the levee at "the dip" where the bike path drops down to street level to bypass some pipes. Somebody must have eased up suddenly as the line went through a little "S" curve and the next thing I knew there was one rider flying down the levee on the grass. Luckily, he neither hit any immovable objects nor slid out. This all happened near the back of the group and the riders up front never knew about it so they just kept pounding back up the levee. The rest of us eased up for a moment to see what had happened, but when I saw the gap opening ahead I told Matt "looks like the statute of limitations has already run out on this one." We had to chase pretty hard to close that gap, and I don't think the rider who did the little "Lance Armstrong" thing down the levee ever regained contact.

Back at work we interviewed five people yesterday for an editor position we currently have open. Three were good, one was OK and one was kind of a dud. IMHO, the position is somewhat mis-titled, as this person will likely be doing a lot of other stuff and not a whole lot of what one would normally think a "senior editor" would do. We've got another whole batch of resumes to sift through and another round of interviews to schedule before we narrow it down to three or four to call back for more in-depth interviews. This is the first time I've ever had to interview people who have degrees in things like English and Journalism. The really interesting thing about it is how many of them had glaring grammatical errors in their cover letters. One would have to take that as a bad sign for a position with a title containing the word "editor," right? I have threatened to ask each of them to spell Ophthalmology just for kicks.

Yes, yes, I know I'm throwing stones from a glass house, but I never claimed to be an English major!

OTB at Hodges - The Hell of the La.

The infamous Hodges Gardens course lived up to its reputation this weekend, reducing otherwise capable cyclists to dehydrated cramping lumps of expressionless meat. I should know. I was one of them.

Arriving at the course around 1 p.m. after a 5-hour drive, I spotted a space underneath the hay shed near the start where there was a bit of shade. Although a number of our key guys were missing, by the time everyone arrived we had a decent-sized contingent of NOBC masters, and the combined 35+/45+ field comprised about 25 riders. For a course in the middle of nowhere with dangerously bad asphalt and a reputation for abject brutality, this was a pretty good showing.

I immediately discovered that I had left my water bottles at home, but scrounged around and found a couple rolling around in the car. All bike racers have two things in their cars: water bottles and safety pins. I did a little warmup spin and didn't fail to notice that Russ W. was looking particularly psyched for this race. I also noticed that I was not, but often I get more into the race after it has started, so nothing to worry about there, right? We watched the end of the Cat. 5 race in which our teammates took 1st and 2nd, and then lined up in the sweltering heat for our start. We were due for nine laps of punishment on this course, which basically means nine climbs of the "big hill." This course is all about the big hill that comes up once every 5.4-mile lap. There have been times when I've looked for to those climbs and the inevitable attacks that they provoke. This was not one of those times, but nonetheless I was feeling OK and was ready to respond to whatever the other guys might throw down. Well, throw down they did, and on the very first time up the hill. The initial part of the climb was brisk, but not too bad, but when we hit the false-flat section I had a feeling something was about to happen. Sure enough, Russ attacked hard. I went with it, along with a few others, coming over the top I guess in the top 4 or so. As we rounded the curve everyone shifted into the big ring. Well, almost everyone. You see, when I went to shift, the lever would not budge! The combination of dry air and accumulated grunge must have played havoc with my shifters, and as the lead riders pulled away, I was left fiddling with my shifter. Finally I got it into the big ring, having drifted half-way back through the string of riders. Up the road were two riders who were pulling away and I could hear Russ on his radio encouraging his teammate to keep the pressure on. The rest of the pack seemed to be in a state of shock and confusion, not having expected an attack within the first three miles. A couple of my teammates came past and made sure I got their wheels. I remember Russ being at the front of the group letting the gap open between the two escapees and the pack. He could see that I was struggling and radioed ahead to his teammate, telling him to punch it. I started to chase, but I knew what was about to happen. Once the gap had widened enough, Russ jumped hard to bridge. I wasn't surprised and tried to go with him, but couldn't hang on. All this time I'm conscious of this awful unfamiliar noise coming from my bike. The rest of the pack started to come back together finally, but there was little effort being made to mount a serious chase.

I started looking for the source of the noise and discovered that my rear brake was so loose it was about to fall off the bike. The caliper was literally bouncing back and forth off of the rim. I thought perhaps the bolt had broken, and fearing that the whole thing would end up in my rear wheel, I dropped back where I wouldn't kill anyone if it did.

As we went through the feed zone, I asked Jason, who was feeding us after having just won the Cat. 5 race, for an allen wrench. The next time up the hill, I went to shift down to a small cog after the climb, and found that now the rear shifter was locked up. Geez! I was really about to just hang it up at that point. I guess it was the third time through the start/finish that I got the allen wrench and dropped off the back in order to try and tighten the brake bolt. It took forever - I probably should have just stopped and gotten off the bike to do it - and by the time I got going again the pack was pretty far ahead and the brake was rubbing lightly on the rim. I chased the all the way around the bottom of the course and made up a lot of time the next time up the climb, and then, of course, couldn't shift into anything smaller than the 19 tooth cog. Well, that was it! I was about ready to just quit at that point, but as I went past the start/finish Jason was there handing me up a cold water bottle, so I just settled down into an easy pace.

Every time I would come up the big hill and try to shift back down to a small cog, the shifter would hang, leaving me with a choice of either the 23 or the 21. If I kept fooling with the shifter sometimes it would eventually work. After a while, I tried spraying water from my bottle into the lever, and discovered that once it soaked in a bit the shifter would start working again UNTIL I got up to the top of the big hill. Over the remaining laps I gradually caught and passed a few riders who had blown up and ended up finishing 9th. Both the break and the field ultimately shattered before the finish. Thanks to Jason for all the water bottles. I would definitely have quit without them! Now I just needed to decide if I wanted to even start the Cat. 1,2,3 race the next day. That evening as I was eating dinner with Shane, I saw Woody and asked him if he had any spray lube, which luckily he did, so later that night I straightened out the offending brake caliper and sprayed the hell out of the shift levers. They were still sticky, but seemed a little better.

Sunday morning felt nice and I decided to go ahead and register for the Cat. 1,2,3 race with the intention of doing maybe five or six laps of the 16-lap race, basically for the exercise. At the line there were only 14 riders. Rather sad, actually. Things started out OK and the shifters were baulky but mostly functional, so I hung in until there was an attack the third time up the hill that strung things out rather badly. I wasn't really interested in going with any breaks, since I had my eyes set on that cold Coke waiting in my ice chest, and as we came over the top a little group of five riders formed. The real race was up the road, so this little group cruised on for a while, eventually dropping first one rider and then me. Having done this race before, I knew I'd never finish at their pace anyway. After a few solo laps, I eventually got together with Josh from Baton Rouge and Woody from New Orleans. Both were in pretty sad shape like me, so we kept it easy with no more of a goal than to finish. It wasn't easy. Thankfully the officials had taken on the task of feeding me water bottles! We lost Josh a couple of laps before the finish. By that time Woody and I were climbing the big hill at maybe 5-6 mph. and struggling to maintain 17 on the rare flats. I hadn't put the bike in the big ring for over an hour. On the second-to-last lap we could see one of the riders ahead of us walking his bike up the hill. When we caught up to him he said he had been cramping up on the climb. He stayed with us for a little while, but when the road flattened out a little bit he rode off, intent on snagging that placing, I guess. On the last lap we could again see him walking up the hill. So I guess we accomplished two things. We didn't have to walk up the hill, and we weren't last!

Last Minute Plannin'

Well, whuddya know! I have internet access this morning. The mail server is down and Tulane's main webserver is down, but I can still get to the web. A big "nice job" to the Data Services techies for not leaving me bound and gagged today.

So I guess I'll drive the old Volvo out to the middle of nowhere, aka Hodges Gardens, for the La./Ms. district championship Road Race. With the Masters races on Saturday and the categorized races on Sunday, it's hard to find anyone who wants to stay both days. I saw Amy and Brandon this morning and they're heading up Saturday morning too, so maybe we'll link up and spring for a hotel room at the scenic Emerald Hills Resort across the street. Maybe I can even convince another person or two to make the trip. Hodges Gardens is really, and I mean really, in the middle of nowhere, about 15 miles North of Fort Polk, which was most certainly located where it is because the Army figured it was so far in the middle of nowhere that the neighbors wouldn't mind the daily bombardment from the tank artillery. That means that Hodges is actually on the outskirts of nowhere. There are only two reasons why we keep having the road races there. The first is that the course has a series of three hills that are guaranteed to split the field up. The second is that it's all on private property so it's relatively easy and cheap to hold a day and a half of races there. Unfortunately, the course is so hard for people to get to and the terrain is so difficult that the turnout is usually quite low. And then, there's the road surface. What was once a nice smooth asphalt road, maybe 25 years ago, is now a rough, worn-down macadam strip offering little more than unrelenting vibration. If there's anything loose on your bike, this course will find it. Robin gave me a handful of Gu packets this morning after the ride, so between that and a bunch of PowerBars, I should be OK fuel-wise. I'm not as confident about my fitness level, however. Having spent the Tour de La weekend completely off the bike, it's been a long time since I've seen any real racing and I feel neither sharp nor fit.

Down Time - Pickin' Places

So the impending move of Tulane's entire Data Systems across town will mean that my regular e-mail ID will be unavailable starting around 6 am tomorrow and won't be back up until some undetermined time during the weekend. I'm guessing I won't have dialup access at all, but we'll see. I'm not sure I can go three whole days without internet access. Meanwhile, with some help from a couple of folks in Texas and the photos of the Cat. 4 finish that were sent to me, I've gone ahead and added placings for the Tour de La Cat. 4 Crit. down to 11th. I'm sure they're not perfect, but I think they're pretty close. Close enough for upgrading purposes, I think. Unfortunately, I don't have a good photo of the finish of the Cat. 5 race. The one that I thought was it looks like it was probably the second half of the sprint because none of the guys we picked in the top 4 are in there as far as I can tell.

Spacemen in the Yard - Not Quite the Long Ride

It really feels like mid-summer now. The a/c runs all night and the morning air is thick and hazy and warm. We had a big group for the long ride this morning and we weren't too far down the road before Eddie or somebody up front had us going 29 mph. I was trying to avoid doing any long-term tissue damage today, taking short pulls and drafting a lot, and when the speed got high about ten miles in, I noticed a little bounce as I was spinning in a lower gear than usual. I knew what that meant, of course. As soon as the pace eased up a bit, I pulled out of the line and started dropping back. Robin noticed and dropped back with me to help fix the impending flat, while I told the other guys to go ahead and that we'd catch them on the flip side. So we stopped and took our time fixing the flat, already dripping sweat all over the place, and then cruised along easily until we saw the group on its return trip. I did end up taking a few fairly hard pulls in order to keep the pace steady, but I made them short.

Today was the day that Dawn Wesson's mosquito research team was supposed to be hunting mosquitoes in my back yard, and when I looked out the window I saw two people in those tyvec space suits, complete with mosquito netted hats, holding these cute little hand-held vaccum mosquito guns. Perfect Mardi Gras costumes, I thought, as I ran to get the camera. Alas, I had left my memory card at work, so I couldn't get any pics.

I guess I need to get busy and figure out how I'm going to get my sorry ass up to Hodges Gardens for the district road race this weekend. I suppose I could take my car, but with the a/c operating only when it feels like it, it might be a little uncomfortable. We'll see.

The Tuesday Rush

I found the clock through one half-open eye as my brain stumbled into wakefulness. The bright red "6:04" made its way down my optic nerve and pounded on the firmly shuttered window to my brain. Suddenly the neurons started to fire and I jumped up. Geez! Ten minutes to get to the levee or I'll miss the training ride. On the bike in 4 and on the drops in 5 pushing the 39 x 13 down Carrollton Avenue. I arrive dripping sweat one minute late and there's just John there, waiting. I ask if we're late or early but the look on his face tells me he hasn't a clue. Just then we see a few riders coming our way and I know we're on time but everyone else is late.

The group was ultimately pretty big. I guess at least 15, complete with The Howard surging up to 29 or 30 mph every time he came to the front, which always seemed to be when I was trying to latch back onto the end of the paceline. Don't you just hate that? You take your pull, move over and start to drop back, anticipating the relative comfort of the draft at the back, but then you realize that you're going to have to be going 3 mph faster than you were when you were at the front just to catch the wheel of the last guy.

There was a flat on the way out and those in front coasted along for a while, not wanting to stop and suffer the sweat-in-the-eyes deluge that comes with a sudden stop in the summer. Pretty soon, the statute of limitations ran out and the group ahead of us started rolling faster. Courtney said "lets to, they can catch us at the turnaround" and a few minutes later the paceline was going strong again.

On the way back a little group rolled off the front while the rest of us were being civilized and waiting for everyone to regroup after the turnaround. Courtney was up there. She has a real knack for staying on the right side of the gaps. By the time we got a paceline going again, they had 20 seconds or so, and our group wasn't really in chase mode yet. When I came to the front the gap had grown slowly to maybe 30 seconds and I tried to lift the pace gradually a couple of mph. At 26-27 we were starting to close and with most of the group taking pulls we reeled in the escapees within a couple more miles. It was a pretty good ride today. Hot, of course.

When I got home I washed out all of the gatorade coolers from the Tour de La, enjoying the cool water on my feet, and rode in to work. It was already in the mid-80s.

So I've almost got all of the post-TDL chores wrapped up. The Chief Referee's report is ready to be mailed - just waiting for the 4-figure check for the USCF. I added more of the masters crit placings that Shane sent me today from the videotape, and I uploaded about 10 megabytes of photos from Malcolm and Laura. I also updated all of the LCCS points standings.

A f t e r m a t h

I swear, it's way harder to work a race than to race a race! The Tour de Louisiane went quite well this year, and we didn't have to dial 911 even once! By the time Mark dropped me and all of the club's race promoting stuff off at my house it was close to 6 p.m. on Sunday. In the aftermath of the event, my basement is a bit of a mess, but hopefully I'll get down there tonight to wash out the gatorade coolers and put everything back in its place.

Friday night registration went smoothly as usual and I guess we handed out about half of the race numbers. The Cat. 5 race was full, but one or two kind masters Cat. 5s switched to the masters race in order to make more room for the 5s, which was nice. In the end I think we went a few riders over the limit out of sheer pity for those who had travelled long distances.

It was about 3 a.m. Friday night when I was rudely awakened from my slumber at the Super8 by a clap of thunder that could have raised the dead. It was storming outside, which seems to be SOP for Friday before the Tour de La lately. By morning the rain had slackened to a light drizzle and as we started off the first few riders around 8:15 the skies were already starting to look better. The TT went fairly smoothly, although one rider (one of OURS, no less!) missed his start by maybe 10 seconds and another had some sort of mechanical, probably a pulled-over rear wheel, just after starting that cost him over 30 seconds. Starting over 180 riders at 30-second intervals does not leave much room for distraction. There is just enough time for me to give each rider a reminder about the course distance, the fact that the road is open to traffic, and the need to ride single-file on the way back. All-in-all the times seemed to be a little slow despite the absence of any significant wind. As soon as the last rider took off, I headed for the truck and fired up the computer. Mark and I got all of the rider information, start times and finish times entered by the time we had to leave for the road race, and I printed everything out in the truck as we made the 45-minute drive to the road course.

By the time we got to the RR course, it was starting to heat up and the rain was long gone, but the scattered clouds were keeping the temperatures from getting completely out of hand. The parking was especially tight this year. There was the usual organized chaos in the half-hour before the start when we're searching for last-minute corner marshals, lining up the lead motorcycles, giving instructions to the local police, and getting the follow cars and wheel trucks organized. Keith, Mark and Elliot handled the confusing like pros, though, and the first race started pretty much on time. I was really relieved that there were no major crashes. In fact the only one I know about was a couple of riders who went down in the Cat. 5 race. We had a whole bunch of new GMRS radios which worked out pretty well. We had very clear communications with most of the following vehicles when they were a couple of miles from the finish, and were able to relay that information to the downstream police car so he could block off the oncoming traffic for the sprints. The place-picking was difficult because all but the masters race ended in a big, charging field sprint. Shane had the video camera working, though, so we were able to get places for almost everybody later that night. I think we had all of the results pasted up in the hotel window by about 9 p.m., which is pretty good for this sort of thing.

Sunday's criteriums looked like a lot of fun. As usual, I spend much of the time squinting in front of a barely readable laptop screen working on the results. Everything would have gone very smoothly except for the unusual number of ties on GC. In stage races, the standard method of breaking ties on GC is by taking the sum of the individual stage placings and giving the better placing to the person with the lowest number. The problem with that, of course, it that you need to know where everyone placed in the middle of the pack. It took quite a while for Shane and Adam to resolve the seven tied riders that we had in the top 12 of the Cat. 1,2,3 race. You see, often you can't read each rider's number on the videotape, so you have to make inferences about who they are based on their team jerseys, bikes, wheels, etc. It is an imprecise methodology. Anyway, the delay wasn't really all that long, and most people were crammed into the Acme Oyster House where we do the awards ceremony, enjoying the a/c and beer and shrimp po-boys. Mike Lew had gotten flowers and champagne for the winners, and even brought along an absolutely beautiful podium girl to hand them out (a photo of whom I regret I didn't get). Afterward, a few of us hung around and had our traditional post-race lunch before heading back across the lake and into reality. I got the results up on the website around 6:30 or so and called it a day.

Everyone in the club worked hard on this event, and I think that the riders enjoyed it. From what I saw of the races, it looked like the Cat. 4s, Masters and Cat. 1,2,3s had particularly competitive races this year. And that's pretty much what it's all about.

Now I just need to fill out the post-event paperwork, add the USCF numbers to the resutls spreadsheet so I can reformat a copy for uploading to the USCF Results and Rankings database, correct all of the club names so that they match the official USCF club names, and of course update the LCCS rankings. I figure that'll take me three or four days, easy.

Official Weekend

Well it's time for me to dust off my old official's hat and spend the weekend in a hot and sweaty dead run as Chief Ref for the Tour de Louisiane. In my case, the term "official's hat" has special meaning because there actually is one that I've been wearing to officiate the Tour since the days when Banana Republic was a funky mail-order company that actually sold surplus military clothes - but that's a whole other story. I've spent all morning printing out release forms, organizing entries, replacing batteries and generally getting all of my stuff together for a weekend that will probably include everything from torrential rain to sizzling 98 degree heat. Why do I keep doing this?

Online registration ended last night with 140 riders registered and I'd be surprised if we didn't see another 50 or 60 for late registration, which will make it the biggest ever, I think. I've been fielding questions all day from riders trying to get early TT numbers and that sort of thing, and I'm not looking forward to having to turn away the Cat. 5s who will certainly turn up on Saturday not realizing that there's a field limit in Cat. 5 mass-start races. Mark's coming over to pick me and all my stuff up in about half an hour. We'll be handling the Friday night registration and spending the night at the hotel. Hopefully a lot of riders will come to pick up their numbers so I can get at least half of the field entered into the computer before race day because it's a real fire drill trying to get the TT results done en route to the Road Race while in the car. If we end up with 200+ riders, it will be very tight, time-wise, getting results posted an hour before the 1 p.m. Road Races.

Naturally, there is a big line of severe weather heading this way - complete with tornados. It should mostly blow through this evening and tonight, but they've got a 50% chance of rain in the forecast for tomorrow morning until around 9 a.m. That means it might be a little messy for the time trial, but if all goes as expected, the Road Races should be hot and dry, which means my socks will probably try out some time around 3 p.m.

I sure wish I was riding this race instead of standing on the sidelines with three stopwatches around my neck, two tape recorders in my pockets and a clipboard in my hand baking in the afternoon sun hoping that nobody does anything stupid out there on the road. Luckily we have a very experienced group of people in the club who have done this for quite a few years, so we will do the best we can managing this largely uncontrollable situation!

Sure am looking forward to that cold Turbodog on Sunday afternoon!

Good and Edgy

I must be finally starting to acclimatize to this hot weather because for no apparent reason I felt pretty good this morning. We had at least 15 on the long levee ride, and it didn't take too long for the pace to ramp up pretty good into the light headwind. It was one of those days when I seemed to feel better the faster we went. Everything felt smooth and buttery and controlled, like it was in slow-motion.

The old Ergobrain rolled over 44,000 miles yesterday, so it seems I've maintained something a bit above 11,000 per year for the last four years. I can tell you one thing. If I'd been doing these kinds of miles back when I was 25 I would have been kicking ass, but back in the day 300 mile weeks were more than rare and I was usually quite satisfied with 150. Now I guess a lot of those miles just go to waste for lack of sufficient HGH, testosterone, sleep and various other youthful juices.

Toward the end of the ride today things got going pretty fast and I took a lot of pulls as we rolled along at 27-28 mph. Then The Donald came flashing past and as Phil Liggett would say "things hotted up." Jay and Dan and BJ went with him and I tagged along too. Anyway, I ended up on Donald's wheel at the end, and when he split off to go down the levee at the playground, I coasted for a little while, passing the playground, and then looked back for the rest of the guys so we could spin back into town together. Nobody was back there, however, so I figured they had all rolled down the levee and stopped at the Playground, so I went ahead and continued on home down Oak Street and past all of the parked coffee-drinker cars lined up near Carrollton where there are three such establishments in a two-block span. It's nice to see Oak St. thriving, actually. It was once the business center of the town of Carrollton. Later, when I talked to Robin on the phone to ask him to pick up a bunch of GMRS radios for the road race, he told me that right after that last surge one of the guys (Matt Howitz) bumped wheels and went down, breaking his collarbone. Geez!! So now I feel lousy that I didn't know and just rode off into the sunset, or sunrise as the case may be, like I couldn't be troubled to stop and help.

I am feeling very edgy today because of the upcoming Tour de La. I skipped the training race last night so I could print out the first batch of 85 release forms for the pre-registered riders. Since then, we've gotten over 30 more pre-registrations. Last I checked, I think we were up to about 117 and there were maybe two spots left in the Cat. 5 race. All of the race numbers and pins arrived this morning, along with a package of one-day license forms, annual license forms, etc. from the USCF. Robin is on his way across the lake right now to patch potholes and generally check out the course one last time. Tonight I'll have to get all my stuff together so we're ready for Friday night registration, which is always actually kind of fun because nobody is in a big hurry. Then bright and early Saturday morning the shit will hit the fan, as they say.

The weather for the weekend is looking like standard summer pattern, which means hot with a random chance of thunderstorms. Margaret Orr, one of the local weatherpersons, is saying:
Saturday-Tuesday: Mostly clear and slightly more comfortable. Lows in the low-mid 70s. Highs will be in the upper 80s to around 90. Rain chance 20%. The Weather Channel is sticking with 40% chance of rain. We shall see. At any rate, it doesn't look like a wash-out or anything and may well turn out to be dry and not too terribly hot on Saturday, which would be nice.

The Tour Approaches

It's hot and humid and I felt particularly sluggish this morning as I rode over to the levee to meet the group. I think perhaps I've just got a lot of other things on my mind, not the least of which is the upcoming Tour de La. This always happens the week before the Tour!

We use Active.com to handle our online registrations, and I get an e-mail notice every time someone registers. Those notices are getting more and more frequent and online registrations are running well above last year. Whether that translates into more entries overall, or just fewer race-day entries remains to be seen. I'm hoping for the latter, myself. It's looking like the Cat. 5 field may fill up before race day. As of right now (around 1 p.m. on Wednesday) there are only 13 slots left in the 50-rider field. We've got 82 registered so far, compared to less than 60 last year at this time. Should be interesting! This is always the point at which I stop worrying about whether we'll have enough riders and start worrying about whether we'll have too many to handle. In particular, I worry about the fairly narrow country roads that we use for the road race, all of which are open to traffic. The center line rule is difficult to enforce sometimes and often it's just the luck (bad) of the draw whether a rider gets hit with a penalty or not. The one thing that gives me some confort is the presence of the motorcycle refs.

Oh Man, it's Summer

10:30 last night. I look over at the outside thermometer. 85 F. The air-conditioners are working hard and have just started to get the upper hand after having been off during the day and having to cool down a house that was around 86F.

This morning at 6:15 it was still around 80 and the air was thick with moisture. An easy spin out to meet the Levee group had me already sweaty and once today's big training ride group really got going there was sweat flying everywhere. That's the problem with riding around here in the summer. In most places there's at least a reasonable proportion of your sweat that actually evaporates and does what it's supposed to do, but here it just drips. It drips from your nose onto your top tube and it drips from your helmet and forehead into your glasses and it drips from your arms onto your handlebars and into your brakes and shifters.

Despite the impending Tour de Louisiane, the pace on the way out was fast, fluctuating between 27 and 30 mph with a couple of guys on TT bikes. Rob's got his aero bars so low I think he's in danger of taking skin off of his nose. Todd was there, all bandaged up, describing in detail how when he got home after Sunday's crash he found he could insert the whole tip of his index finger into the gaping hole in his elbow. David was out trying out a used Litespeed Arenberg that he's thinking about buying. His copious and corrosive sweat has almost dissolved his current steel steed and so Ti is particularly attractive to him right now.

When we stopped on the way back to fix one of the levee ride's frequent flats, the heat was intense and I'm sure we left a pool of sweat on the asphalt. By the time I got home the local news weatherman was already reporting a temperature of 88F at Audubon Park. This makes commuting to work a little less convenient. When it's hot like this, as it will be until September, I pack my shirt and undershirt, and ride in whatever old T-shirt is handy. Since I don't really want to be riding up the elevator in a sweaty T-shirt alongside the Vice-President and other people to whom I'd just as soon prefer not to explain how I get to work, I change shirts in the Bike Room, leaving the sweaty one draped across the bike to dry. The really important thing is to have a very cold drink with me so I can cool down on the way up to the office. I usually put a soft drink (that would be a "soda" to y'all) in the freezer as soon as I get back from my training ride so it can chill down while I shower and change.

Registrations are going well for the Tour de Louisiane. I think we're up to around 55 or 56 online registrations right now, which is a bit ahead of this time last year. I always worry that the Cat. 5 race will fill up and I'll have to send people away on race day, since there's a 50-rider limit for that category. Right now there are about 23 slots left, so I'm sure the field will fill up. I just hope I don't have to disappoint anyone. A couple of times a day I've been updating a special page on the website showing registrations, but I haven't put a link to it from the rest of the site, so you just have to know the URL to see the list. It's hard to know what to make of the pre-registrations, but it looks like we'll have a good-sized contingent from Texas, particularly Houston. The weather forecast is still looking OK. Typical summer weather, which means a hot with a chance of afternoon thunderstorms popping up at random.