In a Fog

This weather is really whacky. I stepped out this morning right into the middle of a 60-degree cloud. As I rode to the levee my bare legs were immediately wet and cold, and by the time I got to the river water was already dripping off the front of my helmet. It was so wet and clammy that I came very close to retreating back to the house, but after a whole weekend off the bike I was determined to put in a few miles today.

The only other rider I saw was Joe F, and so we headed out at an easy pace. So I got in a short and wet ride, mostly at a very steady 19-20 mph. I got home soaking wet, but not too cold thanks to the warm temperature. Hey, it was the best I could do. Looks like tomorrow will be a lot better, though, and indeed the weather was looking a lot better this afternoon. One of the guys who rode Kenny B's "Tour de Bris" last weekend sent a link to his photos. Worth a look.

I had a morning meeting at the uptown campus this morning and it ended right in-between classes, so there were lots of students out on the quad going from class to class. It was great to see, really. By then the sun was out and it was warm, and I was glad that the 40 percent chance of rain never really materialized. I had thought I might have to take the shuttle bus downtown after the meeting, but instead I had a nice ride across town. Downtown, the guys on the roof were very busy and loud and it was sometimes hard to concentrate because of the noise. At one point their erector-set crane kind of folded up the wrong way while they were pulling up a big roll of cable and the thing swing down and banged against the side of the building. Oops! Good thing it didn't go through one of the office windows in the process.

Scott dropped off the most recent batch of team jerseys, shorts, etc., and so despite many years of successfully dodging the task it looks like I'll be the jersey man this time. Considering that this batch had to be ordered within a few weels after the hurricane, it's pretty amazing that Laura got it done.

Home Again, Home Again

Back in New Orleans now after a couple of rather long airplane rides that took us to through Dallas, TX (and a brief stop at the airport Chili's for a badly needed Samuel Adams). It was a whole weekend completely off the bike, and considering the dreary, wet and cold weather in Iowa City, I should add that I never once wished I had my bike with me! I did, however, notice one rider in shorts on Saturday when the temperature was around 40F and there was a steady light drizzle that had been going on all day. The Daughter had a good meet Saturday night, and although they didn't beat the highly ranked Iowa State girls, they had a very good showing, posting their highest score so far this season. The Daughter was especially happy to have finally convinced the coach to let her at least do her floor routine as "exhibition," racking up in the process the highest score of anyone on the team (which of course didn't count since it was exhibition). I think she may have convinced them that she has recovered from her ankle surgery last summer and her knee surgery last October, and she seems determined to make the floor lineup. The coaches, of course, don't want to risk further injury and so have been fairly conservative.

So I guess I've probably gained a couple of unwanted pounds this month. The combination of readily available chocolate, a heavy workload at the office, and reduced riding time is a bad one, and I'll have to start paying more attention to the balance of caloric intake and expenditure. I hate being hungry, and certainly won't go too far in that direction, but for sure I'll be pushing back from the table a little earlier than usual for a couple of weeks and making more carefully considered choices when it comes to diet. Even at my relatively light weight, I quite easily notice the effect of an extra couple of pounds, and trust me, it's not good. Being older makes it even worse. Sometimes it seems like after 12 hours off the bike I'm already starting to lose fitness. At my age, that might be pretty close to the truth.

Up in Iowa City

Arrived in Iowa City yesterday about eight hours before my luggage did. The little planes that they use to fly between Chicago and Cedar Rapids never seem to be able to hold all of the luggage, so they bump some of it to a later flight. Yesterday, mine got bumped and it wasn't until midnight that they delivered it to the hotel.

The weather up here has been rather dismal today. There's been a steady drizzle all day. At least it's not too cold. The Daughter's meet was pretty good, and although they lost to Iowa State, they posted a good team score and were mostly happy. The Daughter tied for 2nd on Beam and finally talked the coach into letting her to an exhibition Floor routine, which she nailed.

Gotta go to sleep!

Need to Get Some Zs

Considering that I was going to be off the bike entirely Saturday and Sunday, I went out this morning with the intention of getting in a decent workout, and although I wasn't disappointed in that regard, it wasn't exactly what I expected either. After an early delay waiting for a flat to be fixed at the playground, the group started out at a fairly decent clip, again with a bit of a crosswind. For some reason, guys were letting gaps open all over the place today, and I had to make a few really hard efforts, especially once Howard showed up. In trying to close one of the gaps Howard came by pretty fast at a point when there were about four riders off the front and generalized chaos in the back. For a moment, I hesitated, hoping that the guys behind me would be able to close the gap, but it wasn't happening. Howard looked back, saw the gap, and eased up until I caught his draft, and then proceeded to ramp the pace up from 24 mph to, eventually, about 31 mph, pulling me up to what was left of the disintegrating lead group. I don't know how he does that. Soon afterward, it was just me and Rob, so we continued a pretty hard pace all the way to the turnaround.

It should have been no surprise that the group turned around early, and we never saw them again except for one of the guys who continued upriver as we were on our way back. Rob and I were both pretty fried at that point, and with no others to share the pace we rode back into the wind side-by-side and not very fast. At any rate, I got in quite a bit of tongue-dragging and pegged my heart rate more than once, which was pretty much my plan. When we went past Howard's house on the way back, he hollered something out the back door, but I didn't catch it.

I realized this morning when the alarm went off that I haven't been getting a whole lot of sleep lately. I was up again last night till around midnight trying to figure out what the Carnegie people had done with their classification system and use of Z scores. Quite a bizarre way to classify research institutions when you end up with two universities in the same category - one with $291M in R&D and the other with $4M. Give me a break! Anyway, perhaps I'll be able to get a couple of nights of good solid "hotel sleep" this weekend up in Iowa City. Not as good as "hotel sex," but I'll take what I can get.

The Sun!

I walked out the door this morning at 6:30 and was surprised at the amount of sunlight already filtering over the horizon. After what seems like weeks of cloudy, foggy mornings, today's clear blue skies reminded me that we must be starting to tilt back toward the sun again. We had ten riders this morning and a pretty nice Wednesday ride on the levee. Although the wind was certainly more calm than yesterday, it was still a factor, and it made the return trip a bit harder than I would have liked.

Somehow, despite the wonderful weather, I'm feeling tired and lazy and frustrated. There are a whole bunch of guys working out on the roof today, but as far as I can tell nobody is working on the blasted elevators. There are still only two in operation (there are normally six). I just got back from a long walk to find food, since there's nothing in the immediate vicinity of the building. It's still odd to be able to walk across some of the major streets in the CBD at will. Most of the big office buildings still seem to be barely occupied and traffic is extremely light. Under the circumstances, I would much prefer to be uptown!

Wrong Side of the Gap

A nice little cool front dragged through yesterday evening, and by morning the temperature was a fairly pleasant 50F or so, but as usually happens the front brought with it a brisk north wind. Since the levee bike path offers absolutely no protection from the wind, and since it generally runs more east-west than north-south, I knew today's training ride would be all about the crosswind. I hit the levee right on time this morning, finding only a couple of other riders there, and we were starting to think we might have to shorten our ride because of the combination of abundant wind and insufficient wheels when riders started appearing all over the place. By the time we went under the Huey P bridge the group was pretty large, or I should say "long," and I rode at the front for a long time waiting for the inevitable.

Pretty soon a line of riders streamed past me and I latched on somewhere past the middle, maybe ten riders from the front. The pace would surge whenever the usual suspects hit the front, and even though I was far from the end of the paceline, I was grovelling along the edge of the asphalt for whatever sliver of draft I could get. I noticed that Jeff, who was in front of me, started letting the guys coming off the front back into the paceline ahead of him. About the third time he did that, I was just about to tell him to stop because all he was doing was dooming us to a fast pace and slim draft when the pace surged again. This time he eased up and motioned me to come by. By the time I did I was already five seconds on the wrong side of the gap and had to really bury myself to make any progress closing it. I guess I was doing around 27 into the cross/headwind. The last rider in the lead group was Donald, and so I was focused on getting his wheel. Just as I was about get his draft and enjoy the reward for my effort, Donald sat up! Auggggh! That was it. There was no way I could make another effort like that unless there was a finish line and a big prizelist in sight, so I eased up a bit too and latched onto Donald as the lead group rode off down the levee. We soon picked up another rider who had come off the lead group and were rolling along at a reasonable clip as we approached "the dip."

Suddenly I looked up and saw that the whole lead group had turned around and was heading back early. You know, riders are like sheep. I knew that Donald probably needed to turn back there in order to get to work on time, but it was unusual for Todd and the rest of them to cut the ride short. Maybe that's why they felt like they needed to be riding like they were 5k away from a Tour de France stage win. Anyway a couple of us continued on and eventually caught Tim who was on his way home (he's temporarily living out that way near Destrehan), and had a nice ride to the turnaround. The trip back was maybe just a little bit easier, wind-wise, but toward the end it was just BJ and me and my legs were really starting to hurt. We did ease up after making the bend near the country club, but those last few miles felt really hard to me anyway.

So it looks like the Tulane student who has been living with us will be able to move back into her apartment on Thursday, so that's a good thing all around, and the sun is finally starting to come out so we should have a few days of cool but nice weather for a change. I am finally starting to feel like I'm getting caught up a little bit for the first time since the hurricane and can maybe start to focus on getting my own house fixed up now.

More Fog

The streets were damp, the skies cloudy and the fog thick on the levee this morning, but I went out anyway for an easy "on the bike recovery" ride. Not that I needed all that much recovery, you understand, although the concept does tend to provide a convenient excuse when you're just too lazy to do a proper bit of training. Acually, my legs felt fine, but I really have had enough of wet streets and sloppy rides. I went out on the old Pennine again, and just couldn't help but ride intentionally through a few little puddles just because I had fenders! Anyway, the weather's getting cooler now and I suppose I'll be back in long tights and arm-warmers tomorrow.

So we had power at our office today where I spent most of the day working on some impossible and ridiculous methodology for allocating some higher education funding. Leave it to a committee to take something simple and straightforward and twist it into something completely incomprehensible. They're building some huge crane on the roof now in order to be able to lift some new hvac equipment up there. Some very serious iron and steel. Hope they did their math and don't end up ripping half the roof off.

Put up some pics from the LSU meet on the "Inside Stuff" website. It's really hard to get any decent photos at a gymnastics meet unless you're on the floor and you have a really good (as in expensive) camera. I also finally got the basic racing calendar updated on the NOBC website, and uploaded the long-awaited BioScience working group report to the Bring New Orleans Back Technology website.

Cloudy, Wet and Warm

The third tube I put in the tire finally held air this morning, and by then I was running rather late. I quickly loaded up the car and made the dash over to the Morning Call to meet the guys going over to do the northshore ride. John R called as I was turning onto Causeway Blvd. to see where I was. David was also there. David's from Ohio and is in town this week doing volunteer work for a church group.

We started out with twelve for what turned out to be a 65 mile ride this morning, losing two along the way who turned back early. The skies were cloudy and the air was thick and humid with the wind blowing out of the southeast, but the pace stayed steady, much of the time hovering around 22-24 mph. Of course there were the usual surges and harder efforts here and there, and we had to ease up a number of times to regroup, but it was a good training ride and I was glad we didn't get rained on, at least not enough to get really wet. I felt fairly good this weekend and in fact I think I felt stronger toward the end of the ride than I had at the beginning. Go figure.

Spray in the Face

We got home late last night from the gymnastics meet up at LSU, where the team lost but actually turned in a pretty good score (The Daughter made the podium for Beam). The forecast for Saturday called for rain, rain, rain, and when my alarm clock went off this morning I hardly needed to look out the window. I could hear the sound of wet car tires on the road outside, so I rolled over and figured I'd ride another day. When the phone rang a little while later, I was surprised to hear Charlie D on the other end. He said he thought there would be a little break in the rain and that if we went out now we should be able to get in a couple of hours on the bike. So naturally I agreed to meet him up on the levee around 8:00. Since I knew it was going to be wet the whole time, I decided to ride my old Pennine, completely equipped with nice solid steel fenders. I didn't regret it, either. For the entire ride there was water spraying off of everyone's wheels, except of course mine, and for the most part I found it better to be in front than in back today. The Pennine is circa 1972. Steel Reynolds 531 with Simplex derailleurs, Campi cranks, and a mix of other obsolete components. It's a nice ride on a day like this, and despite the ever present spray from the other bikes, my feet didn't feel really wet until the ride was almost over, and it was a nice change not to have cold gritty water being sprayed up my ass the whole time.

Later in the day, The Daughter and her entire team from Iowa came over to the house so I could lead them on a tour of some of the key areas impacted by Katrina. Thanks to Kenny B, I had a good idea of where to go, and we visited the areas around three of the biggest floodwall breaches. As we drove through Lakeview and then down Bellaire Drive alongside the 17th Street Canal, it became very quiet inside the van. Like most people, they soon realized that this was much, much bigger than they had thought. Anyway, a valuable learning experience for all.

A rider from Ohio is in town and is planning on meeting me at the Morning Call tomorrow to do the Northshore ride. Hope the weather cooperates!

Finally Friday

The overcast skies made it seem particularly dark this morning when I hit the levee, and being a Friday I wasn't surprised that there was nobody waiting up at the usual spot. A mile or two later I was surprised to see Courtney coming the other way. She stopped and turned around so we could ride together. Courtney's house in Gentilly was flooded in the hurricane and she had to move to Baton Rouge for the Fall school semester while her kids were in school there. Then she bought a fixer-upper in Mandeville, across the lake from New Orleans. The plan was to commute across the causeway with her son in school at Ben Franklin and her working out at Elmwood leading Spinning classes. There were a couple other folks in Mandeville in the same situation, so the commuting chores could be shared. Then at the last minute the others backed out, enrolling their kids in Mandeville High instead, so Courtney was practically forced to follow suit, at least for this semester. Anyway, she was in town to meet at Elmwood and see what she could work out there.

Along the way we ran into a couple other riders and for a little while had four whole people, but the pace stayed slow and conversational. This afternoon I'll be heading over to Baton Rouge for a gymnastics meet between Iowa and LSU. It will be fun, even if I already know the probable outcome, and The Daughter and the rest of the team is planning on making a road trip over to New Orleans on Saturday for some sight-seeing, so that will keep us pretty busy. Kenny B gave me some ideas as to where to take them so they can get a little tour of the hurricane impact. Meanwhile, I'm still working out of the house because they're not expecting our office downtown to have power again until some time during the weekend, and they don't really seem all too sure about that.

Lack of Power

There was a smallish group on the levee this morning for the Thursday long ride, and once we got past the Huey P. bridge I went to the front to get things started. My legs are still sore from my stair-climbing episode on Tuesday, especially my calves, so I wasn't trying to turn it into a race or anything. I was OK spinning, but I really didn't have any power in my legs at all because of the sore muscles. I just wanted to get the pace up above 20 mph. So after a while Rob pulls through and since there's a gap behind him, I slip in. Next thing I know, it's just Rob and me. So we rolled along at mostly 24 mph with a very light tailwind, dropping down to 23 now and then, trading pulls every 50 or 60 pedal strokes in a 53x16. At one point I looked back and could see Donald pulling the rest of the group just about 10 seconds back. They could have easily closed the gap if they'd wanted to. Rob and I got a nice workout all the way out to the turnaround and when we started back we were surprised that the group was nowhere in sight. We figured someone had flatted, but when we met Kevin coming the other way he said that they had all turned around at the "dip" and so he had been chasing us solo for miles.

I had been looking forward to an easier ride back home, but with only three of us and an increasing headwind, it turned out to be a long and, for me, painful haul. My sore legs were really screaming by the time I got back onto city streets a couple of miles from home.

Headed in to the downtown office this morning to check out the electrical situation. The office still lacks power, so I went out onto the roof to gather some intel. and learned that the plan was to work all weekend in hopes of having everything working again on Monday. On the plus side, they did have the freight elevator working so I didn't have to climb 25 flights of stairs this time. Right now I'm sitting in my powerless office working on my battery powered laptop listening to the workers out on the roof. I guess I'll ride back uptown in a few minutes and work out of my house again today.

In the meantime, you should really check out the funny but oh so true editorial from yesterday's newspaper on the "Chocolate City" controversey. If only he'd said "cafe au lait!"

Lights Out - Update

A little excitement at the office today! An hour or so after I got in to the office, I noticed some Otis elevator people in the office and on the roof. Come to find out that the elevators had all stopped working. They had just figured out that there was no power to the elevators about the time I was noticing water on the stairwell landing on the very top floor (even with the elevator motors) and on the 25th floor where the elevator electrical controls are located. Obviously there was some sort of leak, and with the steady rain something must have gotten wet and thrown the circuit breaker. Meanwhile, a couple of the staff arrive in the office, rather exhausted after hiking up 25 flights of stairs. So we're sitting there wondering when they will get the elevators working again when there's a big explosion (about 30 feet from us) and the lights flicker a few times and then go out altogether. I can hear someone screaming from the elevator electrical room, and about that time one of the guys runs in from the roof and asks if we have a fire extinguisher. I was standing right next to it, so I hand it to him and follow him out the door. There's smoke billowing out of the electrical room and some sort of secondary alarm has now gone off. The main building fire alarm never sounded. Luckily, the sprinklers didn't activate either. So we gather up our laptops and evacuate down 25 flights to street level. Just as I'm leaving, one of the guys who was in there told me it was under control and they had put out the electrical fire that had started when they tried to switch the elevators back to normal power (extremely bad move under the circumstances). So anyway, eventually they let people back into the building, although of course the elevators were all out. I trudged back up 25 flights only to find that our floor, unlike the rest of the building, has no power, so I guess I'll be working from home today. No problema. Since Katrina, I'm set up to work anywhere!

Cold Feet

Now don't you just know that if you skip a day the weather the next day is practically guaranteed to be miserable? When I woke up this morning I felt around on the night table for my little penlight, shined it on the outdoor thermometer, and saw an encouraging 65F. So I put on my short and jersey before looking out the window. Mistake. The streets were slick with water and even though the sun hadn't risen yet I could tell the skies were heavily overcast. I walked quietly to another room to check the weather radar on the computer and it was worse than I thought. Just west of the city was a huge line of yellow and red rain. If I had gone out I wouldn't have made it more than five miles. Half an hour later it was pouring rain and the temperature was in a free-fall, dropping over ten degrees by the time I headed off to work with The Wife around 7:45. The parking garage in our building isn't supposed to open until later this week and all of the usual above-ground walkways are still closed, so there's not escaping a walk in the rain. Thanks to the tall buildings and gusty winds, I slogged the two blocks in horizontal rain, wishing the wishing the whole time I had thought to wear my boots. These penny loafers just don't cut it when it's wet outside, and by the time I got into the building the front of my pants was soaked and the water had already found its way to my socks. Looks like it will be a day with cold feet! There are a few guys hanging around in our suite speaking Spanish and waiting for the rain to ease up so they can continue their work on the roof, so I'm not going to complain about my little damp socks. Sucks to be a roofer on a day like today. Yesterday, when we were finishing up at my mom's apartment, it was after dark and a few housed down there was still a crew of roofers on a house on the block working away in the dark on a steep 80 year-old roof with a single light. I hope they got everything covered up before the rain this morning.

Oh yeah. Naturally The Mayor made the national news:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/17/nagin.city/index.html

Way to go, Ray. Perpetuate the stereotype. I'm sure that will really play well in D.C.

No Play

Since today was a holiday and my riding has been in the dumpster lately, I decided I should take today off in case I was either getting sick or in need of a rest, so I slept late and tried to relax. It worked - for an hour or so. Then I decided it was time to install the new wiper blades on the car and investigate why one of the speakers has stopped working. The former job required a bit of a field modification and the latter involved trying to re-solder an impossibly located wire to another impossibly located wire. The speaker now works, but probably won't for long. I then spent all afternoon at my mom's rental apartment where I installed a new toilet and three ceiling fans, arriving back home just in time to get a call from Megan, the Tulane student who is staying with us until her apartment is finished. She arrived about ten minutes later. Her computer couldn't deal with my router's security, so I went to disable it and somehow managed to screw up the whole network. I spent the next couple of hours trying to get the modem and router talking to each other again. So anyway, it was a long day and I never got out to play. On the plus side, it's always so satisfying when you install something and it actually works. Now my back hurts and I'm sure my neck will be sore tomorrow. Oh well. The chance of rain tomorrow morning is 50-60%. Damn.

Our esteemed mayor, playing up to the local (and specially imported) African American population at a MLK day ceremony, actually uttered the following: "We ask black people ... It's time for us to come together. It's time for us to rebuild New Orleans -- the one that should be a chocolate New Orleans..." "This city will be a majority African American city. It's the way God wants it to be."

Oh, is that what God wants? What was he thinking? I could almost hear the screams of his political advisors all the way uptown.

Disappointing

It was cold Sunday morning for the northshore training ride, but by the 8 am start it was probably nearly 40F. There was nobody but me at the Morning Call at 7 am, so I drove across the causeway alone, watching the thermometer as it rose into the 50s over the warmer lake waters and then plunged back down to the mid-30s on the northshore. There were only six of us this morning, and it seemed like everyone was feeling pretty tired. I was disappointed with how I felt. My legs were still sore for Saturday's Giro ride and every time the pace got fast, which wasn't very often, I would be hurting much earlier than I should be. Maybe the cold had something to do with it, or perhaps I'm fighting off the head cold that's been going around. I dunno. Something hasn't been right all weekend. Hopefully I'll feel better next week. Anyway, Mike L said he's heading out to California for a while to work, so we'll probably miss him for at least the spring races.

Tomorrow we're off from work for the annual MLK day ritual. They had a parade today with lots of imported people but couldn't get through it without gunfire that sent a number of people to the hospital. I feel sorry for the idealistic folks who organized it. I wonder if they'll make it through tomorrow without more of the same. Anyway, it's disappointing, if not predictable.

Spent most of the afternoon today trying to figure out why the Carnegie Foundation's new classification scheme tags Tulane and a few other serious research universities as "high research" instead of "very high research." How do you figure to identify the level of research using a scheme that is supposed to normalize for institution size, but includes all faculty instead of just research faculty, and uses total research expenditures (including institutional funds and Ag funds at the land grant universities) instead of federal research expenditures?

Hard North Wind

The temperature dropped last night into the mid to low 40s, but compared to the strong, gusting North wind, it was nothing. Riding out to the lakefront to meet the Giro ride, I was struggling in a 39x17 and often managing only 14 mph as I rode straight into the wind. I knew it would be a hard ride today, no matter what.

The group was, not surprisingly, rather small for a nice sunny Saturday morning. The wind coming off the lake was strong enough to spray lake water onto the road here and there, and riding west in the crosswind my vererable old 36-spoke front wheel was getting tossed all over the place and riding a reasonably straight line required a lot of attention. The ride down Hayne was into a head/cross wind, and although the speed was rarely over 25 mph, a small group went off the front and by the end of Hayne, even that group had split. I ended up in a 4-man group unenthusiastically chasing the lead group all the way out to the turnaround. When I finally sat up to remove my skullcap and unDshirt, a gust of wind very nearly put me on the asphalt. My legs were hurting all day as often happens to me when the weather turns cooler, and today's ride was, at least for me, just plain hard the whole time. From the start I was looking forward to the tailwind that I'd get on my way back home from the lakefront.

I sure hope the wind dies down before tomorrow's northshore ride!

Interference

I had an early morning meeting today and although I could have gotten up extra-early for a ride in the dark, I didn't. I hate it when work interferes with my riding. By the time I left home for the office it was pouring down rain but after a couple of hours the cool front came through and it cleared up nicely. It was a busy day, though, with meetings both uptown and downtown. Next week the office will be open until 10 p.m., and the parking garage is schedule to re-open on Wednesday, so the building will be nearly back to normal except for the elevators. When I stopped by my mom's rental this evening on the way home the lights were on downstairs and the brother-in-law was inside installing the bathroom cabinet. Progress! Lots still to do, but as long as we're moving forward, it's good. The Daughter's gymnastics meet starts in Oregon in a couple of minutes. If you're quick, check out the live scoring.

Out the Door

Yesterday morning I bailed. I got up, got dressed, got on the bike, went two blocks, realized I was under-dressed, turned around and went home for some hot coffee. Sometimes, making it out the door just isn't quite enough. It's always hard for me to get myself out the door the day after that sort of thing, so this morning I made sure I was suitably attired; maybe even a bit over-dressed, just to be on the safe side. It was in the mid-50s and there was a light fog in the morning, but instead of burning off as the sun came up, it hung around. In fact, I think it got a bit thicker. That extra humidity always makes it feel much cooler than the thermometer would imply, and indeed I was quite comfortable in my long tights.

There was a small group this morning for the long levee ride. Todd, BJ and Eddie had taken off early on their TT bikes, and all I saw of them was a blur as they zipped past us in the opposite direction as we neared the Luling bridge. Donald had to turn back at "the dip" today, and when he did a few of the guys went with him, so it was just a skeleton crew that made the whole ride, and that kept the pace comfortably in the 20-23 mph range most of the morning. It was a nice enough ride - nothing to write home about, though. I was feeling kind of tired and still am. It's one of those days when my head just seems to be in a fog all day. It was a struggle to proof a report that a group of Harvard B-school students had written on the biomedical industry. The report was OK, I guess, with only a couple of things that made me mutter "Oh my God" as I scribbled mark-up in the margins. It was mostly cut-and-pasted stuff from a couple of the draft "Bring New Orleans Back" reports (including ours, of course), plus some demographic info from the census bureau. Anyway, I've still got a long list of things I need to finish today before I can get out the door and ride home. I think maybe a glass of wine tonight.

Maybe two.

A Quick Fifty Grand

Yesterday afternoon I walked over to the FEMA Disaster Recovery Center that is set up in the New Orleans Public Library, a few blocks from work, to turn in my SBA Loan Application, since the deadline is tomorrow. I figure that if they'll OK a low-interest loan then we might be able to put in a proper a/c-heating system rather than grafting some replacement parts onto the existing one. Anyway, it was about as pleasant as a trip to the dentist. Not that the SBA folks weren't nice and all, it was just that there was a lot of waiting around. The person sitting next to me was a young woman with a bright orange mohawk, numerous scalp tatoos, and multiple facial piercings. She seemed pretty nice, but I have never figured out what people get out of those kinds of body modifications. I mean, did they look less attractive before they did that?

When The Wife arrived home from work she pulled out a set of four new beer glasses that she had picked up on sale, and since we still have a bunch of beer around, I obviously had to try one of them out. I opened an Abita Turbodog with my handy magnetic Orbea bottle opener, courtesy of one of last year's races, and she popped open an Abita Purple Haze. She looked at it, commented on how nice it looked in the glass, took a sip and asked me if I wanted it. Since it would be wasteful to pour perfectly good beer down the drain, I had to drink it, of course, even though its slightly fruity taste isn't really my cup of tea. About the time I finished those two beers, the sister-in-law and her friend showed up and we ended up spending three hours or so out on the porch where we emptied a nice bottle of Kendall Jackson Merlot and some other Merlot, and whatever was left in the bottle of Little Penguin in the 'fridge, while I tried in vain to avoid the constant cigarette smoke that seemed always to be blowing in my direction. I lost count after the sister-in-law snuffed out her seventh or eighth cigarette. Damn those things are evil.

So anyway, it was with a stuffy and slightly foggy head that I dragged myself out of bed this morning and made my way out to the levee for the Tuesday long ride. The weather is still quite warm, and I was a bit overdressed with two jerseys and arm-warmers. When I arrived, I found a pretty good-sized group there already, and by the time we really got rolling down around the country club I guess we had about fifteen riders. It was darker than usual because the skies were, and still are, overcast, but we somehow managed to avoid hitting any pedestrians. By the time we were half-way to Kenner the speed was staying up around 27 or so and the number of riders staying in the rotation up front was getting smaller and smaller. Todd and Eddie were pushing the pace a bit, while Rob, who would ordinarily be doing the same, was hiding out near the back. He was just getting back on the bike after a bout with the head cold that's been going around lately.

The group made a pretty quick turn-around today and we held 24-25 mph all the way back, although there were only four or five of us doing most of the work. I was pretty tired by the time we got back to the playground and so I rode the rest of the way home pretty easy. All-in-all, and nice quick training ride. I checked the odometer after the ride and noticed that it had rolled past the fifty thousand mile mark some time toward the end of Monday's ride.

Another Good One

I woke up a little bit early this morning, and had plenty of time to hit the ATM machine, gas station, and CC's coffee before meeting up the Morning Call. We ended up waiting about ten minutes extra for Reo and Kevin, but still arrived at the Lee Road school just a tad after 8 a.m. As it turned out, we would more than make up for our late arrival during the course of the ride.

The winter northshore training rides have had quite a streak of good luck. Here we are in January already and except for last week, which I missed, the weather has been fantastic. Today was no exception. Although the temperature on the northshore was in the upper 40s when Charlie D and I arrived, the skies were blue and the wind was out of the south and it already felt warmer. Shorts and two jerseys were more than sufficient as the temperature quickly rose into the 60s. This morning the krewe was a little different than usual. We were missing a couple of the regulars, like Jay and Rick, but had picked up Tim and Realdo in their place. Pushed along by a steadily increasing southeast wind and Tim and Reo's extra horsepower, the group's speed stayed high all day and hardly a yard of the 60-mile ride went to waste. There were a couple of good sprints and some hard efforts up the usual hills. We lost Jaro for the second time shortly after Enon, and knowing that he was familiar with the roads we continued on after that. I think the warmer weather had everyone wanting to go a little harder than usual today and half-way up the hill on Sie Jenkins Road the pressure went up a notch and stayed there all the way to the end of that short but tough little stretch.

I think there were a couple of guys really looking forward to a stop at the Enon store, but when we arrived we found it closed with a sign on the door about not having enough "staff." We stopped briefly anyway and chatted with a couple of other riders who were there before heading up the watchtower climb in what was now a pretty strong head/crosswind. I was sitting at the back of the paceline scrapping for a sliver of draft on the edge of the road when a gust of wind very nearly blew me right into the ditch.

After I got home, I checked the computer and found that my cumulative mileage is just a bit below 50,000 miles now. I spent an hour or so over at my mom's apartment putting in a few more outlets and switches.

You know, it strikes me that all of my pictures show guys riding along at a nice easy pace, talking or looking at the scenery. Well, the reason for that is that when we're going hard, there's just no way I can fish the camera out of my pocket, and even if I could, I'd end up with (a) a blurry picture and (b) dropped. So I guess you'll just have to take my word for it when I say we had a hard ride.

Cold Giro

It was down in the 30s this morning when I left, and although I was pretty well bundled up and I felt fairly comfortable on my ride out to the lakefront, my fingers got really cold as the Giro ride started because, as usual, the pace for the first few miles is really slow. One thing that I really noticed today was the increased amount of traffic, especially in the areas that were badly flooded like Lakeview and New Orleans East. This was the first time since the hurricane that the ride through Lakeview at 6:30 a.m. wasn't like a ride through a ghost town. There was at least some traffic everywhere. Meanwhile, a 50-person delegation is heading to The Netherlands tomorrow to learn about the impressive storm-control system that the Dutch have developed.

Thanks to the cold, the group was smaller than usual, and most of the time the pace was fairly controlled. Apparently Todd was somewhere up the road most of the day. I don't think I ever saw him, though. As usual, it got fast along Chef Highway, and after taking a couple of pulls I dropped to the back as the pace ramped up into the upper 20s. I was determined to stay in low gears and spin today, and it was a little easier to do that on the tail end. I think I ended up in a 53 x 16 toward the end, so I guess I cheated a bit, but at least by then my vest was in my pocket and my fingers had thawed out. It should be warmer tomorrow for the northshore training ride. In fact, it's looking like the weather will be really nice.

The Wife and I spent most of the afternoon installing electrical outlets at my mom's rental apartment. It took a lot longer than I had expected. One reason was that the Brother-in-law had rewired the place with a rather heavy gauge wire so I couldn't make the connections the easy way. By the time it got too dark to see what we were doing, we had both cut our hands a couple of times. When we arrived, we met one of the students who lives in the upstairs apartment who had arrived early. He was hoping that the electricity would be turned on soon. I checked the breaker box, and could see that the electrician hadn't been there yet to install the breakers and connect up all of the wiring. That's supposed to happen this weekend, but I'm thinking it won't. He did say that the gas was working and so he had hot water. Luckily, he has someplace else in town he can stay until things are working again. Classes start on the 17th. It'll be tight.

Twelth Night and Cakeless

It's Twelth Night, and around here that has some special meaning. For one, it's the last day you're supposed to have christmas decorations up. For another, it's "King Cake Day." And finally, of course, it's the official beginning of the Mardi Gras season. There are really only two carnical krewes to which I'd really like to belong. One of them is the Twelth Night Revelers, the krewe that opens the Mardi Gras season. The other is the Krewe of Comus, the one that closes it. The Twelth Night Revelers have their Ball tonight, and the Phunny Phorty Phellows have their streetcar parade today. This year, since the streetcars aren't running on St. Charles, they're doing it on Canal Street. Gotta roll with the punches nowadays! Anyway, I never did get any King Cake. Damn.

So I finally got in a ride, however brief, early this morning. It was colder and very windy, and I didn't have much time, but after two whole days off the bike, I was desperate enough to suit up for an 18 mile ride in the dark. Hopefully I can get in a full weekend of rides this weekend, although tomorrow morning is supposed to be quite cold. It's always January that turns out to be the hardest month for training. You'd think it would be November or December, but January is always colder and windier and the big races still seem like they're a long way away, so it's easy to make excuses.

It was moving day for the office, and so I had to drop The Wife off at the office early, then go to the uptown office, load up everything and move it to the downtown office. It wasn't all so difficult, really, but anyway it took up a lot of the morning.

Missed Again

Well, I had to skip the morning training ride today because of a morning meeting downtown. Tomorrow I'll be moving what little we have at the uptown office down to the downtown office, but I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do that without missing another morning on the bike. I may end up riding the bike downtown to get the car so I can drive back uptown to make the move. It is getting cooler around here again, and tomorrow morning will be a bit chilly and more than a bit windy. Locally, the volume of traffic around here seems to have increased dramatically over the last few weeks, and the fact that many of the major intersections still don't have working traffic signals is slowing things down a lot.

Now here's a surprise. Entergy not only replied to my email about my crazy gas bill, they emailed back saying that they would cancel the original bill, correct the apparently incorrect meter reading, and send out a new bill. Wow. Competence. Weird.

Work, work work

The weather today is just wonderful and St. Charles Avenue has been packed with cars all day. Many of the schools are open now and things are looking pretty lively. It's really kind of exciting.

I could have, should have ridden this morning, but I was up 'till 1 a.m. or so working on a scheme to divide up $95M in federal disaster relief funds among the area universities in preparation for a meeting tomorrow, and I really wanted that extra hour of sleep. I was also trying to figure out how my electricity and gas bill suddenly jumped to $350. I figured out that they must have gotten the starting meter reading wrong by 100 cubic feet when they installed it after the hurricane, and was shocked when Entergy not only responded to the email I sent this morning, but actually agreed with me! I'll probably be downtown much of tomorrow and then on Friday we'll be moving everything back into our regular office where I will have my very own telephone! Whoohooo! I will certainly miss the lovely view of St. Charles Ave. and the entrance to Audubon Park and the easy commute to work.

I finally got the OK to put up the new Office of Research website that I re-designed for them, and maybe now I can find some time to work on the bike club and LAMBRA website and put the latest newsletter up on the LPMA website.

Had lunch with a few people including a Harvard MBA with three years of med school who is down here to help out with some of the Biotechnology committee's recommendations and strategic planning. Should be interesting. Rebecca took him for a little tour down to the 9th ward and said he was pretty shocked. He said that he now felt kind of stupid for some of the things he wrote in his initial planning document.

Early Enough

Yesterday afternoon I headed downtown to check out our office space up on the roof of the Tidewater Building. We'll have to give the classroom from which we've been operating back to the students in a couple of weeks, but still have to officially request permission to move back into our regular office space downtown. There's supposed to be a list of people who are allowed to enter the building, but when I arrived I just signed in and headed for the elevator. I guess since I had my Tulane ID on, the security guard figured I was OK. When I entered the office I was greeted by a big pile of construction tools and equipment in the middle of the floor, and noticed that the construction guys had apparently set up a television on the receptionist's desk. Otherwise, though, things looked pretty good. There's still a lot of work going on on the roof, and they've installed a big crane up there in order to haul up the big air handlers for the GLP lab (the year-old ones got trashed by the hurricane). We're kind of used to having the building maintenance guys coming in and out anyway, so that won't be much of a problem, and I certainly don't want to slow them down by getting in their way. I sat down at my desk for the first time since August, made some phone calls, and sent out the necessary emails to get us approved for re-entry on Friday. It was so nice to actually have a desk and a telephone all to myself! I had almost forgotten what a luxury that was. The maintenance folks said they could get the place cleaned up and the a/c working again by then, and some time around 10:30 last night the VP approved our request, so we should be good to go. I think Friday should be early enough. Once we're back, we'll have to be out of the building by 4:30 each day, and the parking garage still isn't open, and only one or two elevators are working, but it will still seem like one more step forward. I sure will miss my easy one-mile commute on quiet tree-lined residential streets, though!

I know that most of the rest of the country has already moved on, content that things in La and Ms are all patched up by now. Indeed, it's tempting to encourage that notion since we definitely want people to come down here for Mardi Gras and school and to work. The reality, however, is that everything is still kind of broken, even in the least-affected areas, and the road ahead still looks long, risky and difficult for everyone. Even the Federal Government's U.S. Postal Service still can't seem to manage to deliver my mail after over four months.

I actually woke up more or less on time this morning and arrived at the levee promptly at the usual 6:15 a.m. meeting time. It was still dark enough to see the stars in the eastern sky, and quiet enough to hear a little squeaking noise coming from my jockey wheels which haven't had any attention since around mid-summer. There was nobody up there when I arrived, but in a minute or so big Richard showed up and we rolled off toward the playground. It wasn't until we were there that we spotted a couple of tail lights ahead of us and realized that they had actually left EARLY. Geez! Like 6:15 isn't early enough? A few miles later I found out that there were two riders (guess who they were) ahead of the group. Anyway, nobody was interested in trying to chase down a couple of TT specialists who already had a couple of minutes on us, so we rolled along at a nice moderate pace until somebody's rear tire exploded loudly just past the "dip." It took a long time to fix since we had to improvise a boot from a food wrapper that required Howard to eat his breakfast a little early, so we turned around and headed back without going all the way to the turnaround. It wasn't long afterward that the morning's escapees caught us and as they rolled past I was surprised that nobody seemed interested in at least hanging on, so I made a little effort and latched on myself. The three of us were trading pulls at 25-29 mph, depending on the wind direction, but most of the rest of the group did eventually catch. I got in a good fifteen or twenty minutes of hard work before we eased up at the playground. It was a little cooler today, but not quite cool enough for me to pull on the long tights yet, and the weather now is pretty damned nice out there.

Springtime in January?

Really. It looks like a nice spring day today in New Orleans. It's 75F with a nice breeze and partly cloudy skies, and if I didn't know better, I'd think winter was over. This morning the levee bike path was quiet, and on the way out I passed only a few people commuting to work. Eventually I saw some people out training, but not until I was almost back. The office is rather quiet today, no doubt due to the various Bowl games on tap throughout the day and evening. Our own Sugar Bowl will have to be played in Atlanta this year since the Superdome is still being put back together after being trashed by the combination of hurricane and fine citizens. They're hoping to be able to have games there again around September.

I did an easy ride this morning, typical for a Monday morning, and as I often do on solo rides this time of year, I set the computer to show cadence and spent a lot of time above 100 rpm working on efficiency rather than strength. It looks like this warm weather will continue for a few days. Meanwhile, all of the plants are totally confused. Grass is growing, flowers are budding.

If only they knew . . .

First Ride

New Year's Eve night was a bit different this year. For the first time in a very long time, I heard only fireworks at midnight - no gunfire, none of the characteristic pop-pop-pop-pop-pop sounds of automatic weapons. Earlier in the evening I had checked out the BurboCam to see how things were looking down in the Quarter. They do a live web video show, interviewing people on the street and that sort of thing, whenever there's something big going on down there. Then at midnight I stood briefly on the front porch watching the fireworks coming from someplace about a block away as they exploded into the foggy night air. I worried about the sparks that rained down onto the plastic-covered roofs.

Decisions, decisions, decisions. There were three options this morning. A 6:15 a.m. ride out to the levee for another Giro ride, a drive across the lake in the fog for a noon ride on the Northshore, or a 9:30 ride on the levee. Since I hadn't gone out last night, I could have done any one of those, but riding alone in the dark before dawn on New Year's Day isn't particularly safe, and the Northshore ride would have ended up consuming most of my day.

I opted for the levee. It is still unseasonably warm, and this morning I happily rode off into the thick warm mist wearing shorts and a summer jersey. The fog was still thick enough to make it seem pretty dark. Before I got to the playground, I ran into a couple of the guys who were fixing a flat. As always, the damp roads played havoc with the tires. It was another ten minutes before most of the riders finally showed up and we headed off down the bike path in a double paceline. We started with about eight, but by the time we got to the turnaround at the end of the bike path out past Destrehan there were maybe a dozen. There was a lot of conversation, and so the pace stayed quite steady.

Tim and Kenny were out on their new team bikes that had been picked up yesterday. Rather nice carbon fiber Orbea Opal models decked out with Campi Chorus. For some reason, the whole group stopped for a while at the turnaround - I think a couple of the guys had to answer calls of nature - and we all stood around up there for a few minutes before we finally got moving again. On the way back Tim rolled past me and said "come on, let's make them work a little bit." A little bit. Yeah, right. Reo soon got in on the action, as did Charlie and Howard, and "CLICK" the switch went from "training ride" to "race."

It stayed fast, up around 27-29 mph, all the way back to about Williams Blvd. when Howard flatted and Tim or someone peeled off to head home. So we waited up for the rest of the group that was by now a couple of minutes back. The easy pace didn't last all that long, though, and things picked up pretty good, although they didn't get quite as out of hand as they had earlier.

An article on nola.com that was pretty good: Cry Me a New Year. The Christmas decorations are starting to come down today, and tomorrow we'll be back at work. My office will be moving back into the Tidewater Building some time around mid-week, and I'm planning on going over there tomorrow to check it out and make sure there aren't any big surprises.

Last Ride of '05 - Out with a Wimper

It's noon on Sunday and I have a headache. Perhaps a bit too much wine at last night's little get-together, or maybe just a case of Katrina Head. We had a nice little group at the house yesterday - a few of the neighbors, a few people from work. Reo rode over and Adam stopped by, so it was nice to be able to talk about bikes for a little bit instead of the realities of the disaster. The Wife had gone out and stocked up on beer and wine - far more than we needed. I think we'll have to have another get-together just to take care of the surplus. We have about ten different varieties of Abita beer, including of course "Fleur de Lis Restoration Ale" and a few big bottles of "Little Penguin" wine (which seems to be our most recent "house wine." I just fished one of those big bottles out of the freezer where it had been put, and forgotten, by The Wife. Of course, it had frozen and popped its cork, but didn't make too much of a mess, so it's sitting on the kitchen counter right now thawing out. The seafood gumbo that The Wife made was pretty good, and I think there's enough left for dinner tonight.

I'm sitting here on the front porch, legs a bit sore and head a bit achy, listening to the construction workers next door and watching the damned Buck Moths fluttering around under the oak tree perpetuating the life cycle of the nasty Buck Moth Caterpillar, one of which is destined to give me a bad sting next year. The cat is busy stalking the moths through the screen door, lunging at them when they get too close.

When I awoke this morning the fog was really thick, but I went ahead and rode out to the Lakefront anyway. After all, when the morning temperature is 65F in January, you just gotta ride. I mean, there are freezing riders in Minnesota who would give anything for a day like this. It was much darker than normal due to the fog, and the streets seemed particularly quiet. Nonetheless, there was a decent sized group for the last Giro Ride of the year, and by the time we were half-way down Hayne Blvd. it was strung out into a long, thin 28 mph line. The group split and reformed a couple of times on the way out, and we had a nice rotation going on Chef Highway, but after the turn-around everyone seemed happy to ride easy and chat, which was fine with me because every time I'd go hard my head would start to throb!

This year the City is trying to strictly enforce the anti-fireworks law, and it's a good thing too. With half of the homes covered in flammable blue plastic, the chances of fireworks-ignited house fires is very real. Yesterday morning as the Friday levee ride group was riding, we were stopped by one of the Jefferson Parish police officer who was out reminding everyone he saw that they would be issuing citations to anyone caught using fireworks on the levee this year.

So here in New Orleans the year 2005 will go out with more of a wimper than a bang, in more ways than one. I know I'll certainly be glad to get this one behind me, and this year in particular I will appreciate the sense of renewal that New Year's Day will bring. On the positive side, many of the uptown residents are back in their houses, lots of the children are back, and the local schools will be reopening in a few weeks. On the negative side, the U.S. Postal Service is still not delivering mail here on a regular basis, the city has a very long way yet to go, and there's a brand new water line leak on the corner in front of my house.

c'est la vie.

Premature Attackulation

It must have been the warmer weather and lighter winds this morning. Right from the start, Rob and a couple others were rolling along faster than usual, and when other riders would meet us, the group was reluctant to slow down very much. By the time we were half-way out it was already starting to feel like a race, and the occasional surges by Howard and Todd were taking their toll. Donald, clearly unhappy with the Giro-esque mentality was in gap-opening mode, letting big gaps open in front of him in hopes that the lead group would wear themselves out. I bridged across a couple of times, and the last time the split stuck. It was the first time in a long time that it felt almost like a race. The group was feeding on itself and there were a lot of clearly premature attacks, the perpetrators of which, I knew would have to pay up before the end of the ride. For my own part, I was skipping pulls here and there when the pace would get too high.

The return trip was mostly more of the same and for the first time since Katrina I was back home at the "usual" time. I have to admit, however, I was pretty tired by the time I got to work this morning. Fortunately, it's pretty quiet around here for now.

So we decided to have a little get-together this Friday night at the house. As usual, we are totally unprepared, but we'll pull something together at the last minute. Everyone reading this is invited! 6:30 pm, Friday, 81 Neron. Should be fun.

Short Week

It seemed like a particularly long holiday weekend, and I was happy to get back to some semblance of routine this morning. The usual Tuesday long ride eventually accumulated a group of a dozen, but when I hit the meeting spot this morning there was only one bike there. As I rode up, I saw that Rob had his front wheel off, but he was just standing there looking at it. Odd. Turned out that he had slammed into one of our city's new potholes in the dark on his way over and blown both tires. Having only one spare tube, he was close enough to ride the flat front to the levee where he could borrow another tube. His rim had a huge dent it in - huge enough that I was surprised he hadn't gone down. Anyway, I gave him a tube and we were on the road a bit late, but then so was everyone else. The ride was fairly steady today, hovering around 21-23, until we got about half-way back and The Howard decided out of the blue that he needed to up the pace to 30 mph. A few riders split off with him, and the rest, including me, just sped up a little bit. After a while we were mostly all back together, though. Erich M. was in town from Athens, where he's about to start work for a financial investment advisor type of company. As we approached one of the pumping stations in Jefferson he and Rob split off the front a bit and as we went around the pumping station I put a little pressure on the pedals to close the gap. Apparently I was about the only one to do so, and we ended up doing a little 3-man TT the rest of the way. As soon as we eased up around the playground, Mark D caught from behind. He must have been chasing solo for a few miles at least.

Yesterday morning after a short training ride I decided to clean up the neutral ground across from the house and spend a couple of hours with a shovel, rake, etc., eventually filling up five of those huge contractor-type plastic bags with leftover hurricane debris. It looks better, but my hamstrings, back and shoulders are all sore as hell today, which never seems to be much of a problem while riding, although walking isn't all that much fun.

So this will be a short week at work. We were off yesterday and will be off again on Friday. That should leave me completely confused since I already think today should be Monday.

Christmas Day '05

It was a long christmas day this year, and also another day off the bike. We were up before dawn to exchange presents before The Wife and I drove up to Baton Rouge to visit the mother-in-law. A large part of or visit consisted of driving aimlessly around Baton Rouge during the day looking at christmas decorations. There were a few times when I swear I was about to fall asleep at the wheel from sheer boredom. It also consumes a lot of energy dealing with someone with early Alzheimer's disease. Although traffic was very light when we drove there in the morning, by the time we headed back around noon, it was much heavier. It also seemed that the average speed was around 85 mph. After our big christmas lunch with the family, which didn't happen until around 2 p.m. this year, we watched a dvd movie and finally got back home in time for Joey D and Kelly to stop by. We had a real nice visit, and finally called it a day around 10:30 p.m.

It looks like tomorrow will be pretty cold, but since I have the day off I'll probably wait until the sun comes up to go for a ride.

Frosty

There was a some yesterday, but much more today. Although the temperature was about the same, a slight shift in the wind had brought in a bit of Gulf moisture, resulting in a nice little frost that covered levee and rooftops all along the ride this morning. We accumulated only four or five riders this morning, including Joe F., and so the pace stayed slow enough for conversation. By 9 a.m. the temperature had risen from 39 to the mid-50s, and my short commute to Gibson Hall for the last work day before christmas was an easy one.

It's 2:30 p.m. right now and the place is nearly deserted. I've just finished three glasses of eggnog daiquiri. Rebecca dropped in to the office a while ago with a gallon of the delicious slurry, and although there were only three of us left to polish it off, we clicked plastic glasses, toasted New Orleans, and did our best. Now, as always seems to happen, I'm the only one left here. The lack of distraction this morning did allow me to finish off the rest of the Research Office's website re-design, however, and I'm thinking I'll skip on out of here shortly.

Christmas, such as it is this year, is just about here in the Crescent City. There is a pretty good article in today's USA Today. I particularly liked this bit:

"What makes New Orleans different, worth the billions of tourism dollars that come in every year, even worth living in, Ogden says, is its gritty charm. "We don't want gated subdivisions with cul de sacs like Dallas or Atlanta." That thought, he says, "makes me wake up in the middle of the night, screaming."

and this one:

"It's hard to work. It's hard to concentrate. I was watching TV last night, and there was a little girl who was worried that Santa wouldn't know how to find all the children, and I just broke down and cried," says Miester, who is living with her mother since her home was destroyed. She says a friend of hers went into a bagel shop, and when they asked her what she wanted, the friend burst into tears: "I want my house back!" They gave her a bag of bagels."

I leave you with this little number that someone sent to the psychiatry list. You'll recognize the rythmn.

The Twelve Days of Post-Katrina Christmas

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
The power turned back on by Entergy.

On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Eight dump trucks hauling
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Nine roofers roofing
Eight dump trucks hauling
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Ten electricians wiring
Nine roofers roofing
Eight dump trucks hauling
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Eleven plumbers plumbing
Ten electricians wiring
Nine roofers roofing
Eight dump trucks hauling
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveriesFive MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergy.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
Twelve painters painting
Eleven plumbers plumbing
Ten electricians wiring
Nine roofers roofing
Eight dump trucks hauling
Seven stacks of sheetrock
Six mail deliveries
Five MREs!
Four jugs of bleach
Three flood adjusters
Two FEMA checks
And the power turned back on by Entergyyyyy! PLEASE!PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!

Surprising

Yesterday's ride was a typical Wednesday levee ride - a handful of riders, a moderate pace, and no surprises. Although when I arrived home there was no mail (the U.S. Post Office seems to be delivering selected mail only two or three times a week around here, and we have not received a single christmas catalog!), I was surprised to find a small package at the door. Inside were the missing package I'd ordered Nov. 5, and a few pieces of month-old mail, including a traffic ticket reminder from Iowa City compliments of The Daughter. This was the stuff that the Jackson Post Office had forwarded to me after I finally got in touch with them last week. So now I can pump up my tires again!

It was surprisingly cold this morning. Colder than yesterday or the day before. I've really got to start paying more attention to the weather forecasts. Before I headed out into the darkness, I put on my good ol' Pearlizumi vest. I knew that somewhere along the 42 mile morning ride it would end up in my pocket, but then that's exactly what they're made for.

It took a dozen miles for us to gather up a group of ten or so riders this morning, and the pace stayed pretty steady for most of the trip. I had contemplated skipping the ride this morning when the alarm went off, but I was ultimately glad that I pushed myself out the door, as usual. I got The Daughter to give me a ride to work this morning so I could bring in a few bacchanalian gifts for the office. She had just returned from a drive over to mid-city and Lakeview to take some photos for the folks back in Iowa City. She didn't have to go far to find houses with water marks at six and seven feet.

Things have gotten pretty quiet here at work over the last couple of days, so I've had some time to do more work on the Research Office's website. They've got a lot of stuff on there that they can't possibly maintain, so I'll have to set up a reality-check meeting with the director so they don't end up with a bunch of outdated information and links, but at least it will be a good start. I'm listening to the KPLU.ORG Jazz stream right now, which feels just right today. I think the weather will be warming up over the next few days, and although it was around 38F this morning, the temperature is up to 55 right now. The high for Saturday is supposed to be 71F, after which another cold front is supposed to come through just in time for christmas morning. There are no temperatures below 42 in the 10-day forecast, though, so except for the increasing chance of rain around New Year's Eve, the riding should be good.

The Mayor has lifted the 2 a.m. curfew for the functioning areas of the city, starting Friday. As you might have expected, this was of sufficient importance to returning Tulane students that they were calling the President's office to find out when it would be lifted. Tulane students and faculty who need housing will be living on a cruise ship docked at the university's "RiverSphere" berth on the river downtown. Now, that would be interesting! It's been a few days now since I've ventured outside of the uptown area here, and things are feeling more and more "normal." Of course, I know that if I go half a mile in the wrong direction, reality will slap me in the face, but I'm glad that I can enjoy occasional periods of denial anyway!

Hopefully I'll be able to make the Giro ride Saturday, but I'm guessing Sunday will be a day off the bike.

A Few Days of Winter

We were already 17 miles down the road tby the time the sun came up this morning. The cold weather wouldn't feel nearly so bad were it not for the darkness. When the sun's out, 40F feels just great, but when it's dark, I swear it feels fifteen degrees colder. To make matters words, my little flashing headlight was really acting up this morning, and every time I hit a little bump in the road it would stop working. I guess one of the battery contacts is a little flaky, but regardless, it was just driving me crazy. At least I wasn't underdressed today, at least my my standards. With long tights, skullcap, a short-sleeved jersey, two long-sleeved ones, my Un-DeShirt, DeFeet gloves and shoe covers, and clear glasses, I was pretty comfy. There's just no point being cold on a weekday training ride, IMHO.

I arrived alone atop the levee a minute or so before 6:15, and a few minutes later there were three of us. We took one last look down the bike path toward uptown, and headed out. Eventually, we accumulated a good-sized group of maybe ten or so. With it so dark in the morning, lots of people have started meeting us along the way rather than riding all the way down to the "official" starting spot.

As often happens when I'm cold, my legs were reluctant all morning, and when Todd picked up the pace by five mph about a mile before the turnaround, I dropped to the back and eased up, taking a few minutes to look at the scenery and let my legs recover a bit. Shortly after we started back, we ran into Donald and Ronnie who had missed the group because of a train crossing. A little group split off the front early on the return trip, but there was never an effort to catch it. With a pretty good headwind, it was a challenge to maintain 22 mph at times, but the group in front wasn't doing much better. It looks like the lows will be 38-40 for the next couple of days, but by christmas it should warm up a bit. Of course, by my standards, it will still feel like winter.

I got the bulk of the work done today on the Office of Research website changes, and although I'm not entirely satisfied with it, I think it will work, and besides, I want to back away from it soon so I can hand it off to ORA to maintain. At least it doesn't look like something from the 90s any more!

One thing I've really noticed over the last five or six days is the number of students and children around. I think that a lot of people have returned to the city in the last week. For some, it's not so easy. One of our office staff is living in Gonzalez, LA, which is a good hour and a half drive, each way, her husband also has to communte into town, leaving at 5 a.m. each morning. Their house in New Orleans East was completely flooded. She says she wishes they would just bulldoze the whole area, because it's just so depressing to see.

Nice on the Northshore

The temperature was a full ten degrees colder on the Northshore this morning. As I had expected, I was the only one from the Southshore to make the drive, but I was glad I did. Our 9-man group started out straight into the 39 degree north wind, but by the time we had clicked off ten miles it was already warming up thanks to the clear blue sky and a few hard efforts. I tried out the Nike skullcap that The Daughter gave me yesterday and I was surprised how warm is was.

For the most part, the pace stayed pretty reasonable. On the run back into Enon on the way back, Jay attacked and things got fast for a while. Then, as usual, there was a surge to the top of the watchtower hill. For the whole last half of the ride, the weather was nearly perfect. Perhaps the tailwind had something to do with that, though. Anyway, I felt pretty good riding today, despite, or perhaps because of, my minimal mileage last week.

In the afternoon, I foolishly agreed to accompany The Wife and Daughter on a shopping trip to Lakeshide Shopping Center. The parking lot was packed, so once The Wife started trying to tell me how to drive and where to park, I decided to drop them both off at one of the entrances and handle the complex task of parking the car solo.

Good move.

I ran into Eddie C at the Mall and he said that the Giro ride was fast and hard today, and his legs were sore. Geez guys, it's the friggin' weekend before christmas.

Chill!

Rainy Day

It's been an odd week. Thursday morning was cold and windy, and although the streets were still a bit damp I wanted to ride. I really did. I headed out the door, turned the corner and the cold damp wind cut right through my clothes to my skin. It took about two blocks for me to figure out this wasn't going to be any fun at all. I hit the "abort" button and returned to old homestead.

So by Friday morning I was really needing a ride, and I left home figuring I'd probably be riding by myself. As it turned out, we had a nice little group on the levee. It was a nice day with slightly warmer weather and just a light wind, and though it might not have qualified as a legitimate training day, considering my lackluster rides of the preceeding week, it was nice nonetheless. I always tell myself "it's only December" when I have weeks like this. Jeff was out with his Powercranks. Man, those things are just unnatural. Especially when the rider coasts with both feet down. Wierd. Ronnie was out on his new Litespeed time trial bike, and he ended up pushing our pace just a bit, which kind of kept us honest. I think that without him, we would have spend more time going 18 mph and less going 21. On the way back, we picked up Joe F., and I thought about how I'd be lucky to be riding like that when I get to be his age.

The forecast for Saturday was looking none too good - a fitting end to this week. On the "plus" side, there have been some positive signs coming out of D.C. that will go a very long way toward restoring confidence in the city.

Saturday morning I could hear the sound of car tires on wet streets as soon as I awoke, and although I didn't really have to get up and look, I did. It wasn't really all that bad, but the combination of wet and cold is just not my cup of tea. If it had been February, I would have ridden anyway, but "it's only December." So it was a rainy day for me. It pretty much rained all day, and I felt a lot colder than the temperature warrented for some reason.

So I ended up going out to the Sears store with my mother because they were having this big 10% off sale on top of the state's "tax holiday" weekend, which meant a 14% discount even on sale items. On top of that, if you used your Sears credit card, you could get a 10% rebate. The mom needed to buy three refrigerators, two ovens, and one dishwasher to replace the appliances damaged in the flood, so we headed out there for the half-day sale, bracing ourselves for long day. When we arrived, they were giving out numbers. Ours was something like two hundred eight. They were calling for number twenty-seven, so we were looking at about an hour and a half, easy. The place was packed. After an hour or so, my mom was talking to another woman who had been given someone else's ticket when that person gave up and went home. She gave her the number since she didn't need it, and a few minutes later it was called! Nice!! We picked out the appliances, which added up to around $2,000 even with all the discounts. The next available delivery date was in mid-February, so we decided we'd figure out a way to pick them up, and scheduled pick-up for January 5. Anyway, it was an experience! The Wife and I made a feeble attempt to do some christmas shopping, but we just couldn't get motivated and after driving around and wandering through a few stores, we called it a day and stopped at Taquera Corona for a few tacos and a bottle of XX.

The Daughter came home this evening from Iowa City for the first time since mid-summer. Her flight out of St. Louis was delayed for about an hour while the authorities removed a drunk passenger from the airplane. Tomorrow I'm planning on doing the Northshore ride. I'll bet I'm the only one from the Southshore.

Nothing Good to Say

I had a nice ride this morning with a small group and it was pretty much all downhill (figuratively, not topographically) after that, culminating with a thunderstorm and a brand new roof leak, probably thanks to insurance adjusters and roofers walking around on it.