Cuts and Bleeding

It was darker than usual this morning as I headed out to the levee, thanks to overcast skies and a rainy forecast ahead of another approaching cold front. Appropriate weather for today as you'll see later. Even so, I was surprised to find the bike path deserted when I arrived a couple of minutes after 6:15. I found Donald alone at the playground and we continued on, eventually picking up a couple more riders along the way, and once again we cut the long ride to a medium-length one. We had a pretty good ride, though, and the added effort of the smaller paceline and moderate wind made up for the shorter distance.

Today a press release by Tulane was scheduled for noon. Tulane announced its cuts. Some of the details are on the "Survival to Recovery" website. Numerous degree programs have been eliminated. The Medical School's clinical enterprise is being slashed. A number of athletics programs are being eliminated. As I sit here there is a group downstairs in the President's office stuffing FedEx envelopes with letters to the 230 faculty and staff who are being terminated. It is both sad and scary. The university is bleeding, the city is bleeding, the state is bleeding, and the Federal government is responding with about the same level of urgency we saw when the levees failed. I guess they don't call us "the city that care forgot" for nothing.

I look outside the window of Gibson Hall and there is a handful of workers working on the landscaping and putting christmas lights on the Azaleas that line the semicircular drive across from Audubon Park. It seem odd under the circumstances.

Easy ride tomorrow for sure.

Southern Winter

Tuesday morning was cold and windy, and indeed it was hard to get myself out the door and to the levee by 6:15. The 39 degree air felt a lot colder thanks to the strong winds and I wasn't too surprised to find the bike path virtually deserted. There were only four of us and when Donald, who recently started a new job working for FEMA, said he would have to turn around early, we all decided that would be a fine idea for the rest of us too. We still got in around 35 miles. Later in the day, I had a nice ride from the uptown campus to the health sciences center (and back) downtown for a meeting. Ended up at work till around 7:00 working on a report and returned home to find that the neighbor and The Wife had strung up lights on a couple of the oak trees. Man, this next electric bill is gonna be interesting. Anyway, the street looks quite festive, except for the ever-present contractor trucks and the FEMA trailer parked in the neighbor's driveway.

Wedesday the weather was still pretty cold, by "southern winter" standards, but a bit warmer, although The Daughter called to say it was ten degrees below zero up in Iowa City where they spell winter with a capital "W." We had a nice group of eight or so for the usual Wednesday ride and things were going along smoothly until Donald inexplicably decided to attack about half-way back. The rest of the paceline sped up just a bit, and I'm sure everyone was thinking that he would ease up and come back to the group quickly. Eventually big Richard pulled the line back up to a pace that was starting to close the gap, and then I cam around and finished the job. Along the way we dropped a few of the guys, though.

So Tulane bought an apartment building just off of St. Charles near Jackson Ave., and has lined up a cruise ship also. The cruise ship will be moored at the "Riversphere" location, which is really an old riverboat casino building that Tulane was given downtown. Luckily, it happens to have a beautiful concrete dock. As I rode the commuter bike through campus this morning it seemed that the level of activity had moved up another notch. There's just about a month left before classes resume. Compared to much of the city, Tulane's campus will look like a real jewel.

Seasons

Who says we don't have seasons down here in New Orleans? Damn, we practically had all four of 'em just this week. When we went to bed last night we had the air conditioner running. By morning it was in the 50s outside and tonight it will around be down to the upper 30s with a much lower wind chill. Yeah, I know that's not considered cold in Minnesota, but it's pretty cold by New Orleans standards. I'm thinking it won't get below 40F here, but I'm sure it will feel a lot colder. It's all relative, you know.

Today was another day off the bike, thanks to the rain we had all morning ahead of the cold front. On Sunday I skipped the Sunday Giro ride, and instead did a long solo ride up on the levee. Somewhere way out there around Destrehan, my computer hit 49,000 miles. It's going to be tough to get out the door tomorrow morning in the dark with that cold wind blowing. Tonight The Wife decorated the artificial christmas tree, and the house is full of the usual holiday decorations. Hey, anything to get your mind off of reality, right?

It was a long day at work today, and I had to skip one meeting downtown that I had wanted to make in order to put together a last-minute photo presentation for Sharon to take with her up to D.C. around mid-afternoon. Somehow I managed to get good photos from four of the local universities, put them all into a nice little package with four photos per page, find someone in the building with a color laser printer, etc., etc. Under the circumstances, I think it came out pretty nicely. Thinks are not looking too good for the university, financially speaking, and the uncertainty is starting to get to everybody. We've already lost a few key administrative/academic people, and I suspect more will follow. I think things will get worse before they get better.

Summer Weekend in December

It is late Sunday night and a cool front is slowly approaching. Behind it comes cooler weather that I'm not really sure I want. It felt like summer this weekend in New Orleans, and between the warm weather and my rest day on Friday, my legs felt pretty good for Saturday's Giro ride. The temperature had warmed up so quickly that the overpasses were all damp with condensation, and most of the group stopped to walk across the slippery steel grating on the top of the Seabrook bridge near the start of the Giro ride. There was a little group that split off the front at that point, and they didn't wait for the ride to regroup. Eventually, though, someone had a flat and things were able to come back together. It was a fairly fast Giro ride for this time of year. I felt good during the ride, but then had to battle a headwind all the way home.

The annual LAMBRA meeting was on Sunday in Baton Rouge, and since I was the one who would be representing the NOBC I had to skip the Northshore ride and instead went out for a long solo ride on the levee. The meeting went fairly well and we at least got a start on the 2006 race calendar. We also decided to add a Cat.3 division to the LCCS points series, even when the 3s are combined with the 1s and 2s. Should be interesting. By the time the meeting was over I was not feeling too good. I'm really hoping I'm not coming down with a cold or something. The Wife came up to B.R. with me and spent about three hours at the local shopping mall, so we ended up taking home an artificial christmas tree to replace the one that was ruined in the flood. The Daughter and I always have allergy-like problems when there's a real tree in the house for very long. Tomorrow will be a long day at work and I'm already pretty tired, so I'm off to bed now . . .

Listening

Since my body's obviously been trying to tell me something the last few days, I decided it was time to do a little listening today, so I skipped my usual morning ride. Of course I woke up at 5:45 a.m. anyway. I've done my weekday riding in the morning for so long now that I'm decidedly uncomfortable when I don't.

Yesterday it was raining when I was ready to head home from work, so I got a ride with The Wife and left the commuting bike at Tulane. As a result, I had to walk the mile or two to work this morning, which would have been quite nice except for the 40 pound messenger bag I was shouldering the whole way. In addition to the laptop and all the other usual stuff, I had a few 2006 calendars in there too. As it turns out, we have maybe forty cases of these rather nice calendars that are put out by the anxiety disorders association down in our basement right now. They were apparently printed with the wrong color ink and the whole job had to be re-done, so they gave them to the Psych department and they ended up in our basement.

So our final staff person started work again today and I decided that since we'll probably be stuck working out of this classroom through December, I'd see about getting some printer-sharing going. Ordinarily, that would be pretty simple, but since we're using the university's network, I knew it wouldn't be. I've been down this road before. Luckily, the TIS support folks are also shacked up in Gibson Hall, so I walked downstairs (yep, all they've got them and their computers down in the basement - slow learners, aren't we?) and one of the guys came back upstairs to set something up. Theoretically it should be a simple matter to share a printer that's connected to a computer with other computers on the same network, right? Well, naturally it wouldn't work and we'll be trying again on Monday.

Slow Day

I almost didn't go. I mean, is was kind of chilly and damp this morning and I musn't have slept well because I woke up feeling tired. But of course I went out anyway, and as usual it was fine once I got out on the road. I arrived at the usual meeting spot on the levee right on time, but it was just me and Richard. Eventually we ended up with eight or nine riders, and although Todd raised the pace from a comfortable 23 mph to an uncomfortable 27 mph, it didn't last too long. He took off again with BJ on the way back, but the rest of us weren't interested and just watched them ride off into the distance. My legs were feeling like lead again today, making 23-24 mph feel like a real challenge, so I wasn't taking very long pulls.

At work, things were pretty quiet, at least for me, so I ended up making some updates to our office website's contact information pages. I had a heck of a time dealing with the odd way that Dreamweaver handles shtml files that contain server-side includes.

It's only 8:30 p.m. right now, but after just one glass of wine (well, maybe it was more like three) I'm already sleepy.

Musical Mail

The legs were better today, if only due to the easier pace of the Wednesday ride. It was fairly cool, at least my my standards, but certainly not what you'd mistake for COLD. That will come later, I'm sure. I was comfortable with the long-sleeved Pearlizumi Kodiak jersey over a summer jersey, and although the cotton DeFeet shoe covers weren't essential, I was glad that I wore them. Otherwise, it was just another nice moderate-paced weekday training ride on a day of marvelous weather with clear blue skies, a light breeze and mild temperatures. Sadly, I spent pretty much the whole of the day inside at work.

Around midday I decided to take another shot at tracking my missing bike stuff order from Excel Sports. This time it showed an actual delivery date and location. Here's what it said:

Summary: Your item arrived at the JACKSON, LA 70748 processing center at 8:02 am on November 28, 2005 and is ready for pickup. Information, if available, is updated every evening. Please check again later.
Detail: Acceptance, November 07, 2005, 5:25 pm, BOULDER, CO 80301
Detail: Electronic Shipping Info Received, November 07, 2005

So even though I had sent in an online change of address to the U.S. Postal Service, this package still got forwarded to Jackson, LA, taking 21days to arrive. Twenty-one days! Any guesses on how long it will take to get re-forwarded back from Jackson to New Orleans? I think it's cute that they refer to the "Jackson processing center." I suppose they mean the two people who work at the post office there. On the plus side, I'm sure that the folks at the post office in Jackson will remember me and my forwarding order.

It'll be chilly again tomorrow morning. I hope the long ride isn't too brutal.

A Very Looooong Ride

The regular Tuesday long ride seemed a long longer than usual today, at least to me. It was much cooler than it's been lately, but I still ended up a bit over-dressed. To make matters worse, there were certain individuals on this morning's ride who wanted to make it both long AND hard. Todd and VJ spent most of the ride about 20 seconds off the front despite persistent head and crosswinds. A few of us were none too interested in making a race of it, but on the other hand we weren't willing to drop off the back either. Although I was careful to maintain the pace when I came to the front, I was staying out there for only 30 or 40 pedal strokes before pulling off. On the way out there were a few surges that took us up to 27 or 28 and started to close the gap to the duo off the front, but there wasn't really enough horsepower, or perhaps just motivation, to bring it back together again. Surprisingly, the return trip turned out to be quite fast too, with long stretches up around 26 mph. Since my legs had felt achy from the start, this all made for a very long ride. I can't really explain why my legs were hurting like that today. Perhaps I rode a bit harder than usual yesterday, or maybe the cooler weather had something to do with it.

So the City of New Orleans has set up FREE high-speed wireless internet throughout the CBD and French Quarter. Once the area loses its "disaster area" designation, they'll have to drop the speed down a notch so as to not compete unduly with the regular service providers (mostly COX and BellSouth around here), but still, it makes us the only actual City that has gotten away with a city-operated free internet service. Amazingly, I had heard nothing about all of this until I read about it this morning. Not that I did not have a clue, however. Yesterday, while sitting in the Bioscience workgroup meeting I had fired up my laptop to see if there was a good signal and found five or six low-level wireless networks within range, all with the "city of new orleans" ID. I wondered if perhaps some of the city's administration was operating out of the hotel temporarily, but of course now I know better. Tulane Hospital today opened a small primary care facility on LaSalle St. on the ground floor of the parking garage across from the (currently closed) emergency room. That's another bit of good news!

I had to run home around noon today to meet The Cable Guy (who I thought was supposed to come on Wednesday rather than today). I had to give him directions to the house, as he was clearly unfamiliar with the area, but once he found the place he got everything fixed up quite neatly. I could hear the Latin music blaring from his open truck door the whole time. Beats the hell our of Rap, IMHO. One more Katrina item to check off the "to-do" list.

So the insurance company called to say they had increased my roofing settlement amount up to the estimate I had gotten, adding about $10k to the total, so it'll now cover the whole roof (barring any nasty surprises). I think I can probably live with that, although The Wife is afraid it won't be enough to fix everything.

I think I'll go have a glass of wine now . . .

Quick Ride, Long Day, and MAIL!!!

Since I had two back-to-back meetings downtown today, I left for my Monday morning ride early. It was, and still is, quite warm for this time of year, even here in New Orleans. I suppose it was nearly 70 F when I headed for the levee this morning, taking my usual route down Neron, Short, and Willow streets. After three group rides in a row, I was rather looking forward to a quiet solo ride. As often happens when I ride alone, my pace would creep upward gradually until I would finally have to consciously ease up for a while. Next thing I'd know, I would find myself again pushing up against my self-imposed "base training" limit. Of course, around here it's hard, and not much fun, to do a real base training phase, since there the combination of the relatively mild weather and the frequent group rides tends to guarantee some significant hard efforts practically year-round. You could do it, of course, but what fun would that be? So anyway, I got in an easy 22 miles or so and headed home to iron a shirt.

The Psychiatry department staff arrived at 8 a.m. to move their stuff out of our house and drive it all downtown where they are finally able to reoccupy their offices on the 10th floor of the Tidewater Building on Canal Street. Since I needed a ride downtown for my two meetings with subcommittees of the Mayor's "Bring New Orleans Back Commission," I helped them load and unload boxes and computers, and then got The Wife to drop me off down at One Canal Place for my 10 a.m. meeting. The rest of the day was spent in meetings, writing up notes and reports, etc. I also set up a Tulane listserv for one of the workgroups and made a few minor changes to the website.

This evening the insurance adjuster called. They want to pay to replace one half of the roof and to patch the other half, so are offering about half of the lowest estimate I got from my roofer. I'm faxing them my estimates in the morning, assuming I can get to a functional fax machine. They're also saying that you can still get asbestos shingle roofing. Hmmm.

On the plus side, when we got home today we discovered that mail had been delivered. The actual U.S. Postal Service had actually delivered actual mail right to our actual house! Whoohooo! Now that's exciting. Never mind that one piece was a flyer for a bike race in SC that happened in mid-October and another was a cable bill dated Nov. 3.

One little problem at home, though. It seems that while we had a fax machine connected to our home telephone line, one of the faculty members gave his answering service the number. Their automated messaging system keeps calling our house now trying to fax us copies of his messages, and it is very persistent! I've turned the ringer off on the phones for now. Hopefully we can get it fixed tomorrow.

Complications

The streets were still wet from last night's rainstorms when I headed out in the car this morning, and so I wasn't too surprised when I arrived at the meeting spot on the Southshore and found nobody there. So, clutching my $1.90 small coffee from Puccino's I set the cruise control for the 24 mile drive across Lake Pontchartrain. The only radio station that wasn't doing lame PSAs or playing classical music at 7 a.m. on a Sunday was already in Christmas music mode, but at least it was mostly rock n' roll Christmas music, so I went hoppin' and boppin' over to the Northshore where we ended up with a group of eight for the team training ride. The weather was unseasonably warm, and although I started out with arm-warmers, they were in my pocket within ten miles. Our group's pace was a bit faster than last week, but as it turned out it would take us over half an hour longer to do the same ride. The first flat came on the way out, on Tung road, and was quickly fixed, so we continued North through Enon, sprinting for the "town pole." The "Enon" sign that belongs on that pole has been missing for about a year now, but we know a town limit pole when we see one. Way out around the mid-point of the ride we cut across from one highway to the other on a little road called Sie Jenkins Road. It's a couple of miles of steep hills and rough pavement, so of course it's always a race. When the lead group got to the end of the road, we made the turn and continued slowly, waiting for the rest of the guys to catch up. One rider was missing. We waited a little longer. Still, he wasn't in sight. So Keith and I rode back to find him, figuring that he'd either flatted on Sie Jenkins or taken a left at the intersection instead of a right. Keith went backwards on the course, while I headed North in the wrong direction in case he had gone that way. After riding for a mile or so with no sign of him, I turned around and met Keith who told me that Dennis had broken his chain.

Now of all the mechanical incidents that can spoil your ride, a broken chain 30 miles from home has to be right up there. The rest of the group was a good five miles down the road by now, but finally Keith got a cell phone call through to one of them and they send Jorge back in our direction since he happened to have a multi-tool in his bag. Meanwhile, I pushed Dennis along for a couple of miles, struggling up the hills in my 21, until we all met up again and could repair the chain.

Before we got back to Enon, we had another flat, and then we stopped at Enon so John could put some more air in his tire. While we were there, we discovered that we'd routed Dennis' chain over one of the aluminum tabs on his jockey wheels, instead of under it, and had to pull out the multi-tool again to fix that. About that time, we noticed Dennis' rear wheel was going soft, but by now we were about fed up with bike mechanic school and decided to pump in some more air and hope we would make it the last 15 miles back to the cars. Along the way John came off the back. As it turned out, Dennis made it OK, but John finished the ride with about 10 psi in his front wheel.

It was a very complicated ride!

What it's Like on Saturday

So first, check out Tulane's "welcome back" video.

It was around 65F this morning when I finally woke up, rather later than usual, with intentions of riding the Saturday Giro ride out at the lakefront. I pulled on a jersey, shorts and arm-warmers, not necessarily in that order, and rushed down the stairs to the basement. Shoes, helmet, glasses, gloves. I was out the door a couple of minutes later, with not quite enough time to make it to Lakeshore Drive without having a Time Trial for breakfast. Thanks the absence of stoplights (there are only temporary 4-way stop signs at the intersections) along Carrollton Ave., and my willingness to blow through numerous 4-way stop signs on the quiet early-morning roads, I made it to Lakeshore Drive just in time to catch the Giro ride a few minutes after it had started.

We had a pretty large group this morning, and things stayed civilized until someone, I suspect Todd, went to the front and ramped it up to about 30 mph, taking a handful of riders with him. The pack, or at least a few members thereof, mounted a reluctant chase, but the horsepower was lacking and we didn't really catch until they eased up around Chef Highway. It wasn't long, though, before the pace heated up again. I kept reminding myself that it is November as I spun the lowest gear I could handle near the back of the 40-rider pack. There were a few riders off the front again, and the pace was up around 27 or so, and soon Realdo drifted back alongside me and commented that even though you don't really care about the group off the front, you still hope they get caught before the turnaround. Indeed. I suppose that's one way to tell the bike racers from the bike riders. If there's one thing that all bike racers learn to hate, it's the feeling that they're getting dropped!

So I ended up riding a bit harder than I had planned, but I was able to keep things under control enough to avoid doing much damage and so I'm sure my legs will be fine for tomorrow's ride, assuming that the rainstorms that started rolling through here half an hour ago clear out before morning. Reo and I rode back down Canal Blvd. together. The prediction is for strong storms all night, finally easing up around 7 a.m., so it may be a tough call tomorrow.

The area around my home continues to move more and more toward recovery, but there are clearly some things that are going to take a while to get worked out. I still have yet to have any mail delivered to my house, and the stuff I ordered over two weeks ago, and was shipped via U.S. Postal Service, has yet to surface. There are new stoplights at most of the major intersections nearby, but a mile or two in any direction except toward the river things deteriorate pretty quickly. Riding through Lakeview on the way home today, The watermarks are still clearly visible on the houses along Canal Blvd. The worst are about even with the tops of the doorframes, though most seem to be at around the five foot level. Many, perhaps most, of the houses I could see have been gutted, and sit sadly awaiting their fate. Apartments are in high demand near the University, and the owner of the three-unit house across Pine St. from me told me today that she had just rented it to a student sight-unseen, and has already received the deposit and first month's rent via FedEx. I didn't dare ask how much. There is still a large pile of branches and tree trimmings, to which I added today, on the neutral ground near the house, and another pile of construction debris a few houses down where they recently ripped out a whole gound-level basement. They've been there a couple of weeks now and grow higher each weekend. Garbage pickup seems to be happening about once a week, apparently on Wednesday.

The Wife and I spent much of the day outside cleaning up. While I trimmed dead and broken branches from the Oak tree, balanced on top of a ladder with a long pole-saw and sawdust falling into my eyes, The Wife bagged up leaves and debris from around our house, from around the next-door neighbor's house, and from around the unoccupied 4-plex across the street. The next-door neighbor is supposed to be moving into his FEMA trailer in the driveway some time after Thanksgiving, but hasn't yet shown up, and the apartments across the street are normally rented to students, so I don't expect we'll see any action there until January. On the plus side, the SUV that's been parked in front of those apartments since the hurricane disappeared a few days ago. I don't think it was badly flooded, so hopefully the owner finally retrieved it and it didn't get towed away to the flooded-car graveyard. BTW, the admissions department at Tulane reports that over 90% of last semester's freshmen have already registered for their Spring semester classes. That's a good sign, I think.

While we were outside today the roofing company's guy showed up!!! Now that was truly exciting, since we've been waiting for about a month. This guy was brought in by Orleans Sheet Metal and Roofing from Montana to help them catch up on their estimating. He gave us two estimates. One for a true "equivalent" roof made of some sort of composite plastic type of material that looks like slate, and the other for some good-quality dimensional asphalt shingle roofing. In both cases, it's necessary to overlay the entire roof with plywood first. The first estimate was around $26k, and the second was around $19k. We still haven't heard from our insurance company, but I'm guessing they aren't going to spring for the $26k job, and will probably try to tell me that all I need is $9k to fix things up. Should be interesting, eh?

It's raining cats and dogs outside right now!

A Nice Muff

As is typical for a Friday, there were only a few of us up on the levee this morning, but along the course of our 26 miles we picked up a few others, including Mark and Reo. I took the long way home, riding all the way down the bike path to Audubon Park where the Zoo was preparing for it's official re-opening today. They won't be back to their regular schedule yet, and will only be open on weekends. It's hard to believe that it has been nearly three months since Mother Nature squashed my city.

Later in the day we drove downtown because The Wife wanted to check out the recently re-opened Riverwalk shopping center. Unable to think of an excuse quickly enough, I reluctantly went along. It was rather a disappointment, however, as most of the shops, and indeed all of the larger ones, have still not re-opened. So we ended up walking down to the French Quarter where Cafe du Monde was doing a brisk business today. The Quarter was fairly busy and after checking out the flea market down by the French Market, I started getting hungry. I had noticed that Central Grocery was closed, so we went down to Napoleon House and split a half-muffuletta. Nothing like biting into a nice warm muff, eh? They are offering only a limited menu, but of course it includes muffelettas, gumbo, red beans and rice, etc. The temporary menu has "MRE" in big letters at the top. Below, it says "Muffelettas Ready to Eat." The table next to us was occupied by Corps of Engineers Red-Shirters.

Late in the day we decided to play postman and hand-deliver some Psychiatry party invitations to folks with addresses in the neighborhood. The post office is still not delivering mail around here very regularly (we have yet to receive anything), although I was able to pick up a few items of mail at the post office myself this morning.

So it sounds like the Psychiatry department will be moving out of my house and back into the Tidewater Building on Canal Street on Monday. I won't be able to help, though, because I have two back-to-back meetings, coincidentally also on Canal St.

I'm a year older today. Feels more like two!

Holiday Levee Ride

There were 20 or do riders up on the levee this morning for the 7:30 a.m. Thanksgiving Day levee ride, and there would have been a few more were it not for the popular Turkey Day Race. This run is now in its 98th year, but it's not the longest-running race in the City. The New Orleans Track Club's Jackson Day race is actually older. It is something of a tradition to have a special training ride on holidays. I can remember back when we used to try to ride the same number of miles as the year on New Year's Day back in the 70s and 80s. Needless to say, that little tradition was doomed to fizzle out pretty quickly. Maybe we should start it up again now that we'd only have to ride 6 miles!

The weather has been warmer around here lately, and although I started off in arm-warmers and two jerseys, by the time I got home from this easy 44 mile ride everything that could be unzipped was unzipped. It was a really nice day in the City that Care Forgot, and the streets were unusually quiet, even for a post-Katrina day. I think that most of the contractors took the day off, leaving the city to the relatively small number of actual residents.

It was good to see some of the local riders who have been rather scarce since the hurricane because of work or displacement or whatever, and the group rolled along in mostly a double paceline at a moderate 20-23 mph the whole way. I'm thinking I'll do the Giro on Saturday and then the Northshore ride on Sunday like last week. It's looking like the temperatures will stay quite warm until early next week. The high temps Sunday and Monday will be around 80F. However there's a significant chance of rain Saturday, so we'll have to see how that works out.

We ended up going over to my mother's place in the early afternoon for an early Thanksgiving dinner. Although there were just the three of us, The Wife brought a pumpkin pie, a pecan pie, and a lemon merangue pie, along with potato salad. Go figure.

Guess what I'm having for breakfast tomorrow.

Oops! Missed the Train

Inexplicably tired last night, I had a glass of wine after dinner and by 9 p.m. was already half asleep. Not being one to argue with my own biorhythm, I went with it, unfortunately forgetting to set the alarm clock on the way. The next things I saw were the bright red numbers 6:15 on my bedside clock. Oops. The levee ride train had already left the station for the Tuesday long ride, so I took my time and headed out for an hour's ride and got back before the long ride returned. I saw a few people heading the other way as I was heading out, so I guess that either the pace was fast enough to drop people, or the group was really small (or both). Oh well.

At any rate, the weather here today is marvelous as I sit here looking out from the third floor of Gibson Hall though an open window at the entrance to Audubon Park. There's a light wind blowing through the sycamore tree outside the window and I can see the sunlight sparkling off the ripples in the lagoon. The only thing missing is the sound of the streetcars rumbling down St. Charles Avenue. Could be worse.

If you happened to see the incredibly, and intentionally, one-sided 60-minutes report on TV entitled "New Orleans is Sinking," then in the interest of the responsible journalism so sadly lacking at CBS, you need to read the article from the front page of the Times-Picayune this morning entitled "Not so Fast, 60 Minutes." So CBS does an article, intended to be controversial, implying that New Orleans is doomed and that there is not point in putting any more money into it, and they somehow couldn't seem to find anyone in the whole country better qualified that this plate tectonics geologist with absolutely no qualifications even remotely applicable to coastal erosion. There are, of course, lots of qualified scientists in Louisiana who are readily available and who, in fact, let CBS know in no uncertain terms prior to the report being aired. Go figure.

Predatory journalism at its best.

So I sat in on a meeting between Tulane and FEMA representatives today that was interesting. One thing I was happy to hear was one of the FEMA people complimenting Tulane on the way it is handling the whole situation and how much better it is than the way the state (i.e. LSU) is handling it.

Base Training on the N-Shore

Sunday morning was looking good and it was nice to be heading across the causeway again, looking forward to a great Fall day. We had a group of eight or nine at the start of our 58-mile Base Training ride, and it was just warm enough to dispense with the long tights. To give you an idea of the conditions, I'll say that I headed out wearing two summer jerseys, lycra arm-warmers, DeFeet shoe covers, and my trusty DeFeet Un-D-Shirt. Twenty miles later, most of that was in my pockets. So we head out to the North and right away some kid zooms past our double paceline at around 70 mph. A few moments later we hear a siren behind us and a police car goes flying by at more like 90 mph. A mile or so later we come across the two of them pulled off on the shoulder. The kid is sitting in his car with his head in his hands and the policeman is writing up a ticket on the trunk. As we went by I told the officer "thanks," and he replied "no problem." We saw two other police cars heading to the scene moments later.

So anyway, the weather was nearly perfect all morning and we had a really nice Base Training type of ride with long stretches of smooth paceline in the low 20s. Of course, there were a few sign sprints and some hard efforts on some of the bigger hills because, being bike racers, some of us couldn't resist the urge to attack.

I got home to find the refrigerator in the kitchen, but then spent a couple of hours hooking up the icemaker and inserting the box into the narrow space where it lives. It was a bit wider and taller than the old refrigerator, and I guess I had maybe an inch and a half of clearance to work with. Anyway, I can now check the refrigerator and dryer off from my Katrina "to-do" list.

Monday morning was cooler than I expected and because it had rained a bit overnight, the streets were still damp. I briefly considered sleeping in, but my legs felt fine and the weather looked good so I went out to the levee for an easy ride. I met Mark D. up there and we cruised out to Williams Blvd. and back at an easy pace. Although it's been ten weeks since the hurricane, practically all conversation still centers around it, one way or the other, and I suppose that will continue for months.

At work I'll be assisting with the Technology subcommittee of the Economic Development committee of the Mayor's "Bring New Orleans Back Commission." Should be interesting. I've set up a little website for it already, but since this particular committee is just getting started, I don't have any good content for it yet.

Oh yeah, I almost to thank "60 Minutes" for their usual one-sided documentary last night that made it look like the entire city was destroyed, covered with mud, and sinking into the muck like a brick in quicksand. Thanks a lot, guys.

Bad Legs

As soon as I got on the bike today I knew something wasn't right. For some reason my legs felt achy all day. To use the technical term, I had a case of the dreaded "bad legs." Why? No idea. So on my way out to the lakefront when I spotted Rob turning onto Wisner Blvd. ahead of me, it was hard to pick up my pace and catch him, even though he saw me and eased up to wait. Anyway, as the group was about to start, Howard L., who lost his house in Katrina, looked over and commented about his gloves. He was wearing these black gloves with faux fur around the wrists. Apparently the only gloves he could find were his wife's!

I was glad that the pace stayed pretty tame all the way out to Venetian Isles today, but on the way back things started getting out of hand. There I was, sitting in near the back going 30 mph and the gap in front of me is opening up! I had to make a few hard efforts just to stay in the paceline, which at one point got up to 35 mph. I can't say I felt terrible. Just flat. Really flat. I rode home down Canal Blvd. and looked at the watermarks on the houses up around the tops of the doorframes and thought about how long is was going to take to put everything back together. Depressing. Finally, I got back to my own "happy place" on uptown island and again thought how lucky I was and how much of a difference for or five feet of elevation made. I mean, in many parts of the country there's more elevation change than that between the sidewalk and the front door.

Got a call from GiVo yesterday evening as she was driving back from CA to AZ, having finished up her rotation in Sacremento (at least I think that's where it was). She will be riding for the Diet Cheerwine team next season, making most of the big races around the country. New bike, new kit, etc. Sweet.

Tomorrow I'm headed out for another Sunday Northshore training ride. It should be nice. The only bad part is that the new refrigerator is being delivered in the morning, according to Sears, so I will have to miss the big event.

Acclimatization??

5 a.m. and I'm lying in bed thinking that it should be warmer. I check the indoor-outdoor thermometer next to the bed and my suspicions are confirmed. So I ended up down in the basement re-lighting the pilot light on the furnace. It was too late to go back to sleep, so I basically shuffled around the house until it was light enough to go out.

It was fairly cold this morning, and still rather windy, and it was clear that I have not quite acclimatized to the cold weather. My fingers were frozen by the time I hit the levee, and since I was a few minutes early and it was too cold to stop and wait, I rolled down the levee slowly wondering if anyone would turn up. After a while Joe F. showed up. He had never been able to find his long tights yet this winter, and so was riding in shorts. He was looking pretty cold, and I think he would have been happy to turn around at the playground, but I convinced him to ride on. Even so, we were going pretty slowly and turned around at the pumping station, a couple of miles before the usual turn-around. Another rider joined us on the way back, and by then the sun was coming up and it was a little warmer. Anyway, it was kind of a typical easy Friday ride, just a bit colder. It always seems to take me a couple of weeks to acclimatize to the cold weather, so I figure it's worth it to force myself out the door right now because in a few weeks this weather will feel relatively comfy.

The house looks more and more like an office every day now, and I guess there were five or six staff there all day today. I had to run back from Tulane to the house around lunchtime to get a few files off of my desktop which currently resides in my study along with a few visiting Psychiatry computers, printers, routers, etc. When I got home, there was some good news, however. The word from the VP at the Health Sciences Center was that the power was back on in the Tidewater Building and that he was probably going to move back into his office on Monday and then begin to coordinate the re-entry of other departments, one of which would be The Wife's and another of which would be mine. I have a feeling, however, that we will hang out on the uptown campus for a while longer, though.

Should be interesting.

Tomorrow, the Giro; Sunday, the Northshore training ride. Also Sunday, the refrigerator and dryer get delivered!! Whoooohooooo!

Out the Door

I was out the door at 6:05 this morning, comfortably over-dressed and intent on getting in a few miles. The winds were gusting out of the North and as I made my way to the levee I wondered if I would end up being the only one crazy enough to show up on a day like this. I had intentionally over-dressed a bit in order to prevent a repeat of yesterday's retreat, but my thin Defeet gloves weren't quite cutting it and my fingers were already pretty cold by the time we started. We ended up with about ten riders, which I thought was quite good under the circumstances. The circumstances today included a gusty cold crosswind that made it very difficult to hold a straight line and essentially impossible to get any draft beyond the fifth rider. Which explains why the group split on the way out and I ended up in a group of . . . five. I don't think anybody was even pretending to want to do the usual long Thursday ride today. Before the pace picked up I ran into Leslie, an old friend who does masters swimming, and a fair amount of running too. She was riding to work at Ochsner with a huge bag slung dangerously over her shoulder. She sounded glad to be employed again after having been out of work (she's a nurse) because of the hurricane, and as she turned off to ride back down the levee I warned her to be careful with that bag. I would have liked to have had more time to talk with her.

The ride today seemed rather hard even though I was trying to limit my exposure at the front. Donald was taking some l0ng pulls into the wind, and for a while I ended up stuck at the back negotiating with the edge of the road for the last sliver of draft. It took a lot of concentration just to stay on the asphalt most of the time, and every time you'd come to the front it was like getting hit in the chest with a sack of cement. Once the sun came up over the trees, however, it did warm up a few degrees and I was able to strip off the vest. Hopefully the wind will finally ease up tomorrow.

By the time I got showered and ready for work, there were already five people in the house, and as I rode off to Gibson Hall I saw the department chair walking up the steps. Can't wait to get my next electricity bill! With all the lights on and a whole slew of computers, printers, routers, etc. going all day, it should be interesting.

Around the Block

The cold front came through overnight and I awoke to gusty winds, damp streets and much cooler temperatures. The thermometer seemed warmer than it looked, but I trusted it anyway, dressing for weather in the mid 50s. I headed out the door and the cold North wind sliced right through my double layer of summer-weight lycra like a hot knife through butter. When I got to the first intersection, the bike turned and headed back around the block and back to the house. Some mornings it's just not meant to be. I decided instead to use the time to scrape out the remnants of the fiberglass insulation I had pulled out of the flooded part of the a/c blower ductwork. For an hour or so I crawled around literally inside the ductwork, scraping and vacuuming, finally emerging to re-install the blower and blower motor. So at least we'll have some heat if we need it. Around when I finished, the sister-in-law called. She was on her way over to take a shower because the power had gone off at the place where she's staying in Bywater. There were already a few of the Psych staff at the house by the time I showered and headed out to the empty classroom and folding table that I call an office nowadays. It bothered me all day that I hadn't ridden this morning. Despite the large mug of coffee I brought with me, my feet were cold all day today, but I'm determined to get in a training ride tomorrow morning.

So the USCF sent out a little summary of rule changes for next year. I see that they have again backtracked on the Cat. 5s, prohibiting the awarding of prizes in Cat. 5 races and at the same time increasing the field limit to 75 riders. 75 Cat. 5s in a road race. Yikes! They also re-defined the term "Stage Race" to include what are really omniums (i.e. multiple stage races based on points rather than time).

Tuesday on the Levee

Monday evening we headed over to my father's place in River Ridge where we promptly disposed of a bottle or two of wine before dinner. Then we decided it was a good time to go over to his apartment building and pick up the small refrigerator he said we could use. Well, this wasn't quite the "small" I had been thinking of. It was a typical apartment-sized refrigerator, and it was a good thing it was dark because I wouldn't have wanted too many people to have seen two somewhat inebriated guys trying to stuff a refrigerator into a Volvo. We did get the monster in there, but it was a little too long for the hatch to close, so I hooked a bungie cord to the latch mechanism of the hatch and secured the other end to the underside of the car. Then, the refrigerator slid just a tad farther forward and .... click! Great. Now the hatch was closed with the bungie cord hook stuck in the mechanism. I could neither open or fully close the latch, and it wasn't until this morning that I crawled into the car alongside the refrigerator and hack-sawed through the bungie cord hook in order to get the hatch open again. Just for the record, it's not a very good idea to load refrigerators into automobiles while drunk.

This morning's long levee ride was good. It was surprisingly warm when I headed out there - I guess around 70F. There were maybe 15 guys initially and the pace was mostly moderate until Todd (or at least I think it was Todd) ramped the pace up near 30 mph and the front part of the paceline started shedding riders. We ended up with maybe eight who did the whole ride and I got back a bit later than usual because we had to stop for one flat tire and then again to tighten a loose pedal back onto a bike. It looks like a cool front will push through here over the next day and by Thursday we'll have lows in the 40s for quite a while. I guess I should get busy and install that blower motor in case we decide we need to fire up the central heating unit.

Things in my immediate neighborhood are really starting to look better, but five or six blocks away there's still a lot of work to do. It's so strange riding to work because although both Gibson Hall and my house are on relatively high ground, the area between the two got some pretty significant flooding. The nicest thing, though, is being able to look out the windows of Gibson Hall toward the entrance of Audubon Park where everything looks just completely normal.

I'm back at our temporary office in Gibson Hall today where I'm hoping to get a couple of telephones installed soon. They tech guys were just up here looking at the phone lines and said that the most they could put in here were two phones and maybe one or two ethernet lines. I guess that will have to do for now. It is looking like we will probably stay camped out here through December, even if our office in the Tidewater Building becomes available, because most of the other people we need to work with are here as well. We'll see.