I have been out of action for the last week. After going to Spinning last
Tuesday, my brother and his family came in to town for Thanksgiving and left
early Sunday morning. I suppose I could have been selfish and gone riding
but, hell, it is November. So what if I do not ride. Besides, I had been
fighting off the early stages of a cold all week. Saturday, it finally
caught up to me and my throat had begun to hurt.

Skipping the race Sunday probably would have been best for my health but I
was feeling pretty decent and it was the last race of the season. The
throat was not hurting anymore and only had a little nasal drip. Sundays
race at Creve Coeur was fun. Rain the night before created soft, mushy
ground in places made for some slower and more slippery riding. My trend of
average performances at best continued. I wanted another top 10 to finish
the season off but did not manage to pull that off. I creeped across the
line in 12th. Not too bad but there were only 15 finisher but there 7 DNF's
so I was in the top half even though some of those DNF's were ahead of me
when their race ended. That doesn't matter I guess. If you can't finish
the race, it doesn't much matter how fast you are.

Sunday night I went to bed and my nose refused to let air pass through it
any longer. Why is it that you can be in a vertical position and breath
fine but as soon as you go horizontal the passages clog up. That frickin'
annoys me. Anyway, I got MAYBE 30 minutes of sleep all night just before
the alarm went off. I shut it off in a half-comatose state and ended up
oversleeping by half an hour.

On top of that, I was invited to a dinner party Monday night. While it was
an enjoyable evening of good food, good wine and good talk I stayed entirely
too long and got home at 12:30. Thankfully I could breathe last night and
got about as good a night of sleep as my 4:20 alarm would allow. Still, I
am far from feeling spry today.

With some luck, tonight's presentation at the Shark will get done at a
reasonable hour. More importantly, I need to be smart and not hang around
too long afterward.

Sometime this week I really need to get work on installing my new-ish
DuraAce 10-spd. That sounds like a Wednesday project.