Long list of updates

I've been traveling, so I've fallen behind on updating my journal. My apologies to my legions of fans. (You should probably not read all this crap until you're ready for bed. It's going to be quite long and dull.)

Saturday March 12 - Team ride
Today was a team practice at an office park in Greeley that will be the location for a criterium race in another month. The plan was to get familiar with the course a practice some tactics to position the team for a win. Since I'll be racing in Cat 4 and these guys are all Cat 3, the purpose of my participation is to give them an extra body for practice. The more team members you have (within reason), the easier it is do some tactical riding.
The temperature was warm, and it was nice and sunny, but holy cow was it windy. We were in a stiff crosswind on the ride east towards Greeley, and the other guys were clearly interested in going faster than me. My legs, weary from a week full of leg strengthening training, were having a hard time keeping up as the wind was trying to blow me off the road.

The crit course looks pretty good, much better than the chip-sealed course I raced on last weekend. It’s pretty much a big square with long wide straight-aways and a roundabout on each corner. The roundabouts are what will make things interesting because it will force everyone to slow down and bunch up. Then the people in the front will surely jump out of the saddle and make it hard to keep up.

After the practice I split off from the group to ride home solo. It was nice to take a break and do some easy pedaling. Maybe I shouldn't have taken it too easy, because I realized later that I forgot to put on some sun block. Usually it's cold enough that I've got little no exposed skin, but today I was wearing shorts and the thought of sunburn didn't cross my mind. Now I've got a nice funny looking burn on my legs that abruptly stops where my shorts started. I won't be making that mistake again any time soon. It's way too early to have a sunburn.

Sunday March 13
I'm in Savannah, Georgia this week for work. Essentially, I'm the sacrificial lamb for a customer that has been having a problem for almost a year. I don't think anyone back at work will be to surprised if I come back missing a limb or two.

Denver got a snowstorm over night, causing several flights to be delayed and long lines at the check-in. The good news is that United has a separate "odd size" check in, and I had a cumbersome bike case so I skipped the nasty line. When my boss asked me a few weeks ago if I wanted to go to Savannah the first thing I said was "Can I bring my bike?"

The trip started out in good fashion as we boarded the plane and proceeded to sit there for a loooong time. After everyone, was loaded a flight attendant announced that the plane had "come in with an electrical problem" and the maintenance crew was repairing it, and it should only take "a few minutes" to get going.

Question #1 for United Airlines: If you KNEW the plane that I was about to board had an electrical issue that needed fixing why wouldn't you mention it at the gate while everyone is sitting in relative comfort instead of a crappy airplane?

The pilot eventually told us that the problem was fixed, and they were just waiting for some paperwork, whatever that means. About 40 minutes later, we were pulling away from the gate....and hour and a half late....I only had an hour to make my connection in Washington DC. So as we're pulling away from the gate we get another announcement informing us that those of us who missed their connections have been rebooked on another flight and a flight attendant would be coming by to give us our new itineraries.

Question #2 for United Airlines: If you knew BEFORE I even left my originating city that I wasn't going to make my connection, and that you were booking me on a new flight for the FOLLOWING day, why wouldn't you just let me stay in my own bed instead of some hotel on the other side of the country?

But it's not all bad, because Tom Frazier is still in Washington DC. When I found out that I was going to be in DC over night, I called him and made arrangements to meet up. I called him when I landed, and he met me at the airport. We spent the evening sitting in the hotel restaurant chatting until about 2AM. It was really cool to get to hang with him again for a little while because he's moving to Australia in a few weeks, and I have no idea when I'll be able to see him again.

My flight was scheduled for 9AM Monday morning, so I got up (reluctantly) at 6:30 so I could shower, eat, and catch a shuttle to the airport. My traveling partner from work got put on a different flight, and we couldn't get him on mine because there were no seats. His flight left at 6-something and connected in Atlanta before getting to Savannah at 10:20. Mine was a direct flight and was scheduled to get in at to Savannah at 10:40. So for getting there 20 minutes later, I got to get some good sleep time. :) Sweet!

Not so fast. I crammed myself into my little space in the plane, and prepare for another exciting flight. The cabin door closes and the attendant starts to give her safety speech when the pilot comes out of the cockpit, opens the cabin door, and steps out. As far as I can tell, it’s never a good sign when the pilot gets off the plane. A few minutes later we find out that there is a problem with the strut on the landing gear. It's fully compressed, so they need to re-pressurize it before we can leave. Is the entire United fleet falling apart, or just the planes I'm on?

After we get that fixed and taxi up to the runway the pilot informs us that "it's just not our day." We're 14th in line for takeoff. I don't know what time we finally took off, but it was at least 30-45 minutes late. I'm typing up this entry on my laptop on the plane, so if that strut fails on landing and I die in a fiery crash, hopefully someone will find my laptop and understand what happened. :)

So I finally made it to Savannah. The plane was late, and it kind of sucked that my coworker had to wait around for me instead of getting to the hotel. As it turns out, however, his rebooked flight was on Delta, but they kept his luggage on United, so his luggage was on the same plane as mine and he would have had to wait there anyway. I was very relieved (and shocked) to see my luggage come around on the carousel. I was especially relieved to see that my bike made it in one piece.
It didn't really matter that we got in late, because we still hadn't heard from the customer about when/where we could meet him, so we were kind of dead in the water. We ended up going to the hotel and then lunch before we finally got word from the customer. We've collected a lot of good data over the past few days, and may have some solutions to the issues. Solutions like: Hey, don't do that because it's not supported.