Two Random Things, Unrelated So Far As I Can Tell

I missed the Paris-Roubaix bike race (on TV, as well as in person) this Sunday because I was travelling. But I did get to read a bit later, and see some pictures, too. What I noticed is that Tom Boonen (who won the race) wasn't wearing gloves the whole time. A couple weeks ago, looking at pictures from the Tirreno-Adriatico race, I noticed that Chris Horner wasn't wearing gloves (at least in the time trial portion), either.

I wonder why not? (And especially, I wonder why not on cobblestones, where falls seem more likely, and where I'd imagine a tiny bit more padding would be welcome.)

(It sounded like a great day for Boonen, too! From television and such, he's a very likeable biker, so I was rooting for him in the absence of Fabian Cancellara.)

***

Sunday morning, I set the alarm on my ipod thingy for 5:45 so that I could get showered, packed, and dressed to get into a taxi by 6:10 to get to the airport for my flight at 7:45. Unfortunately, I hadn't changed the time zone setting on the ipod, so it was an hour behind the eastern time zone.

Uh oh, you're thinking.

Only not. I woke up and went to use the bathroom, and on the way back to bed, I looked at the room clock, and saw that it was 5:50. And then I thought, shouldn't my alarm have gone off? So I looked at the ipod, and it said it was 4:50. And I looked at the room thing, and then looked at my phone, which said 5:52. And finally, I realized the time zone thing and got my rear in gear.

How lucky was I to 1) need to use the bathroom, and 2) look at the room clock rather than my ipod? I'll count that as very lucky.

When I got to the airport, I asked and was let off at US Airways, because that's who had sold me the flight I was on. But it wouldn't let me check in. Finally, one of the service folks there pointed out that while US Airways had sold me the flight, it was actually a United flight, and I needed to go to the United area to check in. And that was a ten minute walk. Fortunately, I had plenty of time.

But again, how lucky was I that I wasn't already an hour behind? Very!

Some days, I feel like I'm in one of those Buster Keaton movies where the wall comes down but he ends up with the glassless window area coming safely around him.