The weekend before.

Well this weekend turned into a big pile of shit.
Hurricane Irene expected to hit us Saturday evening, I'm assuming I've got till noon to get some riding in before we get anything.  I plan on going to Rosaryville, do 3 hours, go home and finish prepping for the hurricane.

What happened.
I get an email the night before, all the Md. parks are going to be closed starting Friday evening.
Me?  I don't care.
Get up early (for me on a Saturday 7am) ride over to the Rose and its already starting to look nasty. As I'm parking in the shopping center next to the park, I hear on the radio its already raining about 20 miles east.
Hmmm. Ok, I might have time to do a loop.
Ride over to the trail and its still pretty muddy from the t-storms we got thursday.
I decide to bag it.  I might be able to a lap before the rain starts but I'd still want to go home and ride the trainer some. 
I ended up getting 2 hours on trainer (while watching Tucker and Dale vs Evil).
Not the workout I had really wanted.

Spent the rest of the day /evening sitting in a chair in my garage watching the wind blow and wondering which tree was going to fall on my house 1st. 

Sunday (Post Irene)
Got up ready for the worst (maybe a tree on my truck). What I saw was the biggest let down ever.
I've had worse damage from t-storms.  All I can assume is that the weakest of the trees have already been downed by the summer storms.
Theres one good sized limb across my driveway and a crapload of smaller branches.

I go to the bike shop and give the niner the final tuneup before the race.
Change out the shifting cables and housing. Put on a new chain, which finally got rid of that mystery noise I had been having. I guess there was a stiff link in there somewhere. Had to listen to Julius make fun of me for having 3 quick links in my chain.  Cleaned the front d out in the parts cleaner and lubed it back up. Did final lubing . 
Damn it shifts nice again.  I don't know why I wait so long to change the cables.
What I didn't count on having to do was taking the grips off and sanding down more corrosion.
I just put the new grips on a month ago and I already had to beat them off. I fixed it this time.  Slathered grease all over the bars. 

In related SM100 prep.
I found my lantern and charger and put it on to charge.  Keeping my fingers crossed that it'll work.
Pulled the air mattress out and made sure my rigged up AA batteries will work a few cycles.
Found my thermos , so I can have an atleast a warm cup of coffee before the race.

5 days and some hours to go.