Some time yesterday evening I decided to skip today's training ride. Time for a little down-time. My legs and back have been feeling kind of stiff the last couple of days, and although that's not likely due to my training routine, I took it as a sign. I learned long ago that trying to schedule rest days into your training schedule here in New Orleans is doomed to failure. It's really the weather that has control of that aspect of my training, and it typically works out pretty well, keeping me off the road once a week or so. Problem is - we haven't had a rainy morning around here in a month. Anyway, if I'm going to get my butt kicked this weekend at Rocktoberfest, I may as well start out with legs that don't ache. We've had a fair amount of pre-registrations for the race - almost all Cat. 5 and Cat. 4 riders. For some reason, the Cat. 1,2,3 riders only pre-register for the really big races. Hopefully the rainy weather predicted for Saturday will be all cleared out for the Sunday morning races.
So, instead of riding in to work as usual, I drove in with The Wife instead. I love being in the city on weekday mornings when everyone is fresh and heading to work, the school children are walking to school or to the bus stop (why don't they ride bikes any more??), the college students stroll along on their way to class with cups of PJ's coffee, or sometimes, heaven forbid, even the Wal-Mart of coffee shops - Starbucks. Everyone has a purpose in the morning - a mission - and nobody has yet been beaten down by the routine or the frustrations that will have them watching the clock by 4 p.m.
I've been working on an analysis of Tulane's research standing in comparison with other AAU-member institutions, and once again the Prez wants that on a per-capita basis. As I've explained many times before, that's really not possible to do accurately, because of the many inconsistencies among universities when it comes to reporting faculty, what they define as faculty, what kinds of faculty they are, how then aggregate or disaggregate multiple campuses, etc., etc., but naturally the details are lost on these folks and they keep asking for it again. So, they'll be getting the best I can come up with, albiet with lots of footnotes and caveats listed at the bottom of the page. Anyway, it's tedious and rather unrewarding work that I know won't really answer anybody's questions or provide useful guidance to anyone, but for some it will at least provide what these sorts of things - reports and consultants - always deliver: The Illusion of Progress!
Tommorrow: Back in the saddle . . .
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