Friday F'sure

Yeah, you right. It's finally Friday and it has been a long and rather unmotivating week for me, highlighted by the submission of our semiannual lobbying reporting form to Congress. It is an irritating task that serves no useful purpose and about which nobody really cares, so naturally it's my job to make sure it gets submitted. So now, for the public record, everybody can know that Tulane spent roughly $160k on lobbying during the last half of 2004. Bet you really were dying to know that little tidbit, eh?

This morning's training ride had a fairly large group for a Friday, and we did our traditional easy Friday ride. These almost always are done as a double line so that everybody has someone to chat with, and the lead pair usually stays on the front for a mile or two since the pace is generally between 18 and 21 mph. Along the way, Dan and I somehow got on the topic of mosquitoes and for some reason I totally blanked out on the genus names of the most common ones around here (culex and aedes) until The Donald chimed in "aedes!" Anyway, the morning ride was fairly relaxing, but by the time I was ready to ride to work it was already about 85 degrees F and sunny. The photo above came from the finish line camera at last weekend's race. Adam, who was one of the Referees for the event, clipped it from the video and sent it because it was kind of interesting. It wasn't all that close of a sprint, but for some reason I felt like I needed a little bike throw just to be on the safe side. I was probably a little delirious from dehydration at that point after riding two criteriums that day. Tomorrow I'll be doing one or more criteriums over in Denham Springs, which is just about an hour away. It's looking like it will be really hot and I'm not feeling too motivated. Come to think of it, I'd better print out the event announcement so I know where and when I need to be there! Amazingly, the temperatures have been even higher up in Iowa City where tomorrow's high is predicted to be 100. It's only 92F here right now. I wonder if she ever put that air conditioner back in the window . . .

I got a quick note from Gina this morning telling me that she has been upgraded to Category 1. Getting a Cat. 1 upgrade nowadays, without resorting to groveling and begging at the feet of the regional USCF rep., is no easy task, but if you want to have a go at it, spending a couple of weeks placing in the top ten at Superweek is a good start! That makes her one of fewer than 200 Cat. 1 women in the U.S. out of about 3,800 licensed riders.