Splitsville

It was so dark this morning! I mean, I know we're starting to tilt away from the sun and all, but lately the clouds in the east have made it seem much darker than you'd expect for this time of year. Added to that this morning was a steady wind out of the west that made for a long trip out and a fast one back.

Although the group started out small, we kept picking up riders along the way and by the time things really started rolling I guess we were up to about 15. There seemed to be a lot of riders this morning who were determined to keep it slow and kept opening gaps in the paceline. Finally, I had gotten about enough of that and went across yet another gap and soon the group had split. A few of us up in front got into a decent little paceline and pushed into the headwind at about 24 mph. The ride back was faster, though, but eventually it split again and a small group got pinched off the front around the pumping station in River Ridge. I had to go around a few guys and chase in order to make the bridge, topping out at around 34 mph. The rest of the way we were doing around 27 fairly comfortably, except for a big surge at the end. Dan and I hung onto Matt's fancy TT rocket for a while, but finally backed off when we got to the bridge and he was still pulling at 31 or so. Not a bad training ride.

Looks like I'm going to need to get a digital certificate so I can electronically sign our semiannual lobbying reports. Yet another unfunded mandate by Congress. I think it'll cost us about $60 a year in order to submit our two reports, not counting the fact that I'll need to send them (on paper!!) a notarized form. Pain in the arse, this is.

On a brighter note, NASA procurement is ready to send us our RFP for one of our centers that received a nice little $1M earmark. Last year they took $80 of that for administrative costs, but this year they are apparently not allowed to do it, so we get the whole $1M. Of course, we must first put together all of the necessary documents, statement of work, budgets, etc., and submit it all via their new NSPIRES system. Should be fun. The Principal Investigator is completely clueless about the adminstrivia required for this sort of thing and I think that deep down he just doesn't understand why they don't just send him a check.

The Time Trial and Road Race this Saturday should be hot and boring, but I guess I'll go since it's right next door in Baton Rouge. I wonder what the turnout will be like. It would be great if we could get a lot of our local guys to skip the Giro ride for once and go to an actual race!