Better Ride

Finally a clear, crisp and DRY day! There was a nice group for the long Tuesday ride today, and for a change the pace didn't surge so much on the way out to shatter the group. It was a much better ride than yesterday. As much as I was enjoying the nice weather (temp around 50F, clear sky, light wind), I have to admit that I was struggling at times for some reason. I guess it didn't help to have taken those two days off. So a few guys turned back at the dip this morning, but I think this time they were just the ones who needed to be back early. I think a lot of the guys decide on where to turn around based on how fast the pace is, and today it was fast but reasonable. The lack of a crosswind also helped immensely, allowing riders to recover at the back rather than languish in death row waiting to be dropped.

On the return trip, Todd and Rob slipped off the front while nobody was watching right at the start. Once the rest of the group finally got its act together, the pace ramped up, but by then Todd and Rob were going pretty hard. I was thinking we'd probably catch if everyone started to work together, but right about then Howard came by and I latched onto his wheel. He looked back for a second, and then, in a repeat of last week, he towed me across to the lead duo at 30 mph. It was a while before I could start taking pulls after that, and after a mile or two Howard said he was going to drop back and pick up the rest of the group. I was starting to die, but Todd was pulling at around 25-26, Rob at around 25, and I at more like 24. Luckily, I had Todd's wheel so I was getting a little better draft. Todd finally headed home somewhere out around River Ridge and we slowed down a bit. After that, it didn't take too long for a few of the survivors of the larger group to catch us, and everyone rolled back in at a more civilized pace.

After spending a few hours reading through a recent issue of PC World while on the airplane(s) yesterday I decided to try out one of those free web-based services that provides access to your office computer's files. Last weekend I really needed a couple of files that I had been working on, but they were stuck on my office desktop computer. So I installed Avvenu's free software. Amazingly, it seems to work. We'll see what happens when I try to access the files from home tonight! I just know it can't be this simple.

There's a nice video on the "Daily Iowan" website with some clips from last weekend's Pink Meet against Iowa State.