Disappointing

It was cold Sunday morning for the northshore training ride, but by the 8 am start it was probably nearly 40F. There was nobody but me at the Morning Call at 7 am, so I drove across the causeway alone, watching the thermometer as it rose into the 50s over the warmer lake waters and then plunged back down to the mid-30s on the northshore. There were only six of us this morning, and it seemed like everyone was feeling pretty tired. I was disappointed with how I felt. My legs were still sore for Saturday's Giro ride and every time the pace got fast, which wasn't very often, I would be hurting much earlier than I should be. Maybe the cold had something to do with it, or perhaps I'm fighting off the head cold that's been going around. I dunno. Something hasn't been right all weekend. Hopefully I'll feel better next week. Anyway, Mike L said he's heading out to California for a while to work, so we'll probably miss him for at least the spring races.

Tomorrow we're off from work for the annual MLK day ritual. They had a parade today with lots of imported people but couldn't get through it without gunfire that sent a number of people to the hospital. I feel sorry for the idealistic folks who organized it. I wonder if they'll make it through tomorrow without more of the same. Anyway, it's disappointing, if not predictable.

Spent most of the afternoon today trying to figure out why the Carnegie Foundation's new classification scheme tags Tulane and a few other serious research universities as "high research" instead of "very high research." How do you figure to identify the level of research using a scheme that is supposed to normalize for institution size, but includes all faculty instead of just research faculty, and uses total research expenditures (including institutional funds and Ag funds at the land grant universities) instead of federal research expenditures?