The South

Much, much warmer and humid, with a wind from the South this morning. It looked like a good enough group, but then I noticed something. Both VJ and Howard were on their TT bikes. And they were at the front. And there was a tailwind. 1 + 1 + 0.75 = 27 mph. It wasn't long before I looked back from the shelter of VJ's arse and saw a long, long stretch of empty road between the group and us. Although I was feeling OK this morning, I wasn't foolish enough to try and match speeds with these two, especially with a long headwind waiting for us on the return trip, so I stayed in the rotation but took much shorter, and sometimes slower, pulls. There was a bit of a lull after we came back up the levee at the dip, but toward the end Howard just emptied the whole chamberpot and somewhere around 30 mph I saw VJ's shadow slip off my wheel. A moment later the SRB separated and I shifted back out of the 13 as we coasted in the last half-mile to the turnaround.

On the way back I found myself accidentally way out in front of the group for a few miles, although I was going only 16 or 17 mph. Finally I heard tires coming up from behind and the Mother Duck came by on his aerobars followed by a long line of ducklings pedalling in his wake. I latched on to the tail end for a while, but noticed that only VJ and Howard were pulling, so I went back up to the front to get into the rotation. By the time we were back to Kenner there was a gap again, but I could feel something wrong. I did that little bouncy thing that we all do when we think we might be getting a flat. Yep. Didn't even make it to Williams Blvd. before it hit bottom and I had to stop and fix it. Good ride anyway, I think.

Lots of increasingly distasteful politics going on regarding the Katrina relief money with Baton Rouge insisting they know better how to allocate and spend it than the universities that need it. Why the hell do these people insist on perpetuating the Banana Republic stereotype? OTOH, why did Congress put the money in the hands of the State instead of allocating it directly to the institutions that need it? When you've already borrowed $150 million (this is NOT an exaggeration, BTW, it's a fact) it's pretty important to get the money sooner rather than later. Instead we've got the State Legislative Fiscal Office screwing around with $95M in federal funds. It would be one thing if someone had come up with an allocation formula out of thin air and was trying to force it down someone's throat, but in this case the presidents of all of the affected universities for which the funds were intended got together and worked it out and agreed to it.

I'm spending this afternoon setting up a new laptop (Thinkpad Z60) for our VP. After seeing the condition of her previous computers, handhelds, and cellphones, I went for the shock-protected, titanium-covered model. This one has a tiny little fingerprint scanner on it. That should be interesting.