Crunch Time

It always seems like a lot of I have all sorts of things going on that manage to crowd themselves around the Tour de La date. This morning the CFO called to say he had received the contracts from the Board of Regents for the Emergency Relief Funding and that they wanted them turned around by tomorrow along with our pre-award expenditure invoice, so naturally there was a little fire drill involving three offices to make that happen since we're talking about $15.3 million. One thing I know for sure is that there will be a big sigh of relief coming from the president's office once that check arrives.

There was still an uncommon north wind lingering around the levee this morning, which made the ride a bit harder but also allowed sweat to evaporate. Evaporation is something you really don't appreciate until you're riding down here on a hot humid day with sweat dripping liberally onto your top tube while you struggle to see where you're going through your sweat-blurred glasses. So today was nice. Hardly any drips! On the way out there was a bit of a tailwind, but it was mostly crosswind so Dan and I tried to get a second eschelon going so that everyone would get some draft. It lasted about two pulls (Dan's and mine) before they all went back to riding along the edge of the asphalt wondering why they were getting dropped. It is always so hard to get a second eschelon to work. Maybe we need to have a workshop on that or something because I just don't think everyone understands that it beats the hell out of hanging onto the back without a decent draft until you get dropped. Anyway, the ride back turned out to be pretty hard, especially on the sections where we had nearly a direct headwind.

TDL registrations are somewhere around 120 or so right now with online registration closing tomorrow night, so it looks like we will easily make last year's field size assuming we get a typical Friday night and race day registration. It's great that so many people pre-register and pick up their numbers on Friday night because it really speeds up race day registration. There will be a real good representation from Texas, and that's great because one of the main reasons we've always put on this race is so that the local guys who can't travel very much can get some experience racing with some good riders they don't see every day. The Cat. 5 race will likely hit its 50-rider field limit by race day, possibly earlier, so I just sent out a reminder because I don't want anyone to be disappointed at not being able to race. I got an email today from Jay S. who said he won't be able to race because after suffering through last weekend's race with back pain, he was just diagnosed with a herniated disc (pending tomorrow's MRI, I presume).