Cool Old Stuff

It's almost 1 p.m. and I'm sitting here on my second cup of high-octane coffee procrastinating. I've got to pull a big white paper together in the next few days and most of it is still bouncing around in my head. Meanwhile, people keep sending me various writeups and old documents from which I will need to extract bits and pieces as I fit together this puzzle of interconnected elements - research, teaching, tech transfer, economic development. I find that if I let this sort of thing rumble around in my brain for a day or two, it eventually all starts to self-assemble and then once I start writing it all comes very quickly. That's what I'm hoping anyway. The guy from the Department of Education who called this morning looking for the progress report on the $7.5M award we got and drew down late last month hasn't called me back, so I guess I'll give him a ring before they go home up there in DC or MD or wherever their office actually is.

A couple of long-time friends, Billy and Sally R., moved to the Northshore the other day. Appropriately enough, for a couple whose relationship revolved around cycling for a long time, they bought a place just off of Old Military Road, near Smith Road. Anyone who has been riding for very long knows exactly where that is. Billy has pretty much retired from competitive cycling. He won one of the early master's national championships back when I was a premature master in the 30-35 age group. Anyway, in cleaning out the house prior to the move, he sent his son over with a car full of cool old stuff. A couple of sets of fairly standard 6-speed wheels, a set of 1980's time trial wheels (24-bladed spoke, radial, insanely narrow assos rims, equally insanely narrow tubulars), a collection of maybe 30 tires, all the way from tubulars still in their plastic wrappings to 25mm, 27 inch Performance clinchers, a couple of apparently unused Concor saddles from before they changed the design, and leather dressing for leather saddles. Haven't had a chance to sort through it all, but I'm sure it will be an interesting trip down memory lane. I have a couple of bikes that are in need of wheels and tires, and so this stuff will be put to very good use. The old Pennine will finally get its original 27" wheel back that has been on my commuter for the past ten years, and I'll be able to switch the commuter to 700c wheels which will give me a tad more clearance under the fenders so I can run a more comfy tire.

It was strangely dark this morning when I went out to the levee. The overcast skies made it feel cooler than it was, so I went ahead with two jerseys, arm-warmers and long tights. No point being cold this time of year. There was a nice group of maybe a dozen today, and thanks to a bit of a tailwind the pace eventually got pretty fast on the way out. When we hit the first little dip where a access path drops down the levee to the street and then comes right back up, Matt split off to fly down the downhill. People seem to like to do that. They usually come back up to the path just ahead of the group. I happened to be on the front at the time and just couldn't resist messing with him, though, so I pushed the pace and we beat him to the top. It was funny when he started climbing back up and looked over to see me looking back at him. He stood up, and you could tell he was calculating whether he'd be able to stay ahead of us. Coming back, though, it was paceline all the way. When Howard surged ahead with one other guy on his wheel, the rest of the group hardly even looked up. The forecast for tomorrow morning is looking pretty wet and nasty, so I'm thinking it might be a rest day.

Been exploring MySpace lately. Find me if you can....