Situation Normal

Overcast skies served to moderate the heat just a bit this morning for the long levee ride. With nearly 20 riders and only a light breeze, I had a feeling it would be a fast one. It wasn't long before we were strung out into a long thin line blasting down the bike path at speeds in excess of 28 mph. I dropped back for a while to languish in the draft, waiting to see how many of the guys pushing the pace were going to turn around at the dip. We did in fact lose a few, but you would hardly have known it. Somewhere within the last mile or so there was yet another surge. As my speedometer ticked up past 30 mph I let a little gap open in front of me, assuming it would slow right away and I'd be able to roll back into the draft. Instead, I think it increased even farther, so with my pain-o-meter already in the red and myself just outside of the draft range, I struggled for a while to hold what I had. When I looked back, I there was nobody on my wheel, so eventually I sat up and soft-pedaled in the last bit.

The ride back, at least from my perspective, felt like the first laps of a Cat. 5 criterium. The pace would surge, then slacken. Gaps would open, gaps would close, and you would be either pedaling all-out or hitting the brakes. At one point the pace surged again up past 30 mph and I craned my neck to see who might be responsible. When I saw Howard dropping off the front I just couldn't resist getting out of the saddle and having a little go of it. I don't know what happened to Howard after that -- we were fairly close to his house -- but we ended up with a slightly smaller group. Anyway, it was a pretty good training ride today and my legs were tired by the time I got home.

Things have been really busy at the office the last few days and I've been working on collecting a lot of constantly changing data for some testimony our Senior VP is giving next week to the House VA committee regarding the need for getting the Veterans Administration hospital and services back up to speed in New Orleans. It's been difficult data to collect and trying to do any meaningful analysis of it is like nailing jelly to the wall, but fortunately I have a lot of jelly nailing experience, so it's basically Situation Normal. Of course, having a national holiday tomorrow isn't helping things very much, especially since a number of key people around here have used the opportunity to take vacations. Here's a little tidbit, though. Did you know that in FFY'06 76% of all NIH awards in Louisiana were made to institutions in the New Orleans area? That's the year after Katrina. Not too shoddy, eh? Actually, 40% of all the NIH awards in Louisiana went to Tulane, which is about the same as went to the three major LSU biomedical research institutions -- combined.