Good & Bad Rides

Some bike rides are just turn out great, others are far from it; in the past week I've had one of each.

Last Saturday I did the usual group ride at 8:00 am. As the first day of my week long break from work I wasn't too enthused to be getting up so early, but the ride is a good one and I rarely can sleep later than 8:00 or 9:00 anymore anyway. Well, this day that ride just went wonderfully. I think I've mentioned the ride here a few times before, about halfway through the ride there is a good climb and near the end a nice long flat stretch to a sprint point. As usual I was solid on the climb, cresting the hill fourth on a day that I really wasn't feeling all that much power at the start of the climb.

But the climb really isn't my favorite part of the ride, though I like it, the sprint is really what I love. It comes at the end of a nice long flat stretch, probably at least 5 km of solid hard pace lead up to the sprint. For those that have never done a sprint on a bicycle it is nothing like a track and field sprint, it is far more complicated, tactical, dangerous and fun! Unlike a running sprint, on the bike you get to use other riders to help you get across the line first. This means saving as much energy as possible for the time that you need to accelerate at the end. So you have to constantly be aware of your position in the bunch, the last place you want o be as on the front, where you do all the work pushing through the wind. But you also don't want to be at the very back, because gaps form and it's just too far to move all the way to front in time. Plus you have to think about the wind, what side you want to pass people on to avoid the wind as much as possible, but not to let yourself get boxed into a place you cannot get out of in time.

All in all, it's quite like a game of chess, only the pieces are moving around 50 km/h and touching someone else's wheel will cause a massive crash. So the times when you are setting up for the sprint and you see everything, know where everyone is and are just feeling fresh are really lots of fun. That was the case last Saturday, everything worked out perfectly, I made all the right choices and right moves to take a decisive win in the sprint. Not that I got more than a pat on the back from a friend after the fact, but the act itself is rewarding.

Today, however, I was at the other end of the spectrum. I thought that my week off from work would be a good time to ride up palomar mountain. I hadn't tried the ride before but I've done similar ones out in Jasper and figured this would be a nice ride to do on a weekday when the motorcycle enthusiasts aren't all over the climb as well. Unfortunately it also seems to be the day that my legs just decided that they really didn't want to do any work. Now part of the problem may have been the starting point for my ride, a casino at the very base of the climb, so I had only about 50 meters of flat road before things started going upwards. But there were no real alternative starting points. Anyway, after climbing the first 5.5 km of the over 25 km long route I had planed I realized I was never going to make it. My heart-rate was red-lining almost from the start and I just never felt like I was going to be able to get my legs to move smoothly enough to make the ride feasible. So I shamefully turned around and coasted all the way back to the car. In my defense I coasted down the 5.5 km at upwards of 70 km/h so it was pretty damn steep to start with.

Though I know that there isn't much I could do about it the whole thing was quite disappointing, it's very rare that I cannot accomplish something on my bike and to fail at this one so spectacularly and soon was really a shame. Not to mention that I had to drive an hour just to reach the starting point. Oh well, maybe I can try the ride on one of the furlough days that I won't be allowed to work this semester.

A lot of work done.

The past few weeks have have just been a blur. I was read somewhere, a couple of days ago, that it had been over a month since Michael Jackson had died. I was stunned by this because I was certain that it had only been a week or maybe two ago. But it seems when your days are dominated by writing grants the days just blur together.

But I'm finally done! In the past two months I have completed three major grants. One for the NIH, one for NSF and the latest was for the new version of the US anti-doping agency. All in all I've asked for just over a million dollars in total from the three institutions (to be paid over three years). The reality is I would be extremely lucky to get any one of those grants funded; though I just had a little moment of freaking out about what would happen if they were all funded. That might be the worst case scenario; I would be pretty hard pressed to get them completed in the given time if that was the case. But it's a problem I would be happy to have.

One of the ways I benefit directly from the grant is being able to supplement my income. I typically ask for about 10-20% of my salary, in the hopes of being able to by myself out of some of the teaching I have to do. Though if I get the funding this year I'm more likely to just pocket the money, as the budget cuts have now cut my salary by 10%!

The furlough plan recently passed, though I use the word plan in the loosest possible sense of the word. The plan, as we have been told is that we will be furloughed twice a month; we don't (legally prohibited from going to) work two days a month and are paid less as a result. Now the people organizing how the furloughs will work have all kinds of rules in place, such as the maximum allowable furlough days per month, the maximum number of consecutive furlough days... It's all well and good, except that there is no plan on how to implement furloughs for faculty members.

The problem is we don't all work the same schedules. Some classes are Monday, Wednesday & Friday, others are Tuesday & Thursday, some are only one day a week... this is not the typical government office type of situation. So the difficulty is how to implement a fair system for the closures of the university. Do you do it every other Friday? But then those who teach Tues. & Thurs. still work the same amount. Do you force every class to miss two lectures a month? Well that's not any better because now some classes will miss 25% of their lectures. Oh, did I mention that the students are now paying 30% more for the classes. I wonder how happy they will be with this whole situation?

To end this blog post on a more positive note I did just download a new game for my iPhone that is a total blast from the past: Worms Armageddon! Ok, so the armageddon part was dropped from the name, but the game is in the Apple App store. It's not perfect, but hey, for a platform with no real buttons nor a mouse it works pretty damn well. So I now have something new to play with on the days when I'm not allowed to go to work.