2nd half of summer

My summer has really been divided into two halves plus a little at the end. The first half was spent writing a few papers and getting ready to teach. The second half was very busy and spent finishing a paper and sending it to a journal and teaching. Tomorrow I am heading to NC to get Nici and head back to TX with her. It has been a long summer with her working in NC and me working in TX. It is amazing to think that we just had our 4th anniversary on Thursday. It seems like yesterday that we got married.


While I am not looking forward to summer being over I am looking forward to Nici being back in TX with me. I will still have 2 weeks until I have to start teaching in the fall and about a week until I will have to be back in the lab full time.

I had hoped to get 1000 miles in on the bike and a tt and a MTB race but I settled for 800 miles and no racing. It is odd that about the times that the races came around my legs were feeling pretty weak but afterwards they were feeling better. This last week I was able to make it to the KOW ride (race) and I stayed on the lead group much longer than usual. I was able to stay at the front and watch a bunch of cat 1 and cat 2 racers play out team tatics. Amazingly I am a member of one of the two teams that was controling the ride. When I saw a teammate being pulled back to the group form a break away, I came very close to attacking and trying to form a break of my own. I quickly realized that I was doing everything that I could to simply stay with the group so attacking was out of the question. At least my head knew what the right thing to do was, even if my legs could not do it.

Hotter than Hell is coming up and despite my plans to not do it this year I am ready for another shot. Hopefully I can finish in under 4 hours this year. I was very close last year so maybe with my legs starting to come around I can do it.

Well I am off to North Carolina in the morning and I can't wait to see my wife and not have to just talk on the phone.
North Cakallacky here I come!

Back for 2nd half of the summer

I had a very very nice trip back to NC last week. It is amazing to think that the summer (atleast the way I am breaking it up) is half over. The plus side is that I have made it half way through the summer and am closer to having Nici back in TX with me.

My trip to NC was great. I was able to get in two nice rides with friends. Thank you Terry for letting me borrow your Madone! After my usual 4th of July ride Nici and I made a short trip down to the beach to see my sister and brother in law. We had a very nice time at the beach, grilling out, playing cornhole, and playing Mario kart on the Wii. It is a good thing that I am a better bike handler ( and driver) than I am at Mario Kart. It was pretty ugly. Other than a rainy few minutes at the beach after taking the time to get our stuff out to the beach we had a lot of fun.

I am back in TX and prepairing for teaching during the second summer session. I am still working on a few papers and have several undergrads collecting data for other studies but I will need even more focus during the second half of the summer to get the papers out, teaching done, and miles logged. While I came pretty close to hitting my 1,000 mile goal during the first half I am even more determined to hit it this go around. Fortunatly I have an extra week to get it done so I should be ok. I do have 1 race ( Time trial) planned and so we will see how it goes.

Well enough for now. I am heading back to have a slice of pizza and watch the end of todays tour stage!