general craziness

after the training camp for texas 4000, the speed of everything seems to have picked up. i submitted an abstract on my research to a conference that i won't be able to attend (i'll be somewhere in alaska) because my advisor wanted me too...but get this, then he sends me an email yesterday asking if i would be interested in presenting it at another conference as well and that he should be able to foot the bill for the travel expensives. the conference is in the netherlands at the end of may :) so it's looking like i may be making a quick trip to the e.u. before i commence my bike ride and also means i need to get on top of getting my irish passport. i have all the papers, but just haven't had time to sit down and fill everything out...or get passport photos taken. fortunately spring break is next week, so i am hoping to add the passport thing to my already ridiculously long list of things to do.

but before any of that list happens, i'm riding my bike to corpus christi. again, this will be with the tx4k crew. it will take us about 3 days and we'll be camping along the way. what happens when you stick 6 tired college age cyclists in a tent on spring break? and make them repeat this procedure for a couple nights in a row? i don't know yet, but we'll be running a repeatability study this weekend, so i'll keep you posted.

in the meantime, i am running another experiment to see just how little sleep i can get and still function. i've been tossing in bedtimes of past 1a, tossing and turning all night and capping it all off by getting up before 7a. at about 9a, yesterday morning, i was sitting at work, having trouble focusing on my computer and thinking that staying up late the night before had been a terrible idea...but by afternoon, when my advisor broached the topic of conferences in europe, i was flying pretty high. maybe the lack of sleep just makes one more susceptible to mood swings...or maybe it just helps you develop the ability to get a fifth or sixth wind.