On Wednesday I have a fair day at work until the afternoon. My project boss and her right hand deputy sit down with me and plead with me not to retire. Or, as an alternate, we try to brainstorm and try to find somebody that can replace me or be trained by me to do my job. We don't come up with any good solutions and maybe only one person who would be trainable. After work I lift weights, clean and water the roses, grab a shower, and go to a CD release party for The Potential Lunatics. I enjoy the Lunatics' music and I enjoy being around the young crowd. I scan the crowd a few times and realize, again, that I am the oldest person present with most people closer to a third of my age (rather than half of my age). When I get home I do some web programming and then collapse into bed.
Thursday is a slow day at work so I'm planning on after-work activities. I water the grass, scrape/sand/and prime one of the last windows needing work, and get on my hands and knees to pull up weeds from the carnations and pepper plants in the backyard. It always feels good to get dirty and clean up the yard.
I have a decent Friday but look forrward to getting home and doing things there. When I get home Person Ti_Ca has cleaned and laid out in the sun three sets of blinds and they look pretty clean. But still another 13 to go to get all the way around the house. I lift weights, mow the lawn, clean the roses, and then paint one more windowsill. The only windowsill l eft to be painted is the lviing room window, but it is shaded from the sun and does not look in bad shape. So I'll probably be lazy and not get to it this time.
I get out the door for a road bicycle ride near 7 am on Saturday. I have decent energy but I'm not near the top of my riding ability. I get to the Whittier Narrows dam and cross over and start down the San Gabriel revier trail. As I start down I hear someone calling my name. It is Brian, the man who owns Long Beach Cyclery and sold me this road bicycle. We talk a bit and then I start riding with his big group - almost all decked out in Long Beach Cyclery jerseys. Brians tells me to come by the shop and get one of the new style jerseys. We start down the trail and the ride seems to split into two groups: one fast group and one slow group. I don't quite recognize this split at the beginning but find myself with a group of 8 riders who are marching down the river trail at speeds near 23 mph. It's about all that I have today to keep up with them and finally I come to my turn-off point and leave the group. I should go join the group of riders since, as Brian says, "We start at 7 am every Saturday". Later in the afternoon Brian calls me on the phone and says he was glad to see me again and that he sees me riding regularly and that I should join their group. I ctach a very wet but drying qualifying F1 session from Spa, Belgium. Just the name, Spa Belgium, sends shivers up and down my spine let alone with rain and drying conditions. I run a few errands and then enjoy a quiet day today. The ride this morning was very hard paced, but it was just 40 miles or so, so I'm not hungover from it. After having finally read Flash Boys in two days (after waiting for it from the library for two months), I now have 4 books from the library to read.
On Sunday I'm up at 5:30 am to watch the Belgian Grand Prix from Spa (almost) live. I'm about 30 minutes behind so that I can fast forward past commercials. After the race I take the mountain bicycle out to the end of the ocean trail and back and add a few extra miles in. The legs are tired still from yesterfday's hard-paced ride. After a shower I pack up supplies and go to work. I want to get a start on the workweek, bank the hours to take off later in the week near the Labor day weekend, and avoid the majority of a party that Person Ti_Ca is having. I get back home after 3 pm and mingle with the party-goers who are mostly playing Khmer card games where the rules seem to change every hand. At 7pm everyone leaves and I relax to start (or continue) the workweek.
I have a good Monday at work and finalize some more details. After work I lift weights with no pain, trim the roses by one-third height (because there are some people who believe that this promotes fall blooms), water the roses and impatiens, and then do some grocery shopping with Person Ti_Ca before relaxing.
I struggle and suffer through Tuesday at work as my mind is on other things. Today is my last day for a week as I'm taking an extra long Labor day weekend. When I get home I clean up the roses and pick up the trimmings from yesterday's "third height" massacre and then I get down on my hands and knees and clean the kitchen floor. Person Ti_Ca and I had bought a mop with built-insquirter to clean the floor, but after three cleanings in the last three days (Person Ti_"Ca's sister, Person Ti_Ca, and me), I've decided that the mop just pushes the dirt around the floor and I can still tell it's dirty. I only wipe down the kitchen floor with warm water and the bucket of water is pitch black when I am finished. The new mop WAS only pushing dirt around. I relax on Tuesday night and update some financial information and relax and work on websites before a long road bicycle ride on Wednesday.
I start Wednesday with a ride along the ocean and down to the old yacht club. This is a good ride today because there are very large waves coming in due to the high tide - even in Long Beach. (History: Long Beach built a breakwater during World War II for the ships' safe haven. The breakwater is still there and usually prevents Long Beach from getting big waves. There has been a long running argument whether to leave the breakwater or to remove it.) After the ride I trim the front and side bushes and clean up. In the afternoon I run some errands and then go to a coffeehouse that I used to go to regularly. It is dead in the afternoon, so I am able to do some web programming until my laptop dies and then I finish off one of the library books that I checked out. I'm able to drop the finished book off at the library on the way home. In the evening I do a bit more web programming because I want to finish this domestic violence website and move on to others.
I get out the door on the carbon fibre road bicycle at 6:45 on Thursday morning. I don't know what to expect on this ride, but I go over the WHittier Narrows dam and head south on the San Gabriel rvier trail. When I come to the 40 mile cutoff point I ignore it and continue on towards the ocean to see if any of the big waves are remaining. I ride along the ocean and back up the Los Angeles river trail with my entire organism starting to tire as I complete 57 miles. It is already hot by the time that I finish, so I run a few quick errands and head for home and eventually read at home with the doors and windows open to let a cool brezze flow through the house. The carpet cleaners turn up and one of the guys is the same guy as two years ago. They are very quick and efficient and in no time the carpet looks very clean and now just has to throughly dry. As Person Ti_Ca goes off to his night class I do some web programming and reading and try to recover from today's long ride. I vow that on Friday I will sleep in as late as my body lets me.
I sleep in until 6:40 am. That's as late as I can sleep. I mill around the house and finally do the ride on the mountain bicycle to the old yacht club with a few extra miles thrown in at the end. AFter returning I edge and mow the lawn and then get cleaned up. I try to do a few little things around the house before movign the furniture back unto the carpet - trying to give it a full 24 hours to dry. In the afternoon I start scrubbing down the bathroom. Since the door is glass, this involves using a rzor blade to scrape off the soap before washing it. It is tedious, but it looks fantastic when it is done. I mix the bathroom cleaning with preparing vegetable soup for the next week or so. Person Ti_Ca has a surprise party for a fried who just passed his RN exam, so I have a quiet evening at home. I end up in bed and reading very early and off to sleep early as well.
I sleep until 7:15 on Saturday morning. I trim and water the roses and take care of the lawn before putting on sunscreeen and heading out on the mountain bicycle. I ride again down to the old yacht club because I want to see how big the waves are (they've dissipated now) and I end up with a good workout where the legs feel strong. Perhaps the extra hour of sleep helped. Saturday afternoon, after lunch with Person Ti_Ca, is spent slowly oiling wood furniture and doing little things around the house. Person Ti_Ca springs on me his desire to go to Cambodia in December for a friend's wedding in addition to the June or July trip to France. This opens up some possibilities of invites that I have to asian countries at the end of the year and I start to think about them. I don't really do much on Staurday because Person T_U has mentioned the day before the possibility of going out clubbing. When I call Person T_U at 7pm on Saturday he respondes with, "Oh I went out last night and won't go out tonight". So I'm a bit disappointed to not get out.
On Sunday I ride north on the Los Angeles river and meetup with Derrick who has finished his classes for the summer. Because Derrick hasn't ridden for a while I do all of the pulling and I don't have a problem with that. When returning home I bypass my exit for some extra miles and eventually turn around to go home. I pass one guy and I feel that he has latched on to me and I keep up a reasonable pace into a headwind but cannot lose him. When I get home I realize that I've lost pressure in the rear tire all the way down from 100 psi to near 40 psi and that would have certainly slowed me down a fair amount. I watch an exciting and close Britich MotoGP race in the early afternoon and then get emails from people associcated with the domestic violence web site who want it do something. And I point out "It already as those options". Is it cluelessness on somebody's part or miscommunication? Late in the evening I watch the Moto3 race and finally see my favorite rider win for the first time this year and vault himself up into the title fight.
I wake up on Labor day and I see that the road bicycle has a flat rear tire. I kew this because it kept softening up during Sunday's ride and, try as I might, I couldn't shake off one rider at the end of the ride because of the soft rear tire. It reads below 40 psi when it should be near 100 psi. And I'm hungover from other ides, so I relax around the house for a bit and then go for about a two hour mountain bicycle ride. On these rides, when I'm physically hungover, it takes 10 miles to get going and then the legs and (usually) the entire organism starts to feel good. After the ride I change out the rear tube on the road bicycle so it is ready for future rides and then watch the Moto2 race from Silverstone, England. In a moment of weakness I buy a bottle of Tequilla and mix it with some other drugs and have quite the relaxing and enjoyable afternoon. Later in the evening I FORCE Person Ti_Ca to look with me at the typical expenses that we have so that he has an updated understanding of where all of the money goes. (We did this about two years ago before he had any accounting classses and I don't think that he got the full picture and understanding of the budget and expenses.)