Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday, December 8, 2014 8:02 PM

Thanksgiving and Beyond


On Tuesday I do not go cycling in the morning. Instead I ride wth Person Ti_Ca to Cal State Long Beach and I wander around the campus while he has his clsses. I'm wandering around one of the engineering buildings when I hear my name Called out "Ray!" It turns out it's the co-worker intern who has the office next to mine. He certainly didn't expect to see me on campus and I didn't expect to run into him. We have a brief little chat and he finally says, "So you really are looking for a job here" I don't really answer his question but we each continue our days. When I get home I get on the mountain bicycle for a very windy ride to the old yacht club and back. The legs (and entire organism) are tired but I crank along the best that I can. Late in the afternoon Person Ti_Ca and I go grocery shopping because he wants to have people over for a Thanksgiving dinner and "I'm not going anywhere near a freeway or a grocery store on Wednesday". When Person Ti_Ca leaves for his night class I do some of the early cooking and watch the Kings' ice hockey game.

I start Wednesday with a one hour walk. I am too tired to face getting on the bicycle for now. Afterwards I clean the roses, start a backup of my desktop computer, and clean out some old mailboxes. Reading through some old mailboxes brings back some memories - most of them of my failings that I need to improve upon or get help for. Near noon I get to the library and pick up Joe Perry's autobirography about his time with and without Aerosmith. And then I start the final trenching for the sprinklers. Person Ti_Ca looks oout of the windows to see the commotion and asks if I need help. And within 2 minutes he's outside asking what to do. I've come to the point where I needed a second person for some water drilling and we manage to get through the tough part and I'm covered in mud and water though Person Ti_Ca emerges unscathed because I told him where to tape down the plastic to cover the flying water and mud. I just need to measure, buy the pipes and connections, and make the connections and the sprinkler system will be finished. After a qucik shower I realize how tired I am and that I have not eaten since early this morning, so I sit back with some pasta and relax. And hopefully recover for a long Thanksgiving day road bicycle ride. Eventually I get down for another nap in the afternoon and then get up to watch the Kings' win 4-0 on the road in Minnesota. It's a slow evening as I rest for a (hopefully) long road bicycle ride on Thanksgiving morning.

I start out Thanksgiving with a long road bicycle ride. I go all of the way past the Whittier Narrows dam to the Santa Fe dam and turn around and go back to the ocean. This streatch - from the Santa Fe Dam to the ocean - is a 30 mile stretch of trail with no reason to stop or slow down. AT times I find people to draft from or pull, but for the most part this ride is a loner ride. I keep saying, "You ought to stop for some gel and electrlyts", but it never happens. And in the end I just crawl on home for 72 miles. After a short recovery period I fast forward through the Lions' Thanksgiving day win and then do some cooking for Ti's Thanksgiving dinner. He wanted a real Thanksgiving dinner and its his first turkey, so we'll see how it turns out. (Not that I eat meat at all, but we'll see how it turns out for the guests.) The turkey turns out undercooked so people have to pick from the parts that are fully cooked. Later the guests play cards and Person T_U drops by for a few minutes after he has his Thanksgiving dinner with his sister.

I sleep in until 6:45 am on Friday morning. I try to get my bearings and wake up and then go for a two hour ride on the mountain bicycle. The legs feel svery strong - considering yesterday's long ride - but the will and spirit are a bit lacking in enthusiasm. Nonetheless it is a good ride! When I get home I take the chance to use lemon oil on some of the furniture which was vacated of "stuff" for the guests, do some groacery shopping, start putting leftovers together for lunches for the next week, and relax. In the afternoon we take Person Ti_Ca's car to Home Depot to buy the supplies needed to finish off the revamped sprinkler system. Later some friends arrive and we start driving towards clubs in West Hollywood. I'm the designated driver since I have the most fun at clubs listening to music under the influence of Red Bull only (and everyone else wants to drink).

A number of people come over to the house and start drinking vodka and Smirnoffs and playing cards before going to the club. I am one designated driver and Stephen is another. We meet up at the herd/clone club and dance for a while ebfore heading to another club. I likethis club because the techno/trance/house music is addictive. I just cannot stand still. The place is crowded and I'm bumping into people (or vice versa), but nobody cares as we are all having fun. A couple of people want to meet me and start conversations,but I just lose myself in the music. Most of the group goes back to the herd/clone club before midnight and I tell them that I will be back there in 30 minutes. At one point I actually take a selfie of myself with an weird set of ox playing on a flatscreen in the club. (Because I've nicknamed myself "old ox" and this fits in perfectly.) I eventually make it back to the herd/clone club 45 minutes later and regret it the moment I walk back in. The music is horrible top 40/hip hop/ I tolerate the last hour or of the evening and then we head for home (but with a stop at a MacDonalds drive trough for some people in the ar who are hungry or thirsty). We drop Lida off and then Panath off and then, in thick Long Beach fog, make our way home. And my light is going off fo sleep at 3:11 am.

I start Saturday near 7:45 am. Except for when I was sick, I can't remember the last time that I slept this late. I get out on the mountain bicycle and as I make the turn around at the old yacht club, I see my cycling friend Terry. I grab him and get introduced to his friend Glenn and we ride away back towards home. (Terry typically drives his car with his bicycle in it down towards Long Beach and then rides the river trail and the ocean.) I change my clothes and make a final push on the sprinkler system. I'm trying to figure out how to integrate the old backyard sprinkler valves into the front yard faucet and I finally just say, "I need to glue this thing together, let it dry, and see how it works." At one point Person Ti_Ca asks if I need help and comes outside to start digging, but there is no more digging to be done. I spend the next three hours cutting PVC tubing, gluing connections together, and getting down on my knees (with knee pads on) and getting up. Just before the complete sprinkler system is glued together I run out of PVC pipe by a few feet. I am so tired at this point, so I go take a shower and go to Home Depot and (hopefully) buy the last pieces needed to complete the sprinkler system. But I've had enough for the day so by 3:45 pm I'm trying to relax after a good two hour bicycle ride, three hours of sprinkler work, and four hours of sleep.

I don't feel well on Sunday morning, but I start out on the road bicycle. It's obvious that I don't "have it" today so I ride 30 miles and head for home. I put on dirty clothes and finish the last of the cutting of pipe and gluing for the sprinklers. Since this went quicker than expected I rake some leaves from the large tree in the backyard (to really make it feel like football season) and then I take a shower. When I take the recently claybarred World Rally car out for errnds it starts to rain. The rain was not supposed to come until later in the week. I run my errands, put the car in the garage, and wipe it down so that it looks new and fresh again. And as I start the laundry I start my official relax period with some football games and some small tidying up around the house. Later at night I watch some Aerosmith videos on youtube (since I'm reading the book by the Aerosmith guitarist) and I also watch the Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech from a few years ago of Aung San Suu Kvi (accepting it 20 years after the award since she was under house arrest for that 20 years).

I have a one degree fever on Monday morning and struggle throughout the workday. But I do get my bearings and pick up where I left off before the ten day Thanksgiving break that I took from work. I present my work for an informal pier review and things look good. But Monday is a long day and when I get home I don't get in a workout.

On Tuesday and Wednesday we have heavy rain and I have to drive the car to work. I have good days archiving models and simulations and creating a library for future use from them. But both days are painfull driving home - both days taking an hour to get home whereas the motorycle is usually 20 or 25 minutes. On both days I start lifting weights again by lowering the weights near the bottom of the 5 repetition capability and lifting slowly and with strict form.

Everything is still wet on Thursday morning, but it isn't raining and it isn't supposed to rain anymore. So I put on old pants, socks, and shoes for the ride to work and change into more suitable attire with the clothes that I've brought with me in my backpack. Today I put my head down and make a lot of progress on things that have to get done and archived. I also help coach a younger engineer through some things that she is going through as her superiors are on vacation. Right after 4pm I head out the door to start the weekend. It is good to be on the motorcycle and get home in 20 or 25 minutes rather than the 60 minutes it took the last two days in the car in the rain. I go out for a long walk and buy supplies for Friday's meeting at Cal State Los Angeles. And then I relax with some ice hockey and football on the television.

On Friday I get up and check the markets and then ride the motorcycle to Cal State University, Los Angeles. I have an ex-boss who retired three years ago and is now part-time teaching at CSULA. He has been trying to get me to join the faculty, so I figured I would go check out the reviews of the senior design projects, talk with my ex-boss, and try to see Derrick, my cycling friend's senior project. (Derrick and I and Ted coincidentally know each other.) I'm late to the reviews because my ex-boss changed the rooms and buildings on me and didn't tell me. But I track him down and surprise him when I show up. And I also surprise the students by passing out assorted candies, chocolate bars, and sweets that I bought on Thursday night. I contribute to the reviews as best as I can and try to encourage the students and ask questions to make them think about the future direction and builds of their projects. And then I ride the motorcycle on home. It turns out the commute from home to CSULA is about 18 miles compared with my current commute of almost 16 miles, so the difference in commute is small. When I get home I eat lunch and then mow the lawn, clean the roses, and do some grocery shopping. I relax for a bit and then lift weights (since I didn't cycle this morning) and then I relax for the rest of the day.

Saturday starts with an early mountain bicycle ride to the old yach club and back home with a few extra miles thrown in. I try to get out the door pretty early to start this rid ebecause I just want to ride and be left alone to think about hings. When I get home I change into some older clothes and go check all of the sprinkler circuits. Except for the initial coupler leaking, which is a known problem, all of the circuits work well. So I start shovelling the dirt back over the pipes and into the trneches that I've dug over the past couple of weeks. I'll deal with the leaking coupler locally. After a shower I get two new books from the library related to juvenile justice and economic poverty, stop in at Home Depot for some generic supplies, pick up lunch for later, and do some grocery shopping. As I return home I start to relax as Person Ti_Ca heads to the gym for a workout. I've been contacted by some CSULA students, who are friends of my cycling partner Derrick, so I send an email to the CSULA faculty member who invited me to participate and check on the ground rules of how much help I can contribute. After I relax a bit I get restless and get down on my hands and knees and wash the kitchen floor and both bathroom floors. And then I relax a bit more.

When the alarm goes off on SUnday morning I keep hitting the snooze button and even stay in bed for a while deciding whether to ride at all today. I have a slight headache and I'm being lazy. But I get out of bed and start out on the road bicycle to the Whittier Narrows dam about 35 minutes later than I would normally be out. There is a strong headwind up to the dam and I pull a guy along. When I cross over the dam and start down the San Gabriel river trail I don't quite get the tailwind that I wa shoping for. But I just keep pushing on. And just as I'm thinking, "There hasn't been a single ride or group of riders pass me yet today - maybe I'm not that slow today", a rider passes me and slowly but surely goes off into the distance. Nonetheless I stop at about 40 miles. When I get home I clean up the roses, lay down some anti-weed grains, and finally dispose of a very small Christmass tree brought over by Person C_T back in the 2006 timeframe that I've kept alive by watering and nurturing. As I'm approaching retirement, I'm cleaning house of things that I have no need of and I've made a tasklist of things to accomplish over the Christmas holiday that suppor this goal. And the tasklist inclue some minor house fixes that I should be able tot ackle myself. After a shower I do some cooking for the week's lunches and make some spaghetti for today's lunch.

On Monday I have a great attitude at work and make a fair amount of progress. Yes, I made a bunch of silly Monday morning mistakes on the simulations, but I fixed them. These are things that a co-worker, who we asked to find a different job, had done. It took him months to get the wrong answer whereas I can get the wrong answer in a couple of days but then realize it is wrong and fix it the next day. Regardless I make a lot of good progress throughout the day. When I get home I have a good workout with the weights - maintaining the same weight levels but increasing repetitions. It's only when I increase the weights past a certain amount that joints start to hurt.