Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday March 21, 2016 8:02 PM

Daylight Savings Time


On Tuesday morning I'm tired and hit the snooze button on the alarm clock for an extra 9 minutes of sleep. It feels good to ride the motorcycle again after the few days off work and the Monday rain. I have an okay day at work though I'm dragging. And finally I go home, grab a book to return to the library, and walk all the way to the library to drop it off and then return home. I spent a fair amount of time continuing to organize and catalog the technical papers that I have and want to keep.

The workweek is out of control. There are demands from every direction to help out with all sorts of tests currently being run and for a "transfer of domain knowledge" from me seeing that people are hearing rumors of my retirement. And, of course, there is no money to pay for a "transfer of domain knowledge". We get through a number of tests but cannot finish and will have to work on at least Friday and probably Saturday also. Each night I try to work off stress by lifting weights or working the abdominals, but it is not enough to relieve the stress. And I end up eating too much each night.

On my off-Friday I ride the motorcycle to work and we run a vibration test. We have a few little difficulties and my experience really helps us over a hump when it looks like we are stalled. A few of the crew ask me where I learned some of the stuff that helped get us over the hump and I just chalk it up to experience. I don't ask them the question of who they will ask for help when I am retired. In the middle of the afternoon it is pouring rain and everyone is worried about me getting home. But I tell them it is a fast moving storm and will be gone and the roads almsot dry by the time finish work. Sure enough the storm moves out and I barely get wet from some road spray as I ride home. I get in a "best effort" session with the weights as a couple lifts are a struggle and others are easier.

I start a busy Saturday with a mountain bicycle ride to the old ycht club and back home with a few extra miles thrown in. I take the opportunity to wash the motorcycle before grabbing a shower. I dry the motorcycle and put it away and run errands to the library, the ATM, and the grocery store. Before noon Person Ti_Ca and I have Mexican food for lunch and I get dropped off at the bicycle store to ride my repaired bicycle home. I also give the cyclery shop a deposit for some carbon fibre wheels that should arrive in a couple of weeks. When I get home I mow the lawn and clean up the roses. And this is not enough so I wax the motorcycle before relaxing to the end of the afternoon.

I start Sunday's road bicycle ride enthused to be back on the road bicycle. I get started a fight a head wind most of the way up to the Whittier Narrows dam. And I continue north to the Santa Fe dam. On this ride I'll see a rider ahead and catch the rider. That rider will invariably try to stick with me on my wheel against the headwind. But after a little while they have dropped off - I'm on fire today! I get to the dam and turn back towards Long Beach with the same thing going on: catch a rider, pull them along, and then they drop off. Except one rider stays with me for 5 miles and takes a short turn at the front before slowing so that I have to pull again. By the time that I get home I've got in almost 60 miles and I'm a bit tired. I get in a shower and do some grocery shopping and then wax the wheels on the motorcycle. Later I watch the second-rate superbike race from Thailand and the Indy car race from Florida. A two hour nap in the middle of the afternoon helps but I'm left spaced out for the remainder of the day.

I take Monday off to make up for the previous off Friday that I worked. It is raining in the morning and my legs are hung over from Sunday's ride, so I get out for a one hour walk and return a library book along the way. I work on straightening up paperwork and then get in a session with the weights. When Person Ti_Ca comes back from school we go suit shopping for him since he has interviews coming up. And later in the day I catch the Kings' ice hockey game.

There are panics at work on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday the panic is related to a model delivery so I jump in and grab the component models and put them together. This takes most of Tuesday but I'm able to take enough data home to continue work there. When I get home I go for a run but my left calf starts hurting 20 minutes into the run. I have to mix up running and walking but I'm able to get in a good 60 minute run/walk with just enough pain to wonder when I can run again. On Wednesday there's a panic over a test so I go babysit the team as we work our way through the test nad make sure we don't mess it up like last time - this being a repeat of the wrong test that we ran a few weeks ago. When I get home I jump on the mountain bicycle and put in a very strong ride to the end of the ocean bicycle trail and back home. I maintain a good pace and don't let up or lollygag around today.

Thursday and Friday are continued stressful days at work and I keep thinking that I should be done with this mess. But I try my best to fix errors in other people's work, to update errors that I've made, and to make sure everything is technically correct. By Friday I am burned out even though I have only worked four days this week and I leave work at 3 pm. After Thursday's higher repetition, lower weight workout I work the abdominals and lower back on Friday and then mow the lawn.

On Saturday I'm out the door a bit after 7 am for a road bicylce ride past the Whittier Narrows dam. I go just past the ox in the farm and turn around to go home. The San Gabriel river trail is blocked off so I go back to the Los Angeles river trail to ride for home. WIthin a few miles of home the super-fast rides of my bicycle store are going past me and the storw owner (who is a 9 time state cycling champion) is yelling, "Come on Ray! Come on Ray!". But I don't have it today and let them go and ride with a couple of their riders who have dropped off the back. One of the guys has the deeper carbon fibre wheels and tells me that I've made a wise choice in going for the shallower ones. After a shower I run errands at two grocery stores, the Home Depot, and the library (to pick up a book about a guy who visits Cambodia and meets a Cambodian lady and stays for a while). (I don't know the ending of the book.) After a few phone calls and watching F1 qualifying from Australia, I take my mountain bicycle to the train and get transported to downtown Long Beach for another ciclavia event - where they close the streets to automobile traffic and let the cyclists and walkers go wild with bands playing. I ride around for two hours and then get on the train for home. Person T_U, who has said he wanted me to join me for the event but is always late, arrives down at the ciclavia event well after I have left. Person Ti_Ca and I go to get the suit that he has decided on tailored, buy some shirts and ties, and then go home to do homework. I atch the Los Angeles Kings' ice hockey game in the evening and get ready for a Sunday of F1 and MotoGP.

Here's another Sunday morning when I'mhungover from previous day's activities. Thus I take the mountain bicycle out for the loop ride. I get cranking quite nicely but at the end my legs are getting tired. As I get older it is harder to get two consecutives hard days of effort in a row. After a shower I cook lunch for the week while listening to the Formula One pre-race show. And then I settle in for a reasonably fascinating race. Later I catch another reasonably fasicnating and close MotoGP race. And after doing some minor house cleaning the day is almost gone. I start in on the new book from the library that takes place in Cambodia. I'm only into the first 30 pages and the story takes place at places I've been (not yet in Phnom Penh). I'm wondering how this book will turn out.

I get to work and finish with some models and simulations and PowerPoint charts for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We've made some mistakes in the last month or so but we caught them in the last few days and are finally ready to close out this effort on Wednesday. My productivity slows down on Monday afternoon as I watch the clock and finalyl go on home. I have a very good session with the weights, trim the roses, and clean the shower glass. The Kings' is on but I'm distracted with other things. Just as well as they play very flat and lose 5-2.