I start Tuesday with a 40 minute walk and get cleaned up to ride the motorcycle up to California State University at Los Angeles. A group of faculty members, industry sponsors, and volunteers discuss the senior design projects and the logistics. I think I am getting assigned to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for police, fire, and other extreme use where the UAV has to take a bullet or an explosion and be able to return to base. Afterwards I'm supposed to meet up with team members from last year's project, but nobody shows up. Person Ed_C texts me and we meet up at a Thai restaurant in Monterey park and have a nice lunch and visit. When I get home I fix a sprinkler that has broken and try to get back to the encryption implementation. But my heart isn't in it late in the afternoon. But later in the evening I make some progress and hopefully tomorrow it will go live on the website for testing.
I start Wednesday with a 45 mile road bicycle ride. It takes a while to get going but then I crank quite nicely with a pretty rapid pace all of the way down the San Gabriel river and along Del Amo until I get stopped for a traffic light. Its a good ride and I feel strong at the end. After a shower I run errands at Target, two banks, the library, and the grocery store. In the middle of the errands Person T_U calls and I drive over to one of his rental properties that he is refurbishing. Both units are a mess and its a lot of work. And I just say to Person T_U, "And you keep finding me rental properties to buy, but I don't want to be burdened with all of this work". He understands. Person H_CS was supposed to visit later in the afternoon but isn't feeling well. Thus I relax and don't quite have the motivation to get the encryption live. Instead I start making needed phone calls to alert banks about upcoming travel plans.
I'm lazy on Thursday and take care of the roses and some paperwork first thing in the morning. When I would normally be finishing a bicycle ride I start out on the mountain bicycle for a recovery ride to the old yacht club and back. It's a good recovery ride. When I get home I put my head down and finish off the encryption. Somewhat to my surprise, it works! We now have 256 bit AES encryption running and it doesn't seem to slow the process down too much. In the middle of the afternoon I drop off for a nap and then have a 6 pm teleconference. The shotgunning is back! Instead of trying to stay focused on the child abuse product for launch, team members want to take off in different directions. Some of us try to get things back and focused on the child abuse process for hospitals.
Friday is a slow day. I get out walking and work the abdominals and lower back. I manage to organize things that I need for the trip. And I manage to start documenting the child abuse web programs. Otherwise the day passes without much of anything accomplished or done.
I don't sleep well on Friday night and have a number of weird dreams about exes. One is very disturbing about an ex-girlfriend from 30 years ago. In the dream it is as if nothing happened between us and we are both ready to get back together. Nonetheless I have a good 45 mile road bicycle ride when I get up. As I apporach the dam I see another coyote run across the bike trail in front of me but behind a couple of cyclists ahead. When I catch them I ask if they saw the coyote behind them but they did not. After getting cleaned up I get the car washed and look for some travel-friendly clothes and find one shirt anyway.
I have some trouble sleeping again on Saturday night. But I'm out the door by 6:40 am for a mountain bicycle ride to the old tacht club and back. After a shower I start laundry and clean up the roses and start laying clothes and other articles out for the trip. I catch a wet but drying MotoGP race from the Czech Republic and then watch a wet Olympic men's marathon. I do some more packing and then wacth a very wet Moto2 race, more packing, and a very wet Moto3 race. Near 8 pm my neighbor gives me a ride to the train station and I take two trains and a shuttle bus to Los Angeles International airport for a redeye flight at 11:35 pm.
I get to Quito, Ecuador on Monday afternoon and go walking. It doesn't matter where I go because I've been sitting so long that I need to walk. And I have no plan. At one point I see a cyclist stopped at an intersection and I ask him (in Spanish) where I can rent a bicycle. And he gives me a couple of leads - one which I reject immediately because the bikes at that shop are crappy bikes. Later in the evening Person F_Ec comes to visit and we start planning the trip.