I have two more good days of cycling on Tuesday and Wednesday to go with Monday's ride. I don't seem to be tired and acoomplish other things around the house throughout the days. On wednesday I drive to Torrance to visit a chriopractor/acupressurist to see if he can help with my left ear. I visited Dr Jo about five years ago and he gave me self massage and exercise to perform after a fall and they cleared up the symptoms in a couple of weeks. Though I know this will be more diffciult. Do Jo and I have a great visit and he does perform a typical chriopractic neck adjustment but he also gives me some acuproessure/self massage exercises to perform and tells me that I am low on zinc. I ride on home on Wednesday and take extra zinc and continue to do the self massage on my neck throughout the evening. Byt the time that I go to read and sleep my neck is sore from all of the massage.
On Thursday I cannot answer the bell to go cycling - my legs are tired. Instead I get out walking and lose track of time and end up walking for 72 minutes. When I get home I fix a couple of sprinkler heads that have sunk down and then I trim the roses. Today is going to be hot, I'm tired, and my neck is sore from self massage, so it is a slow day. But I continue to do the neck self massage/acupressure exercises even if my neck is sore. We're hoping that the self massage and exercises can relieve stress and tension in the soft tissue fascia and stop the blockage of nerve signals. What else can it be? We'll find out on Monday or so since I have a MRI scheduled to look for cranial nerve blockages and neuroma that could be affecting my hearing. I don't know where Thursday afternoon or evening go since it is very hot outside.
After sleeping very poorly on Thursday night into Friday morning, I get out on a decent road bicycle ride though a bit shorter than desired. Back at home I water and feed the roses, vegetables, and carnations. When I get inside the house there's a message that I need to go have a blood test TODAY so that I can have the MRI on Monday. Really? The MRI has been ordered for a week and they tell me at the last minute that I need a blood test? I roll the motorcycle out but it won't start. The battery keeps losing more and more storage capacity. So I roll the motorcycle back into the garage and drive the World Rally Car to my heatlh center to refill a prescription and to have the blood draw. Hopefully the results will be in by Monday. It's a Khmer lady who draws my blood and after I surprise here by greeting her and and asking her how she is in Khmer, we start talking. And well after my blood is drawn and labeled we keep talking about places to visit in Cambodia and I point her to a couple of movies that take place in Cambodia that she and her husband can watch. I drive back home, stopping for pick-up lunch along the way. Back at home I take the battery out of the motorcycle and put it on the charger. This motorcycle really needs some maintenance but I swore I wouldn't put anymore money into it and would go buy a new one. And I was ready to do that until yesterday's 7% stock market drop. What to do? I spend the rest of the day self-massaging the neck and watching movies.
I sleep well on Friday night into Saturday morning. Just after the alarm goes off at 5:55 am there is a moment of doubt when I think that I might just go walking this morning. But I get out of bed and get ready and leave the house at 6:24 am for a road bicycle ride. I get in a decent ride. I think about extending it a bit but decide against it. Back at home I trim the roses and bring new blooms inside the house to bring me joy and pleasure for the next few days. And I do some deweeding and degrassing of the rose beds with a weed wacker. After a shower I pick up some supplies for the day and start reading emails. My kidney functions are okay so I can have the MRI on Monday which requires the injection of a contrasting agent (which can be hard on the kidneys). I see that the motorcycle battery has lost 3/4 of a Volt while sitting disconnected overnight so it is barely hanging on with its last legs (or last cells). I spend some time in the afternoon cleaning up and shredding or recycling old paperwork. And I start into the book shelves and I have to decide at some point whether I think I'm going to work as an aerospace engineer again because I have a lot of useful notes and textbooks. But they have not been opened in a few years now.
I start SUnday with a recovery ride on the mountain bicycle. It's still a two hour ride at decent pace with some headwinds, but I'm a bit physically hungover from the last two days of riding. Back at home I deweed the vegetables and trim a bush and then grab a shower. Today I just relax and catch up on some Netflix series that I'm watching and ressurect some Python Markov chain scripts that I worked on back in February. I didn't have much luck back then, but I decided to give it another shot.
I start Monday with a 70 minute walk. At one point I stop and talk with a lady who is out walking her 9 year old golden retriever. I miss Nopey! Back at home I water the vegetables and trim the roses and get cleaned up. I work for a couple of hours on the Markov chain work and can't quite get the genetic algorithm, tha designs the Markov chain parameters, to work. But I keep pounding away until I drive to my medical center for an MRI of my head. We're trying to get to the bottom of my hearing loss. This is a contrast MRI, so you get in the machine and it takes 30 minutes of reading, they inject a dye in your arm, and then you go back into the machine for another 10 minutes. The dye they inject is both thick and a large quantity, so it hurts the arm a bit and bleeds some. Since an MRi can be claustrophobic and loud, I've brought my foam ear plugs and kept my eyes closed the entire time inside the machine (so I cannot get clasutrophic due to the tightness of the space). I drive on home and watch some television and then work on the Markov chain again. I finally figure out what is going on and have to resort to an old fashioned penalty function in order the pose the design problem properly. By the end of the night I'm getting results that are believeable even if they take more iterations than I would like. It helped to quit working on this problem and come back to it - though the three month off-time is more than optimal.
I sleep horribly on Monday night into Tuesday. I wake up a bit after 2 am and cannot sleep so I read until almost 4:30 am. I sleep in until 6:30 am and get out to the grocery store for shopping before the crowds come in. Back at home I work on the Markov chain analysis. At mid-morning I have a good session with the weights, clean up the roses, clean/lubricate the chain of the road bicycle, and re-install the battery in the Yamaha YZF-R1. It starts up sort of easily, but I know that the battery, the chain, the sprocket, and engine seal is on its last legs. After a shower I catch up on news and email a Yamaha dealer for a price quote on a new motorcycle. I have a surprise phone call from one of my financial advisors and we agree to talk again tomorrow after I've done some homework today. It isn't until nearly 2pm that I'm finally having lunch.
I'm awake and out the door early on Wednesda morning for a good ride to the end of the bicycle trail and back at home. I needed to start early to try and get back home to catch Emilio, one of the gardners, to relay a message to him from the neighbors. Back at home there is no sign of Emilio yet so I didn't miss him. I trim the roses and get cleaned up. I verify the research that I did yesterda on a couple of mutual funds to jump into and things look resonable for a call with one of my financial advisors late in the morning. Emilio shows up at 9:15 am and I give him the message and phone number for the neighbors. Today to pull out the trimmers and cut my own hair again. I'm a bit more aggressive this time and so it is shorter and I think it will pass.
On Thurday the alarm goes off at 5:55 am and I put it out and turn and go back to sleep. I eventually wake up about an hour later and get dressed to go cycling. I have a good mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back home. When I get home I water the vegetables and the carnations and then I get cleaned up. By the time that I have finished getting cleaned up, I have a message indicating an interest in the motorcycle that I have for sale. I end up having two conversations and a few email exchanges with the interested party with new photos shared of the 2002 Yamaha YZF-R1 motorcycle. I keep telling the interested party to slow down and think about this because I may have every service record of the bike, it is very old with a lot of mileage and I want him to enjoy the bike if/when he purchases it. I do minor tidying up of things around the house and I still face the dilemma of keeping or getting rid of tons of engineering notes and books that I've had for many years. Of course I punt the decision down the field and will think about it later. I eventually realize that it is 1:30 in the afternoon and I have not eaten anything yet today. So I cook some vegetables and sit down to watch television with vegetables and chips. As the day progresses and I have an offer on the Yamaha YZF-R1, I start having second thoughts about getting rid of it. I do mental calculation of how much work it needs and it might not be so bad if I skip the small oil leak.
I get out walking first thing on Friday morning for over an hour. I spot clean the oil leak from the Yamaha YZF-R1 and then trim the roses - brining in some nice blooms for the living room. Since the neighbors are making noise moving and it is well past the legal 7 am "quiet time", I go mow the front and back yards. I take one last chance to start the YZF-R1 and it starts right up. So I grab a shower, call my motorcycle repair people (who have moved slightly closer to me since I last went there), and then take the bike in. I've decided to keep the bike and dump a bit of money into and kick the can down the road for a year or two before deciding what to ride next. I run into the typical repair people and they need to see the odometer indicating 103,672 miles on the Yamaha YZF-R1. And the service order gets written up and I take a Lyft back home (with both the driver and me wearing masks).
I don't answer the call to go cycling on Saturday morning. Instead I go do the major grocery shopping for the week. A bit later I lft weights, trim the bushes along one side of the house, and trim the bushes along the other side of the house. I also do the semi-annual gate adjustment - once just as summer begins and once after a bit of rainfall in December (since the ground shrinks and swells and throws off the latching of the gate). After a shower I go pick up lunch for later and cook a ton of vegetables for the week. And then just relax with television and other small things.
When I try to get out for a road bicycle ride on Sunday morning, I cannot. The front tire s flat. It was fine when road it last, so I must have picked up a flat right near the end of the last ride. So I switch over to the mountain bicycle and have a good strong ride. I get cleaned up and then I get a start on cleaning the garage. To do this I have to remove everything, wash down the floor, let it dry, and then put everything back. So I start removing everything and get halfway done and it has only been 30 minutes. So I keep going and empty the garage and wash down the floor. I take a break to go grab lunch to bring home and let the garage floor dry. It takes a while for the garage floor to dry, but I take my time putting stuff back - working 10-20 minutes at a time. Finally everything is done except I need to clean the carpet where the workout bench is. This will wait until tomorrow. Now I'm tired, a good tired, so I take it easy for the rest of the day. I don't even fix the road bicycle tire.
I get out for a good two hour ride on the mountain bicycle down to the old yacht club and back home (since I have't fixed the road bicycle flat tire yet). At home I pull out the garage carpet and vaccum it down. I find this goes easily and picks up all of the dust and dirt if I use a vaccum brush tool with the brush removed. I pull the carpet back into the garage and put the weght bench and extra weights into position. After a shower I take off to do errands - the ATM machine, CVS pharmacy (where I accidentally shredded my CVS rewards cards last week), the car wash, and a stop for lunch supplies. Back at home I put everything away and the World Rally Car looks great. Should I give it a coat of wax or not? I get inside the house and pay bills and check the news and markets and relax during the warm part of the day. I've already accomplished everything on my to-do list through Tuesday even though it is only Monday noon.