I'm out of bed at 5:45 am and out the door for a road bicycle ride on the "bastardized derailleur". I take my recently usual Tuesday route and get in a good 75 kilometers. There were no issues with the rear derailleur. After a shower I relax a bit and grab a cinnamon muffin and then ride the Yamaha YZF-R1 down to the main public library in Long Beach to return four books and get four new ones. I stop off at CVS on the way home for some vaseline (used to reduce/remove "hot spots" where my cycling shorts rub the skin) and a bottle of wine. The bottle of wine gets opened at 1pm and soon I'm washing the kitchen floor and then washing the hardwood floors. I save the living room and hallway hardwood floors for last since I can watch and listen to the Moto2 pre-race interviews and show as I wash the floor. And now I can sit back and watch the Moto2 race. The results are not what I wanted for my favorite riders buts its a fun race nonetheless.
I'm out of bed at 5:45 am on Wednesday and out the door for a run/walk at 6:15 am. Today I take my time with a bit of extra walking to get warmed up but then expand the run/walk ratio for the rest of the effort. I end up at eighty minutes of of a good run/walk. Today, as is semi-regular, I see my Korean walk acoomplices and just slow down enough to ask "When is baseball season going to stop?" knowing that they are baseball fans. But neither of us know the answer. Back at home, I relax for a bit and stretch and then trim the roses and do some maintenance on the garage door. After a shower I do the grocery shopping and teasingly avoid my favorite cashier because "I thought you might have those scissors again". Last week she had pulled out scissors to help a shopper open a package and I told her that I almost changed cashier lanes when I saw her with the scissors. It's become our latest teasing. At home I cut my own hair thinking, as has been the case for the last four months, that this will be the the last time that I do this. I read the news and the markets and see no CSULA questions or issues coming in. Thus later in the day I experiment with some object oriented programming in Python for some of the human trafficking and child abuse processes. THis will take more time to work on, but it makes the code more compact. And throughout the day I think about finishing and filing my tax returns but cannot push myself to write out the big checks required this year.
I get in a good bicycle ride on Thursday down to the old yacht club and back to home. I prepare my taxes and find that I don't have large envelopes so I put everything on the dining room table for delivery tomorrow. At noon there's a Matlab-to-Python Zoom connference call which turns out to be a waste of ninety minutes. After 5pm I fill up the motorcycle with $20 of gasoline (never has this happened before) and ride down to Seal Beach to visit an acupuncturist. This first appointment takes a lot of time since she goes over my medical history and reasons for coming in. But afterwards, following a mess of needles shoved into me, I feel good. I'm just getting home before 9pm and pretty much prepare for reading and sleep.
I have great sleep on Thursday night into Friday. Was it the acupuncture and other pressure-relief techniques from last night? After reading the news for a while I go buy larger envelopes for myt ax returns, enclose/seal/post the envelopes in the parking lot of the post office, pay for certified mail delivery, then do some grocery shopping. At home I lift weights and find that I struggle on the right side with shoulder and bicep exercises. What's going on here? After a shower I just relax and gather some information for tonight's CSULA Zoom meeting. Today we late out a plan quickly and work on debugging the software. The team has made great progress since Christmas!
I start out the door at 6:16 am for a road bicycle ride. I'm heading north on the Los ANgeles river and the kilometers are not coming easy today. I get over the WHittier Narrows dam and then decide, what the heck, I can still get up to the Santa Fe dam. So I keep pushing forward and get to the dam. I turn around and two riders pass me very quickly on the downhill run and I just let them go. I climb back over the WHittier Narrows dam and continue south towards Long Beach wtih a little tailwind. And soon I;ve caught the two riders who took more advantage of the downhill than I did. As I catch them I slow down and we talk a bit and one of the riders has my bicycle frame but a newer addition. And we both joke "The bicycle is faster than I am". But I pull the two riders along and the next thing I know is they are gone. Where did they go? I complete the ride a bit slowly at the end for ninety kilometers. A warm shower feels good and I catch up with the news, discuss a few issues with CSULA students, and then ride the mountain bicycle over to the grand opening of the Bixby Knolls Center for Innovation and the Arts. The center is in an older abandonded church and as I walk around I realize how much I love this space and it would be a super-coup if the owners could get enough micro-enterprises, innovators, and artists to keep this space. After a while I ride on home and just relax because this has already been a busy day.
I start the first day of daylight savings time with a recovery ride on the mountain bicycle down to the old yacht club and back to home. My triathlete friend has warned me that he'll be running along the ocean again and I should expect to bump into him. But I don't. At home I edge, mow, and trim the front yard. Then I take the time to pick up all of the pieces of asphalt that have decided to crumble on the edge of my driveway. The crumbling pieces are only on one side, at the boundary with the street, and the other side is intact. But I should expect that patch of asphalt to crumble soon. I go trim the roses and bring fresh blooms inside the house. The roses are just about to bloom wildly. I get in a warm shower and then notify the CSULA students that though we fixed some issues on Friday and Saturday, I think we fixed them slightly wrong. It's just a matter of taking vector components but I think we accidentally "squished" them all together rather than subtracting later. And I've been working hard now since 6:30 am so I take a break and just relax with some freebie movies and golf and other things.
I've slept horribly on Sunday night into Monday and feel blah most of the day. I work the abdominals, lower back, and core muscles and then ride the road bicycle over to the repair shop for the new hangar (which holds the rear derailleur). I've told the shop owner that I'll be there a bit after 11am but the shop is still closed when I arrive. I call him and he says he's finishing taxes and was delayed but will be at the shop in ten minutes. To keep things moving, I help hime roll twenty bicycles out of the shop and onto the sidewalk as display to attract new customers. And then I go across the street and read. It's probably only an hour and I get a call back saying the bicycle is ready. And then I ride home, grab a shower, and pass the day with some CSULA help and some recorded television programs.
Since its now daylight savings time, I can't safely get on the road bicycle until about 6:45 am and have a good seventy kilometer ride. Though there is heavy fog along the ocean. And I notice I'll have to finetune the front derailleur, rear brakes, and a water bottle holder. Maybe its time to find a new bicycle shop. (I regret the day that Long Beah Cyclery closed down in summer of 2019 because they were super friendly and technical and precise. But at least they closed down before the pandemic as the owner got a job offer that he couldn't refuse with a good salary and good benefits.) After a shower I work on the monthly crime reporting maps and help out the CSULA students some more. At least they are making good progress and the questions they have are tricky ones that they wouldn't easily be able to figure out. The rest of the day is fairly slow as I keep stretching muscles out and watch a few remaining recorded television programs.
I start Wednesday with a morning run/walk - though today I do more walking than usual since my left hamstring hurts a bit and I'm just not feeling it. After getting cleaned up I drive to my medical center to give a blood sample, to refill a prescription, and to get my blood pressure checked. The BP is very good and I'll get blood test results soon. I stop at an ATM and the grocery store on my way home and then trim the roses and just kinda be a vegetable for the rest of the day.
I start Thursday with a mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back home again. After a shower I get my blood tets results and they look good. My HDL (i.e., good cholesterol) keeps inching up while my LDL stays fairly constant. I read the markets and the news and binge watch a Netflix series. Late in the day I ride the motorcycle down to Seal Beach for my second appointment with this new acupuncturist.
I've preplanned to sleep in late on Friday and get n extra hour or so of sleep. I walk to the grocery store for supplies and then read the news and the markets. I've probably feeling the effects of the acupuncture and cupping from last night, so there probably will not be a workout today. Instead I trim the roses, mow the backyard, deweed the sideyard, and do a bit of digging to fill in some holes in the backyard. After a shower I check the FP1 and FP2 results from Bahrain for F1 and then ewatch the FP2 sessions for MotoGP and Moto2 from Indonesia. The CSULA meeting gets cancelled at the last minute and I just relax and prepare for Saturday's long road bicycle ride.
I'm not sure I'll do the long road bicycle ride today, but I start out in semi-darkness at 6:30 am and head north along the Los Angeles river. Unlike other rides where it takes 10 kilometers to get going, today I'm cranking right from the start. I keep thinking I'll just go to the shorter turn-around point today and go home. But I get there and feel good so I keep on going up to the Santa Fe dam and turn around. There's a little period where I'm more mentally tired than physically tired and though I've made this ride 100 times before, I make a wrong turn but realize within 20 meters that I've gone the wrong way. I get back on the right path and finish with a good 90 kilometer ride. After a shower I start in with F1 qualifying from Bahrain and the Moto3/Moto2/MotoGP qualifying from Indonesia. Since Indonesia is a new track, the qualifying is exciting and there are a lot of riders trying to hard and falling off (unhurt) which makes for a fun session. The rest of the day is just spent continuosly stretching various muscle groups and relaxing. As I'm in bed reading before sleep I hear some raindrops and get out of bed just to see how heavy the rain is. It appears more than light now, but not enough to stop a Sunday morning bicycle ride if it ends soon.
I wake up on Sunday morning to no electrical power in the house. I look out the front window and see that no house or street lights are illuminated, so at least it is not my house. I get dressed and as I start out the door for a mountain bicycle recovery ride at 6:33 am I hear the neighbor's air cnditioning come on. And as I ride down the street there are house lights on and street lights on. I continue on for a windy ride to the old yacht club and back to home. The power is on when I return. I stay outside to trim the roses and then go take a warm shower and do some grocery shopping. I've decided today will be a pure autoracing day so I watch the F1 race from Bahrain with some good battles with the new regulations and later watch a recorded IndyCar race from Texas. MotoGP/2/3 will all get delayed a day as I prolong the excitement throughout the coming week.
Monday is a fairly slow day. I fill out some forms and write out a check to the state for a non-profit and, after reading the news and the markets, I walk to the post office to send it off certified mail. When I get home I work the abdominals, core, and lower back muscles and then grab a shower. The MotoGP race from Indonesia is delayed for more than an hour due to a downpour and treacherous track conditions. When they start the race the track is still fully wet. It's an exciting race and despite the track being fully wet, there are no crashes and it's fun to watch. Later in the days I do some scrubbing of bathrooms and just kind of relax.