I start the new year with an extra hour of sleep since I hear raindrops and nasty wind. The rain isn't heavy, but enough to make cycling have to wait. I hope to get out near noon or so, but the wind is still nasty. Thus I bundle up and go walk for more than an hour and mow the lawn and pick up the leaves. Its perfect timing as the rain starts to fall just as I'm finishing up. And then another slow Sunday evening to start the new year.
I start Monday at 5:15 am because there's "yelling" amongst the noisy neighbors: "Hurry, we're going to be late", "Wait, I forogt my phone charger", "wait, I forgot this", "Hurry up and go get that". My alarm goes off at 5:30 am anyway, so I get up and see the neighbors piling into a white van and it turns out the van, was it Uber or Lyft or something, has been kept waiting and waiting and waiting as the neighbors try to get their act together. This is the lack of consideration that goes with the entire family - don't care about the neighbors and don't care about keeping the service workers waiting and etc. When it is light enough I get out for a mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back to home. I've missed many days of cycling due to rain and I can tell. After a shower I take the retired schoolteacher neighbor to her new doctor's office to signup, except that it is closed since Jan 2 is a holiday. We get over to Target and I show the neighbor how to drive one of those electric scooters and I walk along as she picks up a number of items. And then we go to Trader Joes and she picks up more items. Back at home I grab lunch and have the football games or the news playing the background. It's Jan 2 and I'm already building my calendar with the F1 and MotoGP race and test dates. Am I addicted or what? And later, as we wait for more rain, I watch some football and was going to watch some ice hockey (since my television provider has given me a free trial of the ice hockey package for one week). But the football game has a play, which I missed, where a player collapses on the field and actually requires CPR on the field. So I keep watching the delayed and finally postponed football game to try and get a status of the player who is in the hospital in critical condition.
Tuesday is a blah day. It rains just hard enough to make cycling dangerous and walking miserable. So I get in a session with the weights and though I'm still lifting very light, it feels better than last week when I started back in. I spend a fair amount of time setting up databases with my web hosting company after they changed the procedure and I'm still not there - I'll have to call them. And I take the retired schoolteacher neighbor to get signed up for her new primary care physician (who used to be her prrimary care physician a while ago) and it seems whatever guidance one office gave her is different than when we are there in person. But we get it straightened out and she already has a appointment scheduled for Monday. I make a quick trip to buy lottery tickets since the jackpot is about $750M and...what the heck? In the mail today I receive some sort of state stimulus that I was not expecting and when I activate the stimulus debit card, it says the balance is $250. Okay, thank you very much. I've heard that these cards are semi-easily hackable, so I'll make sure to activate it and quickly get to an ATM and draw as much money as I can out of it.
Wednesday and Thursday are, again, blah days since the rain hampers things somewhat. On Wednesday I try to get out walking with an umbrella but it starts raining pretty hard. I continue and get in a 65 minute walk but I'm soaked at the end and jump in for a warm shower as quickly as I can get my wet clothes off. I've heard that the stimulus debit cards are semi-easily hackable, so I activate it and drive directly to one of their designated no-fee ATMs to draw $200 (the max allowed) out of it. Then I drive to Vons and buy $43 worth of food to nearly zero-out the card before hackers can get at it. Thursday starts blah because today is supposed to be a heavy rain storm lasting all day. But it turns out that the bomb cyclone moves through the area quicker than expected and we do have some intense rain but by 1pm or so it is gone. Thus after I visit the hand surgeon (and am told that I don't have to come back anymore because we just need to give the finger time to heal) and get to the bank for cash for an upcoming trip, I get out walking in the cool sunshine for 75 minutes. And the next three days should be dry for cycling. On both Wednesday and Thursday I spend time watching the chaotic and humiliating process of the US House of Represetatives as they try to elect a speaker and I watch some Netflix before some ice hckey games come on.
It's cold on Friday morning from a cloudless night so I wait until 7:45 am to get out riding. Today I take the mountain bicycle down towards the old yacht club. Along the ocean beach bicycle path, the water has pooled within 10 meters of the bike path due to a large high tide and all of the rain that we've had. I've never seen the water anywhere near this close to the riding trail. When I turn towards the old yacht club I can only get about three quarters of the way there because the street is flooded. The water is up to the axle level of cars parked in the area and the police have blocked off the road. I turn and later add on some kilometers near the Queen Mary to get to a standard distance. The weaknesses in myhands and grip and forearm that have been present since my accident is gone or greatly reduced - probably due to lifting weights during all of the rain. After a shower at home I tidy the bathrooms, prepare the motorcycle for my trip by removing the battery, and unstick a door that has becme stuck due to all of the rain and the shifting soil. Later I just relax with some ice hockey and Netflix.
Saturday morning feels extra cold even if it isn't. I start out north on the Los Angeles river trail with the mountain bicycle. I hit a nasty headwind for the last quarter of the way to the Whittier Narrows dam. I still don't climb the dam and have a good ride back home for about fifty kilometers. My FitBit claims that eighty percent of the ride was in the redzone for heart rate. It was a good ride! After a quick shower I have a phonecall or two and then return library books, buy a couple of groceries for the next two days, and pick up some milk for the rtired schoolteacher neighbor. And then I become a vegetable and watch football.
I start out the riding the mountain bicycle at 7:27 am and get down to the old yacht club and back to home. There are still puddles of water on the sand, but the road to the old yacht club is clear of water, debris, sand, and mud. Its a good ride especially considering its the third consecutive day of riding. At home I weedwack the sideyard and rosebeds, clean up debris from the rains, and remove the pedals from the mountain bicycle for the trip. After a shower I start the laundry and start packing using a checklist I've put together over the last five years to make sure that I don't forget anything. And then I just relax with football and finish the last episode of a Netflix series.