Wanting to protect my left knee from further damage and to encourage rehabilitation, I go walking on Tuesday moning for 88 minutes. At home I trim the roses, grab a shower, and get to the drugstore for an Ace bandage to wrap around ice packs on the knee. In my closet I find a knee compression device, which I do not know where it came from, but I put that on in between regular icing sessions of the left knee. I read the news and markets and watch the MotoGP race from the Czech Reoublic. I remember attending the MotoGP/2/3 races here in 2004 or 2005. You had to take a 30 minute train from the center of Brno where I just followed all of the spectators with various support shirts on for their favorite teams. After paying the entrance fee, we had to hike about 2 kilometers on tricky dirt paths to the track. And now, when they show the helicopter sites of the track, I see that the track is cut out of a beautiful forest and it makes me want to go again. I sat in the stadium section where everyone was drinking whatever liquor they brought with them and it kept lightly raining and stopping and lightly raining and stopping. Now the stdium section s packed with fans. I want to go again but maybe I'll buy a reserved seat somehwere else on the circuit. Later I offer help to a friend working on an SBIR contract. Then I watch the Mt Ventoux stage of of the TdF as I continue to bounce back and forth between ice on the left knee and the compression knee device that I found in my closet. This bouncing back and forth between ice and compression continues throughout the day. I have steamed vegetables and brown rice for a late lunch and try to eat as healthy as possible to get my left knee back to fitness. Later Joe comes to visit and we grab a Japanese dinner and catch up.
On Wednesday morning I go walking to vontinue my left knee rehabilitation and when I return home Joe is almost ready to go to work. I didn't realize he was going to work today before he picks yp his friend Ghabriel from the airport tonight. I ice my knee, grab a shower, pick up some groceries, and sit down to read the news. There's a phonecall from the retired schoolteacher saying "There were 20 or 30 people in her house all last night talking about 'dumping Trump' and keeping her awake all night". When I call her on the phone and make sure her exterior doors were deadbolted, her answer to my "How did these people get into your house" is "I don't know". Thus I get pushed around her healthcare providers for 45 minutes until I can speak with someone about a welfare check. And it turns out the welfare check is just a call to 911. Since I'm conferenced in on this call I tell them that you can send an ambulance but she won't go with them and then she'll get charged a non-trabsport $250 fee. I walk over and she's adamant that there were 60 people in her house (note the number change) and they kept her awake all night. Her healthcare providers are useless since she's clearly hallucinating and they won't do anything about it.
On Wednesday night into Thursday morning it is obviously late July so I have a window fan going. I have a sheet and a Mexican blanket over me and I wake up and I'm cold. What? Cold in July? So I turn off the fan and go to the other room where I store my down comforter and put that over me for the last hour of sleep. Except that I cannot answer the alarm and turn it off and sleep until 7am. I get up and read a bit of the news and then go ligt weights. Its a good workout with no shoulder or joint pain so it is time to increase the weights a bit. I trim the roses and grab a shower and run some errands including buying foor for the neighbor lady across the street who was actually mad at me yesterday and said some stern things. (As her niece told me, "It's the dementia talking") I deliver the food and she's fully stocked because Aldis made a delivery that her niece set up (though they were a few days late and that's why she was out of food). I go back home and read the news and markets and sit back for a mountain stage of the Tour de France.
After four days off from cycling and running and tons of icing sessions on my left knee, I go for a road bicycle ride on Friday morning. I go for mainly a spinning 50 kilometer ride with just a couple of hills to climb. And the minute I get home I put an ice pack on my left knee as I wipe the bicycle chain down, put it away, start my computer, and then take a shower. I run a couple of errands and put a knee compress on and later, as I watch the F1 practice session from Spa, Belgium, I have the knee the left knee wrapped in an ice pack again. I'll continue to alternatie ice packs and compresses throughout the day and see how my knee feels before bedtime. Later I have a lunch of steamed vegetables (of colors white, green, yellow, and orange) on top of an Indian flatbread. Later I watch the final mountain stage of this year's Tour de France and it seems like the last two days of the the TdF will be a mere formality. And after trying to talk down the retired schoolteacher from another hallucination, I watch the some of the Dodgers' game. (Is the retired schoolteacher's set of health insurance and doctors ever going to help her?)
On Saturday I go for a brisk walk for 100 minutes. I immediately ice my left knee and grab a shower. I just need a few items at the grocery store so I take the motorcycle out with my backpack and grab my items. Throughout the day I continue to alternate icing the left knee and using a compression fitting which I don't know where it came from. I finally try the marble etch remover compound that I ordered from Amazon a couple weeks ago. I've used these compounds to remove etches before, but they did not work well. (Etches in the marble are usually caused by acidic substances such as lemon juice or orange juice on the bottom ring of a glass or vinegar or wine or coke or tomatoes or from hwo nows what.) I start using the etching coumpound on only a few small etches (not stains) on the marble that have bothered me for many years and would not removed from previous trials. This one works well and if someone pulls out a microscope, they could see the etches - but who is going to pull out a microscope? I am my worst critic and I am happy with the results. Thus I go around the complete the kitchen marble surfaces and look for etches to remove and now I will no longer be bothered by etches (i.e., dullness) from marble stains that ONLY> I would ever see. I take time to watch a very weird and upside down Sprint qualifying from Spa, Belgium for F1 cars and then I watch a hilly stage of the Tour de France. By about 1pm I am eating lunch as I continue to inadvertently go on 18 hour "intermittent fasts" where I don't eat anything from about 7pm one night until 1pm the next day. Later in the day I kinda watch the Dodgers' game as a friend has suggested oa stock prediction idea to work on and though I dismissed this idea in 2019 and 2020, I re-consider it now.
I continue to rehab my left knee with another 50 kilometer ride. The knee feels better everyday. And I immediately strap an ice pack to the knee as I go out and trim the roses and sharpen up my axe. (Which I don't think I've ever sharpened.) I watch qualifying for the Belgian F1 race where teams have to make decisions ahead of qualifying to set up for a wet or dry race on Sunday - a very critical, race-changing choice if you get it right or wrong. At noon I watch the IndyCar race from Laguna Seca and ireegularly check up on the Dodgers' game. Late in the afternoon I fast forward through the final stage of the Tour de France and will be able to cut of my $7.99 monthly Peacock bill until next July. Late in the day I try to start my dishwasher with a "normal wash with dry heat" rather than a "one hour wash with dry heat". And I am able to get it working with a screwdriver on the touchpad.
I have a bad day mentally on Monday. I take the day off from cycling and running but in a great session with the weights in the morning where I've increased the weights on each lift a bit. It feels good. After ashower I work on a Markov chain model and the sample problem that I've found works well but as I try to modify it to do what I want it to do it keeps stopping with no errors but not completing the Markov chain. I'm puzzled. I watch a wet, then red-flagged, the wet, then dry F1 race from Spa, Belgium that has some interesting battles and strategy calls throughout the race. I take a few steps back on the Markov chain model and still can't get it to do what I want. So I pull out the new marble etch remover that I got last week and give it a try on a few small etches on the marble "railing" at the front of the sink. It works! The etches, which have bugged me for 14 years, are gone! And the marble surface feels and looks shinier. (These are not areas where the marble is stained, but areas where something acidic has dropped on the marble and dulled the surface. Something like orange juice or vinegar or Coke or anything acidic will almost instantly etch and dull the surface and leave a spot that you can only see with the light at a certain angle.) After this little trial I go out for a 52 minute slower walk and just look at all of the storefronts and try to recall what was in each storefront from when I first moved in. There are a few that are the same, but there has been a lot of turnover in the small business since the Covid pandemic. After a brief shower I just relax and lose myself in television.
I start Tuesday with a decent 65 kilometer bicycle ride and when a couple of riders pas me I just let them go - I'm still rehabbing the knee. But it's a good ride and I immediately put an ice pack on the left knee with a new old-style Ace bandage that just came in the mail. The one I bought last week at CVS kept shrinking down in width to less than an inch and was just a pain to wrap or unwrap. This old-style Ace bandage has no sticky substance on it and it keeps its full four inch width no matter how I wrap or unwrap it around ice-packed knee. I mess around with the Markov chain model and am still getting weird results so I pull out the new etch remover and remove a couple of other smaller etches in out of the way places but I end up using it lightly on the entire set of marbke kitchen countertops. Now they all look shinier and feel smoother. I grab lunch and watch some television and then play a bit with the Markov chain model. I know I am close but just making a silly mistake somewhere. Right near 6pm I have reconstructed some of the loops in the Markov chain code and now it works. The framework is now ready to be converted over to the actual problem to solve.
Not wanting to overdo my rehab but not get out of my routine, I take the mountain bicycle out for a recovery ride and turn around at the end of the beach trail (rather than carrying on through the peninsula). I very rarely use a higher gear today and spin for most of the time. The minute I get home I wrap my left knee in an icepack with the new old-style Ace bandage which is working well. With the icepack on my knee, I wash the kitchen floor (to remove any marble polishing grit that may have dropped on the floor) and then I line trim around the complete backyard. I do not mow the lawn today and save that for Thursday. After a shower I go to Trader Joes to re-supply my daily multi-vitamins and then to the grocery store for some final supplies for the month. At home I read the news and markets and then work a bit on generating the transition matrix in the Markov chain process. I also update the upcoming events sections of a couple of websites that I am responsible for and have to do as each month turns over to the next. I finally give the exterior of the stainless steel refrigerator and stove a reasonable cleaning after a few years. (Granted I try to wipe up spills or stains or marks the minute that I see them, so this is not as big an effort as it sounds like.) Late in the afternoon I switch on the Dodgers' game to watch another Shohei Ohtani start and this time he lasts 3+ innings with 2 runs scored against him as he rehabs from surgery. But he has had bad hip cramps throughout the start and has looked off the entire time. Fortunately he continues to bat even though they removed him from pitching.
I start Thursday with a good 82 minute walk where I actually have three very short running periods. I'm probably not ready to start runing yet especially since I don't want to mess anything up before a planned birthday ride. At home I immediately put ice on the left knee and mow the backyard with the icepack wrapped with an old-type Ace bandage. I remove the ice pack to go trim and mow the front yard because I don't want to answer questions if people see me with it on my knee. But after the shower I put the icepack on again for 30 minutes or so and regularly do this throughout the day. I get a phonecall from the retired schoolteacher's medical group and they will send a nure to see her at 1pm. I let them know I can be present if desired or they can fill me in privately afterwards or not at all. I don't want to infringe on her right to privacy about her medical condition (as dire as it is). I half-heartedly work on the Markov chain analsysis deriving probabilities from past data. I'm really close, but I'm just not fully into it today. In the meantime, I work on some other end of month activities and just relax with a lot of pasta ahead of a longer bicycle ride tomorrow.
On Friday morning I get in a 75 kilometer ride back to my normal speed. Though my left knee gives weird sensations, I have a good ride. As soon as I step off the bicycle I put the icepack on my knee wrapped with the Ace bandage and I clean the bicycle up to get it ready for a birthday ride. I grab a shower and make a quick trip to the grocery store before reading the news and markets. I quickly find one bug in the Markov chain model and there is one last process to be written (or debugged since it is partially written) before I can declare victory and wait for my friend to give it a trial. I slice vegetables to be steamed for lunch and watch FP2 for the Formula One cars in Hungary. Later I watch a bit of the Dodgers' game. But today I feel good and use the ice pack irregularly on the left knee and have a slow day.
I'm not sure what to do on Saturday morning and I end up taking the mountain bicycle out for a slightly shortened recovery ride to the end of the beach trail and back to home. I immediately put an icepack on my left knee and trim the roses and do a few other things with the ice pack present. After a shower I ride the motorcycle to the nearest Vons grocery store (after the one 1 kilometer away Vons closed down last February) and buy food and stuff it in my backpack. On the way home I manage to find three books of interest at the library and I know they won't fit in my backpack, so I check them out and then stuff them inside my motorcycle jacket and ride a bit slowly back home. (I've done this tons of times, so its not a problem.) I unpack everything, help the retired schoolteacher write a check and turn on her television (Have I mentioned that she should not be living alone?) and then I read the news. F1 qualifying from Hungary has some surprises so maybe Sunday's race will be fun. The Dodgers' have an early game from the east coast and they lose miserably. Later I watch a couple of Netflix movies and just relax. The Markov chain model and source code is open, but I'm not feeling it. I know that I am one small step away from it being finished and hopefully I will finish it on Monday and finish the writeup and send it off to my friend.
On Sunday morning I start the day with a spinning mountain bicycle ride but just to the end of the ocean trail and back to home. I don't go out onto the peninsula for these latest recover/rehab rides just to keep the distance a bit lower. I immediately ice the left knee, grab a shower, pick up supplies at the grocery store, talk wth friends over the phone, and visit the schoolteacher across the street who has decided that she will go back up to Ojai and live with her niece and nephew (which failed miserably last time) and probably die there. I encourage her to just ignore her niece and nephew's polar opposite politics and when it gets to be too much, just say, "I'm going to my room to listen to the news". I also help her with a bill to pay and tell her that I will help her make sure she has everything that she needs on the day before she leaves. (She cannot even remember what her MacIntosh charger cable does and says she's never used it but that cannot be true because she's had this MacBook for 14 years.) I also turn on her television because she can't remember from yesterday how to turn it on. Afterwards I watch an interesting F1 race from Hungary. And then I work on the Markov chain model that I had an inspiration from the in the middle of the night on Friday. It works! I convert the raw data into probabilities and just need to show some predictions against real data.
On Monday I hit the snooze button and stay in bed until 6 am. I read the news and markets and then get in a pretty good session with the weights - giving the legs a day off from cycling or walking. I take a quick shower and ride the bicycle to the grocery store. In front of me a customer is buying strange things and I ask him in Thai if he is Thai. He is, so we speak some Thai and he is from Chiang Mai and though I tell him that I love Chiang Rai, he appreciates that I can converse with him in his native language. Today's cashier has been on vacation in Taiwan and Japan, so I try to pay for my groceries with Japanese Yen. He looks at it and smiles and takes a minute to compute dolar equivalent. I'm surprised that his number is 30% higher than when I was in Japan - indicating the continued strength of the dollar. I ride home and implement some little imrpovements in the Markov chain model and write it up to deliver to my friend. I let him know the caveats and I hope that he understands that this is NOT a long term prediction tool. But rather a month-to-month tool. And I let him know that I will look for some daily data that I can demnstrate the Markov chain on. At lunch with steamed vegetabes and garlic nan, I watch the news and am completely dumbfounded by how our country is going. But I don't let it effect my blood pressure or anger and just accept it as I think about other countries to live in. Much later I watch the start of the Dodgers' game and then go read befoe sleep.