On Tuesday I wake up and hear raindrops starting to fall. This was expected. Near 6 am I grab a coat and umbrella and walk to the Starbucks for two blueberry muffins - I'm cracing something sweet. I start trying to fix the code that I realize had a bug or miscommunication or two and I wash the blueberry muffins down with a combined Red Bull and Mountain Dew. I'm maling incredible progress and I look at the time and its approaching noon. I put on workout clothes and have a good workout with the weights (as ideas on fixing the bug and making the code robust come to mind). After a quiak shower I work on the code a bit more grab cheese, letttuce, and tomato sandwiches for lunch. And then I go code more. Later I take a break to watch some of the Dodgers' game and eat three of the cookies that I must have baked two weeks ago. They are still good with ice cold milk. On Tuesday night, since I am so thin now, I am so cold that I put on one of my pair of hunter's socks and the down comforter on te bed. This is going to be a long six weeks until I get to Vietnam.
I'm awake at 5:30am and resetthe alarm for 6am. I put on three layers to go cycling in the cold, wet conditions: a base layer sweat shirt, a cycling jersey for its pockets, and an outer shell. My core body stays sort of warm during this mountain bicycle ride but my face gets very cold. I only use the mountain bicycle because there will be wet and sandy patches and I want the added traction (and I just wiped down the road bicycle so that it looks brand new). I have a good ride and really don't notice the cold after the first few kilometers. At home I grab a shower, meditate, and get back on the bicycle to pick up wine and cheese. When I'm at home I read the new and markets, pay some bills, add more information to my Vietnam eVisa, and do some tidying up of my bathroom. By now it is 12:30 and I have not eaten anything so I chop up some vegetables to steam (in a bit) and go back and look at my code from yesterday. I have an email from my friend who I am coding for and explain the problem that I had with Python but also say it is almost fixed and that I have Reinfrocement Learning and Neural Network concepts almsot ready to go. I stay close to the house between noon and 4pm because I've received a notice of an international delivery for these hours. Thus I play around with the code and look through my archives to find the neural networks that I used in the past with reasonable success.
I start Thursday with another mountain bicycle recovery ride to the old yacht club and back to home. The rainy day messed up my usual schedule but I didn't want to run before Friday's expected long road bicycle ride. So a partially spinning, partially pushing mountain bicycle ride doesthe trick. At home on this cold day, I trim the roses, get in a warming shower, mediatate, get to CVS for more Bacitracin antibiotic creame (which I can use during my trip) and wine, pick up a new pair of reading glasses from last week's eye doctor appointment, and drop off a book at the library. When I've put everythig away I pull the road bicycle and turn it upside down and drop lubricant along the shifter cables since the shift levers were not returning to their neutral position after I got wet a couple weeks ago. It seems like this helps and I turn the bicycle rightside up and set it in the sun (with a towel underneath) to let the lubricant flow around and not stain the driveway. Tomorrow's ride will be the true test of this maintenance task. I then read the news and markets as the road bicycle soaks up the sun and I receive a package of free probiotics and free medical tape from my Medicare Supplement plan. I unpackage them and out them away for my trip. In the mail today I receive reports on two children that I sponsor through World Vision and both seem to be improvinge ach year. As I'm ready to pick up the wine glass to fill it a Long Beach Police Department SUV drives slowly down my street and stops at my neighbor's house. It's a quick visit and I don't know the nature or details of the visit, but the police officers are back on their way to the next call within a minute or two. Today I cook pasta again to carboload for tomorrow's expected long road bicycle ride and I pass the day away with some Netflix, the Dodgers' game, and some of the football game. I'm burnt out from the coding of the last few days and can't bring myself to even generate plots of the resulting data.
I start Friday, a chilly day, with three layers for a long road bicycle ride. A t-shirt, a long sleeve sweat shirt, and a cycling jersey. I make good progress after the warmup and fight against a chilly headwind all of the way up to the Santa Fe dam. I take advantage of a slight tailwind going south and I'm feeling good. Thus I go south past Del Amo to the bridge and turn around and fight a headwind back to Del Amo. Riding across Del Amo I'm starting to feel tired but get in two good sprints to make amber lights. I conclude with 110 kilometers. I immediately take a calcium/magnesium supplement to fend off legs cramps and put ice packs on my knees. After a shower I run a quick errand and start watching MotoGP FP2 from Australia. Except that I'm interrupted by two long consectutive phone calls with Karlos and with the retired schoolteacher's neice. Despite having no blood or brain sugar left, I am completely rational and we talk about the various situations. Finally I get back to MotoGP FP2 from Australia, lunch of steameed vegetables and bread, FP2 for Moto2, and finally sprint qualifying for F1 from COTA. I take a break and become a vegetable as I watch some of Dodgers' game. Later I have a small bowl of blank pasta and cheese and just get ready for a busy Saturday. My 50th high school reunion friends call me and we have a conference call. It's good to hear their voices and find out what they are doing.
Saturday starts with a chilly 80 minute run and icing the knees. After a warming shower I meditate and start gettting together things I might need for the morning human trafficking event being held at Star Elementary school - right near the location where a lot of prostituion and human trfficking occurs. Because I "kinda represent the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task force", I wear a tie and nice shirt and pants to the meeting. I see two members for the LBHTTF but we don't really exhange any significant discussions. There are presentations from the city and they are doing their best. When public comment from overly-emotional residents taking place, I leave and go shopping at Vons for pasta and cinnamon muffins and wine. At home I watch fun watch MotoGP/2/3 qualifying from Australia and then the F1 sprint race from COTA where the two constructor champions take each other out. And have a slow remainder of the day.
I'm just really tired on Sunday morning and reset my alarm for another thirty minutes. I get dressed and take the mountain bicycle out for the traditional Sunday recovery ride to the old yacht club. I spin at times and push at times, but enjoy the ride. At home I trim the roses, do some other gardening, grab a warming shower, and meditate for both mindfullness and physical recovery. I start the laundry, charge every device inside my house, and watch a fun MotoGP sprint race from Australia with close battles throughout. I chop and cook vegetables and enjoy them with whole wheat bread during some meaningless football games. Later I watch F1 qualifying from COTA and then spend time with more meaningless football games and a meaningless baseball playoff game. I make a few changes to the current code after talking with my friend and vow to make Monday a strong coding day, a day off from working the legs, and a day of lifting weights. I'm just plain worn out and need a vacation - though that will not happen until 24 November. And that open-ended vacation, will still involve a ton of cycling and running and coding, so when is my real vacation?
I'm out of bed at 5:45 am to read the news and work on code. Today is a day off for the legs and I'll lift weights later. Python is doing some really weird things and I still haven't finished debugging when I go lift weights. I get in a good session and grab a shower. I still don't have any ideas for the Python code so I watch the MotoGP race from Australia (though I accidentally saw on Facebook who won). I try to stay away from Facebook during F1 and MotoGP weekends, but i messed up. After the race I continue debugging the Python code and make progress on the strange legends its putting up on plots. One last little fix to the Markov chain calculation and I can move on to the Reinforcement Learning project and the Neural Network project. (THough I still have to go look for my old neural network codes to reuse.) Later I watch the Detroit Lions' Monday night football game.
I get out for the traditional Tuesday morning ride and before I get to Cherry and H ear a tick-tick-tick noise. I stop at Cherry amd cannot see anything, so I continue on. It is still there and I stop at Paramount and see a very thin wire stuck in the tire and bent laterally so that it hits the brake calipers on every wheen rotation. I know these thin wires are the ones that typically cause flat tires, but I pull out the thin wire and continue on. I turn north on the San Gabriel river trail and now I know for sure that my front tire is very slowly going flat. Nnethe;ess I get to my turnaround point and squeeze the front tire with my fingers and sure enough it is going flat. I turn south on the San Gabriel river trail and realize that I'm not going to make it home. I stop in at Liberty Park where lots of cyclists gather to ride from and find one and ask if he has a floor pump. He does not, but he has an electric pump that he pulls out of his saddlebag and we pump my tire up enough so that I can get home. I thank him in Tagalong because it's obvious from his accent where he is from. At home I take off my predominantly white and yellow Renault cyling jersey and immediately take the flat tire and tube off the bicycle rim. I replace them with one of the brand new tires I just bought and with a new tube. I ride up and down the street to make sure I haven't pinched the tube durng installation and put the bicycle away. I trim the roses, grab a shower, meditate, race to the downtown publc library and find four interesting books off the "new books" shelf within five minutes and check out. At home I keep checking the front tire every few hours to see if I pinched the tube on installation and hopefully I'll ride without incident tomorrow. I finally get to the F1 race from COTA which has different strategies employed by different drivers. Thus it's interesting to see who will prevail but my favorite team (and it's lead driver) win the race very easily. Later I spend time hard-prining some roses that I thought that I had dug and removed from last year and then I sweep the driveway. The rest of the day is fairly slowly with pondering whether my road bicyce front tire was sufficiently fixed for a ride on Wednesday morning.
On Wednesday I sleep an extra 30 minutes because it is still very dark and almost dangeroud to be out riding - even with lights. I ride noth on the Los Angeles river trail and get t the Whitteier Narrows dam and a bit beyond and turn back for home About halfway home I feel my front tire going flat again. What? I just put on a brand new tire and brand new tube. It seems that if I pinched the tube it wouldn't have given me 40-50 kilometers. Thus I stop every five kilometers and pump up the front tire and ride slowly towards home. I could change to a spare tube, but I'm afraid, if I did pinch this one, I'll pinch another one. So I crawl home slowly, stopping every few kilometers to get some air into the tire. I'm surprised that there are so few riders that pass me as I'm going so slow. But I make it home and immediately edge , trim, and mow the front and backyards and then pump up the tire. I go take a shower and do some grocery shopping and when I return, the front tire is very soft. After reading the news and markets for a bit I pull the front wheel off the bicycle and there are no objects on the outside of the tire and I cannot feel any on the inside ofthe tire. But I easily find the hole in the inner tube and I can't figure out what caused it. So I put in a new tube and throughoutghout six hours incrementally increase the pressure in the front tire and come back and check on it later to see if it has dropped. It has not. Near 4pm I finally go up to about 110 psi and put the bicycle away. There's 40 hours I'll let it set before a hopefully long Friday ride. I watch an entertaining Moto2 race from Australia and then a documentary about scamming and slavery on youtube called "Foreced to Scam: Cambodia's Cyber Slaves". I've known this was going on, but if you've ever gotten a random phonecall or text by some thinking you are someone they know, and they try to start up a friendship when you tell them they have the wrong number, this is what is happening. It's been an eventfull day and I just relax for the late afternoon and evening hours.
I istart Thursday with a 15 kilometer run and everrything feels good. At home I trim the roses, make sure the repaired tire is holding air, and then pull out the flat tubes to see if the hole is in the same locations (relative to the valve stem). They are not. I know the first flat was caused by a tiny piece of metal wire that stuck in the tire and poked through to the tube. The second is a mystery since I see nothing in the front tire - remember this was its first ride. And the hole doesn't really look like a pinch during installation. Very puzzling. But I'll see what the tire pressure reading is on Friday morning and then go try again for a long ride. After a shower I meditate, print out my eVisa for Viet Nam which just came via email today, and gather a few other documents that I know I will want to have. I read the news and markets and visit the prosthodontist in the afternoon. When I get home I cook pasta to carboload for Friday's road bicycle ride and then watch some of the football game.
I sleep well on Thursday night into Friday morning except that I wake up and my right shoulder hurts - actually the area between the right side of the spine and the right scapula. I flip over and switch to my left side and get out the door for cycling after 6am. I've been going out a bit later since the darkness stays with us so much longer in the mornings. I'm mentally tentative because I've had two flat front tires on my last two rides and physically tentative because the right shoulder discomfort is present. On today's ride I go north on the Los Angeles river trail and mentally hallucinating another flat, I stop for ten seconds at THAT Home Depot in Paramount on Alondra where our current president FIRST deployed the National Guard to tound up illegal immigrants. (By the way, there is no such thing as an illegal human being.) Both tires feel file so I continue. The shoulder discomfort comes and goes and gets extreme at one pint, but I get past the Whittier Narrows dam and El Monte airport to the Santa Fe dam and start south for home. I'm mentally feeling confident in my bicycle and it's tires and so I continue on past Del Amo down to the bridge. I make a quick U-turn and go back to Del Amo and ride on home, with plenty of shouldeer/scapula discomfort, to finish a 110 kilometer ride. I get in a quick shower and stretch. My typical upper bacl and shoulder stretches do not hurt. I read the news and markets and lay everything out to watch MotoGP and Moto2 practice sessions from Malaysia - both somehwat affected by light or heavy rain suddenly appearing as happens in that part of the world. I chop up and steam vegetables and lay them on whole wheat bread with some Italian oil for lunch near 2pm. I keep performing stretches for the legs and shoulder areas and feel no discomfort. I manage to squeeze in the FP2 session for F1 from Mexico city before I end the day and week with the Dodgers' first game of the World Series from Toronto.
I'm out the door after 6am for a 99 minute run/walk. I'm trying to slowly work the distance up after my knees were give me warnings six weeks ago. I immediately ice both knees after the run while doing a few setup things around the house. After a shower I visit the post office, Trader Joe's for multivitamins for my upcoming trip, get money from the ATM, and visit a grocery store for weekend (and beyond) supplies. At home I read the news and watch exciting and unexpected qualifying session results for MotoGP/2/3 from Malaysia. During the qualifying session, which take about an hour to run through, I have ice packs on my knees the entire time and afterwards my knees are cold and I almost want to put heatpads on them. But I do not because "ice is the universal healer". I watch some college football for a pizza lunch and then watch an unpredictable qualifying session for F1 from Mexico City. I text my neighbors, one Mexcicana and one Salvadrena, to "hold me to" going to this race next year. They are the BEST neighbors ever. I poke around and gather items and paperworks and computer files for my ucoming trip and finally watch the second game of the World Series. The Dodgers got hammerred in the first game. Which is not a surprise since they had so much time off and their manager is 1-11 in the first game of all of his World Series' games.
I sleep very well on Saturday night into Sunday with some really wild dreams towards the end of the sleep - no scary, just weird. I have zero organism energy but get out for a mountain bicycle ride. I try to push a bit at times and the rest of the ride I spin. At home my time is not slow, so I'm okay. I hard prune another ose bush. This is early in the off-season to be hard pruning, but I want to be getting things done before I go away for a long vacation. I have three large rose bushes to hard prune and the neighbors' bush approaching my Internet cable to work on over the next two weeks. After a warming shower I meditate, do the laundry, and read the news of the day. And watch a decent MotoGP Tissot sprint race from Malaysia. I cook and steam vegetables for lunch and just watch some football games. As I gear up for the F1 race from Mexico City. The F1 race, though won by a mile by the polesitter, produces all sorts of different strategies and all sorts of battles throughout the field. That is why we love about F1 - the unpredctiability of the results! It take me a while to recover from the excitement of the F1 race and than I just relax and watch a bit more football as I am so tired today.
I'm still worn out on Monday morning and sleep until after 6 am before getting up to read the news and markets. I get a chance to lift weights and some lifts are "on par" and a couple are "underwater". After a shower I watch both the Moto3 and Moto3 races from Malaysia. During the races, as the city workers begin to tear up my street to repair it after 25 years of the residents complaining, I find a time when the workers have approached my house (on the other side of the street) and I walk out and give them each a bottle of cold water. They are appreciative and I'll keep trying to do this so that they do my part of the street best. (Sidelight: When I was in Hanoi last year it was raining so I could not ride the bicycle, so I put on running shoes and clothes to go down to the small lake where people would run, do yoga, ThaiChi, and other healthy things. Today the main street is completely torn up with that waffle pattern where the road machine has ripped up the concrete prior to repait. The following day is dry and when I get on thie main street it has been completely repaved with new gutters curbs. In two days they have completely ripped up the street and paved it over. This contrasts with Long Beach where they expect to get the north side of my street ripped up, recurbbed, and paved in almost one month. And the south side of the street, where I live, another month. What the FU$&?) Since I am worn out I have a slow day and watch the Dodgers' pivotal third game in the Worls Series. Though I take tiem to bring the new (from February 2025) laptop aside and make sure that it is ready for travel with Microsoft products and I load some Python modules so that I can continue the work that I've started recently. I'm sure that I will need to modify my Python installation, but some basic runs from the past run well. I watch the Dodgers' game until late in the 7th inning when SHoei Ohtani hits a home run to tie the game. I go to bed and read and sleep shortly thereafter. (Getting ahead of the diary, I'm shocked to learn the game went 18 innings and the Dodgers' Freddie Freeman hit another walk-off home run to centerfield to win the game.)