It is very foggy and wet on Tuesday morning and I don't want to get my road biccyle all wet and sandy and dirty, so I take the mountain bicycle out of a rare loop ride (i.e., Del Amo East, San Gabriel trail South, Ocean Trail West, Los Angeles river train north). At the point almost exactly halfway into the ride I wonder why I am having to push hard to maintain the same speed and when I climb up one of the underpasses, I realize that I have a flat front tire. This confirms my theory that flats come in threes as I had two road bicycle flats within the last month or os. I don't find a good place to stop, so I just stop and start taking the wheel off and pull the punctured tire out ad closely examine the tire itself - I don't want o put anew tube in if a piece of metal or glass or thin wire is still in my tire. A couple of riders ask, "Are you okay", and I respond with "I think so". One rider from Sinaloa, Mexico stops anyway and we both inspect the tire. And I put the new tune in and use the brand new, bouthg ten days ago, electric bicycle tire pump to get the new tune up to a suitable pressure. Now I just pick everything up and continue on. The Mexciano rider from Sinaloa owns his own fire safety installation system company and we don't chat about Trump possibly exporting him but we talk about other things (as we work on trying to find the source of the flat). I push away and everything is good and I get in a reasonable loop ride in the damp conidtions. At home I immediately put ice packs on my kness, spray the bicycle with Simple Green, and rinse it off. I do this because my hands get filthy dirty changing the tire. THe bicycle looks clean now and I lubricae the brake cables and degrease the chain and gear cluster and take a note that I do not have a brand new spare inner tube for this bicycle. So I'll repair the old, punctured tube to carry as a spare until new ones are ordered and arrive. I get in a warm shower and ride this same bicycle to the grocery store for supplies. At home I read the news and markets and well after 12:30pm I am sitting down to watch the Moto2 race from Portugal. And chopping vegetables to be steamed for a lunch a fair amount of time later. After the race I find that I do not have a replacement tube of this exact size for the mountain bicycle so I find the hole in the flat tube and repair it. I let it set for a long time under a bit of weight so that the patch gets a good bond. And later I pump it up to an intermediate tire pressure and we'll see if the repair holds pressure overnight.
I start Wednesday on the road bicycle with a tentative ride to start with because I have had s many flat tires lately. But I ride up and over the Whittier Narrows dam and beyond a bit and then turn to go home. It's a much shorter ride than usual, but hopefully it gives me confidence that I will not have a flat tie on ebery ride. The warm shower afterwards feels good and I meditate and run a couple of errands on the motorcycle. When I get home I do a real quick hand trim of the neighbor's bush that is infringing on my driveway. It's just a stopgap until I pull out the electric trimmers and cut the bush back six inches. (At least it is a "soft" bush and easy to trim and sweep up when I get to it.) At 11:30am is the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force meeting that I attend via Zoom. We review the recent city-wide meeting from few Saturday's ago and we review legislation that allows human trafic survivors to apply for benefits and lost wages. After the meeting I chop vegetables for lunch and watch the MotoGP race from Portugal with lunch. I take some time to continue detailing out the neural network code fr my friend with confidence intervals and I also propose a couple of other indicators of how well the neural network is predicting outcomes. The evening is slow and I hope to get in one more bicycle ride on Thursday morning before a strong rainstorm is scheduled (with a lot of uncertainty) to arrive.
With the rain continually being pushed later and later on Thursday, I duplicate yesterday's road bicycle ride a bit past the Whittier Narrows dam and back to home. My legs are tired and I'm slower today, but its a good ride. After a shower I meditate and read the news and markets. I'm really just killing time before a dental cleaning appointment followed up by delivery to me of my nightguard. The nightguard seems to fit well - we'll see tonight - and so my second appointment is five minutes. I drive on home stopping to lend a mawl to Frank and Jeanine and stopping at a grocery store for supplies. I've been having salt cravings so I buy a bag of Dritos chips to help satisfy that craving. (I believe that when the body is craving something, it is telling you it is missing something.) Later in the day I have just a few chips with dinner and flip between the football game and ice hockey game. Not a very productive day.
On Thursday night into Friday morning, if/when I wake up I do not hear the heavy rain that was predicted. When I wake up I look outside and the pavement is spotty wet. When I take my blood pressure and temperature I see that my blood pressure is up about five points on both systolic and diastolic today - probably from the salty chips that I craved yesterday. As long as I don't do this everyay, which I don't, it's okay. Thus I strap on running clothes including gloves, a shell, and a hat and get out for a 15 kilometer run. Yes, it starts to rain a bit harder at times during the ride, but nothing of significance. It's a great way to start a day when I'll probably be stuck inside the rest of the day. After a warming shower I meditate and do the laundry for the wet, rainy clothes and some other things, read the news and markets, and put the finishing touches on the neural network code and almost finish the report. I stop to chop vegetables and watch FP2 for MotoGP from Valencia - the last race of the year where only the Moto2 title has not been decided. In the afternoon I put the finishing touches on the report and I'll let it set for a while before sending it off to my friend. The rest of the day is fairly slow and I just huddle up and stretch and stay warm after the wet, long run.
I'm really tired and its raining, so I switch off the alarm and sleep until 7am. I red the news and markets and pull a yoga mat, two dumbells, and a couple of ten pound weights into the house and start my once per hour set of exercises for the abdominals, lower back, and biceps. I only get in five of these sets today. In the morning I watch MotoGP/3/2 qualifying, which uses up a bit more than an hour and I also squeeze in the Tissot sprint race. It has stopped raining, so I put on my winter jacket and grab a backpack and umbrella and walk to the store for a few supplies. It starts to rain just as I get to the store and when I'm leaving the store I need my umbrella to walk home. But I also take this chance to put the yoga mat and weights back into the garage. Today is an extremely light workout day. And I watch a Netflix movie from THailand and some college football.
I sleep well and on Sunday morning there is still some rain coming down - at times very hard. But I get out of bed and get dressed as if I can go for a run and read the news and weather. It looks like there is a window coming up with no rain. Thus I set out for a run/walk before 7am and get in a 13 kilometer run/walk and feel so happy t not be home-bound as I felt yesterday. A warming shower feels super and I get dressed to walk to the store for a few items. I look out it is raining in the backyard and dry in the frontyard. I don't believe my eyes, so I check again and sure enough it is is raining steady, but not hard, in the backyard and the frontyard is dry. Thus I take my winter coat and umbrella and backpack and walk to the grocery store for milk and a adult beverage. Leaving the store, the rain is harder and by the time that I am home there is a fair amount of water everywhere. I take off all of my clothes and shove them, and a few other things, into the washing machine and start the cleaning/drying process. I take time to meditate to calm my mind and body and to promote overalll physical healing. After reading the news for a bit I watch and en exciting season-ending Moto3 race. (This time I watch the races in chronological order.) After the race I put the laundry away and chop vegetables for lunch and watch some football. I don't actually eat lunch until the later football games start after 1pm. There is no coding done today because I've sent the neural network and confidence level report to my friend and I know how to fix the incompatibility between my desktop version of Python and my laptop version of Python - maybe I'll get to that on Monday. Later I watch MY Detroit Lions play their game against the defneding Super Bowl birdteam. I also try to log on to my Southern California Edison account to see why my bill is $10 higher than usual for this time of year. As expected from old school, behind-the-times, dinosaur companies or organizations, the website lets me log in and gives me a spinning wheel for hours saying "Please stand by". I'm sure I'll get an email on Monday saying their website is down for a few days.
With wet pavement and light rain falling, I get up to read the news and markets and keep an eye on the weather radar. I see a break of more than two hours starting near 8am so I get dressed and take the mountain bicycle out to the old yach club and back again with no rain or drizzle or mist. It is good to be back on the bicycle after a few days off. A warming shower feels good and I wipe down the bicycle (that I just cleaned) and put it away and watch the last MaotoGP race of the season from Valencia, Spain. I can already feel the withdrawl symptoms of no MotoGP/2/3 racing until March. In the afternoon I take stock of things around the house and start to make a list of things to donate to reputable organizations when I return from my long trip. I do this because it will be easier on my trustee if my house is not cluttered (which it isn't anyway) and I hope people can put some of these things to good use. It's mostly very old textbooks and other very old things that I have not used in years. And if, for some reason, I have to replace some of these things, I can probably get a better one at a good price now anyway. I take another day off from coding because I have a good k-nearest mean data idea to try for my friend, but I'm not feeling it. And then I waste away the evening with the Monday night football game.
WHen I wake up on Tuesday it is very cold. But I see no rain on the radar. So I put on four layers (i.e., a t-shirt, a sweathsirt, a cycling jersey, and a shell) to go for the typical mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back to home. Only my face is cold. After I clean up the bicycle, because there are still wet spots and sand along the way, I have a warming shower, drive to the store to pick up heavy grocery supplies, and come home to meditate. I spend almost an hour composing the letter to resign as durable power of attorney and estate trustee from my neighbor's estate as her neice has requested. And then I work a bit on an ad-hoc k-means algorithm to try and get a verification of the neural network prediction. Today, despite ie being a chilly day, I still go out with water bottles for the city workers who are now starting to work on my side of the street. I again hope that they will remember my address and give my curb, driveway, and street paving extra attention. In anticipation of a dry Wednesday, I cook pasta and carboload for an anticipated longer road bicycle ride. I seem to waste away the rest of the day watching Netflix, the news and markets, and working on the k-means verification algorithm. It is so close, but I keep making an indexing error somewhere. Maybe this should be put off to finish until Wedenesday. Except that on my final try the algorithm seems to produce reasonable results. Not I just have to make a compairon between the neural network results and the k-mean results and the confidence will be there!
It's cold again on Wednesday so I hit snooze twice and then get dressed for a road bicycle ride. I clear the WHittier Narrows dam but the cycling path past the dam is flooded. So I turn around and head for home - justifying that I don't want to over-work the knees before I go on vacation. At home I mow the backyard. When I go to edge trim the front yard the plastic spool pn the edger, purchased in July 2024, has broken. I manage to duct tape it back together for today's trimming, but I'll need to order a $6 replacement part. Regardless, I finish edging, mowing, and air blowing the front yard. While still in sweaty clothes, I adjust the gate - as it always needs to be adjusted after the first big rain and in April or May when there is no more rain and the ground has dried up. I get in a warming shower and ride the motorcycle to drop off the remaining library books and pick up a bottle of wine at CVS. At home I work on the k-nearest neighbor effort and have it working - thanks to an idea that I had while out cycling. I chop up vegetables for lunch and, being a MotoGP addict, go looking for video of the 2026 MotoGP bike test session. This session will have lots of dead time as teams make major adjustments to their bikes and try new parts, but an addiction is an addiction. I find the videos and see that they are hampered by some overnight rains. But I skip through six hours of video at random to pick out whatever knowledge I can find. There are new riders on teams, new aerodynamics, new electronics, new crew chiefs, new frames, and other chages. Within minutes of the final session of 2025 finished I am getting withdrawl shakes as I have to wait until February for more testing and March for racing. Later, I should write up the lateste k-means results, but I don't. And just watch some ice hockey.
For my upcoming trip a few days away, I only have gathered my passport, Vietnam visa (on paper), leftover currency from previous trips, and a homemade tape measure to take to bicycle shops to show them what my frame size and seat height should be for either a mountain bicycle or road bicycle.
It is supposed to rain on Thursday and my legs are tired, so I plan to lift weights a bit later. I read the news and markets and try to put my mail on hold, but the USPS keeps giving me a "usps.com sent sent an invalid request". I try three different browsers withthe same result. Right near 8am the weather forecast shows dry until about 10 am. THus I put on my cyclothes and, tired legs or not, get out for a fast ride down to the old yacht club and back to home. I'm branking along in case the rain comes early. But even at 11:30am there is still no rain. I try the usps.com website for a mail hold on my mobile phone and it works. WTF? Regardless, that's another thing out of the way for my trip. I have a slow day and eat vegetable soup and crackers and eventually watch the football game.
On Thursday night into Friday morning I wake up briefly a few times because the rain is coming down so hard. Just as I am waking up there is another one minute downpour and I'm thinking I'll have to stay inside and lift weights today. But I get up and check the weather and the radar and it looks like it will be rain-free for the rest of the day. So I put on my running clothes and get out for an 80 minute run/walk. I feel much better now. I watch FP2 from last night for the F1 cars in Las vegas. And I spend a fair amount of the day loading data off my desktop computer onto memory sticks for travel and then loading the big memory stick onto my laptop.
On Saturday I'm not feeling like a long ride soI take the mountain bicycle to the old yacjt club and back to home. It is very cold but I have good ride without incident. I grab a warming shower, buy some supplies for the last few days here, say goodbye (temporarily) to the cashiers that I know atthe store, meditate, and start watching a wet qualifying session from Las Vegas for F1. At the conclusion of Q1 Karlos coincidentally calls and we have a long discussion about Medicare and funding and taxable income and etc. Finally I get back to Q2 and A3 fom Las Vegas and then have steamed vegetables on a bed of whole wheat bread while I pretend to watch some college football. None of these games mater to me, but I don't feel like diving into a formal k-nearest means analysis and telll my friend that I will get back to him on this next week. And I confirm, "If the neural network predictions macth the k-nearest means predictions, trade it! Otherwise, hold your position and wait for a more conclusive signal". Later I watch more meaningless college fotball games and just stretch and ice my knees and relax throughout the day.
An evetfull start to Sunday. Wake up with about a one degree fever. Maybe because I wore a shirt at night and had the heat turned on for the first time this year? Nonetheless I get dressed and start riding north on the Los Angeles river trail. My front headlight keeps turning itself off everytime I hit a bump, so for the first 10 kilometers of riding, until it is light to see and be seen without the front light, I have to cyclie through the buttons to restart the headlight. I'm a bit slow today but I cross over the WHitteier Narrows am and ride up to the cow/ox pen to say goodbye to them for a while. Except that they are gone! I hope that they have not been taken to a slaughterhouse, but the pen is empty. I ride another kilometer or two and stop for a drink and then head south on the San Gabriel river trail. Except one of the undercrossings for a train is completely flooded and mudded out. There's another rider stopped and I ask him how to get south from here but he doesn't know. I go back 60 meters and turn left and then I turn left on Rosemead Blvd - assuming it is a main street that I can stay on for a while. It is and I make a right turn on Slauson thinking from here I can get back to either river trails. Except I run into Paramount Blvd. This can't be my Paramount Blvd that goes all the way to Del Amo? Can it? I take Paramount Blvd left and note that both Rosemead Blvd and Paramount Blvd have very smooth pavement and since it is SUnday morning there isn't a lot of traffic. After ten kilometers of riding I start recognizing main streets that could cnnect with either trail again. But I just continue south on Paramount Blvd through neighborhoods, industrial areas, medical areas, and business office areas that I've never been to before. Finally I get down near where I used to play ice hockey and THIS IS my Paramount Blvd that will intersect with Del Amo. ANd then I take Del Amo on home. I don't think it was en especially fast ride, but the stopping and starting at some of the lights takes energy out of me. I end up near 80 kilometers but feeling more tired than a usual 100 kilometer, consistent tempo ride. At home I take the pedals off my guest bicycle for my trip, grab a shower, meditate, and get ready to watch the F1 race from Ls Vegas. Except that the Detroit Lions are playing the early game and I'm torn betwen watching MY Lions or the F1 race (with jumbled starting grid due to the rainy qualifying). I end up flipping a bit between the two. Later I collect a few things for my trip and continue to eat whatever food is in the refrigerator that can spoil during the trip. Thus, more steamed vegetables and whole wheat bread today and tomorrow with some cheese tossed in somewhere.
I sleep until 6am and get out the door shortly thereafter for a mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back to home. At home I disconnect the cables from both the motorcycle battery and car battery to prevenet any leagage that might kill the battery during my extended absence. After a shower I meditate and print documents for the trip and then start packing. My Excel checklist works well and it doesn't take long to get everything neatly stowed in my medium size luggage and a carry-on backpack. And then I kinda just waste the day away with Netflix and eating up food that may spoil. Unfortunately I have to dump a coupld of food items because they will not last for the duration of my trip. At 6:30pm the neighbor, who has insisted on driving me to the airport, grabs me and drops me off at the international terminal at Los Angeles International arport.