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 pulll 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.