I'm lazy on Tuesday and take the road bicycle up the real LoS angeles river in order to avoid the construction down near the ocean. When I get to the cutoff I trn farther north and go to the Rio Hondo bridge and then turn around for home. After watering the impateins and a shower I drive to Cerritos mall for last minute shopping. I'm in and out of the mall in 30 minutes - 5 minutes of those being spent looking at the cutest golden retriever puppies. When I get home I open up windows, put a fan in my office, and try my best with turpentine and poluyurethane varnish to refinish the top of my computer desk. It looks almost brand new when I'm finished though the smell will take a couple of days to get rid of entirely. (I decided to do the refinish in-house, in-situ rather than carying the desk outside in the open air and sun.) THe rest of the day is spent relaxing and doing more or less nothing.
I'm out the door at 7 am on Christmas morning for a road bicycle ride. For the first 15 miles there are very few other cyclists out. When I get to the Whittier Narrows dam and continue north to the Santa Fe dam, I see a few more cyclists but still not a lot. I take a quick fluid break at the Santa Fe dam and wish a group of cyclists at the dam a happy holidays. And then I start back south on the San Gabriel river trail. For the entire 22 miles down the trail to Del Amo on I try decide whether to continue down to the ocean or take the Del Amo cutoff. I finally take the Del Amo cutoff to end the ride short of 60 miles (rather than continuing around like the 72 mile Thanksgiving day ride). When I get home there is a note indicating that we are having lunch with Michael and Steven so I grab a shower and Person Ti_Ca drives us to a Mexican restaurant in Long Beach. We have a great lunch and just hang out talking about many different things until I tell the waitress, "Please kick us out when you need this table". I say this knowing that there are many other open tables in the restaurant. But she does indicate that there are people waiting for a booth, so we evacuate the booth after about a three hour lunch and talk. On the way home we drop off Person T_U's Christmas gift on his porch because he isn't there and then head for home.
I don't sleep particularly well on Friday night and into Saturday morning. Thus I do not go cycling and wait a bit and then go for about an hour walk. I meet up with people at a Korean BarBQ restaurant for Person Ti_Ca's birthday celebration. I have my raw vegetables and rice as everyone else has the "all you can eat" lunch as is expected. At the end of lunch there is a threat to come over to our house to play cards, but I say "I've felt horrible all day, didn't go cycling this morning, and have a nasty headache" to keep people away. All of this is true. The group of 11 goes out and does whatever they are going to do to celebrate Person Ti_ca's birthday while I drive home. (The group is very good about deciding who will be designated drivers and who can drink as much as they want.) When I get home I go lift weights and start to feel much better. After relaxing a bit I feel well enough to take the motorcycle windscreen off and polish it up and then give the motorcycle a very brief wipedown to make it look pretty darn good again. (It cannot look brand new because it is 12 years old, but I sure get a lot of compliments when people hear how old it is and how many miles it has on it.) The rest of the evening is spent watching a bit of the Los Angeles Kings' game and just being a vegetable - similar to the vegetables that I had at lunch.
On Monday I get out for an early morning bicycle ride to the end of the ocean bicycle path and back. It is shorter than usual, but I'm on a bit of a time schedule today. I get home and get cleaned up, finish packing, and start the drive to Santa Cruz with Person Ti_Ca. After about an hour I let Person Ti_Ca drive and we continue to make good time. We stop for a break and gasoline and then I drive the last 30 miles or so to Santa Cruz. It is cold up here, but we get out to a decent Thai restaurant for dinner.
On Wednesday, new year's eve, we have a nice breakfast and start out on a hike for a waterfalls in a national forest. As we come across people coming in the opposite direction I keep asking, "Is this the way to the falls?" and I get affirmative answers though a souple people say it is a long way. We have to traverse a small creek a number of time but we eventually make it to the waterfalls. We relax for a bit and take pictures and absorb the sound and the nature and then we start back for the car. It is a long hike and it ends up being 5 hours. When we get back to the hotel we take a nap in anticipation of a late night. Near 8 pm we are out the door for an Indian dinner (where the waitress speaks Thai with me). Afterwards we wander near downtown where the DJ and the party and the new year's countdown is supposed to be but there are very few people around. Since it is only 10 pm or so we reason that it is still too early, but we both decide it is too cold to wait around or walk around and so we go back to the hotel and watch silly HBO movies past the turn of the new year.
On Friday Person Ti_Ca wake up and decide instead of hiking for a while that we will just go home. Person Ti_Ca drives and it is a smooth drive as a lot of people are off work today. The house is 50F when we return to it since we turned the heat off entirely. After we unpack the car, I go have the car washed and do some grocery shopping. I start in with catching up on paperwork and stuff and then I go a put a coat of wax on most of the World Rally Car. Since I am pretty much out of wax, there are some areas left to be waxed shortly.
I start Sunday with a cold road bicycle ride. It is a few degrees warmer than Saturday, but cold nonetheless. I ride both the San Gabriel and Los Angeles river trails and the ocean trail and put together a good ride of about 40 miles. That will have to do for today. When I get home I wipe down the bicycle and prune three rose bushes. (I typically go for a hard prune of the roses in January, but this year I'm just going for a half hard prune.) In the afternoon I struggle through the Detoit Lions' playoff game as they lose the game. One non-interference call possibly turned the game completely around as they could have had a first down and take a bigger lead. Instead the non-call and some other bad play by the Lions result in another playoff loss. On Sunday night I am in bed before 8:30 pm as I want to do some reading and get to sleep early to start the new working year on Monday
On Tuesday morning near 4 am and for the next hour or so I keep waking up with another recurring weird dream about home improvement. It has to do with installing a pool in the backyard (which I've never wanted) and the problems that I keep running into when trying to have it done. Now what does this dream mean? I have a good day at work and rush on home to lubricate the chain of the Yamaha YZF-R1, lift weights again, water the impatiens, and then sit down to work on some ideas for work that I want to explore.