On Tuesday I get up at 6 and go for a 42 minute run/walk to start the day. Karl and I stop at an iHop and grab breakfast before I drop him off at the airport. I continue on to work and make progress on some difficult combinatoric optimization problem. By the end of the day my project bossis convinced that we have a workable solution to present to NASA this week. And my functional boss, after a few phone calls for help from me, is again left speechless when I ask him, What are you going to do or who are you going to call when the old ox is retired soon?" The retirement rumor...no...reality is compounded when an email floats around asking for higher-up bosses for money for domain knowledge transfer from me to the younger engineers and it lists my retirement date as December 2015. I'm just laughing my head off so hard!
I go for a 42 minute run on Friday morning and cool down before riding the motorbike up to the Los Angeles courthouse in downtown. Jurors are supposed to park at the Disney concert hall and then walk 4 blocks to the courthouse. We are having heat wave now with temperatures in the high 90's downtown, so it is already hot at 9:15 in the morning. I have a good book to read and learn some great ideas and methods from the morning where my name is not called as a potential juror. Lunch is spartan as the main courhouse cafeteria is closed for repairs and the elevators are a disaster and I don't want to leave the building. But I manage to find two stale microwavable burritos and Coke. After lunch I do more reading until my name is called. I sit through the first 18 jurors act like diots (most) as they can barely recite where they live, what work they do, and if they have had prior juror experience. Maybe they are nervous. And then we recess for the day. Which means that I have to come back on Friday, our work day off: No bicycle ride, no day off, no pay. I am livid! When I get home from the motorbike ride I am sweating and I edge and mow the lawn to releive the anger of a wasted Friday. If I am allowed to get a seat I will be dismissed anyway immediately. I am livid at the waste, no bicycle ride, no day off, and no pay.
I don't sleep well but get out the door a bit early to ride to the dam and meet up with Derrick. We start back towards the ocean and at a slightly slower pace because it is supposed to be so hot today. At some point I pick up the pace and Derrick calls out 20 mph. A bit later he calls out 21 mph and I respond that that is all that I have today. But for the last few miles I pick up the pace again and we're over 22 mph into a headwind on a very hot day. Unfortunately this takes a lot out of me and I can only go through the motions for the last 8 miles to end up with a good 50 mile ride. I cool off with a shower and run errands and come home and turn on the air conditioning to just have a slow day. I'm sure I'll do some web programming, but for a while I'll just be a vegetable.
I end August with a good, productive day at work and a heavier session with the weights. People come into my office and don't know how to solve a problem, so I explain to them how I would solve it and tell them I'll have it figured out by the end of the week. And later, as the panic of my impending retirement continues to sink in, I am called to a meeting where people want to pay me to perform a "domain knowledge transfer" of my experience and skills. I keep telling them that they are running out of time since I have work committments at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena in October and vacation in December. That doesn't leave much time. So after my heavier weights workout I watch a wild Moto3 race in the rain from England and then work on two different "domain knowledge transfer" efforts until it is time to go to sleep.
I have a mixture of productive time and boring time at work on Thursday. I look forward to getting home and going for a run. On today's run I don't feel any aches or pains - the first time since March or so that it has felt this good. When I'm abouta mile from hme I running across the street and trip and fall. It's an awkward fall and I take the brunt of the impact on my right shoulder and on the right side of my face. As typical, I'm embarassed to have fallen and get up quickly and wonder if I've broken my cheek bone. There is plenty of blood coming from the right side of my face. I start walking home but this isn't going fast enough so I end up running most of the way home. The minute I get in the house I put the ice pack on the side of my face and get two Alleve to reduce the inflammation. I don't want to look in the mirror so I cool down outside with the ice pack on ymface and shoulder. Eventually I get to the bathroom and see blood and inflammation and probably a black eye forming. There is no Neosporin in the house, so I get cleaned up and go to the drugstore and open up the tube of Neosporin and start putting it on my face and shoulder before I've even paid for it. But I get home and trade off ice packs and Neopsorin for the rest of the evening. And starting to feel the shoulder hurt more as the evening wears on.
On Saturday I ride the road bicycle up to the Whittier Narrows dam and meet up with Derrick. THe helmet does not hurt my head/face and the cycling doesn't hurt my shoulder too much. We ride together I and up just short of 50 miles. I get in a quick shower and go to the immediate care clinic to see a doctor. I explain the situation and the lack of symptoms for a concussion and just ask for a pain medicine. He asks, "Is the pain that bad?" I just say that when I'm sleeping and moving around the face and shoulder can hurt some. He does give me a prescription pain medicine but not the one that I asked for. When I get home I watch qualifying for the Italiand Grand Prix from Monza and then take an afternoon nap. Later in the evening I do some web programming and just relax.
Labor day starts with a road bicycle ride up to the Whittier Narrows dam. Right from the start I can tell today is going to be a difficult day. Is the codeine kicking in and making me slow? But everything hurts. I would have expected everything to hurt within 48 hours of the fall, not now 84 hours after the fall. I meet up with Derrick and Terry and we ride south. Because Terry has other obligations, he reaches a certain time and turns back to go home. But Derrick and I continue and Derrick calls out 22 mph and then2 3 mph at one point. This can't be right. I thought we were down at 20 or so. But we continue cranking away and pick off and pick up riders all the way down the aquarium. After a break we had back north and now I'm tiring but finish just short of 50 miles again. I relax for a bit and have some pasta for lunch and finish reading another book. During the heat of the day I take the road bicycle out to the garage and clean it up and change both tires with the two new ones that just came in the mail on Friday. I'm a bit disappointed with myself because I manage to pinch the old rear tube and have to put a new one in. But these tires are known for being a shade under-sized and harder to install, but very puncture resistant. I'll do a shorter "installation" ride on Tuesday morning to make sure everything is ready for longer rides.