Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday March 13, 2017 8:02 PM

Start of March and Karls Visit


I get up on Wednesday and do some reading and get in a high repetition, light weight workout (to try and give the soft tissue of the joints an easier time of it). I head to school and enjoy the class and we get assigned to groups for an upcoming group project. When I get home I mow the lawn and then study for Thursday's exam. Then I talk with people on the Internet from other countries and do a bit more studying before going to sleep.

I start Thursday with about a two hour mountain bicycle ride and finish studying for my atmospheric studies examination. It turns out it is pretty easy, but I amglad that I am prepared and am trully learning the material. When I get home I start re-assembling the lawnmower even though I have not found anything significantly wrong with it. i stop when I get to the point where I have to let a gasket set and settle under preload for 24 hours before conitnuing on. In the evening I have phone calls and messages from throughout the world from friends and just enjoy being in contact with a diverse and wide variety of people.

On Friday I seem a bit tired so there is no morning workout. Today the electric company is upgrading electrical equipment, so I have no electricity between 8:30 am and 4:30 pm. I ride the motorcycle to a nearby coffeehouse and work on the fuzzy rules data mining program and have a brief chat with my city councilperson (who know who I am). I ride the motorcycle to CSULA and help out both senior design teams. Both teams have taken my advice to heart - perhaps because they know they are almost halfway through this last semester. But both teams have made good progress and we'll see what happens. I rush on home, grab some food, relax, have a good workout for the abdominals and lower back, and am tired. I still have no electricity as the electric company has extended the blackout period (for equipment upgrades) from 4:30 until 8 pm and then later until midnight. I walk over to First Fridays just because I have nothing else to do and I still have no electricity when I get home. I spend 20 minutes sitting in the dark just thinking about things before using the last hour of charge on my laptop to work on the fuzzy rule data mining and make some good progress. And finally I go to read in bed via flashlight and go to sleep.

On Saturday morning their is electricity in my house and I get out the door for a pretty good 95 kilometer bicycle ride. During today's ride I am fighting bicycle traffic from a triathalon using part of my same course as well as a Lakewood run for charity that is using part of my course. But I have a good ride and note that there is only one triathlete who just blows by me on the bicycle at a fast past and disappears into the distance - but nobody else passes me. I go get get a book on hold from the library and do grocery shopping and wax the gold rims on the World Rally Car. Otherwise I try to have a slow recovery day so that I can have a good Sunday bicycle ride.

I start Sunday with slow legs but they soon get into a decent rhythym. But north on the Los Angeles river there is a headwind and as I pass various riders I just say "nasty wind" and keep going. I cross over the Whittier narrows dam and get out to a certain point and turn around. Expecting a tailwind, I am disappointed as the terrain near the dam really does a number on the wind. Riding south on the San Gabriel river trail I'm really buffetted around and again, with each rider that I pass, I say "nasty wind today". I'm happy to make it back to Del Amo (the crossover street back to home) with some energy left. And I notice that on the north leg I saw the Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight drain going east whereas on the south leg I saw another Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train going west at the same time as I saw an Amtrak train going west. A first tie occurrence of so many trains. After I get home after 80 kilometers and wipe down the chain (as one should do after every ride), I grab a shower and walk to the grocery store for supplies. Today is going to be a slow day as both my legs and my entire organism is spent. I have conversations with friends from Vietnam, Thailand, and Glendale (via Kazakhstan) on Sunday night. As I'm having these conversations my legs are so tired I am wondering if I am going to be able to sleep.

I wake up on Monday morning and lay in bed for a while before getting out a 40 minute walk. This gets the day started. After some clerical issues I take another walk to the bank and the grocery store and to a CVS pharmacy (which still cannot get their act together on a service that I desire - it has been 5 months). When I get home I think about working out but I know it will be half-hearted, so I pull out the lawnmower pieces and reassemble it (with only one go-back with a bad routing of the spark plug wire on my behalf). The lawnmower starts right up when finally assembled but it doesnot seem to be runing right and I don't think that I've cured the problem - not that I found a root cause when I had it dis-assembled. In the afternoon I do some homework for school and just relax - how will I be ready for a Tuesday morning ride? ANd I also work on the ruzzy rule data mining application as I seem to be making some progress now.

I wke up on Tuesday and my legs are still hungover form previous rides so I just take the mountain bicycle out for a ride to the old yacht club and a few extra miles for a total of about two hours. I get cleaned up and fill up the mororcycle with gasoline, vote, and send money to Vietnma via Moneygram. When I get home I have a bowl of pasta and then edge and mow the lawn so it will be nice looking for my visitior tomorrow. In the mail I receive a check from my former company for a very large amount of money that was unexpected. I think and think about it and can only rationalize that it is 5 / 12 of last years bonus - representing a continued bonus for the 5 months that I actually worked last year before retirement. Nonetheless, it is extra money and I can barely think of a few things to spend the money on for things that are needed now. Later in the afternoon I send out a draft group project document for one of my classes since I've seen no traffic at all about a draft that may or may not be due on Wednesday (tomorrow).

Late on Tuesday night my Wednesday teacher emails the class saying that class is postponed due to an illnes in her family. Thus I go pick up Karl at the airport (he was going to take Uber if I was in class) and we get out for a ride past he old yacht club and back. After catching up a bit we drive over to Cerritos for Thai food for dinner. And then head for home to watch some funny television series that karl watches pn Netflix until it is time for sleep.

On Thursday I have class, so Karl and I go cycling to the old yacht club and back before class. I go off to my atmospheric sciences class while Karl drives down to Huntington Beach to meet a friend for lunch and then go swim. When we meet back up later in the afternoon we run some errands and do some small tasks around the house until we meet up with Person T_U on Retro Row in Long beach for dinner. After dinner Karl and I walk around Second Street a bit, but it ispretty empty on a Thursday night so we drive on home and watch another episode of Karl's funny television series.

I get up early on Friday to clean the roses and pre-emptively spray for aphids and catch up on a number of small things around the house as Karl sleeps. Eventually we get out for the loop ride in the warm day and have a good workout. When we get home Karl and I pull out the tree trimming tools and start hacking away with a chainsaw, hedge trimmer,s and hand tree saw at the three cypress trees that are growing along my back fence. I use a ladder and stand higher on it than I should, but we get three trees down to a height where they will be easier to maintain in the future. And Karl shows a good eye at knowing where to tell me to cut and to clean up and shape the trees so that they look nice. After getting cleaned up we finally grab pizza for lunch near 3pm, run some errands, and relax. Until the fun begins.

Person T_U picks us up at 8:30 and we get to four different bars/clubs/restaurants throughout the evening. The first two are mainly restaurant/bars and we're able to talk and observe the crowd and have fun. The last two are clubs and we dance up a storm even though the music isn't so great. At the last club there's a guy that is interested in me and we dance together and talk and when I won't go home with him, he says to me "I hate you" and walks away. But later he comes back and we talk and dance a bit more, but the answer from me is still "No" and I don't see him the rest of the evening. But I make it a point to both Karl and Person T_U to keep an eye out for him in case he is mad at me and is going to try something when we leave the club. Nonetheless it is a fun evening and I'm turning out the lights for sleep after a bit of reading at 2am on Saturday morning.

I'm out of bed at 6:30 on Saturday morning to catch up on some paperwork as Karl sleeps late. When Karl regains consciousness and wakes up we go for a good bicycle ride to the far inlet point (of the Pacific ocean). It's a good ride and for the last 4 or 5 miles Karl is almost sprinting and I'm just riding along in a higher gear than normal to stay up with him (but I can't get to a higher gear because the front derailleur on my mountain bicycle is frozen in one position). We go to Cerritos mall and grab food from the food court and I am sad that the pet store is out of business - I cannot look at golden retriever puppies and dream of my next one. I drop Karl off at the YMCA for swimming while I go run errands. When I get home I ride the mountain bicycle over to the bike shop to get a new derailleur. My friend Dennis, the cycling roofer or the roofing cyclist, is there and we catch up on things. He has brought his doggie and I spend time playing with the doggie as Brian and Ryan look at my mountain bicycle and decide that I have not used the front derailleur since 1999 (since it is so rusted into one position). I correct them and say that I have not used my front derailleur since I got it from Christopher Columbus. Nonetheless they will get me a new front derailleur and install it and I walk on home. Just as I enter the house Karl is finished swimming so I pick him up and we relax for a bit. It is Saturday night so we head to Second Street and eat middle eastern food (since Karl cannot get good middle eastern food where he lives) and we walk to a couple of a bars to hang out. I cannot drink, of course, since I am driving and I forcefully say to Karl, "I have a zero tolerance policy for myself. If I am driving, then I will not have a drop of alcohol. But you saw what happenned yesterday when I was not driving and we are out drinking, partying, and dancing". He understands. We call it an early evening and the lights go out for sleep before midnight.

I get up early and catch up on some small tasks and implement a gene penalty function in the fuzzy rule data mining program and it seems to be behaving well now. I get Karl to the airport and run some errands and lift weights. Then I do some maintenance on the roses, the garage door, and a bathroom drain and then relax. Today I enjoy the solitude and get a few things done around the house and relax (with our lost hour from the advanceto daylight savings time). I'm in bed at the new 9 pm to read for a while and sleep.

I don't sleep great on Sunday into Monday but I get out on the road bicycle and get warmed up and have decent 75 kilometer ride. It isn't my best ride, but it will have to do. For the majority of the day I work on small projects around the house, work on some notes for a school counselor, digitize some VHS tapes, and do some reading for my classes.