On Thursday I get up very late and tidy up the house a bit and work on some financial modeling before going off to Los Angeles airport to pick Karl up from Florida. His usual shuttle bus out of the airport drops him off at a different Metro station than usual due to construction, so our logistics get messed up. But eventually I find him and we drive home and get out for a good two hour mountain bicycle ride (though a bit cold and windy). At the end we push the pace to catch a pass another rider who tries to stay with us but gives up after a couple miles. We get cleaned up and have Lebanese food for dinner at a restaurant near my house and then go home to watch the last period or so of the Kings' ice hockey game.
There is rain on Friday, so Karl and I run errands with stops at the bank, Target, and lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant. Afterwards we go to a cafe and work on his website. After a while we are close, so I drop Karl off at the YMCA so he can swim and I go on home to lift weights. Near 7 pm we walk around Atlantic avenue for a bit and then drive home to get an Uber to 2nd Street (since we'll both be drinking alcohol). We get to Nick's and hang out for a bit and meet two women who eventually ask us to join them at their table near the end of dinner. They are women - one is a therapist and one is a yoga instructor. But both are stoned on marijuana from vaping marijuana oil. But we have a fun conversation for a while and talk about going to another club that is open (since Nick's closes at midnight). But the women decide to go on home while Karl and I get an Uber to a club we'd been to before. We go in since it looks crowded from the outside and find that the club is not crowded, the music is bad hip hop, and there is some sort of "furry event" going on. What's a "furry event"? I still don't know after the owner has explained it but it seems that people dress up as dogs or coyotes or lions or "furry animals" to express their desire for the evening - whether it is of sexual in nature, domination, submission, activities, etc. It is a very bizarre scene but Karl and I put up with it for an hour so before we catch an Uber home near 2 am on Saturday morning.
Saturday starts with the possibility of rain, bit it finally clears enough to get on the bicycles and ride. Karl and I go for a 2.5 hour ride in windy conditions for a great workout. After a shower we go eat Thai curry for lunch and then go to a nearby cafe to hopefully install the brand new website on his server. There are some hiccups, but we get the new website running on the server. Karl decides that he wants to change a fair amount of the content and "look and feel" so we spend time doing that also. During our time at cafe I meet a student from Korea and we talk a bit. I think that he is happy that he can practice his English (though it is very good). After a fair amount of work on the website we drive back home and have pizza and salad for dinner while watching videos that each of us have lined up for each other.
Sunday starts slowly and we have lunch before getting out for a loop bicycle ride. But I take Karl down the Coyote Creek trail, a trail I've only ridden two or three times, where I point out the bumpy roads and the tricky turns. There's a headwind the entire eight miles down the river towards the ocean so it's good workout by the end of the ride. Karl takes care of some business and then we go eat Japanese food at the nearby restaurant that has very good food and is reasonably priced. And we end the day with a few more videos at home.
Monday starts out very slow and we go to Cerritos mall for lunch and walk around a bit. karl has changed his mind about the website, so we go to a nearby cafe and start working. I show him how to do some things so that he can work as he pleases as I work on other websites. This is a crowded cafe, but a good clientele and we'll probably come back and visit again soon. We've blown past the time we allotted so there is no swimming for Karl or lifting weights for me. Instead we go eat Mexican food and call it a day.
On Tuesday we get out for an early morning bicycle ride - a rarity for Karl who likes to sleep later - and he notes how much calmer the winds are during the morning ride. We're a bit slow today, but its still a good ride. We quickly have pizza and salad for lunch and get in the car and drive to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden to watch the first qualifying round for the upcomign Indian Wells tennis tournament - a highly-regarded tournament on the professional circuit. We split time between watching top-ranked professionals on practice courts and on actual qaulifying matches. I prefer the qualifying matches to see how the players perform in real match situations. Remember, these men and women are playing qualifying matches just to get into the main draw. After 6:30 pm Karl has seen enough so we drive to Palm Springs on the way back home and eat Vietnamese food (where nobody speaks Vietnamese). And then we have a smooth traffic-free drive home - arriving at 10:30 pm.
Wednesday and Thursday are days of bicycle riding in the late morning, decent lunches, and hours spent at a cafe working on websites and doing other geek stuff. On Wednesday we meet up with Person T+U for dinner. On Thursday we cook at home and watch videos.
On Friday I lift weights in the morning and get cleaned up to join Karl and my friend, Person L_V, for lunch. We have a Japanese lunch and then I head up to CSULA. We have a long discussion and build session and figure out a plan of action for the next week. Next Friday, in my absence, the team will put the ocean cleaner component into the ocean for the first time and do some developmental testing. I rush on home on the motorcycle to join Karl for dinner at the Lebanese restaurant again - the food was good and light so we both enjoyed it. Person T_U joins us and then we drive down to a club in Long Beach with a 1980's music tribute band. Their first set has a decent selection of songs but the intermission DJ and their second set are horrible. A bad selection of songs from the band and just trash hip hop from the DJ. So we call it a night - the lights going out for sleep at 12:30 am on Saturday.
On Saturday morning I wake Karl up at the pre-planned 7:30 so that we can try to sneak a bicycle ride in before the rain comes. We get out the door and the mist starts and then drizzle persists throughout the entire ride. It is not enough to make us stop due to dangerous conditions and is not even annoying. We're held up by three different events along the ocean: a 5k fun run, a 5k fun run fundraiser for a girl's soccer team, and a mini-triathlon. On the way back home Karl gets a flat rear tire and says that he will just ride it out (as he does when he is at home). After a while he syas that he will stop and I should go get the car. But I talk him into the standard practice of changing the tube on the ride and it goes smoothly and soon we are back under way. He keeps saying "That's the smoothest I've seen a tube change" and I'm a bit surprised because Karl has thousands of miles of cycling under his belt. Nonetheless we finish the ride all soaked and toss cycling clothes into the washer and dryer as soon as we get in the door at home. After cleaning up we run errands and then go debug my surround sound which has quit "surround sounding". And I find the error in 5 minutes - I mistakenly reset a switch when we were trying to conenct Karl's laptop to my system last week. Surround sound is back! Afterwards I do some neural network programming and Karl does some web content programming before he heads down to Westminster to meet up for dinner with his friend. I continue working along and soon get a text message from Karl that he is coming home because, after dinner, there are no other activities in Westminster. When Karl comes home he wants to go out partying, but I've had enough and we watch a video or two and then head for sleep at a reasonable hour (knowing that we lose an hour of sleep for daylight savings time).
I'm up at 6 am on Sunday and do some neural network programming before Karl gets up, gets packed, and is ready to go. I drop him off at Long Beach airport since he has work in Nevada and can get there easier from Long Beach than Los Angeles. When I get home, as the rain continues to fall, I get in a good workout with the weights and then wash both of our bicycles which are covered in dirt and mud and road grime from Saturdays ride. And I coat both chains with WD40 to prevent rust and let them set in the garage and later, when the day dries up and the sun comes out, in the sun. After a shower I stay in the shower and scrub down the glass doors so that they are crystal clear. And I continue on with laundry from Karl's visit and a quick stop at Vons for supplies. Throughout the afternoon I switch between little cleaning tasks around the house, the IndyCar race from Saint Petersburgh, Florida, and just relaxing.
On Monday I'm a bit lazy, so I don't go cycling. I get the car washed and pick up some supplies and put the car away in the garage. I then have a good core muscle group workout targeting the abdominals and lower back. As I am lifting weights these days, I continue to sneak in exercises that strengthen the calf/Achilles tendon and/or improve my balance, as the physical therapist prescribed. After the workout I trim and mow the lawn and then grab a shower. Oxygenated from some exercise, I solve my latest neural network issue and now, with neural network training going well, can turn my attention to quantifying the confidence level of the neural network predictions.