I wake up to a very chilly day on Tuesday. It feels so good after the nasty hot weather that we had in July and early August. I put on a short sleeve shirt and running shorts and go for a walk/run. As I continue to rehab my left Achilles tendon, I gradually increase the amount of running compared with walking. I'm probably near 25% running and 75% walking now. As opposed to my youth where I couldn't wait or be patient, I'm older and often-injured now to realize that I need to take my time. After a shower I ride the motorcycle up to CSULA and we have a good meeting on the senior design effort. My team "pulled a rabbit out of the hat" for their presentation last week and it went very well. But I tll them that we cannot be playing the game from behind the entire academic year. It is a MONUMENTAL day on the motorcycle ride home as the 2002 Yamaha YZF-R1 turns past 100000 miles on the way home. (This is the motorcycle that many hours of EOS Aqua thermal vacuum testing overtime paid for in February 2002.) I let out a big yell on the freeway as the milestone is reached and thank the YZF-R1 for so much fun over the last 16 years. (Most superbikes NEVER reach this mileage because hey are usually crashed and destroyed long before 100000 miles.) When I get home I work on websites and later go to sleep before the Dodgers' game is over because I cannot bear to watch.
I start a very chilly road bicycle ride on Wednesday before 7 am and crank along nicely and enjoy the ride. When I get home I get cleaned up, work on some websites, and then do some grocery shopping. I finally check websites and see that the Dodgers won their game to even the series long past midnight the previous night. After more web work I mow the lawn and pick up some leaves and cool down with a shower. In the afternoon I continue additional web work that gets piled on me as well as some fun interesting scientific/statistical studies for publication. I get some laundry done, have a conference call with financial advisors, and relax in front of the television with an early Dodgers' game to see if they can break their 2-2 tie and take control of the series.
Thursday and Friday are occupied with both some mundane Web work and some new Web work. I get out for a good bicycle ride on Thursday and go have Korean dinner with a friend in Irvine. On Friday I sneak in a good workout with the weights where I've increased the weights to the highest level I've used sine March of this year. The mundane work is a matter of updating some websites and writing an automated mailer script to send email notices out to members of the Fair Trade Long Beach effort. The more fun work is expanding on a grant proposal that I submitted to the New York Administration for Children's Services for a foster child self-reporting tool. It's time to work on the outline/model of the website just in case I get selected to pursue this novel idea. On Friday I also have a ride up to CSULA to meet with the four teams and we try to nail down some requirements so that designs can be worked on. And finally I relax with the Dodgers' game six playoff game.
I'm up at 6 am and on the motorcycle to Los Angeles International airport by 6:20 am to meet up with Person Ha_KY who has a four layerover on his way from Australia back to Florida. We hang out and catch up on family life, business, philosophy, behaviors, and futures until it is time for Person Ha_KY to cach his flight back towards home. The minute I get home I'm stripping my clothes off to change to cycling clothes and go ride. Ecept that my legs and entire organism are fairly tired today so I take a fair amount of time to warm up. But once moving along I crank quite nicely and somewhat run out of steam towards the end of the ride. Why? I was up late on Thursday night and awake early on Saturday morning and many people at CSULA on Friday were sick. I work on websites throughout Saturday and relaxand don't quite feel productive or well. But I can celebrate when the Dodgers win game 7 and head back to a second consecutive world series.
I sleep late a bit on Sunday and watch a fun and exciting MotoGP race from Motegi, Japan. After the race I run some errands and water the impatiens, trim the roses, water the roses, and do some paint touch-up on the World Rally Car front bumper which has been beaten up from normal road debris and rocks. I'm still tired today and I take some extra B and C vitamins and start in working on the foster care outline/model and I make decent progress. But at some point I just need to lay down and relax. I end up crying for a bit of the period as I recall some bad things that I've done and some mistakes that I've made but I realize that some bad days are bound to happen and it feels good to cry a bit and get this out of the system.)
Monday is a good day. I get in a good road bicycle ride in the morning and chase down a rider with a Pinarello Dogma at some point in the ride. When I get home I trim and water the roses, call my health insurance company to see what is going on with a prescription and then meet with one of my financial advisors to make a defensive move. When I get home I watch the Moto2 race with an exciting race and later, after scutineering, the winner is disqualified for running tire pressures too low. In the afternoon I dig up and some ground and plant the 6 new carnation plants that I bought from the nursery near my financial advisor's office. They only had six carnations at this time and I hope to buy and plant more soon. And on Monday night I decide to sign up for the California State University at Long Beach Climation Hackathon since I have a decent idea for a personal carbon footprint application that maybe we can work on.
I start Tuesday with about an hour walk/run where the run portions of these activities continues to increase. I still want to be cautious as a result of the partially torn left Achilles tendon, but I feel no pain down there. When I return from the run I go talk to my new carnations and tell them how much beauty and joy they are going to bring to this, thier new home, and that they might struggle at first, but they will eventually thrive to bring many years of beauty to the area and ahppiness to me. I get a motorcycle ride up to CSULA and we have a very good meeting with my team and a couple representaties from two other teams. We've come up with a couple of very good ideas that we should draw up and start to analyze to see if they will work. I rush on home on Tuesday to work on the Personal Carbon App (PCA) for the upcoming Climathon Hackathon and also watch the Dodgers' lose the first world series game. Befor eI go to sleep I make it a point to go talk to the new carnation plants and tell them to rest during the night and be safe in their new home.
Wednesday starts with a good, cranking road bicycle ride. At the end of the ride I talk to the carnations and encourage them to wake up and absorb the sunlight and grow and thrive and bring beauty and joy to the area. After getting cleaned up I run some errands and then work on the PCA app and a few other web things that needed to be taken care of. I'm starting to feel good about the upcoming hackathon as well as other things. (Especially after the very sad day that I had on Sunday where I had to lay down and cry a bit just to feel better.)
I sleep late on Thursday and then only ride for about 75 minutes on the mountain bicycle. Near noon I race on down to the main Long Beach Public Library, find three books of interest very quickly, and then race on home. It's a one hour trip in total. I spend most of the day gathering and preparing things for Friday's Climathon hackathon.
I start Friday with about an hour run/walk and get cleaned up for the CSULB ClimaThon Hackathon. (A 24 hour global hackathon to propose solutions to healing our climate and reducing our carbon footprints.) I ride Uber to the event because I'll be coming home after 24 hours without sleep and won't want to drive. The ClimaThon starts with some lectures and then we present our ideas on how to reduce carbon footprints and create sustainable housing. We have a video conference with a team working in Zurich, Switzerland since the Climathaon event is a global event being conducted simultaneously (more or less) in more than 100 cities worldwide. I get my idea pitched and a number of people want to come and work on the idea. We start brainstorming and though I have a skeleton Web-based application ready to go, a developer wants to re-do the entire thing. I'm not about to stop him so the rest of us contribute where we can and brainstrom and gather data and review the application and prepare the final pitch charts. At 7pm there's a yoga session and then dinner. After 12:30 on Saturday morning, when the Dodgers have won the longest World Series game ever played in 18 innings, we're still working away on things. A CSULB school newspaper reported comes by the event near 2 am and I'm looking puzzled as to why a reporter is working at this hour. Nonetheless I give her a recorded interview of the event, the team, the experience, and the intent. Look for me in the CSULB school newspaper soon. Pretty soon it is 4 am and we're still working away and making progress.
Continuing on into Saturday morning, we have a 6:30 am yoga session and the team puts together the final presentation and we practice it a couple of times and go to deliver it. Everybody comes through in the pinch and gives their best presentation to the real judges (as opposed to stumbling and making mistakes during our practice). The various teams wait for a decision and the judges pick our team as the best product and the winner of the 2018 CSULB Climathon Hackathon! We congratulate ourselves and two of the judges pick me out to want to talk to. (Is it because I'm, again, the oldest person at the hackathon?) Eventually I get an Uber ride home and go walking and relax until 10 pm when I have been awake non-stop for 40 hours.
I start Sunday with a fun MotoGP race from Australia with an unexpected result (as a result of past performance). After the race I get on the mountain bicycle and ride for almost two hours. I push at times, but I'm tired and just enjoy the ride. After getting cleaned up I watch a few minutes of football and then watch a close, strategic Formula One race from Mexico City. The final results are good but the ultimate championship decision is a letdown. I ride the mountain bicycle over to a California Senator's office for the monthly Fair trade board meeting and I ask to be let off the hook for taking meeting minutes since I am still somewhat sleep-deprived. I'm glad it's a short meeting and I ride on home and catch up on paperwork.
I want to ride the bicycle on Monday morning but it is very foggy, so I sit down at the computer and put together all of the press releases and web updates for the Climathon win. There's buzz to be generated and I try my best. At mid-morning I've had enough, so I start out on a large loop ride on the mountain bicycle. I stop in at a boat launching ramp and take pictures where people launch their boats and talk with a fireman and a lifeguard to see how CSULA can launch an experimental vessel and test it. They give me the name of someone at the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club and so, after taking pictures of the boat launch area, I ride over and try to find the lady. Nobody answers the intercom to let me into the Alamitos Bay Yach Club, so I continue on a good ride for home. I'm tired when I get home, but I take a shower and set up a meeting with Ruby and other people, and then watch the Moto3 race from Austrlia. This is a completely unpredictable race and super fun to watch. At some points during the race I'm standing up in front of the television and cheering on my favorites and I'm almost out of breath as the last lap starts and finishes. Is it obvious that I love MotoGP/2/3 racing? The rest of the day is fairly slow as I try to prioritize what has to get done next.