I read a blog entry on a water bottle tripod, and splurged. It slips over the cap of a water or soda bottle, and pivots up to 30° in any direction. Perfect for trips when you need to pack small and light, but still want the benefits of a tripod.
A critique of the book I got my sister for her birthday by the New Yorker.
The Earth rising over Apollo 11:
I felt good this morning - tired, but otherwise okay. After watching the end of the final stage of the Tour de France, I knew I had to keep my resolution of exercising on morning when I feel good, since there may be no other time to get any work in.
I pumped up the tired, cinched on the shoes, and headed out for a quick, 20 minute ride, following the old adage of starting out with short rides at a high cadence. I put it into the 52x24 and left it there for the whole ride, spinning happily away. I built up a good sweat.
Lance won the Tour for the sixth straight year, by the biggest margin yet. Pretty cool.
Should I add a ride up L'Alpe d'Huez to my list of life goals?
I had a fun 47th birthday, if 47th birthdays can ever be considered fun.
I started with donuts, followed by a Dodger game, and ended with Mexican food with the Bowsers.
I've been following the Tour on OLN since it began. This morning was the individual time trial up L'Alpe d'Huez, 1132 meters up in 15.5 km. Lance Armstrong won the stage by 61 seconds over Jan Ullrich in a time of 39m41s. I watched the race while I caught up on chores for Evangelina - I've been feeling especially crummy, and had a couple of loads of laundry to catch up on.
Over the last few days, I've made these changes to the Headache page:
When it rains, it pours.
I had a normal Imitrex headache on Saturday morning, and another on Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon, my headache was back with a vengeance, and I took a second Imitrex for the first time ever. (I came close to a second Imitrex on the trip to Fresno for Gabriela's graduation, but it tailed off just in time.)
I woke up Monday at 3:45am with indigestion to die for. I gobbled the last of Tums, then some Pepto pills, and spent the next three hours in that semi-agony of painful indigestion, sleep deprivation, and intense boredom.
It's 9:30am now, and I'm feeling almost human. I had to skip this morning's apheresis appointment - once you're strapped in, there's no good way to get up quickly no matter what your digestive system is telling you.
The day started painfully, followed by a nice breakfast, then a really strange movie, and more pain.
I downed an Imitrex at 6:00am when I woke up with a bad headache - worse than usual. At 9:00, Jason, Justin, and I met Carol, Sheehan, and my dad for breakfast at Twohey's. Good food, a great waitress, and some fun conversation.
Justin got a ride home with Carol, and Jason and I went up to the Laemmle to see Napoleon Dynamite What a weird movie. I'm still trying to figure out what it all meant - it's entirely possible that it didn't mean a thing.
The headache never really went away, and by 3:30 it was getting worse, so I took my second 100mg Imitrex - this is the first time I've taken 200mg in one day.
Two sets of fun car-related commericals:
The kids and I have been watching Ken Jennings on Jeopardy since before I went on my Downieville trip. It was nip and tuck yesterday - he had to run the last four answers in Double Jeopardy to barely get more then twice the second place player's total. He wound up betting only $300. Still, he's now above $1, 020,000 in total winnings for his 31-day run.
Justin needed a new computer, and had cobbled together some cash (birthday money from me, some other birthday money from Rick and my dad, plus a few bucks he had loaned to his friend Spencer, plus the money Carole had given him for his birthday that I agreed to float), so we headed out to Fry's in Industry on Saturday to pick up some things. He wanted to save some money by building it himself, which seemed like a good idea. But one trip to Fry's wouldn't be enough.
I know I went, but I really don't remember what I watched.
You're in the shower, lathering up with a bar of soap, and it slips from your hands, landing on the tiles. Without fail it hits on one of the corners, deforming it, and you have to use it with this deformed corner poking you for a few days until it wears down.
My motorcycle trip to Downieville and Lake Tahoe, from June 26 through July 1, 2004.
Here's a Quicktime movie of Lake Alpine, on SR-4 west of Ebbetts Pass.
Justin, my youngest, turns 16 today. Happy birthday, punk. That's right. Back away—now.
I was having a nice chat with my sister, and a grammar/usage question came up. She does a half-day once a week at JPL, and didn't have her Gregg's at hand.
The question: what are the rules covering dates in the form March 6th.
The answer (from Gregg's, Ninth Edition):
407b - When the day follows the month, use a cardinal figure (1, 2, 3, etc.) to express it.
NOTE: Do not use the form March 6th or March sixth, even though those versions reflect the way the date would sound when spoken aloud.
While I was reading ¶407, I noticed something interesting about the way the parentheses were italicized. Here's the rule:
290g - Brackets are not usually italicized, even when they enclosed [sic] italicized words.
Jason, Carole, and I went to the Laemmle in Pasadena to see Before Sunset.
At Father's Day Pat invited me and the kids up for the Fourth of July. Jeremy had to work, but Jason, Justin, and I made the trip.
We started with breakfast at the IHOP on Rosemead and the I-10. We always have a nice time when we got out for breakfast, so we planned to go out to Twohey's in two weeks. I'm going to invite my dad and siter to join us. So there.
I've been talking with Jason and Justin about new beds for a couple of months now, and Carole prodded us to actually do something. Yesterday we hit a few of the local bed shops, without much luck. Today, we stopped at the Ikea in Covina on the way up to Big Bear. Both kids found something they liked (Jason's has a metal frame, and Justin's is wood). We planned to check out the room arrangement once we got back home, to make sure everything would fit reasonably.
The drive up was quick, but uneventful. The boys watched part of Troy on my new portable DVD player.
When we arrived, we visited for a while, then headed upstairs. I worked on the Sunday Times crossword, and we watched Trucks! The kids showed Carole the beds they had picked out on the Ikea website. As dinner got closer, we migrated downstairs.
Carol and Marvin were there, and John and Elvina drove up from Victorville. Harvey barbequed steak, and there was corn on the cob, watermelon, cantaloupe, cherries, and rolls. Harvey sat with Jason and me, and we talked about my motorcycle ride and some nice mountain roads in northern Colorado that Harvey knew about. Jason was eating some cherries, and I mentioned that the best plums are the one you steal off the neighbor's tree when you're 10 years old. Harvey told a story about his high school years. After a football game, a bunch of kids went to a neighboring town, and decided to grab some watermelons from a local farmer's yard. The farmer came out to stop them, and "accidently" discharged his shotgun, hitting and killing one of the kids from the football team. I glad the guy with the plum tree over on Acacia when I was kid wasn't packing.
A few years back we got stuck in horrendous traffic after the Big Bear Lake fireworks show, and no one was up for that. We left just before 9:00pm, and had very little traffic going down the front way. We pulled in at 10:30, and the kids started measuring their room.
After my early wake-up call, I had no incentive to stick around the motel, and headed out early. The tank was on reserve, and I got gas at an Arco on the other side of the freeway. As I was finishing up, a young guy with a gas can walked up and asked if I could spare a gallon of gas. Having been in such a situation in my wayward youth, I re-swiped my atm card and told him to fill the gas can all the way up. He and his girlfriend were heading to her mother's house in Bakersfield, about 95 miles away, but the two gallons in the can would at least get them close.
I'm still not sure about the accuracy of my speedometer. I've passed those your speed is radar signs a few times, and the posted speed is always 10-15% lower than my speedometer. Because of this, I like to find someone going a speed I'm comfortable with, and just stick with them. This makes for a quick, mindless passage.
A few miles south of Selma I found a guy in a newer, white Stratus, and hooked on - figuratively. We blew down the 99 all the way to Bakersfield, and just before I exited for coffee I pulled up along side him and we exchanged waves.
I got more gas at Grapevine (at the same station I filled up at on Day 1), then pulled off for In-N-Out in Santa Clarita. The place was jumping, as usual, and I wound up sharing a table with a nice guy from Lodi. We swapped stories of motorcycle tours past, present, and future, and shook hands as we parted.
The final miles were uneventful, and it was good to be back home.
