Category Archives: Personal stuff

Days 1, 2 & 3 kind of all ran together on this trip

Personal stuff

Sunday started with a nice bike ride to the coast with Kevin, then at 7:30pm it was time to fly… to South Africa. It’s about as far away as you can go; I think the only place I could fly to that would involve greater distance might be India, but my wife has no desire to go there. Too bad; the number of movies over the past decade from or about India has certainly increased my desire to travel there. Plus, it’s cheap. South Africa is in the category of “reasonable” meaning cheaper than in the US but way more expensive than Cambodia. Everywhere is way more expensive than Cambodia!

But this is about South Africa, and that means two back-to-back 11 hour (ok, actually 10 flying) flights, first to London, then Johannesburg, followed by a two hour flight to Cape Town. The London flight was tolerable but still not something I could sleep on; thankfully, they have showers at the LHR lounge, which might me feel partly human. Karen does much better in this regard, although not quite as well as Kevin. I don’t think anybody sleeps as well, on-demand, as Kevin. The next flight, London to Johannesburg, that felt pretty long, partly because it was the second flight, and partly because there are no extra-legroom seats available, so more of a crunch factor.

Landing in Johannesburg, we had 5 hours to kill, definitely more time than my zombie state desired. Not enough time (or opportunity) to try and sleep, and besides, I needed to adjust to the new time anyway. We spent most of the time in the lounge, emerging about an hour before flight to buy a local simcard for Karen’s phone. In some ways that last yet short flight seemed the worst, perhaps partly because I didn’t take a shower while in Johannesburg, but mostly because it was just a whole lot of flying in a very short time.

No problem getting from the airport to our hotel/guest house (is a small hotel now a guest house?) via Uber. Uber is pretty amazing here; cheap & fast.

More sometime soon, but having some issues updated the diary. Best to check out my facebook page where things are uploading better.

Where have I been???!!!

Personal stuff, Ride reports (not Tu/Th), Shop news

Last Thursday, wow, quite a few days ago, nice ride with Todd & Kevin (kid, not the pilot). Nothing fast, except when the road didn’t tilt up too much so I could hang on the wheels in front of me. Didn’t even come close to breaking 30 on the ride up Kings through the park, but somehow that didn’t seem like such a terrible thing. Sadly, this would be my last real ride for a while, because Sunday I would be flying to Wisconsin for a series of biz meetings & seminars at Trek.

Friday morning it was time for my now-monthly blood test, but not before first trying, and somehow succeeding, to order an iPhone X during the first ordering window. It took a few tries, bombing out several minutes after each attempt, before I game up at 12:40am and went to bed (ordering started at exactly 12:00am, and the initial window that came up shortly thereafter said I had just a 3 minute wait before it would be my turn, but when it was my turn, it did the hourglass thing for 10 minutes before I gave up and tried again… did the same sort of thing). But I did, before taking my shower, set it up to try again. And what do you know, I couldn’t get to sleep so I check my phone and, at 1:01am, it let me order one. In theory it will arrive sometime between November 3rd and 11th. What a dork.

Friday morning, without as much sleep as I would have liked, it was off to the vampires for the latest blood test, as well as coffee at Sheri’s Java Shack. Almost makes it worthwhile! Becky and Kevin always accompany me for good luck; in the early weeks, they came with me to make sure I wouldn’t chicken out. Thankfully my fear of having blood drawn no longer causes my veins to collapse! And this time the good luck seems to have worked because I had my best blood test since my diagnosis last May! Platelets have come down to 505k (they’d been as high as 1.2 million; normal is 400k), RDW showed smaller difference between largest and smallest blood cells (a good thing) and overall things just plain looked good.

Sunday it was off to Wisconsin. Uneventful flights (although the inflight entertainment system went out for about half an hour, making me wonder if I’d get to finish watching Wonder Woman or not) and one of the worst excuses for a $13 hamburger EVER in the Chicago airport. The place was called Santa Monica something-or-other and I think the hamburger probably had been made in Santa Monica… the day before.

Today? A lengthy series of 7 different business speakers and guess what? They were amazing! Trek paced things just right, with enough time in-between that it never dragged like I feared it might. Keynote address by John Burke, President of Trek, followed by various people telling us how we could be more relevant to our customers and more efficient for a better bottom line. After having to close our Los Altos store due to bottom line issues, this was good stuff to hear!

More meetings tomorrow, which means… yes, I’m still in Wisconsin, missing yet another day of riding. Looking forward to being home late Wednesday. –Mike–