07-05-2024 Hike

Woke up early, got ready for a longer hike with my weighted backpack. I hiked directly over to the trailhead to Lake Hodges off of Duenda Rd and took it. Headed to the trail that leads along the south side of Lake Hodges. This trail is pretty overgrown, and as I walked it in the early morning, I walked through a number of spider webs, which isn't a pleasant experience. It has some little ups and downs but nothing steep that lasts for very long. This was an out-and-back hike, and I turned around at about 2.5 miles, got my poles out, and used them for the return part on the dirt sections. Shoulders felt better, I can detect that they are carrying weight but it seems manageable. Total mileage of 5 miles in a little over 90 minutes. When I got home, I had some breakfast and watched a little TV, cleaned the kitchen, then went out into the front yard and hacked back the ficus plant growing by our front porch. Read a little later in the morning, then I patched a couple of inner tubes and replaced the battery in my Quarq power meter. Afternoon was quiet. I worked on the Python routine to do batch processing of my ride's GPX files to generate power curve numbers, was ultimately successful but the batch processing seemed to run into some kind of glitch after about 250 files. I didn't work too hard to figure out what was the problem, just left it as is. Then I ran a separate batch program that consolidates all of the existing power curve data files into a single CSV database file. It all worked, and I was able to look at the database in Excel.

A couple of days ago, I finished The Lincoln Highway, and I read a couple of short stories, including one based in The Expanse series, taking place on Laconia shortly after it has been settled. On this day, I started a book by Bill Browder called Red Notice, which is part memoir and part expose about the Russian government's attempts to silence critics of its finance systems and oligarchy