Today, the sun works for me!

It's gotten hot again in Los Angeles, as I found out yesterday when I rode from my house to the garden plot in West Hollywood. Coming back around 1 pm, I really felt the heat.

Today was laundry day, so I broke out the clothesline and used the heat to my advantage. Even the jeans were dry in under four hours!

I've recently been using the recipe on this blog to make my own laundry detergent. The commercial stuff's gotten so expensive that I finally snapped and refused to buy it anymore.

The home made stuff works well, and combined with air drying makes the clothes smell really good (but not perfumey), and for some reason they're less stiff when air dried with the home-made stuff.

I feel so left out!

We've had two smallish (4+) earthquakes here in Los Angeles in the past 24 hours, and I didn't feel either of them.

I don't mind earthquakes (although I prefer them to not destroy the city like the 1994 quake did). I guess I'm just kind of used to them, but this many so quickly makes a bit nervous that we might have a big one - there's some thought that hot weather we're currently having brings on quakes. The 'Shake and Bake' effect, if you will.

I'm going to stock up on my emergency water, just in case, and then I'm taking the bike to the beach and staying there until it cools off! Like many folks who live near the beach, I don't have air conditioning so huddling in my living room watching Netflix isn't an option.

The advantage of riding the bike to the beach, is, of course, that I don't have to pay for parking. The disadvantage is riding home all sandy because I can never really get it all off in those beach showers, but it's better than sitting at home, slowly roasting.

Back in the gym, for now

Currently, the Santa Ana winds are blowing here in Los Angeles, which means that the air is hot, dry and, well, gross. Since it's blowing from inland to the ocean, all the allergens, pollution and general malaise that float in the air are now headed straight for me.

Mainly, it's the hot and dry that causes my problems. Hot because, well, it's hot. Dry because the dry air makes me cough like I'm about to die. I had originally intended to do a 30 ish mile bike ride today, but upon waking up with dry eyes, a dry nose, and a dry throat, I decided to stay indoors. 

So, I went to the gym. Since I hate doing cardio at the gym (running in place is intolerable, even with trash TV to distract me), I did weights and then a yoga class to stretch out.


I haven't done much weight training since the triathlon season started, so it hurt. Way more than I remember weights hurting, but  then again the yoga hurt, too.  Mainly because of all the bending.

Then I went and sat in the steam room and felt awesome until I had to go back outside.


Hopefully, the hot and dry will be over soon - according to the weather report, it should only be like this for another couple of days.

Fall Means Furnace in Southern California

It's time for the annual Santa Ana winds, which means just when the rest of the country's getting pink-cheeked from the frosty air, we're cooking like proverbial hush puppies in the deep fryer of life.

The winds create a hot, dry heat that burns the eyes and makes anyone with allergies wish they were dead. 

I went for a quick run this morning before work - I'd intended to get up at 6 and run for an hour, but I overslept so I decided to do a half hour run. I stepped out of the house at 6:45 and it was already hot and dry.

I spent most of the run coughing due to the dry air, and by the time I got back from an easy, easy run (30% walking, actually) I was sweaty and gasping.

What I really want to do is go jump in the ocean and stay there until it cools off, but sadly, I've been working too much to get in more than a quick workout here and there. I've also been drinking what seems like gallons of water and not peeing at all, which I'm told is bad.

Local news is predicting the heat breaking over the weekend, which will be wonderful. 

Sunday is the Playa del Rey sprint tri. I'm woefully under trained, but it's just a sprint and it's so hot I don't really care, so I'm not sweating it much (insert groan here).

Beer me!

I'm not normally a beer drinker - I don't like the taste of it very much, and it's too, well, beery for me. I'd rather drink wine, sake, vodka, etc..

But a strange thing happened the other day. I was scheduled to do a 30 mile training ride, so I decided to do it on the commuter bike and make a stop at a farmer's market that's about 8 miles away from me in Culver City.

So I headed out, figuring I'd do a couple of loops on the Ballona Creek bike path, hit the market really quick as I knew what I wanted from a particular vendor (he sells seedlings for $1.50, and I needed some more tomato plants for my garden), and then book it back home.

Of course I forgot about the strong winds we have this time of year, and since the commuter bike doesn't have drop bars, I was really fighting the wind for most of the ride. On an 80 degree day, a nice brisk wind coming from the ocean should be refreshing, but in reality it was just exhausting.

When I got back home (after doing a tad under 30 miles), I had, for the first time in probably my entire life, an insatiable craving for beer. Not a heavy dark beer, either, but a light pilsner. I hiked up to the local bar, downed two glasses, and felt better.

I didn't continue to want beer and I haven't had the craving since. In fact, I'm back to thinking beer is yucky.

I've been riding in the heat for *coughcough* years and this has never happened before.

I wonder what it was?