Stan’s Obligatory Blog

A few days ago, I got a reminder email from the Academy Museum that the “Cyberpunk” exhibit was closing Sunday. I hadn’t even heard about this, so I decided I needed to go see this. So I made arrangements with my friend John to go see it on Friday.

The “Cyberpunk” exhibit was smaller than I’d hoped, but still very good. There was a video presentation with clips from films from “Tron” to “Ex Machina” to the present day. Then, in the second floor gallery, they had some artifacts, with a phone booth from “Blade Runner”, a costume from “Tron”, concept art drawings and props from several movies. All in all, it was entertaining.

And when we came out of the second floor gallery, we saw that the big 50th anniversary exhibit about “Jaws” was next door. So we went to see that. There were a lot of original props from the movie, and video presentations about topics from making the film, including some Super-8 film clips taken on the set. One piece was about John Williams and the music. They had a little keyboard with keys that lit up as cues so you could play the shark music right there. There was also a montage of clips from many, many films and TV shows with a “…gonna need a bigger…” scenes. Which gives an idea of the cultural impact of the movie.

Overall, it was a fun afternoon.

On Friday, I went to the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris. I’d been there once before, back in 1995, and I’d been thinking of going back again. When I looked at their web site, I saw the Run One Program, and I immediately thought of Sandi, who I met some years ago through Atlas Obscura. She likes to do unusual and obscure things. At first I guessed she’d already done this, since she finds ways to see and do lots of things. But when I asked her, she said she hadn’t done this yet. So I told her I thought we should go do it.

They have two operational examples of the Pacific Electric Red Cars, so I made arrangements for us to have a one-hour session in each of them. That way, we could both drive and ride in each of the two cars.

First up was the 717 “Hollywood” car. They had set it up on the loop track around the museum grounds. We were met by Carson, who is in charge of maintaining the Red Cars. He gave us a short tutorial about how to operate the car, and took us once around the loop. After that, it was my turn to drive. I ran the car a few times around the loop, which was a fun little experience. Then Sandi had a turn to drive it. And before long, our first hour was up, and it was time to move on.

The second Red Car was the 418 “Blimp” car, so-called because it was much larger than the 717. It was set up for us on the “main line” track, which is about a half-mile of straight track. We got the tutorial on how to operate it, and Sandi took the first turn. At the end, we had to turn around, which involved setting the car up to run in the opposite direction. We had to put the pole on the back end of the car up on the wire, and bring the front pole down. I was able to put the pole on the wire, but I couldn’t see the hook on the roof to stow the pole we took down, so Carson had to help us out there. Turning the car around also involved closing and opening valves for the air brakes, and moving the brake handle and operator’s key to the other end of the car. We drove it back and forth several times, and it was an interesting experience.

Each car had a “dead man” switch that had to be held down all the time the car was in motion. The throttles and brakes felt very different on the two cars, so driving each one was a distinctly different experience.

Overall, this was a fun little adventure, and I’m glad to have done it. Also glad to have found something that Sandi hadn’t already done, and to help her to have the chance to do it.

There’s a vent for the bathroom ceiling fan that somehow got stuck open some months ago. Lately, I’ve been hearing bird noises coming out of the fan when it’s not running, and today I saw the bird. I guess this means they built a nest in there, so I probably won’t be running the fan until the baby birds grow up and fly away. And then I guess I should close the little flap.

Being retired, we have been spending a lot of time at our house at Lake Arrowhead. We’ve been going up there during the week all year. But this time, we were up in the mountains on Tuesday evening when I got a message from Lulu that there was a fire starting near home. She sent me a picture of flames visible over Pasadena High School, which is just a few blocks from our house. An hour later, the evacuation order came in. We were already evacuated, but that was just happenstance, and we were sort of trapped there, unable to even know what was happening.

The next day, Lulu was able to get back into the neighborhood to see what had happened. As it turned out, three houses on our block burned, as well as our next-door neighbor’s garage. We came back on Thursday to pick up some supplies from the house, since we weren’t there when the evacuation order came through. So we had to come back to get all the items we would have grabbed on the way out the door. Our house smelled very smoky, and there was water and dirt on the laundry room floor from the firefighters dousing the back of our house to prevent it from catching fire while the neighbors’ garage burned.

I came back again on Sunday the 12th to try and piece the broken gate back together. It’s pretty far gone, but I figured I could patch it up enough to be functional for a little while. Still, I cant complain, since I built that gate a bit over 20 years ago.

We came back from the mountain on the 16th and started some cleanup inside the house. We wiped down the walls in the living room, dining room, and hallway. We also damp-mopped all the wood and linoleum floors. And finally, we washed all the towels and bedding in the house. All of those things brought the smoke smell (relatively) under control.

I like to think we have interesting adventures living here, but this is definitely in the category of adventures we’d probably not miss if it hadn’t happened.

It’s not generally well-known that we have the Wende Museum in Culver City, which is a museum dedicated to the history of the Cold War. And because of the Wende Museum, we have the largest piece of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany. It’s on Wilshire Blvd, across the street from Hancock Park and the tar pits, and it’s just a few blocks from Park La Brea and the Jessica Cafe inside.

The day started out cold, but it warmed up nicely. So it was a good day for riding.

45 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

It’s the Sunday before Halloween, and time for our annual “Down for the Count” ride. This is a trip to Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City to visit Bela Lugosi’s grave. This was one of the first themed rides we ever did, back in 2007.

One the way out, we stopped briefly in Exposition Park to see the progress on the Oschin Space Center building. The rest of the ride to Culver City was pretty straightforward, aside from a flat tire on the way out and one on the way back. We stopped in at Grand Casino Bakery for drinks and snacks. It was a perfect day for riding.

56 miles

Route map and elevation profile

This week we heard that the Big Boy statue in front of their Downey restaurant was mangled in a car crash, the restaurant painted him green and put some foam brains spilling out of his broken head. So that was the ride destination for this Sunday. We also had heard yesterday that the Columbia space museum in Downey was moving a full-sized model of the Space Shuttle for display at the museum. So we figured we’d go by there and see if it was parked there.

The route was our standard route for doing south to Downey. We stopped briefly at the oldest operating McDonald’s. They have a little museum there about the history of the company, and also, they have bathrooms. Then we went a bit farther south to the Columbia museum, but there was no sign of the shuttle model. Then we went for snacks at 3rd St Coffee in downtown Downey. Then straight home, basically by the same route we took to get there.

43 miles.

Route map and elevations profile

It’s been about a month since we went to see the Childless Cat Ladies Art Project in Burbank, so I thought we should go back and see if they’d added more to it. So that was the ride today, along with a plan to go through Griffith Park and see where the city closed off a stretch of Griffith Park Blvd to cars.

When we got there, we saw that there were indeed a few new pieces up on the fence, including a kitty asking not to be eaten. Heh.

There’s still about a month to go before the election, so I think we’ll have to go back one more time

43 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

46 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

A few days ago, there was an item on the local TV news about an artist in Burbank who decided to make a pop-up art project dedicated to the ‘Childless Cat Ladies’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlZhvjMUw10

So, of course my instant thought was, “we need to go see this!” So that was the bike club ride for today.

It was a very nice day for riding. The heat wave of the last few weeks had broken, and I actually needed a little Hoover Blanket under my jersey to be warm when we started out. Nice problem to have in August.

Route map and elevation profile