Stan’s Obligatory Blog

We went to see Julia Sweeney‘s monologue show, “Letting Go of God” this weekend. It was really good. Very entertaining. She tells the story of her Catholic upbringing and her later disillusionment with it. This led into her spiritual quest which involved Deepak Chopra, trips to Tibet, Bhutan and the Galapagos Islands. And how all this ultimately led to her abandoning her belief in God. Along the way, she tells a lot of funny stories and takes pokes at most of the major and minor religions. It was a hoot.

She said that the show has been extended through at least the end of January. If you’re in the L.A. area, it’s definitely worth seeing.

Today’s ride was Gene’s “Just One Hill” ride. And there was just one hill. But it was big and steep. It wasn’t nine miles uphill like last week, but it was still a good climb. It was another picture-postcard day, so when we got to the top, we were able to see all the way out to the ocean. On the way down, I had to stop to do a brake adjustment on my bike. While I was doing that, Newton’s front tire just decided to go flat. So we had a little break sitting there on the side of the hill.

When we got to the bottom, we stopped at the Starbuck’s in La Cañada. I had a bagel and orange juice. Easy to digest for glycogen and all that. Then we headed back into Pasadena. We took the side trip up to Loma Alta and came back through the foothills of Altadena. The view from the top of Lake Avenue was impressive. The ride was kind of short by our standards, so we just sort of noodled around Pasadena and Sierra Madre to pad the ride out a bit.

40 miles.