Today’s bike ride
Today’s bike ride was Gene’s ‘Horizontal Bomp’ ride. Mostly flat, with just a few little hills.
We started out east through Arcadia and into Monrovia. Then we turned south and went down to Temple City. From there, we went west back across San Gabriel and San Marino and then up Los Robles back into Pasadena.
We stopped for a snack at Il Fornaio in Old Town. I had a mozzarella, tomato, and basil sandwich, which is my favorite thing there. While I was eating my sandwich and Steve was drinking his coffee, everyone else was working on Spencer’s bike. He just got a new bike, and he wanted to raise the handlebars up a bit. So of course, everyone had to get in the act.
After that, we went west a bit more, down into the arroyo. We passed Idealab. I’m always a bit surprised to see that it’s still there. We crossed under the famous Colorado Street Bridge and down past the Rose Bowl. They were having the swap meet there today, and there was a sign pointing the way to the valet parking. Now maybe it’s just me, but ‘swap meet’ and ‘valet parking’ are two phrases that, unlike a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, just don’t go together.
Anyway, from there, we went up the hill out of the arroyo, up to Windsor Road. There, we passed the house with the plastic cows in the yard. Then we continued on up the hill all the way to Loma Alta. We took Loma Alta up to the top of the hill on Lake Ave, and then we took some of the side streets across Altadena. We passed a classic example of a debris basin at the mouth of Rubio Canyon. We also had a look at the big landslide on the Mt. Wilson toll road. It appears that people have made a little foot trail across it now, but aside from that, there hasn’t been any substantial work done on clearing it yet.
We then headed down the hill on Altadena Drive back to the park. It was still pretty early, so I noodled around Pasadena a bit just to get in a few more miles. That was where I passed the corner of Summit and Mountain. Then I finished up by taking Mountain back across town.
50 miles.