La Tuna Canyon
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Today’s ride was Gene’s “La Tuna Canyon Inverse”. This is basically the same route for La Tuna Canyon, but traveling over the hill from west to east.
We had a small group, perhaps because today was the first day where the ride began at 8:00 instead of 8:30. We began by heading west across Pasadena, crossing the Colorado Street bridge, and then going down the hill into Eagle Rock. There, we passed the offramp that is another remnant of the old Colorado Freeway that was built in the 1950s.
We crossed Glendale and Burbank on Glenoaks Blvd. That was where we passed the church sign about “religious nuts”. We all got a good laugh from that.
Next, we crossed over into Sun Valley, and then went though a little residential area to get to La Tuna Canyon Road. That was where we saw the sheep. They looked at home, even though one doesn’t normally think of sheep within the Los Angeles city limits.
The climb up La Tuna Canyon wasn’t bad. The sky was overcast, and it was still cool. The climb to the top is about four miles, and Matt and Newton left the rest of us in the dust. I managed to catch up to Jason at the top, but Karen was left way behind. She had warned us that she was going to be slow up the hill. At the top, I turned and went back down to be sure she was all right, and then we rode back up to the top.
Cresting the hill in the canyon, we had a nice downhill ride through Tujunga into La Crescenta. There, we found ourselves riding through the Montrose Arts & Crafts Fair. That made for a slow couple of blocks, but we saw some cute dogs along the way. Coming out the other side of the fair, we headed straight up Hospital Hill to our snack stop at Goldstein’s Bagels. I thought it was funny that they had a drive-through. We briefly considered riding through it, but decided that it was probably simpler to just go inside. So we got our bagels and sat down at one of the tables outside. That was where Matt was tremendously amused by my case of helmet hair, so he had to take a picture for posterity.
After that, we headed home through La Cañada and Pasadena. It was a very pleasant ride.
44 miles.
