Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s ride was the classic Toluca Lake ride, with a stop at Bicycle John’s race in Glendale on the way back.

We started out going south on Sierra Madre into San Marino. Then we got on Monterey Road to go across South Pasadena into Highland Park. We took Ave 60 across to Figueroa.

As we were going down Figueroa, I saw a sign for “FUD”. My first thought was something like, “I didn’t know Microsoft was in the food business”. But no, it’s not that kind of FUD.

After Ave 50 and El Paso Dr, we ended up on Eagle Rock Blvd to get to Ave 36 and Fletcher. We passed the old Van de Kamp’s bakery. I noticed that the sign on the front said “Holland Dutch Bakery”. I suppose that’s to eliminate possible confusion with the Pennsylvania Dutch or perhaps Von Dutch. Yeah.

After crossing the Los Angeles River, we got on the bike path. This is the stretch where we always go very fast for no discernable reason. And today was no exception. I actually had to shift to a bigger gear to keep up. We rode all the way to where the path ends at Riverside.

Crossing the freeway, we got on Zoo Dr and rode through Griffith Park to Forest Lawn and into Burbank. We turned right at Barham and passed by Warner Bros, and then we stopped at Priscilla’s. As always, they have the best fresh-squeezed orange juice there. It’s definitely worth the extra $0.25 to get the large, and if they offered ‘Super-Size’ I’d even get that.

After the stop, we headed back on Riverside Drive past the equestrian center. Then we stopped off at Bicycle John’s race in Glendale. We went to see this race two years ago, too. When we got there, it was the Masters 35-39 group racing. I had brought along an extra $20 bill to donate as a prime. This time I made sure I had fresh batteries in my camera so I could get a picture of the riders sprinting for the prize. And it was a pretty good sprint. When I was a racer, I liked it when people donated primes for races, so I figure that I’ll do my part now that I’m older and have more money.

After watching the race for a bit, we left and headed back across Glendale. We took a southern route so we could pass by and see the sign at Hammered Liquor. Then we went down Verdugo to Eagle Rock Blvd again and headed home across South Pasadena and San Marino.

It was a nice ride.

45 miles.
cycling