Stan’s Obligatory Blog

People from Foothill Cycle Club may have noticed that the pictures from this morning’s club ride don’t include any pictures of Susan. She had to go back to New York for the weekend for a funeral. So now I’m just watching her plane as it crawls its way back home across the continent…

This Sunday’s ride was a route that I made up a couple of years ago. It’s a ramble through La Crescenta and Tujunga, with a sightseeing stop at the house where they filmed “E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial“.

It was hot today, and that made riding up the hills even more of a joy than usual. But it was still fun. We rode up through La Crescenta, and then straight up Rosemont to the top. There was a sign near the top warning us that mountain lions have been seen there. So we attempted to maintain a brisk pace. Then west across to Tujunga, where JJ got a flat.

After fixing the tire, we headed up the hill going up to Elliott’s house. That’s something like a 15-18% grade. There was a house with sprinklers that were watering the street, so we all rode through the spray to cool off. At the top, we took a picture in front of the house before heading back down.

Coming down Tujunga Canyon Road, we stopped at a little park to get water, since we were running out. Then down into Montrose, where we stopped at Oven Fresh Bakery.

After the stop, it had gotten quite hot. So we had a secret ballot and voted to take a shortcut home. It was a nice ride, but pretty hot today.

37 miles.
cycling

This morning, the dogs were out in the back yard, barking like maniacs. So I went to have a look. There was a mother opossum on top of the wall at the back of my yard. It had one baby clinging to its back, and it was just standing there looking at the dogs. Opossums are like skunks that way. They just amble around like they own the place, and they don’t care how much noise anyone else is making about it.