Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This evening I met up with Susan and her father for dinner. He’s visiting her for the Super Bowl, and we all went out for dinner at The Bahooka in Rosemead. I’d seen this place every time I took the dogs to the kennel before trips last summer, and it looked like an interesting experience. And it was.

We had martinis at the bar before sitting down for dinner. While we were at the bar, we were all fascinated by the soft-shell turtle in one of the fish tanks below the bar. I never knew that a turtle could have such a long neck. When we sat for dinner we all had the ribs, which were quite good.

It was a fun evening.

This afternoon Lucinda went to play at her friend’s house up the street for a while, so I got to go for a short bike ride. I had an hour and 45 minutes, so I rode out to Duarte and back. The weather was perfect, and it was a nice time. And on the way back I passed a couple of houses in Arcadia that had trees in the yard that looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book.

24 miles.
cycling

Today’s ride had a fairly low turnout. Probably because the weather looked pretty threatening. There were six of us at the start, and we figured we’d just go and see what happened.

What happened first was that Jon got a flat. His tire just went flat, when we had a look at it, it was completely worn out. I’m not sure how he managed to miss that before going riding, but you can see it in the picture.

Continuing on, we rode down through El Monte to Whittier Narrows and then into Montebello. That’s where I got the obligatory picture of Susan with her packet of Gu. Then we turned back north, going over a couple of short, steep hills to get back to Alhambra. At that point, it had become a reasonably nice day. Still cloudy, but it didn’t look like rain any more.

We stopped for a snack at Noah’s Bagels near Caltech. Then we headed home. We cut the route short a little bit because a couple of people wanted to get back early.

It was a pretty nice ride.

32 miles.
cycling

Given all that’s going on in my life right now, could this new show be any more timely? A card came in the mail the other day for “Divorce! The Musical“.

On the web site, they say:

There’s a great saying: tragedy plus time equals comedy. If you’ve ever been divorced, then you know this is true.

DIVORCE! depicts a journey many of us have shared– a journey through sadness, bitterness, irony and above all, that miraculous ability we all have to heal, forgive and move on.

And the Playbill article linked from the site says:

According to production notes, “Set in present-day Los Angeles, Divorce! The Musical takes us on Penny and Rich’s journey, as their fairy-tale marriage unravels. Denial, deception, and raw outrage collide with greedy lawyers, dramatically inclined family members, mountains of paperwork and out-to-lunch therapists. Divorce! The Musical reminds us that laughing in the face of tragedy can sometimes be the best way to move on.”

Musical numbers include “Till Death Do Us Part,” “I’m Living In My Parents’ Basement And My Friends Forgot My Name” and “Half.”

This sounds like a hoot. Even though my divorce process is nowhere near finished, I’m ready to laugh about it.

When Lucinda and I got home this afternoon, there was a package on the porch. It was the new igniter for my oven. So I got out my tools and put it in. It was a bit of an ordeal, just because the two screws that hold the igniter to the side of the burner are at a very odd angle and very hard to reach. But aside from that, it was quite easy to install.

And it works just fine. So now I have a batch of focaccia dough rising to bake later this evening.

On Sunday morning, Susan and I went for a bike ride in San Diego. My favorite ride there was the one to Point Loma, so we did it again. Strangely enough, the weather today was better than when we did it last June, and also better than when I did it in April, 2007.

We took the coast route through La Jolla, and suddenly my phone rang. It was Vikki, who was there for work, and had seen us ride by from the balcony of her hotel. So we doubled back a block to visit with her. She and her friend had ridden down from Los Angeles yesterday.

There was a sign up at the beach that the seals have taken over, warning us that it was “pupping season” and that we should not disturb the seals. While we were there, I bought a seal T-shirt to take home for Lucinda.

Continuing on, we went through Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach, and then up the hill to the road out to Point Loma. We didn’t pay the $3 to go in this time, since we were a bit short on time and didn’t feel like riding down and back up the big hill to the tide pools. So we turned around and headed back.

On the road around Mission Bay, we saw the truck with “Jesus Christ is Lord” on it. I wonder what they were hauling in there?

When we were almost back to the hotel, Susan got a flat. So I took the picture for the Flat Tire Gallery. Then we rode the last mile back to the hotel. It was a very nice ride.

37 miles.

This weekend, Susan and I went to San Diego to see “Star Trek: The Exhibition” at the San Diego Air and Space Museum. This was a show of costumes, models and props from the “Star Trek” TV shows and movies. A lot of the artifacts from the original series are lost, but they had a lot of things from the more recent shows.

On the way in, Susan had to stop for a photo-op with the life-sized standup of Charles Lindbergh that was in front of The Spirit of St. Louis.

Inside the exhibit, they insisted on no photography, so we don’t have pictures of us on the bridge of the Enterprise or in the transporter. I did sneak one picture of the Guardian of Forever from “The City of the Edge of Forever”. Still, it was a fun time.

We also wandered around the rest of the museum. We saw a reproduction of the Red Baron‘s airplane, as well as his collection of medals from the war.

Afterward, we went to visit with my father for dinner at his place.

I like to bake. And tonight I went to bake something. But when I turned the oven on, nothing happened.

This was very distressing.

So I went to the trusty Internet and consulted the Oracle of Google. And I found out that this is a fairly common problem with my oven. The igniter fails with age. But it’s not too hard to fix. So I ordered a new one tonight. And I hope to be baking again by some time next week.

Sunday’s bike ride was the classic Toluca Lake route. West through Eagle Rock and Glendale, and then through a bit of Bubank to Priscilla’s in Toluca Lake. Then back by way of the L.A. River bike path and South Pasadena.

The only amusing things we saw along the way were some people filming something across the street from Warner Bros, a homeless guy with a very large cart of stuff on the bike path, and a long line of birds down in the river bed, all standing at attention on one leg.

It was a very nice day. By the time we were heading back, it was quite warm and very pleasant. And that alone made it a very nice ride.

40 miles.
cycling

Today’s bike ride was through La Tuna Canyon and then across the San Fernando Valley with a snack stop in Toluca Lake.

We met at the Elks Lodge in Pasadena. The Rose Parade grandstands were still up, and they were apparently filming something there. There were some police cars for a fictitious police department in the parking lot.

The ride up through Montrose was nice. At the top of La Tuna Canyon we caught up with Gene and Charley. Then we all headed down the other side. At the bottom, we rode across Sun Valley to get to Coldwater Canyon Road, which we took south all the way across the Valley. The road was pretty wretched, like many Los Angeles city streets. It was also windy, since we’re having a Santa Ana right now. But that also meant that the air was very clear, and we could see the mountains very well. Along the way, we passed the Great Wall of Los Angeles.

In Toluca Lake, we stopped at Priscilla’s for bagels and such. Then we headed home by the direct route across Glendale and Eagle Rock. Then back up the Colorado hill into Pasadena.

It was a nice ride.

51 miles.
cycling