Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Tonight I went with the hiking group on yet another hike up Mt Hollywood. On the way up, I realized that I’d done this same Friday night hike this weekend last year. And that weekend turned out to be quite fun and memorable.

We took a rather steep route up, which was actually great fun. When we got to the top, we all pulled out wine and food, and we had a little party.

On the way down, I chatted with a woman in the group, and I told her my story about living in Texas, and how I decided that I don’t hate Texas any more.

It was a nice way to end the week..

Tonight I went back to Griffith Park for yet another hike up Mt. Hollywood. I’ve found that this is a very good thing to do when I need to forget my troubles and just generally forget that the rest of the world exists. It’s sort of my emotional equivalent of joining the French Foreign Legion.

It’s almost one year to the day since I posted this here, and suddenly it’s relevant once again:

“Love is an exploding cigar we willingly smoke.” –Lynda Barry

So it turns out that last weekend’s trip was the swan song of my relationship with Susan.

Suffice to say that I’m just tremendously sad. But at the same time, I will be forever grateful for the time we did have together. We had a magnificent and magical time. We had laughs and adventures. We went to North Carolina, where we visited Jesse Helms’ grave to make sure he was dead. We went to Texas for my big party. A trip to Lake Tahoe. And we rode our bikes more than 2,000 miles together. We shared a thousand really nice moments.

I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

But now it’s time to close that book and move on…

So here are some random images from our 24-hour vacation to Ventura.

We brought our bikes, so we could go riding on Sunday morning.

On the way out to dinner, we saw seagulls walking around near the park, looking for food. We don’t see many seagulls inland in Pasadena.

We had dinner at a restaurant with a martini bar, so we started off with caramel-apple martinis, which was novel.

After the ride on Sunday, I took a walk while Susan showered. I saw utility boxes painted and turned into art. I also visited the Albinger Archaeological Museum and saw the excavated foundations of the original mission church.

Before heading home, we had lunch at the marina, and got a souvenir picture with a tile mural of a sea otter.

It was another nice, albeit short vacation.

Edit: (4/7/2009) And this trip has turned out to be the swan song of our relationship. It all collapsed for reasons I’m not going to go into. It’s sad, but it will be all right in the end.

For a year now, Susan has been telling about the rides she used to do with the Channel Islands Bicycle Club when she would visit Ventura. So this weekend, we headed up there for an overnight micro-vacation complete with a bike ride on Sunday morning.

The ride started at the park next-door to the hotel, which was very convenient. It was relatively warm for 8:00AM. The ride went up to Ojai and back, including a gratuitous climb up the Dennison Grade on Highway 150.

We started out on the Ventura River bike trail, which paralleled the 33 Freeway. We rode through some oil fields on the way out of town, but we were out in the country very quickly. We went up past Lake Casitas, which had some very nice views from the road. Then it was down into Ojai. That was where I saw the Muffler Horse. I’ve seen Muffler Men before, but never a horse.

A bit later, we saw a house with the front yard turned into a large found-object art project. That was pretty amusing.

Then it was time for the gratuitous climb. It was a pretty nice uphill, with a nice viewpoint near the top, complete with a wall I could balance the camera on for a picture. Then we turned around and went back down.

At the bottom, we picked up a stiff tailwind, and we were able to cruise at 30mph easily. That was fun for a few miles. Then we got to the snack stop. We loitered around for a bit until a group decided to head back. We rode pretty much straight south back to Ventura. It was mostly downhill, but with a weirdly varying wind that kept changing direction on us.

The last part was back down the bike trail we’d started on, which let us off right by the park where we started.

It was a very nice ride with some very pretty scenery.

41 miles.
cycling

On Saturday, I went on the Foothill Cycle ride out to West Covina. This was a pretty mundane, basic ride. But suddenly, I saw a photo-op. It was Gaybar Ave in West Covina. Who knew there would be such a place? I stopped to take a picture for my collection of signs.

I needed to get home by noon, so I skipped the stop and rode home. It was a nice day, so it was a good ride.

49 miles.
cycling

I signed up for the Los Angeles Climb California stair climb. This is a timed run up the stairs of the AON Center in downtown Los Angeles. This is the second-tallest building in L.A. I’d have preferred to do the Library Tower, which is taller, but this one was available. Anyway, running up the stairs in a 62-story building just sounds like fun to me. I’m funny that way.

The only real reservation I have about this is that it’s a fundraiser for the American Lung Association. While that’s appropriate in that without functioning lungs doing the climb would be extraordinarily difficult, it’s one of those things where they want everyone doing it to bug everyone they know to make a donation. And I just don’t like doing that. So this is a problem.

Sheesh. All I wanted was to do something silly and stand on the roof of a really big building for a few minutes. So if you want to make a donation in my name, the page is here.