Stan’s Obligatory Blog

It’s the end of summer, so it’s time once again for the Los Angeles County Fair.

I didn’t win a ribbon this year. But if you want to try, here are the recipes I entered:

Blueberry Muffins
Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

In any case, they didn’t get a ribbon, unlike last year’s entry.

It was a nice day for the fair. It’s usually very hot there, but today was nice. We went there with Lucinda and her friend London. Being the age that they are, Kathleen and I figured we’d send them off with some money, and we’d only hear from them when they needed more.

Right inside the gate, we were assaulted with the stands offering Everything! Totally! Fried! Yick.

First off, Kathleen and I headed over to the Culinary Styles area. I wanted to see if I’d won a ribbon, since they don’t publish the results. I didn’t win anything, so we moved on. We stopped in to see the garden model railroad. It was amusing to see that they had a lot of familiar Los Angeles sights rendered in miniature there. After that, we wandered over to get some Dr Bob’s Ice Cream. Then, we went into the pet area, since they had a pen with some wallabies in it. Not your usual pets, but interesting and cute.

Next, we found the arts building, so we could go see the Museum of Neon Art exhibit there. It was a small exhibit, mostly of old neon signs from their collection. At that point, I got a message from Lucinda. They’d gone on some rides, and they were out of money. And they wanted to buy themselves tails. So I told them to meet us outside, and I gave them some more money. We followed along to see the tails, and they were cute.

For lunch, we went to King Taco. Then, after having the pork carnitas, we went into the barn to see some baby pigs. We looked at all the animals, and ended up at the far end just in time for the pig races. That was amusing, and at the end, they gave us all coupons for a pound of bacon. Made from the losers, presumably.

The final act was to walk through all the exhibit halls and marvel at the endless rows of booths selling all manner of crap. In the end, I bought a hat, which was a fairly modest thing, compared to some of the stuff they were selling there.

It was a fun day.

Since today is the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and all of America is holding various events to mark the occasion, I thought that we at Foothill Cycle Club should join in. So today’s bike ride was a route to visit the World Trade Center memorial at the Los Angeles Fire Department training center near Dodger Stadium. We’d been to see this once before, but I knew that they were going to be having some sort of event going on there today.

We rode out, across Glendale, and then down the L.A. River bike path. Then up into Elysian Park, where we took a short side trip into Echo Park to stop at Chango Coffee.

Leaving Echo Park, we had to go back up a pretty steep little hill. I’d checked out that part of the route in Google Maps Street View, and it really hadn’t looked all that steep there. But everyone who rides with me knows that that’s just how it goes. We’ll find ourselves riding up a wall, all the time while I’m saying, “But it looked flat on the map!”

Rolling down past Dodger Stadium, we came to the LAFD training center. And yes, they were having a big event going on. They had fire trucks, news vans, and a big crowd gathered. We stayed for a little while to listen to the speakers, and then we headed home. The route back was pretty direct, taking Broadway out of downtown, and then up Huntington Drive.

When we got back, it was just me and Carla, and I had only 38 miles. So we took another little side trip to try and see the Altadena wallabies. They weren’t out when we went by, but at least we know where they live now, so we’ll go back another time.

It was a nice ride.

42 miles.