It’s a Wonderful Ride
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It’s Christmas Day, and it’s also Sunday, so that means it’s time to go for a bike ride. And I came up with a theme-ride for today. We rode to Forest Lawn in Glendale to visit Jimmy Stewart, who is perhaps best known for playing George Bailey in the 1946 film “It’s a Wonderful Life“. And from there, we rode to La Cañada to see the house that was used in the film to portray the Martini family house in Bailey Park. This was part of showing George all the good he’d done in the world, since the Martini’s were able to buy this nice house with help from the Bailey Building and Loan.
It was a bit chilly when we started out, but it promised to get warm soon. We rode out across Eagle Rock and then south through Glendale to Forest Lawn. I asked for directions at the gate, and then we headed in. Jimmy Stewart is buried near the Wee Kirk ‘O the Heather church, which is up on a pretty steep hill. But we made it up there, and we got to pay our respects. And we also talked a bit about how it was kind of funny that the movie itself was originally considered a commercial failure, but after it fell out of copyright in the 1970s and was shown a lot on television, it came to be regarded as a classic.
Leaving Forest Lawn, we headed up to Paradise Bakery. After a stop there, we rode up the long hill to Montrose, and then up the somewhat steeper Hospital Hill into La Cañada. There, we saw the La Cañada Rose Parade float parked under the 210 freeway, and then we saw the Martini home. And after that, we headed home by way of Altadena.
It was a wonderful ride.
37 miles.
