Stan’s Obligatory Blog

After stair-climbing practice on Thursday, I got changed and walked over to the Pershing Square Metro station to meet up with Kathleen. She had texted me that she was riding the Red Line in from North Hollywood. On the way over there, I looked back and saw a nice view of Venus and Jupiter, close together, and both right over the Aon building that I’d just climbed.

When Kathleen got there, we walked up the 102 steps (I counted them) to get from the subway platform to street level. And then we headed over on 4th St to go see some art. We met up with Zana there, and we set off in search of the food trucks that are usually at Art Walk night.

It turned out that the food trucks were parked in a lot by Main and 2nd. I decided to try the Rebel Bite this time. I got the Sundried Tomater Melt, and it was quite good. After that, we went to see some actual art. There was a lot of nice art to be had, and the crowds were not too bad this time.

All in all, it made for a fun evening.

Thursday night is Art Walk night in downtown Los Angeles. Kathleen and I were planning on meeting up there to go see the art, so I planned to go practice on the stairs beforehand. This time, I remembered my watch. I also brought along my big fancy-ass camera, since we were going to be going Art Walking. That turned out to be a bit of bother to carry up the stairs, but that’s all right.

This time, I clipped my split times note card to the back of my glove. I made it to 20 a few seconds ahead of schedule. I was right on schedule at 32, but I fell a few seconds behind by the time I got to 44. I was just getting going on my final dash to the finish when I came around the corner at 59 and one of the building guards was sitting in the middle of the staircase. He said they’d just painted the stairs above, so we had to stop at 59. I was a bit startled by this, and it was several seconds before I realized that that meant I should stop my watch. At that time, it said 10:04. So I think my actual time if I’d been able to go on to 60 would have been right around 10 minutes. Which is not bad for being in recovery mode still.