Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today was the springtime Castle Green tour day. Castle Green is an old hotel in Pasadena that has been converted into apartments. It’s a unique place. I’ve been here for the tour once before, but that was years ago, so it was time to see it again.

The tour starts when we walk into the lobby. The sign said that the lights were deliberately left exposed without glass globes so that we could see that they were using electric lighting, which was a new thing when the building first opened.

We walked up the stairs one floor at a time, stopping to see the apartments that were open for the tour on each floor. We got to see one apartment that Tim Burton used to live in. That was most likely back in the days when Old Town Pasadena still smelled of urine, and was a relatively cheap place to live.

The building and decor in Castle Green are very interesting and amusing. We enjoyed seeing how each apartment was decorated. I particularly liked seeing how each person who has one of the end apartments decided to decorate the round room in the turret at the south end of the building.

We made our way up one floor at a time, until we came out on the roof. After that, we went back down to see the rest of the first floor, and also the one open suite in the basement.

It was a fun afternoon.

Today’s bike club ride was the “Fern Dell and The Trails” ride to Griffith Park. This is the first time we’ve done this one since last summer.

It was cool and overcast when we started out. We had a good-sized group today. The route out took us through Eagle Rock and then down to the L.A. River and Silver Lake. We had to take a small detour there, since there was a sign that said that Glendale Blvd was closed for a short stretch. So we went up Riverside to detour around it. Then we headed up Hillhurst into Griffith Park.

The ride up to Griffith Observatory is always a joy. That is, it’s a joy if you like riding up steep hills. It’s a pretty hard climb, but we got to the top all right, and we rested for a few minutes on the lawn there. Then we headed down Western Canyon Road to Fern Dell and The Trails.

The cafe was as crowded as I’ve ever seen it. There was a line, and about half the tables were full. That was kind of unusual. I also had a laugh at the stuffed crow nailed to the roof of the building. Shades of the Dead Parrot. I also thought it was funny that they made a point of telling us that the plastic utensils are biodegradable, even though they looked and felt like regular plastic. And I was also amused by the choice of sugar, liquid sugar, raw sugar, and honey.

When we left The Trails, we had to ride back up the hill into the park, and this time, we continued on all the way up Mt Hollywood. When we got to the top, my phone was making its ‘barking sea lions’ sound for an incoming message. Carla said that Silvio had gotten a flat on the way up. So I rode back down to find them. When we got his tire fixed, we started up again. Just over the top, John and I stopped to have a look at the ‘Haunted Picnic Table‘. This is a pretty good prank. The guy who made that story up made a very convincing-looking fake L.A. Times web page for the article. The key is that ‘rn’ can look like an ‘m’ in the location bar of your browser. So we stopped for a photo-op with the crushed picnic table before headed down the hill.

At the bottom of the hill, I heard the sea lions barking again. This time, Carla said that Silvio’s tire had blown out back up near the top of the hill. So we turned around and rode back up the hill to find them. About halfway up, we found everyone else coming down. They said that Silvio was throwing in the towel. He was walking down the hill, and had called home for a ride. So the rest of us continued on.

There were some fire engines and an ambulance parked by the river where the bike path starts. I have no idea what they were doing there, but they looked like they were doing something.

We rode down the bike path all the way to the end where Riverside goes over the river and turns into Figueroa. From there, we rode up Figueroa into Highland Park, and then across the arroyo to South Pasadena.

All told, it was a pleasant ride. It was supposed to be about 45 miles, but with all the extra riding up and down Mt Hollywood, when I got home, I had 49.5. So I rode back down the block once just to make it come out to a nice round 50.

50 miles.