Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today was a solar eclipse. Here in L.A., we’re too far south to see the full annular eclipse, but we still got something like 85% coverage, which was still fairly dramatic.

I got a little solar filter for my Meade 2045, which is my ‘small and portable’ scope. I set it up in front of our neighbor’s house where there was a clear view through the trees. I was even able to get some pictures by just duct-taping my little Canon A560 to the eyepiece. So the first photo shows the sun just a few minutes after first contact. The second is at maximum coverage. And the third photo shows the little crescent suns projected on our neighbor’s house by the sunlight filtering through the trees.

It was good geek fun. All the neighbors came out to look at it. And now that I have the filter, I’m ready for the transit of Venus on June 5th.

Today’s bike club ride was one that didn’t really go anywhere in particular, aside from up and down a bunch of hills. But we did have a brief sightseeing stop at the 15-mile mark of the Pasadena Marathon. My stair-climbing friend Veronica was running in it, and based on her previous time of 3:44, I figured she’d be passing the 15-mile mark at about 8:40. Which gave us just enough time to ride up there from our 8:00 start at Victory Park. And she was right on schedule, running by us at 8:40:28 on her way to a new personal best of 3:42:49.

After that, we continued on, riding up through La Crescenta, back down to La Cañada, and then up and over the big hills past Sacred Heart school, and also Patrician Way. It’s all one hill, but we rode up and down it twice by two different routes. Then we rode to South Pasadena for cold drinks at Kaldi’s.

By then, it was pretty hot, and the last part of the ride didn’t include any more big hills. We just rode home at a leisurely pace. It was a pleasant ride.

42 miles.