Stan’s Obligatory Blog

A few weeks ago, I’d read about the city had put 96,000,000 black ‘shade balls’ on top of the big reservoir in Sylmar. Since we went to see the art balls in MacArthur Park last week, I thought it might make a good companion piece to see these more utilitarian balls-floating-on-water this week.

The route was straightforward. Across Eagle Rock and Glendale, and then all the way up Glenoaks to Sylmar. We did most of this route last summer, when we went on a tour of sights from the 1971 San Fernando Earthquake. Since we were there, we stopped briefly to see the fault scarp next to the McDonald’s in San Fernando. Then we continued north on Glenoaks, almost all the way to its end. A quick left on Roxford St brought us under the 5 freeway, and right to the reservoir. And from there, we could see the water, completely covered by black plastic balls floating on the surface.

A few months ago, I had occasion to take the Metrolink train back from Santa Clarita one day. Along the way, I’d noticed that there is a dedicated bike path that runs between San Fernando Road and the Metrolink tracks. So we tried that out today. The north end of it begins at Roxford, and we rode it for several miles, all the way to Van Nuys Blvd. It was a pretty nice path, although it had some discontinuities at some intersections where it moved from one side of the railroad tracks to the other. They kind of need to sort that out to mark it better and make it a little easier to get across the streets at those places.

It was hot, so we stopped to get some cold water along the way. That helped a bit. And then it was time for the ride up La Tuna Canyon. Five miles uphill, and as much fun as it sounds like. With the heat and the distance we’d traveled, we were kind of dragging a big by the time we got to the top. But from there, it’s almost entirely downhill all the way back to Pasadena. So all told, it was a nice ride.

58 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today was yet another little adventure with Atlas Obscura. Today it was Rock Hunt: Rubies. This was a short hike to a rock slide where the many of the rocks have corundum crystals embedded in them.

The night before, the organizer emailed us the location to meet. It was a bare set of lat/lon coordinates, which turned out to mark the location of a turnout off Mt. Baldy Road above Claremont. I put them into Waze, and it worked out how to get there. At the start, our guide passed around some rocks for us to look at so we would know what we were looking for. Then we headed out. We walked a short distance down the road to a small road that branched off down into a canyon. At the bottom, we took a trail that led us down to the river at the bottom of the canyon. Since we’re in our fourth year of drought here, the river was very small. We were even a bit surprised to see running water in it at all. We hopped across on some rocks and kept walking.

In a bit less than a mile, we got to the hillside with the rockslide. We all just sort of picked a spot and started digging and breaking rocks. In about ten minutes or so, I found my first ruby crystals. Once I’d found the first one, it was pretty easy to find more. We stayed there for about two hours, and in the end, I had about ten pounds of rocks collected.

On the way back, we stopped at the blackberry patch. Looking closely, we saw quite a few blackberries on the bushes. Most of them were just out of arm’s reach, but there were some we could reach, and they were very tasty. This was an interesting and entertaining little adventure.

The one final bit of drama was on the freeway going home. Traffic stopped suddenly, and up ahead, I could see there had been a spectacular truck accident, and the CHP had temporarily completely blocked traffic in both directions. Most of the wreck was on the other side, so our side was only stopped briefly, but it was still dramatic-looking.

Today is August 27th. It’s a holiday in Texas. That’s because Lyndon Baines Johnson was born on this day. But here in Los Angeles, it’s just Thursday, and time to go downtown and climb the Wells Fargo building stairs again. They told us that there was another elevator problem, so we could only go to 44 tonight. But that meant that I could get in five climbs instead of four, and that works out to be basically the same total amount of climbing. My goal for tonight was to do four climbs up to 44 in 9:33 or faster. I was aiming for a target pace that would get me there in about 9:30.

The first two times up, I was holding back a lot, and I still got up faster than my target. The third time I was just cruising, not holding back, but not pushing, either. And the fourth time, I had a push a little to maintain my target pace. But I came out on 44 right on time, so I guess I made my goal.

My reward for making the goal was to go up a fifth time, but un-timed and taking it easy. George was there, so we walked up together, talking and stopping at the fans at 11, 27, and 41. It was a nice evening on the stairs.

Tonight was yet another session on the Wells Fargo staircase, and tonight I managed to make three climbs up to 55, all within one second of each other. That’s a big step, since I haven’t been able to do anything like that in a long time. The first time, I was holding back quite a bit. I made a conscious effort to slow down, and I came out on top in 12 minutes even. The second time, I was still holding back a little, but maintaining the same pace. And I came out on top in 12:01. And the third time, I had to push just a little bit the last five floors or so, but I made it up in 12:01 again. This is the most consistent pace I’ve been able to do over , multiple climbs since 2013, so that’s a Good Thing.

Any my reward for making the three climbs at a steady pace was to do the fourth, untimed, and stopping to cool off at the fans on 11, 27, and 41. I just took it easy the fourth time, and made it up in about 15 minutes or so. Good times.

A few months ago, I read about how an artist was planning on having some 3,000 plastic spheres painted with flowers, fish, birds, and so forth, and then was going to float them all on the lake in MacArthur Park. I made a note that we should go see this when it was done, and this was the weekend. This is our first art tour bike ride since we went to see “Urban Light” back in May.

We rode down Huntington Drive into downtown L.A., and then down Spring St through downtown, and then Flower down to Adams, near USC. On the way out on Adams, there is a place with some sharp humps in the pavement, and Carla’s pedal hit the peak of one of them. This knocked her foot out of the pedal, and it snapped off one of the little stops that hold the spring-loaded back of the pedal. We were able to lever it back into place well enough to continue the ride, but that was today’s installment of the long-running series, “I’ve never seen one of these break before“.

We stopped for bagels at Noah’s in Larchmont. After that, we headed back toward downtown, taking 7th St in, since it goes right by the park. When we got to the park, we stopped off to have a look at the balls floating on the lake.

The route home went through Echo Park and Silverlake, and then home by way of York Blvd and South Pasadena. It was kind of hot at the end, but a pleasant ride.

43 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today was the gyoza eating contest, which is one of the events in Little Tokyo for Nisei Week. We’ve been to see it in 2011 and 2012, and it was both hilarious and horrifying. That makes it a “must-see” in my book. So we took the train down to Little Tokyo to go see it.

As always, the announcer from the IFOCE was great. He knew all the statistics, the rankings of the eaters, what contests they’d each won. And he introduced each one with enthusiasm and stomach-turning stories about how much they could eat. Each eater who had competed in this event before had a number on the back of their shirt signifying how many gyoza they had eaten before. Joey Chestnut was there, and he holds the record with 384 gyoza in ten minutes. At the same time, the tables were prepared with stacks of plates, each plate carrying 25 gyoza. The announcer had the audience count down from ten, and they were off and eating. It’s really amazing to watch. The intense concentration, the heads bobbing up and down, swigs of water to wash it down, and occasionally jumps and shimmies to try and pack the food down in the stomach. The contest was ten minutes. And nobody stopped eating. They were stuffing their mouths as fast as they could swallow, and nobody suffered the dreaded “Reversal of Fortune“. When the countdown to the finish came, they all stuffed their cheeks like chipmunks, since any gyoza that are already in their mouth at the finish count as long as they swallow them.

In the end, they tallied up the results, and Matt ‘Megatoad’ Stonie won with 343 gyoza. He didn’t set a new record, but it was enough to win. Joey Chestnut came in second with 339. Miki Sudo came in 3rd with 178. Full results are on the Major League Eating web site. As I said, watching this contest is both hilarious and horrifying. I recommend it highly.

Tonight’s stair session was another attempt at maintaining a consistent pace over multiple climbs. And this time, the magic worked better than it did on Tuesday. Still not as good as it was two years ago, but better than I’ve done in a while.

On the first climb, I held back a lot. I was aiming to get to the top right about 12 minutes, and 11:56 was nicely close. The second time up, I had to hold back a little bit, and I made the top in 11:59. The third time, I was feeling it. But I managed to maintain the pace, although I fell behind by a few seconds in the mid-40s. But I still had enough in the tank to be able to speed up a little bit and make up the time, and I came out on 55 with another 11:59. So that was pretty good.

After doing the three climbs, I still had plenty of time for a fourth, and my reward for hitting my goal on the three was that I was going to take it easy the fourth time. I didn’t time it, and I just plodded slowly up the stairs. I stopped in front of each of the four fans that blow cool air into the stairwell. Taking a minute to cool off at the fans was a nice treat.

I guess the next step will be to do this a few more times and see if I can get to a place where the first three climbs won’t be too much of a strain. When I can get to that, I’ll try for the fourth.

Tonight, there was some sort of problem with the freight elevator at the Wells Fargo building, so they told us we would only be climbing to 44 this time. I did some quick math, and worked out that climbing to 44 five times would be 215 floors, which compares favorably to the 216 that going to 55 four times totals. So my goal for the evening was to do five climbs, and try to do them at as close to a steady pace as I could. I worked out that my target pace would get me to 44 in about 9:35, so that was the goal.

The first time up, I was holding back a lot, but I still got there quite a bit faster than planned. The second time was slightly faster than planned, but close. The third time, I made it up right on schedule, but I was feeling the strain. I had to push a little bit to keep on pace the last 20 floors or so. After that, I knew the fourth climb was going to be hard. I managed to stay on target up to about the 20th floor, and then I kind of started to fall apart. I managed to keep moving, but I was losing time at each checkpoint, and in the end, I came out about a minute behind schedule.

Still, I’d made four climbs from the street up to 44, and there was still time for a fifth. I figured there was no point in timing it. I went in the door at about 7:08, and as long as I made it to the top before 7:30, everything was good. And since it was only 43 floors, even though it felt like snail’s pace, I made it up in about fifteen minutes. So I guess I can’t complain too much.

So my goal for Thursday is to try the same thing, but to go slower at first and see if that will leave enough in the tank to keep up the pace longer later on. We shall see.

Today’s bike club ride was a visit to Spoke Bicycle Cafe, on the L.A. River in Frogtown. We’ve been down that way before to visit The Frog Spot last summer.

We started out from Victory Park and headed west. And we didn’t get too far before GT got a flat right in front of the Gamble House. (The Gamble House is a landmark in Pasadena, and it also was Doc Brown’s house in 1955 in the “Back to the Future” movies)

We rode across Eagle Rock and Glendale all the way into Burbank. Then we turned west to go on the Chandler Bikeway. We took a short side trip to see the desert tortoises along the way. Then we headed south to pick up the L.A. River bike trail, which took us all the way to Frogtown and Spoke.

It was pretty hot today, and we pretty much all wanted cold drinks and maybe some small snacks. But Spoke was nice. It was a good place to stop along the river trail, and I think we’ll go back there again. I got a big iced tea, and after I finished that, they gave me another cup of ice to put in my water bottle for the ride back to Pasadena.

We started out up Figueroa, and then turned off at Avenue 43 to get on the Arroyo Seco bike trail. We’ve been on part of that before, but this was the first time we rode the entire length of it. And it was pretty nice. At the end, it let us out into South Pasadena, and at that point, our group kind of broke up. It was very hot, and everyone just wanted to head for home, and only a few of us live near the park where we start. So in the end, it was just a few of us who went all the way back to Victory Park. But it was a nice ride.

43 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Back in May, Carla and I rode to Monrovia for the dedication of the Metro Operations Campus. And today was the first of the dedications of the new stations that they are finishing up on the Foothill Extension of the Metro Gold Line. Since I’m not going to be able to make the other ones, I made a point to ride out to Duarte for this one.

It was very hot today, but the ride out there is only about 10 miles, so it’s not bad, even in the heat. They had a short stretch of Duarte Road closed for the event. There were tents set up for shade, and the dignitaries were making their speeches. The station itself looks like it’s basically complete, although they had it roped off. They had a train parked there, which I guess means that the track from Pasadena to Duarte is passable by train now.

They had a table set up to tell the story of the artwork in the station. Every Metro station has some sort of art in it. The art at the Duarte station has steel pillars with carved limestone at the top. The carvings are supposed to evoke something of the history of the area near the San Gabriel River. Or at least that’s what they told me. In contrast, I passed the Arcadia station on the way out there, and it had a big peacock on it. That seemed appropriate, since Arcadia is known for its large collection of feral peafowl.

They had some cakes there, but I didn’t want to stay out there in the heat until they served them. I did manage to bum some ice from the caterers, so I filled my water bottle with ice and had cold water for part of the ride home.

21 miles.