Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s ride was the old Glendora route, with a side trip to see Rubel’s Castle, and also the Glendora Bougainvillea.

When we were going through Covina, we passed the original topiary house. This was where I got the idea for the original Topiary Tour. I also saw that the first hot-rod mailbox house is for sale now. I guess times change. I hope the new owners will still keep the mailbox.

When we got to Glendora, we took a short side-trip up the hill to see Rubel’s Castle. Then, on the way back down, we passed by the Glendora Bougainvillea. Then we stopped for snacks and drinks at Classic Coffee.

39 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

It’s Nisei Week in Little Tokyo, and that means it’s time for the gyoza eating contest. We’ve been there before, and it’s always simultaneously hilarious and horrifying.

In a departure from the format of previous years, they added a few side contests. One was a short one featuring some of the girls who were in last year’s Nisei Week court, as well as one pitting LAPD officers against LA County firefighters. Those were all entertaining, but were just a warm-up for the main event. Lots of the big names in competitive eating were there, and once the ten minutes began, it was obvious that they’re all professionals. The plates held 25 gyoza each, and empty plates started stacking up in front of the top eaters as their heads bobbed up and down and they did little shimmies and jumps to try and pack the food down as they ate. And of course, in the final seconds, they stuffed their cheeks like chipmunks to try and pack in as many gyoza as possible. I guess that’s the competitive eating version of a sprint to the finish.

In the end, Matt ‘Megatoad’ Stonie was the winner again, and by a convincing margin. He was the only one to go over 300. The full results are here:

http://majorleagueeating.com/news.php?action=detail&sn=970

Yesterday, I went on a tour of the Columbia Memorial Space Center with Atlas Obscura. During the talk there, they mentioned that one of the original buildings was still standing, dating back to the days when it was Vultee Aircraft in the 1940s. So today’s bike club ride was the route to Downey to see the oldest operating McDonald’s, and also to see the old Vultee office building.

When I rode to our meeting place in Victory Park, the sprinklers were all running. In these drought days, that looks odd. But the city is using recycled water to keep the playing fields in the park green. And thanks to Atlas Obscura again, I know where ‘recycled water’ comes from…

The route was pretty much straight out and back. We went directly south all the way to Downey, where we stopped briefly at the old McDonald’s so John could get a classic fried apple pie. Then we continued on the mile or so farther to get to the site of the old Vultee/North American/Rockwell plant. I stopped for a moment to take pictures of the building that used to be the main entrance to the Vultee offices. Then we headed back north to downtown Downey and 3rd St Coffee.

The route back went up the Rio Hondo bike path, and we had a nice tailwind, so we were able to go pretty fast. The rest of the route back was just retracing our route out from the morning.

40 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today I took a tour of the Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey with Atlas Obscura. We got a nice treat when they brought in an engineer who worked at North American Aviation, later Rockwell, from the early days of Apollo all the way through the Space Shuttle program. He had some good stories about the early days there.

Later on, we went upstairs, where there was a long conference table in the room. Remember this scene from “Apollo 13”?

This was the table the actual North American engineers used back in 1970 when they had to figure out how to piece junk together to get Apollo 13 home.

Last week, I found an article about Current: LA, which is sponsoring a set of art installations around the city, all intended to have a water theme. So today, we rode to Studio City to see one of them. And to go for gelato, too.

It was a prefect morning for riding. Cool, with the marine layer keeping the sun hidden. We rode out across Eagle Rock and Glendale to Studio City. The entrance to the park was right across the street from Universal Studios, and the actual art installation was all the way at the back of the park. Three fiberglass horses embedded in the ground. “…the horses are empty slates onto which viewers can project meaning.”

As I always say, anything can be art if you say it is and can get other people to agree that it’s art.

Leaving the park, we made a brief stop at the little park with the foundations of Campo de Cahuenga. This is a little piece of history that was unearthed during construction of the Red Line Universal subway station. Then we took some little side streets to make our way over to Tujunga Ave and the gelato place.

The route home went down the L.A. River bike path, and then up the Arroyo Seco path to take us back to Pasadena.

46 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

We went to San Diego this weekend to visit my father, and since it’s summer, we also went to the zoo to see the pangolin. The San Diego Zoo is the only place in the western hemisphere to see a pangolin, and they only bring Baba our for 15 minutes a day, and only in summer. I’d taken Lucinda there to see the pangolin last summer, but Kathleen wasn’t able to go that time. So this was her chance to see one of the oddest animals ever.

We got to the zoo a little early, so we walked around and looked at some other animals while we waited for it to be pangolin time. Then we headed over to the children’s zoo. At 1:30 one of the keepers came out with Baba the pangolin. She put him on the little tree and platform they made for him so he could eat. She said that they feed him a slurry of cat food and ground-up insects, all mixed with vanilla-flavored Ensure. Yum. He seemed to like it all right, and it gave us a chance to see his famously-long tongue. After his 15 minutes were up, Baba climbed down off the platform and just started walking back to the building where he lives. This was interesting, since it’s the first time we got to see how he walks on the ground.

After pangolin time, we headed over to the Australia exhibit to see the Tasmanian Devils. As usual, they were all sleeping.

Finally, we walked down the hill to go see the hippos. A few years ago, we got to see a baby hippo there, so we wanted to go back again. And while we were there, we got to see fresh hippo poop. That always makes my day…