Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s bike club ride was a trip to Burbank to see the F-104-on-a-stick in the park, and also to see how the new airplane topiary at Burbank Airport is coming along. And today, we also came home by way of the L.A. River bike path and the new segment that’s just opening on the new Riverside Dr bridge over the river.

The ride out was pretty much our standard route across Eagle Rock. When we got to Burbank, we saw the F-104 in the park. Then we headed to the airport. Sadly, we can’t go see the tortoises any more. When we got to the airport, we could see that the new topiary was pretty much filled out. It’s pretty much back to what it was before they had to replace the bush in it. You can see what it looked like early after the replacement here. And for comparison, here’s what it looked like with the old bush.

We went for snacks at Priscilla’s, and then we headed down the L.A. River bike path. In the past, this ended just a little bit before Riverside Dr went over the river on the new bridge they’ve been building for the last N years. But this time, the path continued on, going over the bridge on a piece of the bridge separated from traffic and featuring both bike and pedestrian lanes. It was pretty nice. We found out later that tomorrow is going to be the official Grand Opening of that little bit of the path.

All around, it was a fun ride.

45 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

As I tell everyone, we’re really quite appalled by what’s happening in our country now. So we joined up with a few hundred thousand of our best friends and went to downtown L.A. to yell about it.

I recently read that there was a memorial monument at Hollywood Forever in memory of the dog who played Toto in “The Wizard of Oz”. So of course I figured it would have to be a sightseeing destination for the Sunday bike ride.

We started out heading into downtown L.A., and then out of downtown on 7th St. Along the way, we got to see how construction of the Regional Connector was coming along. The plan was to get to Larchmont Village for bagels at Noah’s, and then to go the short distance to the cemetery. When we got there, we asked the guy at the information booth, and he gave us directions to where the monument was. On our way there, we passed yet another pyramid crypt. I’d read some years ago that there were only three of these in Los Angeles County, and this one makes four. And we’ve been to see all of them now.

The bronze statue of Toto is life-sized, and I’m surprised I’d not seen it before, since it’s basically right across from the monument to Johnny Ramone. And while we were there, I stopped off to look at Dee Dee Ramone’s grave, which was covered with a larger-than-usual number of lipstick kisses.

For our route home, we began by taking the advice offered by Bette Davis, and we took Fountain. Then we crossed the L.A. River and headed up Eagle Rock Blvd, and then home across Highland Park and South Pasadena. It was a pleasant ride.

39 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

A few weeks ago, we went to an event at the Museum of Broken Relationships in Hollywood. Part of the event was a brief presentation by the Atlas Obscura people about a few odd things they know about in Los Angeles. One of the slides showed a person peering into a little hole in a wall in an alley behind a building. They said it was a miniature cinema that is continuously showing a few short films made by local artists. And GPS coordinates for it were in the footer of the email reminder about the event. So that night, I looked up where it was, and it turned out to be in an alley in Chinatown. So I figured that was going to be a bike ride one day. And today was the day.

We started out across Eagle Rock and Glendale, and then down the L.A. River bike path to Elysian Park. We rode up and over the hill to get to Echo Park and Chango Coffee. And after the stop there, we went back over the hill to get to Chinatown. Then we went in to Chung King Way to get to the little alleyway where we saw the small sign for the Peephole Cinema. We took turns standing up on the little step stool to be able to peer into the hole. It’s an odd little art project.

The route home took us back by way of Huntington Drive. This is usually our route to go into downtown, but this time we were riding the other direction, which felt a little odd.

36 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

It rained all day on Saturday, and the forecast was for clearing, but still a small chance of rain on Sunday. So today we did the Metro Rail tour again. This was the original Metro tour, going through downtown and then west to Larchmont, with a return by way of downtown again. As it turned out, there was literally not a cloud in the sky. So it was cold, but we didn’t get rained on.

On the way home, we made a point to ride down Colorado Blvd in Pasadena to see all the people camping out to wait for the Rose Parade tomorrow.

44 miles.

Route map and elevation profile