Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s bike ride was a visit to the Puente Hills Mall, which was the location used in “Back to the Future”, where Doc Brown first shows Marty the DeLorean time machine. It was kind of chilly this morning, but promised to warm up some and be nice later.

The route was planned to try and be as direct as possible, while avoiding a few major streets that I knew would be bad for riding. Still, the route was a bit longer than our usual rides. Fortunately, it didn’t have any major hills.

When we got to the mall, I found the spot that matched up with the screenshot from the movie. Then I rode down to the spot in the parking lot where Doc’s truck was parked. Fortunately, the parking lot was pretty empty, so I took a run across it, just to see if I could get up to 88mph. Sadly, not today. Then we all rode over to the corner of the parking lot, where there was a Panera Bread for drinks and snacks.

The route back was slightly different from the route going out. The underpass they are building to run Puente Rd under the railroad tracks still isn’t finished, so we had to take a bit of a detour. I guess I’ll have to figure out a different way to get through there.

49 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today’s ride was the Whittier Greenway Trail ride. We’ve done this before, once to see the googie bowling alley sign, another time just to ride the whole length of the trail, yet another time to see the antique streetlights with the swastikas on them, and even one time to visit the site of a 1975 airplane crash.

Along the way, we also took a short side trip to the mall in Montebello. This mall overlooks the Pomona Freeway, and I had remembered that the scene from “Back to the Future” where Doc Brown first shows Marty the DeLorean time machine was filmed at a mall next to that freeway. But after riding around the parking lot once, it didn’t look quite right, and when I looked it up, it was filmed at the other mall next to that freeway. So I know where we’re going next week. Still, it was a nice day, and good for riding.

46 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

A few months ago, I saw an item in the L.A. Times about the Museum of Failure, which was a temporary exhibit of products and ideas that were complete and abject failures. It sounded funny. Of course, then I forgot about, and when I looked at the article again, it said that the exhibit was only until February 4th. Crap. But on the off chance something had changed, I had a look at their web site, and it said something to the effect of, “we’re such failures that we failed to close on the 4th, and we’re here for two more weeks”. So we had a second chance.

There were lots of things that were just kind of silly, some were weird ideas that left us wondering, “what were they thinking?”, and some were downright horrifying. They also had a few video monitors up, playing commercials for weird failed products. Like who thought that orange-juice flavored cereal was a good idea?

They had one fairly large exhibit devoted to Donald Trump, who has presided over numerous failed products, a failed airline, and even a few failed casinos.

The lobotomy tools definitely fell into the ‘horrifying’ category. The stories of movies made for budgets in the millions, but total box office gross under $1,000 were just funny. And of course, they had one bit about Olestra, the failed fat-substitute that added the term ‘anal leakage’ to our vocabulary.

All told, this exhibit was hilarious.

Today’s bike club ride was a trip out to Park La Brea and the little cafe inside. We went there once last summer, and it was a nice setting. The route went through Highland Park and Silverlake on the way out, and then back home by way of downtown L.A. All ground we’ve covered before. There wasn’t really any sightseeing along this route. But it was a nice day, so it was just pleasant to be out riding.

45 miles.

Route map and elevation profile