Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s bike club ride was the Ciclavia “Heart of the Foothills”. This was the first time that there was an official Ciclavia event inland. The route went from San Dimas to Claremont. When we ride to Claremont, it’s about a 58 mile round trip, which is a bit beyond our normal 40-45 for a Sunday ride. So the plan for today was to start by taking Metro to the end of the line in Azusa. From there, we rode to San Dimas, where we picked up the Ciclavia route. We rode the route out to Claremont and back. We didn’t stop in Claremont, since we wanted to get back before it got too crowded.

Back in San Dimas, we stopped for snacks at the Bagelry. Then we rode back to Pasadena. This made a total of 44 miles riding. When we first got off the train in Azusa, I forgot to turn on my GPS thingy, so it missed the first few miles. And it also didn’t count the initial two miles from the park where we start to the Metro station at Allen.

44 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Yesterday, I was at the Aon building stair climb. While we were there, there was a crew setting up for shooting a scene for Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” on Wilshire Blvd. They had lots of fake rocks and fake broken chunks of pavement, as well as a couple of fire cars, like the ones we saw in Griffith Park once that turned out to be for an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy”. The setup crew said they were going to be working all day to set the scene, and the actual filming would be done of Sunday morning, so that was our sightseeing destination for today.

We got an early start today, so we made it downtown in time to see the 8:46 Metrolink train to Lancaster go by. If we see that train, that means we made good time getting downtown.

When we got down to Wilshire, it was pretty obvious that this shoot was a Big Deal. There were a lot more prop cars, and hordes of extras in business suits with dirt smeared on their faces milling about. We even saw Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson there. Apparently, her super power is the ability to create earthquakes, which Jen and I thought was pretty funny, since that meant her character had the power to make us have to go into work.

After gawking at the shoot for a few minutes, we continued on our way. We made a loop out and back through Hancock Park. Then up Benton Way through Silver Lake and then to the L.A. River bike path. We stopped for snacks at Spoke. Then we headed home by way of the Arroyo Seco bike path.

41 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today’s bike club ride was a trip to Chinatown in Los Angeles to see the bronze statue of Bruce Lee there.

We rode out across Eagle Rock and Glendale, and then down the L.A. River bike path. Then through Elysian Park to get to Chango Coffee in Echo Park. I’d remembered this time to check the Dodgers schedule to be sure there was not a game today, since that park gets pretty crowded on game days. We had snacks at Chango before taking Bonnie Brae St down to 7th St. This was novel, since we ride Bonnie Brae fairly often, but this was the first time we ever did it in this direction. It looked like a whole new street. We noticed The Bonnie Brae House for the first time today. We were wondering what was special about it.

Just before we got to 7th St, we passed 666 Bonnie Brae. The police and fire department were there in force today, for reasons that were not entirely clear. Then we turned on 7th and rode back in to downtown L.A. Then up Figueroa St to Chinatown. There, we went to see the Peephole Cinema, and then across Hill St to the Bruce Lee statue.

The route home was back up Huntington Drive, which is another route we do frequently, but not in that direction.

40 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

This week I was a bit short on inspiration of things to go see, so we took a trip to Hollywood to see just a small random selection of items that we hadn’t gone to see before. Also, I’d been sick the previous week, so I wanted to do something a little on the easy side. And according to my logs, we hadn’t ridden out that direction in a while. The two bits of sightseeing on the route were RuPaul’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the mural of silent movie stars underneath the Hollywood Freeway on Argyle Ave.

We rode through downtown Los Angeles, and then up through Hancock Park to get to Hollywood. When we got there, we found RuPaul’s star on Hollywood Boulevard. It was right in front of a storefront that was completely dedicated to advertising RuPaul’s Drag Con. Seemed appropriate. Then we headed across Hollywood on Selma Ave. We had to carefully pick our way through the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. Then we found the mural under the freeway, It’s right across from Castle Argyle. Both of those made brief appearances in “La La Land“.

We stopped for snacks at Spoke. And then headed up Figueroa St to go home. In South Pasadena, I bailed out and took Metro back, just because I was still getting over being sick last week.

38 miles, including the ride home from the Metro station.

Route map and elevation profile