Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This week’s bike club ride was a visit to Rose Hills Cemetery in Whittier to see Eric “Eazy-E” Wright. We’ve been there before, but the last time was pretty grim. It was a brutally hot day, and really uncomfortable for riding. Today looked to be much better.

When we got to the cemetery, it was again a pretty hard climb up the hill. I guess they called it Rose Hills for a reason. But we got up there, and we saw that Eazy-E has a new and much nicer marker now. Photos, a record, and notes that he was “The Godfather of Gangsta Rap”. He certainly made a mark on the world. And the empty beer cans showed that he still gets a fair number of visitors.

On the way home, we stopped for snacks at Merengue in Monrovia, which is always good.

44 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today’s bike club ride was a visit to Griffith Park to see the George Harrison Tree. We’ve been to see this before, but it’s been a while. This tree made the news a few years ago, when it was reported that the original tree had been killed by and infestation of beetles. Go figure.

On the way there, we passed Little Dom’s in Los Feliz. I’ve been watching the HBO documentary “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark”, and in it, Michelle McNamara and Patton Oswalt mentioned several times about how much they liked the food there. So I thought I should make a note of where it is for future reference.

We rode up Hillhurst and Vermont into the park. At the top, we saw the tree, and the (currently closed) observatory. Then we continued on, over Mt Hollywood to Burbank and snacks and drinks at Priscilla’s.

The ride home was pretty uneventful. It was a nice ride.

44 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

This past week, I found out that there are still just a few operating drive-in theaters in Southern California. I thought they’d all gone away decades ago. Apparently, they have been mostly operating as swapmeet locations, but now with Covid-19, they have started showing films again. So today’s bike ride was to go visit the one in City of Industry.

We rode out through Duarte and Azusa to get to Panera in West Covina for snacks and drinks. Then we headed over to Industry to see the drive-in. On the way back, we passed by Rose Hills, which we’d visited before to see the traveling Vietnam Memorial, and to see Eazy-E, and also Jaime Escalante.

42 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today’s bike club ride was a trip down to Vernon to see the big mural painted on the outside of the Farmer John meat packing plant. We’ve been to see this before, but this is the first time in a long time.

The route brought us through downtown Los Angeles. Along the way, we saw several large homeless camps in El Sereno. When we got to downtown, we took a short side trip to see how the construction is coming along for the tunnel entrance for the Regional Connector on 1st St. We also paused briefly to see how the new 6th St bridge is coming along.

In Vernon, we stopped to admire the hog mural. We tried to see inside the gate and see the mural of the big angels flying off to hog heaven, but there was so much stuff set up inside the gate, we couldn’t see it.

We rode back through downtown and then up to Echo Park. There was yet another big homeless camp next to the lake in Echo Park. There really seem to be more of them than ever before, which is disturbing. I was sort of glad that I didn’t have to check to make sure there wasn’t a Dodger game today, although that’s because of Covid-19, which is far from a Good Thing.

We stopped for drinks at Antigua Coffee, and then headed home up the Arroyo Seco bike path.

42 miles.

Route map and elevation profile.