Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Every year since 2007, we’ve made a point to ride out to Culver City to visit Bela Lugosi’s grave for Halloween. This was one of the first ‘theme’ rides I came up with. We call the route “Down for the Count”. So that was the plan for today.

A few weeks ago, we did a ride to the California Science Center to see the Space Shuttle solid rocket motors being delivered. When we were riding by there, I thought we should take a short side trip to see them, since they are big enough that they wont fit into any of the existing buildings there. So we rode into the park and saw the nose cones for the solid rockets, as well as the solid rocket bodies lined up next to the main building.

From there, we picked up the bike lane that parallels the Metro Expo Line for the ride out to Culver City. Next to the La Cienega station, we saw the (W)rapper building. It’s an unusual and distinctive bit of architecture.

When we got to the cemetery, we rode up and over the hill to get to the Grotto. Somebody comes and decorates Bela Lugosi’s grave for Halloween every year, and this year was a good one. The decorations make it very easy to find.

After the cemetery, we went to Grand Casino Bakery for snacks and drinks. Then we rode back to downtown. When I got to downtown, a few of us decided to bail out and take Metro Rail home for the last bit.

42 miles, plus two more to get home from the Metro station

Route map and elevation profile

The Saturday Foothill Cycle rides go lots of different places, but I make a point to go along when they are doing one of my rides. Today, it was the ride to Studio City to see the house from “The Brady Bunch”. We’ve gone to see this several times over the years, and today we even got a little bonus sightseeing. We rode out to North Hollywood for snacks and drinks at Groundwork Coffee. After we left there, we went by the park that was turned into Holodeck 9 a few years ago. As we were riding by, I saw that someone, most likely the same person as before, had made new holodeck control panels for the park. It made for an entertaining ride.

45 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Back in 2012, one of our regular Sunday bike club rides went to see the space shuttle Endeavor as it was being moved to the California Science Center. And in 2016, we rode to Exposition Park to see the external fuel tank for the shuttle, on display next to the building where the shuttle is. I recently read that they have started construction of the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, where the shuttle will be on display in the full vertical ‘stack’, with two solid rocket boosters, the external tank, and the orbiter, all mounted as if ready for launch. So today, the bike club did a special ride to Exposition Park to see the two solid rockets, which were on a pair of very large trucks for transport into the museum.

30 miles.

Route map and elevation profile