Stan’s Obligatory Blog

The weather forecast for today was grim. It was supposed to start raining any minute, and when it did start, it was supposed to be hard rain. So of course, I went riding. I pulled out my Metro Rail Tour. That’s the route that travels around Los Angeles and the San Gabriel Valley, but never goes more than about two miles from the nearest Metro Rail station. That way, if it starts raining, we have a bailout plan.

As it turned out, the weather scared everyone else off, but I still went on the ride.

When I got to the L.A. River, the road was blocked by a freight train parked across the road. The train showed no sign of moving any time soon, so I backtracked a bit and went over on a street where the bridge went over the railroad tracks. When I was passing the park where the old railroad yard used to be, I stopped to get a picture of the towers in downtown. Now that I’m intimately acquainted with several of them.

I rode through downtown and west into Hancock Park. Still no rain. I skipped the snack stop in Larchmont, since I didn’t need to stop for anything, and I headed over to Silver Lake for the route home.

I decided to try an experiment to see if I could find a new way to get from Benton Way in Silver Lake to Riverside Drive. So I turned down one of the little streets that led east into Echo Park. I just sort of noodled around and looked for a way through that didn’t involve riding up and truly scary hills. In the end, I found a way, but I’m not sure it’s an improvement over the regular way we go. But I came out on Alessandro St in Echo Park. So while I was there, I figured I’d go see how the Fargo Street Hill Climb was going. The guys riding the Elliptigos up the hill were pretty impressive.

Coming down onto Riverside Drive, I turned and headed for Figueroa St. That basically parallels the Metro Gold Line, and I rode that up into Highland Park before turning off to go to South Pasadena. Going up El Molino, I saw Kiera riding the other way. We stopped to talk for a bit, since I haven’t seen her since before her baby was born.

By now, it was really looking like it wanted to rain. So I made a break for home. But then I got a flat when I was riding across the Caltech campus. So I sat down and fixed it as fast as I could, and then took off for home again. I got to about one mile from home when the rain came. It wasn’t too bad at first, and I was only out in it for about five minutes. But I still hate getting rained on when I’m riding.

Still, it was a nice ride.

42 miles.