Stan’s Obligatory Blog

For the last 2 1/2 years, I’ve had a goal of doing the U.S. Bank Tower stair climb in under 14 minutes. I first decided this in April, 2010. And it’s taken until now to actually do it.

Today was an odd day. Kathleen was scheduled for surgery in the morning. Not an emergency, but something that had been in the planning for some time, and today was just the day that was available on the schedule. So I spent the first part of the day with her at the hospital in Woodland Hills before heading downtown for the race.

When I got there, I got changed and ready to go. Morgan, Jason, Irving and Chris came in from Pasadena, and we all got in line together. In the starting-line picture, you can see that Chris was starting right behind me, and Irving was right behind him. The two of them ran up and got on my tail as soon as they started.

They were sending us off at close intervals, so there were a lot of people in the stairwell. Traffic was pretty heavy at times, and I had to push through groups of people several times. On the other hand, a lot of the people I knew from the practice climbs were there, and a couple of them gave me a little push as I went by them. I’d made up a split times card and pinned it on my glove. My goals for 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 minutes into the climb were floors 10, 23, 34, 45, 57, and 68. At 10, I was about five seconds fast, so I slowed down slightly. I was right on schedule at 23, 34, and 45. Chris stayed on my tail until about 40 or so before dropping off. And Irving stayed with me all the way to the top. I was a couple seconds behind at 68, but that was all right. I ran the last two floors from 73 to the roof. I remember seeing the flash from the photographer on the landing by the roof door. This was the first time I can recall even being aware that there was someone there. I thought that was odd, but I paid no attention to it. A lot of people stop and pose for the photographer, but I never do. And as a result, my finish line pictures at this event are always bad.

Stumbling out of the stairs, I went over to the big steel girder that the window washing crane rides on, and I laid down on it and put my face against the cool steel. That felt good. I was there for a short time when I realized I hadn’t stopped my watch. I pushed the button, and it stopped at 14:13. Since my time last year was 14:11, I knew that I had gone faster, but by an unknown amount. And after a few minutes, I was able to stand up again and walk down to 71, where they had water and apples for us.

Back down on the ground, they had a little party going on the street by the building. A lot of people had downloaded the smart-phone app from Hallucination Sports and were trying to look up their times. And when I finally got it to work, they listed my time as 13:54. So I finally made my goal. Sadly, there were 150 guys in the 50-59 age group, and I was only good for 8th place. I really can’t complain too much, though. Even though I was nowhere near a medal, I’m still faster than the Average Bear. Also, I got to spend the rest of the evening visiting with my stair climbing friends, and handing out samples of my award-winning cookies.

Now, I’m turning my sights to Chicago for the Sears Willis Tower climb in November. I’ve had a goal of doing that one in less than 20 minutes, and that may be within reach now.

So overall, it was a good evening.

Full results are here: http://www.hallucinationsports.com/

It’s the end of summer, and time for the Los Angeles County Fair. And this year, for the first time, I’m a blue-ribbon-winner in the baking contest. So today was our day to go see my cookies on display. And of course, we went there first.

As always, it was hot. 103 in Pomona, according the Weather Service. Still, we made the best of it. There are a lot of things there that are indoors, including the displays of wines. Who knew that there are wineries in New Jersey? We also got some Dr Bob’s ice cream there.

Later in the afternoon, we went to see the pig races. That was fun, and at the end, they gave us a coupon for a pound of bacon. Hmm.

All this time, Lucinda and London were out and about. The rode some rides, and they played a lot of games. So when we found them later on, they were carrying some big stuffed animals.

I saw one place that was selling hamburgers with a banner of a decidedly unhappy-looking cow on it. I’m not sure that that’s quite the message they were going for there.

In the end, the girls played a few more games. They had to get a big bag to carry all the stuffed animals. So I guess that made it a good day.

Tonight we went back to Hollywood Forever to another Cinespia movie screening. And I didn’t have to put an asterisk on it when I say it was a fun time. We’d gone to two movies there last summer, and the experience was a bit of an ordeal. But this time, we knew how to deal with it, and it was fine.

We made up a little picnic to bring along. Our Tommy Bahama chairs are good because they have pockets to pack stuff in, and straps so they can be worn like backpacks. So we were able to carry lots of stuff pretty easily. We went over there, and we just parked in the first parking lot we saw. It was the car wash at Gower and Santa Monica, and they wanted $10 to park there. That worked for us, so we parked and walked over to the entrance. We got there about 30 minutes early, and we were able to get a spot in the shade. We set up our chars, and it was really quite comfortable. Then, when they opened the gates, we got inside pretty fast, and just walked back to the area and set up camp. Last year, when we waited in the car line to get in, by the time we got there, we had a really crappy, far-away spot on the lawn. But this time, we got a good spot. So the lesson is, don’t try and park inside the cemetery.

While we were having our dinner, two women set up camp behind us. They put out a tremendous spread of stuff. All kinds of things. So we talked with them, and I gave them some of my hummus and homemade pita bread to sample. And they gave us some exotic cheeses, roasted hazelnuts, and what they called ‘lawyer bread’ that was made by someone they know. It was all quite good. And I was regretting that I hadn’t had time to make a batch of my award-winning cookies to bring along tonight.

The movie was Woody Allen’s “Manhattan“, which neither of us had seen in decades. It’s interesting how our perspective changes with age. We enjoyed it, but we both got something completely different out of it this time, as compared to when we saw it 30-something years ago.

All told, it was a fun evening.

Last night, I was at home when my phone chirped at me. It was a message and a picture from Morgan from work. She had gone to the L.A. County Fair and sent me pictures showing my cookies. The very ones I’d brought in last Tuesday. Apparently, all that development and all those endless test batches I baked paid off. My traditional chocolate chip cookies were 4th in their category, and my chocolate cookies took 1st place.

Woo-hoo!

So here are the recipes:

http://1134.org/recipes/chocolate-cookies-2012.pdf
http://1134.org/recipes/chocolate-chip-cookies-2012.pdf

Last year, we came to the Nisei Week Festival in Little Tokyo to see the gyoza eating contest. And it was both hilarious and horrifying. So of course, we had to come back again this year. And this year, the number-one ranked eater in the world, Joey Chestnut was going to be there. Last year’s winner, Pat Bertoletti, and also the number-two ranked eater was also there.

There was lots of fanfare before the actual contest started. As they did last year, they had one seat in the contest up for auction to benefit the Nisei Week Festival. This time, there was fierce competition for it, and the winner paid $400 to sit in the last seat. He said he was from Australia, and he’d done some eating contests there, so he wanted to try this one.

When the contest started, it was quite a spectacle. Bulging cheeks, chomping jaws, and everyone doing the little body wiggle that apparently helps the food to pack down better into their stomachs. Looking at their faces, it’s pretty plain that they’re doing something difficult and painful. In many ways, athletics are all about pushing the limits of the human body, and I suppose stuffing massive quantities of food into it is just another limit to be pushed.

This time, nobody suffered a ‘reversal of fortune‘. When time was called, everyone stood up and finished swallowing the last of what they’d stuffed in their mouths. And then the judges counted plates and tabulated the results. In the end, Joey Chestnut had won and set a new record with 264 gyoza in ten minutes.

As I said, it was both hilarious and horrifying. And that makes it a must-see in my book.

It’s the end of summer, and almost time for school to start again. So that means it’s time for a visit to San Diego to see Grandpa and play tourist. The plan this time was to go to Sea World, mostly to ride the new Manta roller coaster. Now, why they have roller coasters at Sea World is an open question, but whatever. It looks like fun.

We went down on Saturday to visit with Grandpa. We stayed in a guest apartment in his building this time, and that was great. It was just as big and comfortable as the Residence Inn suites we usually stay in, but it was right there in the same building. So that was convenient. We visited for a bit in the afternoon, and then we all went to Prado in Balboa Park for dinner.

On Sunday morning, while everyone was getting ready, I took in the stairs at my father’s building. It’s 20 stories tall. 316 steps from the first floor to the top. So I did that five times. My best time was 2:09.

We had lunch with Grandpa on Sunday, and then we headed to Sea World. When we got there, we went straight for the Manta. They said the wait was 45 minutes, but it turned out to be more like 25. And it was a fun ride.

After that, we headed over to see the penguins and the Wild Arctic exhibit. The little piece of Antarctica they have in the building there was full of penguins. But because it’s summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it was winter in the penguin exhibit. So it was dark in there, and hard to get good pictures.

In the Wild Arctic, we got to see a polar bear facepalm. We also got to see a walrus, some beluga whales, and magellanic penguins outside. They’re cute birds, but very smelly.

We went to see the Sea Lions Live show, which is always fun. They didn’t have the sea lion jumping over a bar with a ball balanced on his nose, but it was still a good show.

At the turtle exhibit, we got to see big sea turtles gliding around the tank, and also a freshly-minted turtle turd. The fish in the tank seemed very excited by that. Yick.

The sea otters weren’t very lively. They were just floating on a little raft and snoozing.

And finally, Kathleen and I went back and rode the Manta again. The line was shorter then, and it was still a fun ride.

It was a fun day, and a fun weekend.

A few days ago, I saw a posting on Facebook from the Greek Theater. They said that they were filming some scenes for the season-ending show of “Californication” there on Thursday night. They needed an audience for the fake rock concert, and they were offering us free tickets and a little bit of a show to go along with the filming. And since this is Los Angeles, they also offered free parking. They know the way to our hearts. In any event, since we’re fans of Hank Moody and his tales of woe, we thought this could be a fun time.

The basic premise appeared to be a rock show at the Greek with a fictitious rock star named Atticus Fetch, played by Tim Minchin, as well as the real Marilyn Manson. The banners all said it was the “The Two-Headed Monster Tour”. They gave away about 1,000 tickets, so the Greek was nowhere near full, but they had us all sit in the front section, so as far as the cameras could see, it looked like a full house.

The show was a bit of a grab bag. They had one guy whose name I’ve forgotten who was not part of the show, but he played some songs for us. They had a stand-up comedian to perform while they were moving things around on the stage. Then Tim Minchin performed a bit as himself. He was really funny. This was followed by Steve Jones, who did a very strange and mellow version of his old Sex Pistols song, “Bodies“, followed by “Hotel California”.

By this time, it was dark, and it was time to make the sausages. They had Steve Jones as the announcer introducing Atticus Fetch, and then a big opening number, complete with some impressive pyrotechnics. They did that maybe three times. After that, they took a short break, and Marilyn Manson came out and did a couple of songs for us.

Here’s a little video of the first number. And check out the big Panavision camera on the boom that was gliding over our heads:

Then they moved some things around on the stage to get ready to hold a wedding. They had Charlie and Marcy Runkle on stage getting married, again, presumably, with Atticus officiating. Pamela Adlon said it was a spoiler alert, but she assured us that something terrible would happen at the end of the episode to keep our interest. After this, Atticus asked if anyone else wanted to get married, and Hank appeared to be proposing to Karen, although that seems unlikely, given the history of his character. But I guess we’ll see one of these days, when the current season is over and on DVD, and Netflix has it.

At one point, they wanted us to all sing along with the chorus of one of Atticus’ songs:

Preggers and poor
bed on the floor
wolf at the door

It should be interesting to see how that gets worked into the story.

They had said that they had to be finished by 11:00, due to city noise regulations at the Greek. But they were still going at 11:45. At that point, there was still no end in sight, so we left. It was just a bit too late for us to be out on a weeknight. They had made up T-shirts for the fictitious tour, and they were offering them to anyone willing to stay the distance. That might have made a fun collector’s item, but it was just too late for us. Still, it was a fun little evening adventure.

This Sunday’s bike club ride was a sightseeing trip to Watts to see the Watts Towers. I’ve always been fascinated by strange things that are the product of someone’s strange obsession. And since the towers were built by Simon Rodia out of junk he found over a period of more than 30 years.

The route was basically straight south to Whittier Narrows, where we got on the southern portion of the Rio Hondo bike path. That took us down through Pico Rivera and Downey to the Los Angeles river. Then we got off on Imperial Highway and rode across Lynwood. We crossed Alameda Blvd, and I took a moment to look down into the trench to see the railroad tracks that they built to carry the freight that is shipped into the port of Los Angeles.

When we crossed into Watts, we saw “111st St”. I presume that is pronounced, “eleventy-first street”.

Then we got to the towers. There is a small park around them, and there are plaques that tell the story. There are docent-led tours there, and Carla said that they are interesting. Someday I’ll have to go see that.

I rode down to the end of the block to see the Blue Line tracks there. I rode the train to Long Beach once, and I didn’t know that the tracks go right by the towers.

On the way home through Montebello, we saw some emus and llamas by the side of the bike path. That was odd. The sign said “Montebello Barnyard Zoo“.

It was a nice ride, with some cultural interest, and almost no hills at all.

49 miles.

We didn’t have time to do any more tourist-things before we left to go home on Tuesday. Gordon gave us a ride to the airport, so we didn’t have to make the epic journey by train this time. And it also gave us a little more time to visit.

When we were getting ready to take off, I looked out the window and saw an Airbus A380 for the first time. It was on the taxiway, right behind a little regional jet, which made it look even bigger, and it’s pretty comically big to begin with.

There were thunderstorms most of the way across the continent today, and some of the thunderheads went up to over 40,000 feet. So the airplane spent a good deal of the trip sort of slaloming between the big thunderheads. This went on all the way to Nevada, where the clouds ended. I saw the big solar power plants that are under construction in the desert just inside the California border.

And finally, we were home. It was a fun little trip.

Monday was our big playing-tourist-in-New-York day. We had a short list of things to see, and all day to go see them. Since Gordon is effectively retired, he was able to come along for the sightseeing.

We started off with a ferry ride across the river from Hoboken. That was actually the first time I’ve ever taken a ferry across the Hudson, despite having grown up in New Jersey and gone into the city countless times. We stopped off at the World Financial Center to admire the palm trees in the atrium. We’re used to seeing palm trees growing like weeds everywhere, but it must be quite a sight to go there on a winter’s day in New York.

Our first stop was the 9/11 Memorial. I’d gone to the World Trade Center back in 1976 when the observation deck first opened up. And I’d been there a few times more over the years. So it was more than a bit jarring to go back to the site and see the memorial. They did do a good job with it. It was nicely done, and it really seemed appropriate. They had the names of all the people who died in the attacks written around the two waterfall pits that took up the spaces where the towers had been. Just like the Vietnam War Memorial, it was just wrenching to see all the names of all the people whose lives were cut short. I saw the Luis Eduardo Torres, and I recognized his name from having read his story not long ago. I also saw Todd Beamer, the “let’s roll” guy from United Flight 93. The edges of his name were polished just a bit more than all the others. I think that because he’s become something of an American hero, people must be taking rubbings of his name at the memorial.

Moving on in our tourist quest, we walked over to the Brooklyn Bridge, only stopping to get some iced tea at a Starbuck’s. The ice was a wonderful thing, since it was hot and muggy, and I find it hard to believe that when I was growing up, I just thought that feeling like that was just normal. Yick.

We got to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked about 1/3 of the way across. We read the plaques telling the story of the bridge, and it was pretty interesting.

Our next stop was the Museum of Sex. This was up at 27th St, so we took the subway. I was always fascinated by the beavers on the wall of the Astor Place subway station. I know that they’re there because the Astor family started out as fur trappers, but it’s still weird to think that there used to be woods and beavers living in Manhattan.

The museum was pretty fun to see, although the air conditioning wasn’t working in some of the rooms. So it was a bit of a steam bath in most of the galleries. But it was still fun. And it was kind of odd to see some people we know in some of the exhibits.

After the museum, we walked up 5th Avenue to 34th Street and the Empire State Building. I’d been there once when I was about eight years old. I remember that they took us up to the observatory to look at the view, and I thought that there must be a staircase going up there, and I wondered what it would be like to climb it. Maybe someday I’ll get the chance to try it.

Our last stop was for pizza. By then it was raining, and we were very tired. But the pizza was good, and after that, we headed home to Gordon’s house. It was a fun time, even if we were tired, hot, and sweaty at the end.