Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Last week, I’d heard that they’d dressed up a 7-11 store in Burbank as a “Kwik-E-Mart” as a promotion for “The Simpsons Movie” that’s coming out soon. So of course I knew we had to ride there to see it. So today’s bike ride was a variation on the classic Toluca Lake route, with a slight detour to the Kwik-E-Mart.

We headed out from Victory Park and took the usual route across Eagle Rock and Glendale. The only unusual thing we saw was the big mound of suds spilling over the fountain in front of a hotel in Glendale. That was pretty funny.

We rode through the equestrian neighborhood near Griffith Park, and then turned north on Marposa to get to Verdugo in Burbank. Then we turned left and saw the Kwik-E-Mart. I wore my yellow jersey today so I’d fit in with the color scheme there. I got a bunch of pictures, but for some reason, nobody wanted to get a pink donut. Still, it was a fun little sightseeing stop.

Leaving the Kwik-E-Mart, we headed down Olive Ave to Riverside and then rode over the Priscilla’s. I got my usual large orange juice and bagel. We couldn’t get a table this time, since the San Fernando Valley Bicycle Club was there, and their group was so large that they took up all the outside table space. So we sat in the grass across the street.

After the snack stop, we rode back into Griffith Park. The plan was to ride up and over Mt. Hollywood and see some of the damage from the recent fire. But when we got to the turnoff, there was a ‘Bicycles Prohibited’ sign up on a little sawhorse on the road. We debated whether we could pretend that we didn’t see it, but in the end we decided that there just wasn’t any plausible deniability there. So we rode took the other route through the park to come out by the fountain on Los Feliz. An electric sign warned us that the road was closed, but there were no barricades, and traffic was going through. So we went through, too. And along the way I finally got to see some of the burned area up close.

Coming out of the park, we took Riverside down to Fletcher and then headed back up into Glassell Park. When we turned on El Paso, Gaurav got a flat. The rest of the group was a bit ahead of us, and they didn’t hear the tire going flat. So that was the last we saw of them for today.

After the flat fix, we headed up Figueroa to Ave 60. That was where the pickup truck loaded with appliances passed us. I liked the little poodle with his head out the window. Not the sort of dog I usually associate with big pickup trucks.

Then we turned left on Monterey Road for the trip home across South Pasadena. I picked up a couple of abandoned couches. The first was in the middle of a huge pile of trash on the curb. The second was all by itself, with a little, slightly forlorn-looking sign on it that said, “FREE STUFF”.

When we got back to the park, I had 41 miles, and it was still early. So Gaurav and I rode out to Arcadia and back. On the way back through Sierra Madre, I got a flat. Gaurav took the obligatory picture.

Overall, it was a very pleasant ride, even with two flats. And check this out:

Gaurav has one of those fancy bike computers that keeps track of where we went. So here’s the route.

50 miles.
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Route map

Since Wednesday was a holiday, I went riding at lunch today instead. Vikki couldn’t go, so Eric and I did the Lida Loop. It was hot and hazy, with a bit of a monsoon making it humid by SoCal standards. It was so hazy that we couldn’t see the mountains until we were in Altadena, only about 1/2 mile from them.

We didn’t see anything particularly amusing today, so I didn’t take any pictures. Still, it was a nice ride.

18 miles at lunch, 30 for the day.

It was Monday, July 4, 1977, and I rode a bike race in Rahway, NJ. It was billed as “A Holiday at Home” because the big east coast races on the 4th of July weekend were in New England, so this was a race for people who didn’t feel like traveling to Massachussetts. This was my third step towards my Category 2 upgrade, so it was a significant day.

The Junior race was something like 10 or 15 miles. The course was a short, four-corners criterium course through downtown Rahway. The course went underneath the railroad tracks in two places. The race was pretty fast. I never got the front to try to break away, and most it was a blur. I don’t remember much about this race, aside from one incident right by the finish line.

Around the middle of the race, there was a crash right as we passed the finish line, and several riders went down. One of them was Frank Kaler, who was the rider who had helped me win the Challenge Cup race back in April. My recollection was that he seemed to crash in a lot of races. That and that he had the orange-tread D’Alessandro tires that always seemed to pop off his rims when he crashed. Usually, when riders crash, they are off the course by the next time the pack came around, but this time, we came around, and Frank was still lying in the road with the ambulance crew around him. He was still there on the next lap, too. Then he was gone, and I never saw him at a race ever again. I heard later that he’d fractured his skull, and was told not to race any more. Back in those days, helmets were the old ‘leather hairnet‘ type, and they didn’t offer the same degree of protection as modern helmets.

Somewhere along the way, one very big and strong kid named Chris Diehl broke away solo. So on the last lap, all of us in the pack were racing for second place. I’d recently learned how to position and sprint in a pack, so on the back stretch I moved up the inside. Coming out of the last corner, I was near the front. I used a 52×17 gear for the final sprint. My eyes rolled back into my head and I went for it. I came in fifth in the sprint, for sixth place overall.

This finish meant that I now had one first-place finish, one fourth-place finish, and a sixth-place finish. All I needed now was one more top three finish, or two more top six finishes to get my Category 2. The goal was within sight.

My prize for the day was a $25 savings bond, which I saved for many years like a trophy. I finally cashed it in 1988 when Cathy and I were buying our first condo. So in a small way, my ride in this race helped me to enter the southern California real estate market.

Route map

Today I did the Foothill Cycle Saturday ride, which was Gene’s old familiar Toluca Lake route. We started out from Victory Park in Pasadena. One of the guys who drove to the park had a funny bumper sticker on his truck with a different take on the classic ‘Ascent of Man‘ illustration.

Leaving the park, we passed an abandoned couch on Hill Ave, and I collected it for the Abandoned Couches Blog.

We rode across Eagle Rock and Glendale, and then through the L.A. Equestrian Center to get to Priscilla’s in Toluca Lake. We stopped there for snacks. While we were there, we saw the tallest dog any of us had ever seen.

After the snack stop, we headed back through Griffith Park and then down the L.A. River bike path. We got off at Fletcher and headed up through Atwater Village. That was where we saw the art-project van. We’ve seen this van before on another ride. I stopped for a picture, and then, when we were about to leave, Don got a flat. So I took the obligatory picture for the Flat Tire Gallery. Fixing the flat turned out to be an ordeal. He put in a new tube, but then when he used the little CO2 cartridge to inflate it, the tire blew off the rim. So Doug gave him a new tube and this time he used my pump to inflate it. But just as he got it up to pressure, the valve snapped. By this time, I’d found the hole in his original tube, so we patched it, and this time I did the pumping. I carefully pumped it up and this time it held, and then we were back on the road.

Right after the flat stop, we passed a second abandoned couch. Then we headed up Eagle Rock Blvd to El Paso and Ave 50. Then across the arroyo to Monterey Road, which took us across South Pasadena and San Marino. Then we went up Sierra Madre Blvd back to the park.

It was a very nice ride.

41 miles.
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Route map

Today’s lunchtime ride was the usual route through Arcadia. It’s summer now, and it’s starting to get hot here. But it’s still nice for riding.

I rode my restored 1977 racing bike today. It’s nice to get out and ride ‘old-school’ once in a while. I had Vikki take my picture, since it’s rare for me to actually be in any of my bike-riding pictures.

19 miles at lunch, 27 for the day.
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Route map

Today’s ride is a new version of an old route. Gene said he added a little more mileage because the last time we did it I had complained that it was too short. Heh.

It was a perfect day for riding. We headed out from Victory Park and out to Duarte. Ben had his “South Park” jersey on, with the big “you guys SUCK” on it. I thought that was pretty funny.

We took the San Gabriel River bike path up to the mouth of San Gabriel Canyon. Then we went south into Azusa. That was where we came to the railroad crossing just as the arms came down. I thought a train was coming, so I got my camera out. But it was just a track-inspection truck. Since I had the camera out, I took a picture of it anyway.

Heading back west, we crossed the San Gabriel River and then turned north. We did the little detour into Arcadia before turning east again, crossing back into Monrovia for our snack stop at Planet Cookies. The last time we were here, there was a crime scene investigation going on in front. This time there was no such excitement, which was fine with us.

After the snack stop, we took a fairly direct route home. When we got back to the park, I had 42 miles, so I rode around a little bit more just to get 50.

50 miles.
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Route map

Today’s lunchtime ride was the Lida Loop yet again. It was a pleasantly warm day, and pretty much perfect for riding.

There wasn’t anything remarkable about today’s ride, since we didn’t see anything particularly amusing. The only incident of note was when I got a flat on the way up the hill on Lida. I sat down in the shade of a tree to fix it, and Vikki took the camera to get the obligatory picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

Also, Vikki had a very attractive new riding outfit, so I thought I’d get a few pictures of that.

18 miles at lunch, 26 for the day.
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Today’s ride was out to Glendale to see the Bicycle John’s race there. We’ve gone to see this race before, but this time, both Philippe and Vikki were going to be racing.

We left Victory Park in Pasadena and headed out to Glendale by the usual direct route across Eagle Rock. When we got there, we were quite early, so we continued on to Priscilla’s for our snack stop. I took a little detour to see the mailbox in Burbank that is decorated to look like R2D2.

After the snack stop, we headed back to the race, arriving in the middle of the Category 5 race with Philippe. He was staying right in the middle of the pack, so that was good. The pack stayed together to the finish, and Philippe got second place in the field sprint. We were all very excited to see that. He did well.

Vikki’s race was next, and we watched the beginning of it before we had to head out for the ride home. I spoke to her later and found out that she didn’t have such a good race. She was involved in a big crash in one of the turns. She got up and finished the race, but it wasn’t a podium day for her.

Leaving the race, we rode down San Fernando Road to Fletcher and then took our usual route home up Eagle Rock Blvd and El Paso Dr. That was where I saw a pile of trash that had a couch underneath it. I stopped for a picture for the Abandoned Couches Blog.

We rode home across South Pasadena and San Marino, and then up Sierra Madre Blvd back to the park. At that point, I had 40 miles, so I did a little apres ride back across Pasadena on Orange Grove to get a picture of the couches we’d passed on the way out in the morning. Then I rode up past the Rose Bowl and back home on Mendocino across Pasadena.

It was a fun ride, and it was nice to see Philippe place in the race.

52 miles.
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Route map

Today I went riding with Eric at lunchtime. We did a slightly shortened version of the Water Tower ride. We skipped the ride around the Rose Bowl because I forgot that this route included that. Besides, we were a little behind schedule because I got a flat on the way up Patrician Way. But aside from that, it was a very nice ride.

15 miles at lunch, 25 for the day.
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Today’s ride was the “La Tuna Sandwich” route. Up and over La Tuna Canyon, and then down across the valley to Burbank and home by way of the L.A. River bike path and through Eagle Rock.

We met at the Pasadena Elks Lodge. That’s where I saw the parking space reserved for the Exalted Ruler. And I always thought that was a joke. The ride started out going past the Rose Bowl and up into La Cañada. We regrouped at the top of Hospital Hill. Then we headed down into Montrose.

Riding over the top of La Tuna Canyon, we passed the Verdugo Hills Golf Course, where the temporary Japanese internment camp was located for a time in 1942. Then we rode down the long downhill into Sun Valley.

In Sun Valley, we rode through the wasteland of auto dismantling yards, past a place where the road was washed out, and finally into the North Hollywood Arts District. We got a pretty complete tour of The Valley in the process.

At the bottom of the Valley, we turned on Riverside to ride into Toluca Lake. We passed the Barris Kustom showroom on the way, and then we stopped for a snack at Priscilla’s.

After the stop, we headed home by way of the L.A. River bike path. This is where we went on the bridge over Los Feliz Blvd, and I was wondering why a bike path bridge gets posted with a weight limit of 4 tons. I’ve been hearing about the epidemic of obesity, but I didn’t think it had gotten that bad.

Anyway, it was a very nice ride.

50 miles.
cycling