Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Route map and photo locations

Cathy and Lucinda went on a trip to visit Cathy’s friends in Austin, Texas. Being that I hate Texas, I elected not to go along. So I’m at home playing bachelor for a week.

After work, I went for a bike ride. I went out through Sierra Madre to Arcadia. Right near Santa Anita racetrack I snapped a picture of the oddly named “Analist Turf” sign. Perhaps it’s just me, but I think they really meant ‘Analyst’. The way they spelled it, it sounds more like an XRCO award category.

While I was taking the picture of the sign, a Boom Car pulled up the light, so I got serenaded by a very loud “Boomp Ba-Boomp! Boomp Boomp Ba-Boomp!” It was a catchy riff, so I ended up humming it for a good bit of the rest of the ride.

Continuing east through Monrovia, I got on the bike path along Royal Oaks. That was where I saw the ‘nun crossing‘ sign. I’ve been by there many times before, but this was the first time I noticed that sign, so I had to take a picture.

At the end of the bike path in Duarte, I turned around and headed back. I was heading into the setting sun, which made me feel like I was back in New York, racing at Kissena Velodrome. The back stretch of that track faced directly into setting sun, and it was my favorite place to attack. Sort of like the old WWI flying ace trick of diving out of the sun.

The last part of the ride was through the Monrovia foothills to get back to Arcadia and Sierra Madre Blvd. Then it was (mostly) downhill all the way home.

22 miles
cycling

See the route and photo locations

Today’s ride was out to San Dimas, passing next to Bonelli Regional Park there.

We started out heading south and east through Arcadia and Temple City and finally Covina. Along the way, we passed the 99-cent burger place, and also Inflictions Tattoo, which I’ve heard good things about in tattoo circles. Then we went south, passing by the edge of Bonelli Regional Park to Via Verde.

When we got to Grand Ave in Covina I noticed that my tire was going flat. Newton asked if I could make it another five minutes. We made it up a little hill and around the corner onto Cortez St. There was a nice shady spot to sit and fix the flat. John took the obligatory picture for the Flat Tire Gallery. I also managed to get a nice macro-focus shot showing the little wire that had punctured my tire.

Leaving the nice shady spot, we headed west until we got to Citrus. Then we went north past the freeway and stopped for a snack at a Starbucks there.

Next, we went west on Workman Ave until it ended, then we went north to Badillo St and took that west into Ramona Blvd and finally Lower Azusa Road. At El Monte Blvd, we turned north back up to Duarte and then west to Holly, right by Santa Anita racetrack. We took Fairview west some more to Golden West and rode up the western edge of the Los Angeles County Arboretum. We didn’t see any peacocks roaming the streets, though.

Coming out back on Michillinda, we went north, passed behind Sears, and then took Orange Grove back to the park.

50 miles.
cycling

Addendum: Here’s a map with the route plotted and photo locations marked.

Today’s ride was out to Glendora, with a stop at a little bakery there.

We started out heading east and south to get to Longden Ave. We took that all the way out to where it merged into Live Oak, and then that turned into Arrow Highway. We passed Arrow Radiator (aka “a damn good place to take a leak“) and also the hot rod mailbox.

When we got to Glendora, we sat down and had some pastries. Philippe spent some time chatting with the baker, who was also from France.

After the snack stop, we took a quick side trip to Rubel’s Castle to marvel at the sight of an actual castle sitting in the middle of a suburban housing tract. Then we came back down the hill a bit and took Sierra Madre west. That was where I saw the Fatboy Ice Cream truck. Is that an example of truth in advertising?

We crossed the San Gabriel River on the bike path and headed into Duarte. We took the standard route home, straight across Duarte, Monrovia, and Arcadia. Then we headed north a bit and took Sierra Madre Blvd back to the park.

At the park, Philippe, Spencer, Vikki, and I all kept going. I took them on my somewhat convoluted route to Caltech so that they could see the funky palm tree. Then Vikki turned off and headed for home.

We then went south into San Marino. We went all the way across San Marino and into South Pasadena, where Spencer turned off for home. Then Philippe and I took Fair Oaks Blvd south to Huntington Drive for the trip home. Fair Oaks and Huntington used to be a big junction for the Pacific Electric, and the modern street intersection still shows this.

It was a hot and humid day today, which is unusual for Southern California. We do hot all the time here, but humid is not common. So we did one more short stop so that Philippe could get a new, cold bottle of Gatorade. I snapped a picture of the store sign, since it looks like a throwback to a bygone era.

Continuing west on Huntington, we passed Twohey’s in Alhambra. They have a very nice neon sign outside, although I don’t know why the guy on the sign has a clothespin on his nose.

The last bit of the ride was back up Sierra Madre Blvd, and then I was home.

53 miles.
cycling

I’ve been playing some more with Google Maps. I made up a little script to create the xml file for listing the photos on a bike ride. So I tested it out with the pictures from the ride to Encino from a few weeks ago.

Here are the pictures

I guess the next step would be to plot the route on the map…

Note: I’m doing some experimenting with Google Maps to show the locations where the photos were taken. Here is a map showing the locations of today’s photos. Click the markers to get the caption and a link to the full-sized photo. And let me know how it works and if there is anything else I should add.

Today’s ride was out to Larchmont Village for a bagel at Noah’s.

We started out going west, across Pasadena and down into the arroyo. We went down past the stables at the bottom and then up the other side into Highland Park.

Going down York Blvd, we passed the Los Angeles Police Department Museum. This has been on my list of things to see for a long time. It sounds interesting.

Turning south on Eagle Rock Blvd, we went down to Ave 36 and then Fletcher. We passed the old Van de Camp’s bakery, which has been saved from the wrecker’s ball and is now slated to be a new L.A. City College campus.

Crossing the Los Angeles River, we passed into Silver Lake. We went around the Silver Lake Reservoir and then down the hill. That was where we saw Mom’s Donuts and Chinese Food. Yikes.

A few turns later, we were in Koreatown, where we saw a very strange sign with a gorilla on it. But since the signs were all in Korean, we have no idea what they said.

Crossing Western Ave, we passed the event horizon that divides the mansions of Hancock Park from the barred-window liquor stores of Koreatown. We went west until we got to Larchmont Blvd.

At the corner of 2nd St and Larchmont, we passed the former home of Adriana Caselotti, who was the voice for the original Disney Snow White, back in 1937.

We stopped for a bagel at Noah’s on Larchmont Blvd. We got lucky, and there were tables and enough chairs for all of us right out in front.

Leaving Larchmont, we went north to Melrose, and then took a quick right and then left to get to Gower St. We went up the west side of Paramount Studios to get to Santa Monica Blvd. Then we went right to get to Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

At the cemetery, we stopped to see Mel Blanc. We also went and had a look at the rocket monument we saw last time. I went over to get a closer look and found out that it was indeed an Atlas rocket, and that the monument is for Carl Morgan Bigsby, who died in 1959.

Leaving the cemetery, we went north on Bronson through Hollywood. We turned right on Franklin Ave and went east. We passed the Dearly Departed Tours van, which sort of fit in with the cemetery visit. Then we crossed the Shakespeare Bridge and headed back across the river to Highland Park.

We went up Burleigh Road and La Loma to cross the hills and get back to the Arroyo. Then Gene and most of the riders went east on California, and just a few of us went straight up Arroyo to the Rose Bowl.

From the Rose Bowl, we went up the little hill at the end to get to Linda Vista, and then went north to Highland and the bridge across the freeway below Devil’s Gate Dam. Then we took Windsor Road north some more and then Altadena Drive back across town and back to the park.

50 miles.
see the route
cycling

Keith Alexander, an old online friend died yesterday in a bicycle accident. The witness said that he wasn’t hit by a car, and if he’d been wearing his helmet he would probably still be alive. Keith, I can’t believe that you were riding in NYC without a helmet.

Addendum: Here’s Dee Snider’s eulogy for Keith.

Today’s ride was a nice ride out through Glendale, with a stop at Paradise Bakery.

The morning was kind of gray and hazy, but the weather forecast said that the haze would go away.

We started out heading west. We skirted the Rose Bowl and headed up into La Cañada. Then we took Chevy Chase up and over the hill. On the downhill side, we got going fairly fast. I saw my speed get up to 38, which is probably the fastest I’ve gone in 20 years. Back when I was young and fearless, that was no big deal. But now that I’m older and more cautious, I tend not to go so fast down the hills. But every time we do a fast downhill, I think of the day back in 1976 when I was riding down a big hill in Harriman State Park in New York. I had an old analog speedometer on my bike that had a little plastic wheel that read the speed off the front tire. Going down this hill, the speedometer pegged at 50, and then the little plastic wheel couldn’t handle it any more and broke off and flew into the woods. And all I could think was, “I broke my speedometer – Cool!” Ahh, youth.

At the bottom of the hill, we headed down through Glendale for a bit, and then came back north to Glenoaks Blvd. We took a left there and rode a bit to get to Paradise Bakery. They have the best eclairs there, so I always get two of them.

After that, we went south on Sonora, where we passed Jimmy’s Super Lunch. We have no idea what’s so super about it, but it was funny. Continuing on, we passed the Bette Davis Picnic Area and headed into Griffith Park. We did one loop around the park, going up the hill behind the Zoo and down past the golf course, and then out to Los Feliz Blvd. Then we went back, passing the Autry Museum and the front side of the Zoo.

From there, we went back up Sonora to Kenneth in Glendale. By this time, the sun had burned off the early-morning clouds and it was starting to get hot. We continued on Mountain back to Verdugo Blvd. Then it was time for the long climb up to Hospital Hill.

When we got to the top of the hill, it was all downhill from there. We went down Descanso and Chevy Chase, and then crossed the freeway to get back to Woodbury Road. Then we took Woodbury and New York back to the park.

52 miles. see the route map
cycling

Found this today on Lifehacker:

It’s a great hack for Google Maps: the Google Pedometer. But it’s not just for walking. It works for bike rides, too. For instance, here’s last Saturday’s ride to the Encino Velodrome as plotted on the map: see the route

Note that the final calculated mileage of 60.9 agrees pretty well with the 61.<mumble> measured by my bike computer.

Now, if only this could be combined with Bike Metro’s route service to give elevation data, it would be perfect.

Since I can’t do the regular Sunday ride this weekend, Gene and I rode out to Encino to the velodrome today. We figured it would be a nice ride, and we could watch a bit of the racing there.

We started out heading west across Eagle Rock and Glendale. That was where I saw Tep Thai and Tip Top right next to each other. Coincidence, perhaps?

Continuing on through Burbank, we passed the Igloo Cafe with its Eskimo caricature on the front. Then we took Moorpark across the east end of the Valley, passing an apartment building with cube-shaped topiary trees in front.

When we got to the 405 freeway, there really wasn’t any good way to go, so we just took Ventura Blvd for a short stretch. This was the ‘gritty urban cycling’ portion of the ride.

When we got to the velodrome, there wasn’t much going on. We just sat and watched the riders warming up for a bit. Then they started the preliminary heats in the Keirin. This is apparently a new form of racing that they didn’t have back in the ’70s when I was a racer. It was a bit odd, but still fun to watch.

I was never much of a track racer. I did most of my track riding at Kissena Velodrome in New York, which was widely regarded as the worst velodrome in the United States. Imagine, if you will, 1/4 mile of typical New York City street rolled up into a banked oval. That was Kissena. It was rough, it had weeds growing through cracks in the pavement, and it had a big hump in the last turn where the track had settled after it was built. There was a sewer pipe running underground across the field, and the ground settled less over the pipe, so the track had a hump. But, being a road rider at heart, Kissena suited me just fine. The back stretch was oriented right into the setting sun for the Wednesday night races, so that was always where I made my move. I used to attack at a lap and a half to go. I managed to win a few races that way, because at first, nobody thought I could go all-out and last for 600 meters to the finish. I even have a picture of this. Those were fun times. When I first came to California in 1978, I raced a few times at Encino. It seemed weird, not having the bumps and hump, and the track was shorter. It felt like riding around the inside of a bathtub. But it was a lot of fun. And it was fun to see it again.

Leaving the velodrome, we looked for a drinking fountain so I could refill my water bottle. Apparently, all of the fountains by the baseball fields there were broken. So we left. We took the bike path across the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area, where we finally found a working fountain. I refilled my bottle, and all was right with the world.

At the end of the park, we got on Burbank Blvd for a short stretch, before turning south on Van Nuys to get to Chandler. Chandler is a nice quiet street, and we took that all the way over to North Hollywood, where it ended. Then we went south a few more blocks to Riverside and headed back into Burbank. I snapped a picture of the Work Boot Warehouse babe, since we’d been seeing her on lots of billboards all across the Valley. We figured that she is part of a time-tested marketing strategy for businesses that have clientele primarily composed of young men.

It was just before we got to the Bette Davis Picnic Area that I noticed that my back tire was going flat. So we stopped there, and I changed it. I had Gene take the obligatory picture for the Flat Tire Gallery. This also marked my second appeance the gallery, and so far I’m the only one with two flats in it.

From there, we headed up into Glendale to Verdugo Blvd for the climb up Hospital Hill. Gene had an accident back in May, so he missed riding for a few weeks, and he was fading out a bit as we went up the hill. But when we got to the top, it was all downhill back to Pasadena, so we made it home just fine.

61 miles.
cycling

Today’s ride was Gene’s ‘Old Town Monrovia’ ride. This was a mostly-flat jaunt out to Irwindale and Azusa, and then back to Monrovia for a snack at the Coffee Bean.

The first thing everyone noticed today was that Sandy and Rasheed were twins. They had the same jerseys, although we were still able to tell them apart. Also in the well-dressed category was Jason, who had his bright red ‘CCCP‘ jersey, complete with hammer and sickle.

We started out going east through Arcadia, Monrovia and Duarte. Then we got on the bike path above Santa Fe Dam and rode that all the way down over the dam and down the San Gabriel River.

We got off the bike path at Lower Azusa Road, which we took west for a bit to Peck. Then we turned north, passing Dandy Doors and the Taboo Gentleman’s Club. The funny thing about that place is that apparently the city of Arcadia made some rule prohibiting them from having a big sign out in front. So they got a truck billboard and just keep it parked in the parking lot in front of the building.

A bit farther north, we passed back into Monrovia, passing the now-derelict train station there. We also passed the Wizard of Bras, which may well count the Taboo dancers among their clients.

Then we got to Old Town Monrovia. We stopped at the Coffee Bean at Myrtle and Foothill and had a snack.

Leaving the Coffee Bean, we headed west on Foothill Blvd. We passed the Aztec Hotel, which is a rather distinctive building. Then we took Highland Oaks up the hill to Grand View in Sierra Madre. After that, we came back down the hill and we were back at the park.

At this point, we had only gone about 35 miles, so Jason, Matt and I decided to do a bit more. We headed west across Pasadena, crossing through Old Town (we have an ‘Old Town’ everywere here) and then down into the Arroyo. We went around the Rose Bowl, where we saw the ‘you are in a golf area’ warning signs. Sadly, the sign was just text, and didn’t have a graphic of a little stick-figure man being beaned by a golf ball. At the end of the golf course, we took a left and went up the hill to Linda Vista. Then we went north a bit to just below the dam. From there, we took Windsor Road up to Casitas, and then took Mendocino back across Pasadena.

50 miles.
cycling