Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Every time I take Lucinda to Disneyland, we end the day with dinner at the Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney. The first time, it was because I just didn’t want to go home. It was right at the beginning of my divorce ordeal, and I was not well at all. Later, when things got better, we still went there to end our day, and I could see the progress. In each successive picture, I felt that I looked visibly happier. I know I felt happier each time.

So here is the latest installment. Life is really quite good now.

Today was the third practice day for the Aon Center stair climb a week from Saturday. Erik couldn’t go today, but I made time in my day to go do it. My quest is to do the tower in under 12 minutes, so today I put on my little electronic metronome and I set it for 72, which is 4% faster than the 69 beats per minute I had it set on last week. There were probably a bit over a dozen people there to do the climb today. I let about 10 people go ahead before I started.

On the way up, I noticed that the turns on the landings took at least one and sometimes two beats of the metronome. If I assume an average of 1.5 beats per landing, that means I spent about 1.25 seconds on each landing, and that totals up to just a bit over two minutes total for the approximately 110 landings in the 56-story climb. That’s really a lot of time spent not climbing. But sadly, 1.25 seconds rest really isn’t enough to recover in any significant way. No matter how you slice it, climbing that many stairs hurts.

Today’s climb felt like it was very close to my limit. I just kept focused on the beeping of the metronome to keep pace. And I managed to keep the pace all the way up. But the last 10 stories were pretty grim. I passed all but one of the people who’d started in front of me, which was nice. And my time at the top was 10:38, which I thought was quite good. Based on that, I should be able to do the full tower climb in about 11:45, which is well-within my goal of 12 minutes. So this is a Good Thing.

I’m really enjoying this weird little sport I stumbled upon last year. It’s fun in a way that I can’t quite explain.

Due to the earthquake this week, I didn’t have much time or inspiration to find some weird sight to go see on the Sunday bike ride. So we just rode out to San Dimas and back. It was chilly and overcast, and not much remarkable happened. Still, it was a pleasant ride.

43 miles.
cycling

Wednesday was the second practice session at the Aon Tower for the stair climb on the 24th. Work has been crazy this week because of the earthquake last Sunday, but I made a point to get downtown at lunchtime to try my legs on the stairs again.

Since Erik couldn’t make it this time, I rode the train there so as not to have to use my car. When I got there, Carla from the bike club was there. She works in one of the other big buildings downtown, and I’d told her about the climb on the ride last Sunday. She doesn’t want to do it, but she came by to see us practice. This worked out well, since I had my backpack and bike helmet with me, and she was able to take them on the elevator up to the 60th floor while I was climbing.

Last time, Erik and I had noticed that turning on the stair landings took a noticeable amount of time compared to the actual climbs up each flight. I took a wild guess and assumed that each stair landing eats up about 1 second. All together that would eat almost 2 minutes total for the climb. So if I want to make the top in 12 minutes, I need to do the actual 1377 steps in about 10 minutes, which would mean 137 steps per minute. Dividing by 2 to account for taking double steps, I get 69 per minute.

I got a small electronic metronome that clips on my belt. I set it for 69 beats per minute. I concentrated on just having one foot going up two steps for each beep.. And I made the climb to the 60th floor in 10:58. This was 15 seconds faster than last time, and works out to making the full climb in about 12:10. So I think it worked. Next time I’m going to try for 71 or 72.

On the train ride back, I had a touch of ‘Climber’s Cough’, which means I went pretty hard on the climb. But I still think I can go faster next time. It was a good practice session, and a good little mid-day adventure.

My Pet Project got mentioned in xkcd today. As always, you have to read the mouse-over text on the cartoon to get the full effect:

Ordinarily, I’d be extremely excited by this. But right now I’m up at 4:54AM fixing the my Pet Project’s database. The M7.2 earthquake yesterday caused so much activity on the system that the database got swollen and filled up the disk on some of the servers. So I’m up rolfing it back into shape.

This Sunday’s bike ride was an old favorite. The loop through northeast Los Angeles and over Mt Washington. It was chilly, but a nice day for riding.

We started out going up to La Cañada and then down into Glendale. That was where we saw the topiary dolphins. Sadly, they’re in the wrong direction to add to the Topiary Tour. So I need to find some more topiary out that way to make a second Tour.

Heading across the L.A. River, we went down Riverside Dr. We took a short detour down Oros St to see the tiniest house in Los Angeles. We also took a peek over the fence to see the new part of the L.A. River bike path that they have been building recently. Then we crossed back over the L.A. River and headed up to Mt. Washington. There is a dog partway up the hill who always stands on the roof of the garage and barks at us as we go by. At the top we stopped briefly at the Self-Realization Fellowship gates before heading down the other side.

Our stop was at Kaldi’s in South Pasadena, which is nice and shady for hot summer days, but not so pleasant on chilly ones. After that, we took a direct route home, since I needed to get back a little early to get ready to go to Easter.

It was a nice ride.

38 miles.
cycling

Sunday’s bike ride was a sightseeing trip to see the one of the traveling reproductions of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. I’d been to see one of them before, many years ago, and it was an amazing experience. The Wall has become a sort of cultural touchstone, and visitors leave photos, letters, and other small items in tribute to their friends and family members who were lost in the war.

It was a perfect day for riding. Cool and sunny, and ready to warm up fast. We headed out from Victory Park and rode down to the Rio Hondo bike path, which brought us down to Whittier Narrows. Along the way, Don dropped his water bottle, and it rolled down into the wash. So we stopped while he walked down the slope to retrieve it.

From Whittier Narrows, we took Durfee Ave over to Peck Rd, which took us to Workman Mill, and Rose Hills Cemetery. The Wall was set up on a patch of ground right near the entrance. The had a display of artifacts in a tent in the parking lot. And there were people there doing a marathon reading of all the 58,000 names on the wall. We walked along the Wall and looked at all the items left there. I think it’s just the saddest thing to see those remembrances of lives lost in what I believe was a completely pointless war.

Leaving the cemetery, we continued on down into Whittier, and then up and over Turnbull Canyon. Coming down the far side, Silvio’s front wheel made a loud ‘SNAP’ noise, and it went wobbly. It was rubbing on the fork, which made the bike unrideable. And the wheel had carbon-fiber spokes that require a special tool to true, so he was pretty much SOL. He called home and his wife came to pick him up. The rest of us continued on.

We took Colima Rd through Hacienda Heights all the way to Azusa Ave. Then we turned north to start our way back. Azusa Ave turned out to be a pretty miserable road to ride on. It was late morning by now, and there was a lot of traffic. So I think that road is off my list for the future.

We stopped at Panera in West Covina for snacks. When I’m going in to a place like that, I generally take my bike shoes off, since walking on a tile floor with bike shoes is a lot like walking on ice. It’s very slippery and kind of precarious. But the manager of the place still gave me a hard time about it. Said he didn’t want to be sued if I stepped on something. I told him I didn’t want to sue him if I my plastic cleats slipped on the tile. So he sort of sulked and walked away.

The last drama of the ride was near the end. David got a flat. He picked up a big staple in his tire, and we ended up having to stop to change it just a mile from the finish. Still, even with all that, it was a nice ride.

58 miles.
cycling

Practice!

Today was the first practice day for the Aon Tower stair climb next month. They opened the stairs from the 4th floor up to the 60th for an hour at lunchtime for practice runs. I talked my friend Erik from work into trying the stair climb. We’ve been practicing on the stairs at Millikan Library at Caltech, but that’s only 10 stories. (The building is 9 stories, but we start in the basement.) So we thought it would be good to go and try the real thing. I did this climb last year, but Erik had never done a big stair climb before. And there’s nothing like trying the real thing to know what it’s like.

Can you tell it hurt from the pictures?

The climb from 4 to 60 is 90% of the full climb from the ground to the roof. It took us 11 minutes and 13 seconds. Based on this, we could do the full climb in 12:20, which is very close to my goal for this year of breaking 12 minutes. So the steady pace training we’ve done helped. Next time we’re going to try it with a small electronic metronome for pacing. I’ll set it for about 3% faster than we went today and we’ll see how that goes.

As is human nature, today is an anniversary of sorts, and it’s time to sit back and take stock. It was two years ago today when Cathy moved out. We’d spent nearly 22 years together as constant companions, so when she turned into a stranger and left, it was a major upheaval in my world. I looked back in my private journal and found this tidbit from that time:

I think the fundamental problem I’m having with dealing with her is that she only speaks to me to criticize me or call me an asshole. You know the old saying, “If you can’t say something bad, don’t say anything at all.” And then she wonders why I don’t want to talk to her.

So now she’s denying that she ever said that ‘it was over’ between us. She’s making it out like I’m the bad guy for insisting that we have to split up. That she never wanted to split. But she was the one who said, “I don’t want to be married to you any more.” That seems like a pretty definitive statement. I don’t see much room for interpretation.

I was in the proverbial ‘world of hurt’ back then.

Looking back one year, things were much better. At that time, I thought we were close to a settlement agreement. Looking at my journal from that time bears this out. We were able to talk in a semi-reasonable manner by then, and we managed to reach agreement on some issues. So I was cautiously optimistic. Little did I know that the whole thing would blow up in my face a couple months later and would lead to nearly a year more of fighting, not to mention thousands of dollars in lawyer bills.

Today, things are much, much better. We finally reached a settlement after the near-equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis last August. There was a lot of high-stakes brinksmanship to reach this point, but now everything is settled. Our agreement was signed and filed in January, and we settled the buy-out for the house in February. So there are no more major issues to fight about. And this has been a great thing, at least for me. My overall stress level is down significantly, and I’m much more able to enjoy life again. I thought I was doing really well this time last year, but I was still the Walking Wounded then.

There’s been a lot of healing over the last two years, and I hope that this continues. I’ve had some tremendous adventures, and even found a new hobby. Once again, I feel pretty good about where I am now. But that still leaves room for more improvement in the future.

So overall, I’m optimistic, and I don’t even have to qualify that with ‘cautiously’ any more. And that’s progress.

Today’s bike ride was a new version of the Topiary Tour that I debuted back in November. I’d added one more stop for some topiary animals in a yard in Baldwin Park. It was cool, but basically a very nice day for riding.

The first stop was the Bunny Museum, where they have a giant topiary rabbit on the front lawn. Then on to the Pasadena Elks Lodge and the topiary elks by the front door. The nose of one was brown. There’s a joke in there, I’m pretty sure.

Riding back across Pasadena, we stopped at the Mobil station at Lake and San Pasqual. The topiary Pegasus was kind of overgrown, and didn’t look much like a horse at all.

The next stop was the house in Baldwin Park. They have a giraffe, a bear, a deer, and and an elephant. After that, we continued on to Glendora to the house with the teddy bears and the swan.

Our snack stop was at Classic Coffee in Glendora. Then we took a short detour to see the Glendora Bougainvillea. It wasn’t flowering, so we’re going to have to stop by again next month to see it in bloom.

The route back was pretty straightforward, ending with a final topiary stop in Sierra Madre at the rocking horse. Since it’s spring, the horse had lots of new growth, and it was somewhat in need of a trim.

It was an entertaining little ride.

48 miles.
cycling