Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This morning, I had occasion to make a trip from Santa Monica to Pasadena. This is 28.2 miles through the belly of the beast in Los Angeles. According to Google Maps, they estimate 40 minutes at best. It took me 36 minutes, which was probably because the 36 minutes in question were from 6:26AM to 7:02AM. I can’t remember the last time I saw the freeways in Los Angeles so empty. It was like an end-of-the-world movie.

Today’s bike ride was the old route out to San Dimas for a bagel, but reversed. The plan was to ride out there, get a bagel, and then stop off for minor sightseeing on the way back. A few weeks ago, I’d see a trailer park on Covina Blvd where the streets were named for the original Mercury astronauts. Or at least five of the seven original Mercury astronauts. There was no clue why Gordon Cooper and Wally Schirra didn’t get streets. I looked it up, and there’s a Cooper Court in San Dimas, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t a Schirra St.

On the way back, I got a laugh out of the Chinese billboard for the Venitian in Las Vegas. I guess they’d heard about all those stereotypes about how much Chinese people like to gamble. Being Chinese, I can feel free to poke fun at the stereotypes, like when I see a Chinese restaurant with a health department grade of “B”.

Aside from that, there wasn’t much memorable about the ride. It was pleasant, but not remarkable.

42 miles.
cycling

On Saturday afternoon, I suddenly found myself with a couple free hours, so I went riding. I did my usual route down to South Pasadena, over the water tower hill, and then up to the Rose Bowl. I noticed today that they’d put up signs making it more explicit which way the pedestrians are supposed to walk there. And that despite there being a clear sign about every 50 yards, people were still ignoring them and walking the wrong direction. Makes me want to carry my riding crop when I’m riding there.

On Saturday morning, Lucinda and I went for a bike ride. This time we went a bit farther than we’ve done before, and we rode down to see the weird palm tree near Caltech. She thought it was pretty entertaining, so we had a nice time.

Today, I took Lucinda and her friend Claire out to the Los Angeles County Fair. We went out early in the day, when they were running the $1 special for tickets. It was a perfect day for the fair. It was hot, but only a normal sort of hot for Pomona. The heat wave of the last week finally broke, so we were able to enjoy the day.

The fair is known for some weird foods. And we were immediately reminded of this by the sign advertising chocolate-covered pickles. Yikes. We were not up for trying that. We did try the chocolate-covered bacon, which was decidedly weird. I kept thinking that the chocolate would have been better without the bacon. It wasn’t bad, but the bacon didn’t really add anything other than some crunch and just plain weirdness. And we also didn’t want to try the “Totally Fried Fair Special”.

We stopped by the food exhibit to see if I’d won anything with my baked goods. I hadn’t really expected to win, but I figured it would be an interesting adventure no matter what. And I did see my Black Walnut Bread on display, which was rather novel, even if it didn’t win anything.

They have a lot of concerts at the fair, and one I saw on the schedule was kind of amusing. Apparently, Creedence Clearwater Revival has been revived in some form, now 40 years later. But since the original name of the group had the word ‘Revival’ in it, what could they call it? “Creedence Clearwater Revisited“, of course.

Lucinda and Claire rode a lot of the rides, and they ran through many of the fun houses, too. We went and saw the farm animals, and they got to pet some sheep and goats. They also played a few midway games.

Through all of this, we could see the smoke plume from the Station Fire burning off in the distance. The wind was blowing the smoke away from us and up to the high desert, so the air where we were was fine. But it still looked kind of ominous.

Overall, it was a fun day.

Sunday’s bike ride was a route I made up that took us as far away as we could go from the smoke of the Station Fire, which has been burning in the Angeles National Forest for the last 10 days. We rode down into Downtown Los Angeles, and then out on Wilshire for a bit before turning north to get to Larchmont Village. Then home through Hollywood and Eagle Rock.

It was a nearly-perfect day for riding. There was just a hint of smoke smell in the air when we left Pasadena, and we quickly left that behind as we rode down Huntington Drive toward downtown L.A.

In downtown, we rode down Grand Ave, past the skyscrapers on Bunker Hill. I got a good look at the U.S. Bank Tower, which was nice. I’ve signed up to do the “Stair Climb to the Top” there in a few weeks, so I will be getting more acquainted with it then.

In Larchmont, we usually go to Noah’s Bagels, but this time we did something different. There is a farmer’s market there on Sundays, so we went and got snacks there instead. It was pretty nice. Then we headed up into Hollywood, passing the stage for “Divorce Court“, and also the Suicide Girls office.

As we rode back into Pasadena, we could faintly smell the smoke from the fire again, but it wasn’t bad. So overall, it was a nice ride.

40 miles.
cycling

On Saturday, I took Lucinda and her friend to the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum so they could see the butterflies on the last weekend of the exhibit. They have the butterflies there every summer from the end of May through Labor Day. This was the first time I’d taken her to see them since 2004.

When we got there, there was a tremendous crowd of people in the the park, and we realized that there was a USC football game about to start in the Coliseum next door to the museum. This made getting inside a bit of an adventure, and if I’d known about this, we might not have gone today, but we were already there, so we made do.

The butterflies are in a large outdoor cage, sort of like a small aviary. They enjoyed seeing the butterflies flying around, and also finding some caterpillars, spiders, and other insects there. One of the docents helped them to find some of the more interesting sights, including the web of the spider that inspired E. B. White to write Charlotte’s Web.

Afterward, we went inside for the “Dinosaur Encounter“, where they had an animatronic dinosaur that came out and walked around the room. It was a pretty good effect. We’ve seen robotic dinosaurs before, most recently a few weeks ago when we went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, but this was the first time we’d seen one that actually walks around free. It was quite novel.

Finally, we spent some time looking at the gems and minerals exhibit before going home. It was a fun afternoon.

On my way home today I saw that the Station Fire had a big flare-up this afternoon. Given that all of us here in Pasadena have been living in the smoke and ashes of this fire for over a week, was it a faux pas that I was barbecuing dinner tonight?

Dinner was pork chops marinated in rosemary and balsamic vinegar, and corn roasted in the husk. It was all quite good.

I registered for the Los Angeles U.S. Bank Tower stair climb today. It’s on Friday, September 25th, and I’m hoping to make a decent showing there. When I did the AON tower stair climb back in April, I came in 24th out of 327 runners, and I’m hoping to improve on that this time. Given that my time for the 62-story AON tower was 12:50, I’m hoping to make the 73 stories of the U.S. Bank Tower in just a bit under 15 minutes. Based on the 2006 results I found online, this would put me at about 30th among the men and about 35th overall. Hey, I’m goal-oriented.

As with the other stair climb, it’s a fundraiser for charity, and I have to solicit donations to make my fundraising goal. In this case, the donations go the Ketchum Downtown YMCA, which I think is a good cause. I used to go training classes there back in the ’80s when I was an aerobics instructor. So this is my way of asking all my friends to consider making a small online donation.

I will be taking my camera along again, and I’m going to get some pictures from the roof of the building, and also probably an ‘action shot’ or two on the way up. Just so you can see how hard I’m running to get a good time.

And as always, there’s a LOLcat for every occasion:

I took part of the afternoon off so that Lucinda and I could bake blueberry muffins, black walnut bread, and oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to enter in the Los Angeles County Fair. It was unbearably hot in the kitchen, but in the end, everything turned out quite nicely. Then we made the trip out to the Fairplex to deliver everything. The guard gave us directions, and we drove through the fairgrounds to the hall where the food exhibit will be held. They put little tags on everything I brought, and now we’re done. Apparently, they don’t announce the results. You have to go to the fair to find out. But we’re looking forward to going to the fair anyway. After all, what’s not to like about a place where you can get chocolate-covered bacon?