Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This morning, the dogs were out in the back yard, barking like maniacs. So I went to have a look. There was a mother opossum on top of the wall at the back of my yard. It had one baby clinging to its back, and it was just standing there looking at the dogs. Opossums are like skunks that way. They just amble around like they own the place, and they don’t care how much noise anyone else is making about it.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to Hollywood to see “Bigger Stronger Faster” at Grauman’s Chinese. This is a documentary about steroids in athletics and performance-enhancing drugs in general. While this may sound dry, it was actually tremendously entertaining.

I didn’t think they really came down on steroids as either all good or bad. It was more of, “well, this is just an extremely gray area”. But they did point out that our culture has a very ambivalent attitude to all kinds of performance-enhancing drugs. The point being that our collective prudery about drugs used for athletics doesn’t square with our overall embrace of drugs to enhance performance in all manner of other endeavors. In particular, the musicians taking beta blockers to control stage fright was an interesting example of this gray area.

But when it comes down to it, this was just a very funny and entertaining movie. The part exposing the fraud of muscle-building dietary supplements alone was worth the price of admission. In particular, the interview with the photographer who explained how he can take the ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures on the same day. That was hilarious.

It’s Father’s Day, which means it’s time for the annual Bicycle John’s Grand Prix race in Glendale. We’ve been to see this race several times before: 2007 2006 2004

The route was the now-classic “Toluca Lake Inverse” ride.

It was a perfect day for riding. We headed out from Victory Park, down into San Marino and South Pasadena. Then over across Highland Park to the L.A. River. Then we got on the bike path. There was a guy fixing a flat right at the bike path entrance. He wasn’t part of our group, but he had a flat tire, so I took his picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

We rode the bike path to the end at Riverside Dr. Then went through Griffith Park to get to Barham Blvd by Warner Bros. Our snack stop was at Priscilla’s on Riverside.

After the stop, we headed back, taking a small detour to see the race in Glendale. I watched for a little while, but I needed to get back on the early side, so Susan and I left early to go home.

The route back was up Verdugo into Montrose, and then home by way of La Cañada. It was a fun ride.

42 miles.
cycling

This weekend, Susan and I were visiting my father in San Diego. We brought our bikes along, and on Saturday morning when he was playing bridge, we went for a ride down to Point Loma. I did this ride last year when I was there when he had knee replacement surgery.

It was a cool and overcast morning, which was nice for bike riding.

We headed over to La Jolla, and then took the coast route there, stopping at the cove to see the seals on the beach. Then we rode through Pacific Beach and Mission Beach to Mission Bay. Then through Ocean Beach to get to the road to Point Loma. At the entrance to Cabrillo National Monument, we paid our $3 to get in and took a moment to grouse about Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party for instituting fees for that area. Then we rode down the hill to the tide pools.

After looking at the ocean and the cliffs there, we rode back up the hill to the lighthouse. Then we left and headed back down to Mission Bay. We took the road around the east side of the bay to the Rose Canyon bike path. Then back up into La Jolla Colony and back to my father’s place.

It was a fun ride.

42 miles.

I took Friday off so that Susan and I could go to San Diego to visit my father. On the way down, we stopped at the Oceanside Museum of Art to see the “Ancient Marks: The Sacred Origins of Tattoos and Body Marking” exhibit. It was amusing, and there were even a couple of people I know in the photographs there.

When we got there, we visited with my father on Friday afternoon and evening. On Saturday morning, we went for a bike ride down to Point Loma, which I’ll write about separately. Then we took him to lunch at Costa Brava for Father’s Day.

It was a fun visit.

After all, one never knows what the day will bring:

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I did another cooking class this evening at Chez Cherie in La Cañada. This one was the hands-on pasta class. I did the hands-on souffle class last February, and it was fun. So I thought it would be interesting to learn to make pasta.

At the beginning, Cherie demonstrated making it by hand and also with a food processor. Then she asked if anyone in the class wanted to learn the hand method. I raised my hand, along with one other person. So we went up to the front table and made our pasta by hand. That was an interesting exercise. Not all that different from making bread.

After the dough was made, we had to let it rest a bit, so they fed us some fresh pasta with different sauces. Then we got to roll the dough out and cut it. At the end, we each had a bag of our fresh pasta to take home and cook.

It was a fun evening.

Today’s bike ride was Gene’s “Noodling – 1” route. This is a route that doesn’t go anywhere in particular, but goes up and down a lot of steep hills in the process. The last time we did this ride was over a year ago, so it was time again.

It was a perfect day for riding. Sadly, I’m getting sick, so I wasn’t quite in the proper mood for racing up the hills. Still, it was a fun little ride. We saw the sights and got some nice views from the top of the hills. But in the end, I was starting to feel pretty sluggish, and so Susan and I cut the last part of the ride short and came home.

32 miles.
cycling

This weekend is the big “Ink and Iron” show at the Queen Mary. This started out back in 2004 as just a tattoo convention, and over the years they have added music, motorcycles and hot rods to the show. So it’s turned into a Big Deal. But I still like to go just for the tattoos.

I went down there with Susan after the morning bike ride. We got to Long Beach about 2:00 or so. We went inside and just wandered around looking at all the tattoos. We got to visit with some of my friends who I know from going to so many of these shows over the years. That was fun. We also watched the Aerial Showgirls doing their show in the big open area in the center of the room.

It was a fun afternoon. As always, pictures are in the Tattoo Conventions Photo Gallery.

Today’s bike club ride was the “Crown City Trainer“, which is another of those rides that doesn’t go anywhere in particular, but manages to go up and down a bunch of hills along the way there. Which I think is great fun.

This route starts at Story Park in Alhambra. On the way down there from my house, I met up with Silvio, and we rode to the park together.

The route starts out climbing up the hill to the water tower in South Pasadena. This is a nice warm-up. Then we rode through the San Rafael Hills area of Pasadena and up Patrician Way. Then back down the hill to Linda Vista before turning up Inverness to climb back up the hill again. As I said, this was all Great Fun.

On the way back, we passed a job site with a sign for Cementum Construction. I thought that this was easily a perfect name for a construction company.

The snack stop was at the Corner Bakery on Lake Ave in Pasadena. From there, the route went back to Alhambra, but several of us who live in Pasadena just headed home from there.

It was a nice ride.

34 miles.
cycling