Stan’s Obligatory Blog

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

Today was the media event for the start of the Southern California Shakeout. This is an exercise to see if we can collectively deal with a M7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas Fault. This is the ‘Big One‘ that they have been telling us about for some years now.

They had an animation showing the waves traveling across southern California in real time, showing just how long the earthquake would last. It was impressive. Most earthquakes we’ve dealt with recently are over in seconds. The Big One will last something like three minutes.

Have I mentioned lately that I really like my job?

Since last week was a flat-ish ride, it was time for a hill today. And Turnbull Canyon seemed like just the thing.

We started out from Victory Park in Pasadena and headed south. We hadn’t gone more than a couple miles when Ben got a flat. Of course, my first thought was to take a picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

While Ben was fixing his flat, Philippe showed up. He had decided to ride with us today, and was just running a few minutes late. So after the tire was fixed, we headed out again. Philippe is a strong rider, and I believe it was his presence that led to today’s ride being much faster than usual. Which was just fine.

When we got to Turnbull Canyon, Philippe and Ben took off up the hill. I didn’t want to try to race them, so I stayed with Susan and Jon. But when we got near the top, I saw that we were catching up to Ben. So I had to see if I could catch him before getting to the top. As it turned out, I was just able to catch up by the top, but he saw me coming and sprinted the last 50 meters (Gotta speak metric, since Ben’s from Belgium.) or so, just enough that I couldn’t quite beat him to the top. Still, it was a fun little exercise.

We came down the other side and then headed back home by way of La Puente and Baldwin Park. Our snack stop was at Planet Cookies in Monrovia. From there, we headed straight home, taking the relatively flat route through Arcadia. Our average for the ride was nearly 17mph, which is pretty fast for our group, especially since we had the climb up Turnbull Canyon today.

It was a fun ride.

46 miles.
cycling

Today’s bike club ride was to Claremont, and it was a perfect day for riding. I’d recently arranged so Susan could get a Caltech jersey, so we were twins today. At the start of the ride, I got Silvio to take a picture.

The route was very direct. We just went straight east, passing through Duarte, Azusa and Glendora before turning south a bit and then taking Bonita Ave out to Claremont. There really wasn’t much to it. But we still managed to miss a turn. Still, we found our way there just fine.

When we got to Claremont, we went to 42nd St Bagels. The rest of our group went down the street to Some Crust Bakery. But both are nice. I had a garlic bagel and some orange juice.

The ride back was pleasant. We went by the most direct route, which included the stretch of Gladstone St with the 1% downgrade. That’s always fun.

When we got home, our average was just about 16mph, which is not bad for this distance.

56 miles.
cycling

In today’s obituary pages, Alexander Courage has died at 88. The headline says it all:

Alexander ‘Sandy’ Courage, 88; composer wrote ‘Star Trek’ theme

Apparently, he had a prolific career writing music for movies and TV for over 50 years. But in the geek world, he’s going to always be known for “Star Trek”.

And the eight notes:

The eight-note brass fanfare that Courage wrote to herald the starship Enterprise became one of the most familiar musical signatures in TV history.

“I’d argue that it’s the most famous fanfare in the world,” Burlingame, who teaches film music history at USC, said Thursday.

“It’s been around 42 years — and it’s all around the world — and when you hear those eight notes you immediately think of the Enterprise,” he said.

Read the whole article here: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-courage30-2008may30,0,1290138.story

Film and TV director Joseph Pevney has died at 96. Bein’ a geek, I immediately recognized his work on the original “Star Trek”. He directed several of my favorite episodes ever: “Amok Time“, “Arena” and “The City on the Edge of Forever“. And of course, he also directed “The Trouble with Tribbles“. So hoist a tribble and take a moment to remember yet another person who helped shape modern geek culture.

www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-pevney29-2008may29,0,2766431.story