Stan’s Obligatory Blog

A friend of mine went to a coroner’s convention recently. There were some crime-scene cleanup companies there, and one of them had this for an advertising item. Heh.

Today’s ride was up and over Turnbull Canyon, which is a nice hill between Whittier and Hacienda Heights. To ride up it is to challenge Newton and beat the force of gravity. And today, I also beat Newton, who is the star hill-climber of our group. This is one of the very few times I’ve beaten him to the top of a big hill. So it was an exciting day.

It was cool and threatening to rain today, so I thought the ride might get cut short. So I left a few minutes early and took the long way down to the park. Along the way, I saw the first abandoned couch of the day, on Orange Grove Blvd. Then I headed over to Victory Park to meet the group.

We had a small group today. I suppose the weather may have scared some away. We headed out to Arcadia and then directly south through El Monte, where I saw the second abandoned couch. Then we crossed into Whittier and headed up to Turnbull Canyon.

The road up Turnbull Canyon is a nice bit of the country in the middle of the city. It’s a steady, winding climb. Jon, Newton, and I led the way. I made sure to stay with Newton, even when he put on some bursts of speed to try to shake me. I knew that no matter how much it hurt, I had to stay close. If I lost contact, it would hurt twice as much to try and catch up later. It also helped that it’s been a while since we did this ride, and I’d forgotten just how long the climb is. Several times I thought we were almost at the top, only to go around a bend and see yet another switchback. But in the end, I managed to hang on to the top, which was a remarkable thing. I usually can’t hang with Newton on a tough climb. So maybe all this riding is actually making me stronger. Or maybe I’m just learning how to hurt and make more effort. Whatever. And being first to the top made up for the fact that I’d said ‘uncle’ and shifted on the way up. To commemorate the occasion, I got a souvenir picture at the top.

The ride down is nice. It reminds me of riding a steel roller coaster. For some reason, the road gives the feeling of flying, even though we stay firmly on the ground. It’s a fun downhill, and I don’t even find it terrifying for some reason.

At the bottom, we headed back by way of La Puente and Industry. Amid all the warehouses in Industry, we saw some people riding horses, which looked kind of strange. We also saw a Metrolink commuter train go by, which is a rare sight on a weekend.

Our snack stop was at Planet Cookies in Monrovia. The whole Old Town Monrovia area has already been decorated for the holidays. It seems a bit soon, but that’s not unusual these days.

By this time, it was getting colder again, and starting to look more like rain. So we headed straight home.

It was a fun, if slightly chilly ride.

53 miles.
cycling

Today’s ride was out to San Dimas for one lap around Bonelli Park. We’ve done this ride before, and it’s always nice.

On the way out, I saw a nice abandoned couch in Baldwin Park, and then a little way down the road, I saw a pile of trash with yet another couch. And then Frank got a flat. He said we should just go on, but I had to stop to take a picture.

After the flat, we continued on. The ride out to San Dimas is pretty flat and not very exciting. But when we got there, we headed into the hills around Bonelli Park. We rode down past Brackett Field. There was a lot of activity on the drag strip at the Pomona fairgrounds. The Love Ride is tomorrow, and apparently they go out there at the end of the ride. So there were thousands of people on motorcycles there to warm up the pavement or something. It was the most motorcycles I’ve ever seen in one place that wasn’t having a tattoo convention.

We took Via Verde back through the park and over the hills. The plastic horse in front of the equestrian center was pretty funny. Then we climbed the hill out of the park and headed down the other side. I saw 40mph on one of the downhills, which is unusual for me. I’m terrified of high speeds now that I’m old. But it was fun.

Coming down into Covina, Tom got a flat. He changed the tube, but the spare had a too-short valve, so he had to borrow a tube from someone else. Finally, he got the tire fixed and we continued on.

The stop was at a restaurant in Baldwin Park. By that time it was getting late, so Jon and I skipped the stop and just headed for home.

It was a fun ride.

55 miles.
cycling

Here’s some of the 7.5 pounds of candy that Lucinda got on Halloween. Sort of like the traditional cornucopia, but not quite. But quite appropriate to modern American culture. Yikes.

One day this week I was sitting in my office and started smelling a pie baking in the kitchen downstairs. This happens sometimes, since my office is in a house, and we have a fully-functioning kitchen. It was a peach pie, and a half-gallon of ice cream appeared, too. It was quite good. And I was suddenly seized by an urge to make an apple pie. I’ve only made a pie from scratch once before, and never made an apple pie. But there’s no fighting these urges.

I got some apples today when I went to do our grocery shopping. I looked up a pie crust recipe. And I got down to business.

Making the crust wasn’t too hard. I used to make quiches, so I’m not a stranger to pie crust. But this was the first time in many years. The worst part of the whole process was peeling and cutting the apples. Then I cooked the apples for the filling, which wasn’t too hard.

The instructions said to cool the apples to room temperature before assembling the pie, but I was a bit impatient. They were still a little bit warm, but I don’t think it hurt anything.

I baked the pie for just about 38 minutes before it looked perfectly done. So I took it out and put it in the laundry room to cool. Again, the instructions said to cool it completely before cutting it. But I was impatient. I wanted to try it out. So I cut a piece and ate it.

It was good.

Lucinda looked at me kind of strangely, since I think this is the first dessert she’s ever seen me make that didn’t involve chocolate in some form. But it was a fun little project.

Today’s bike ride was down to Larchmont Village for a bagel at Noah’s. Sure, there’s closer bagel places, but that’s not the point.

We rode out across Pasadena to Eagle Rock, and then down to the L.A. River and into Silver Lake. We rode around the reservoir and down the hill by the dog park. Then across Koreatown to Hancock Park. When we got to Larchmont, we saw Snow White’s wishing well.

The bagel at Noah’s was quite good, and they had fresh-squeezed orange juice, so I was happy.

The big movie billboards on the wall of Paramount Studios were pitching a movie called “Things We Lost in the Fire”, which seemed appropriate enough right now.

After the stop, we rode up Wilton to Franklin, and then east across the Shakespeare Bridge. Then back home through Eagle Rock to La Loma in Pasadena.

It was a very nice ride.

44 miles.
cycling

Today’s ride was a combination of the regular La Tuna Canyon ride, coupled with Gene’s “No Tuna for Me” return route. It was a bit chilly in the morning, but warmed up nicely once we got going.

We went out by the regular route up through La Cañada and Montrose. That was where we saw The Cone. Ever since going to the “Cone Migration” art show, I look at every cone to see if it’s part of the project. And today, it was. It was Cone number 6. The label said that it was released into the wild on September 8th. And now it’s sitting in front of the Montrose Village Newsstand at 2329 Honolulu Ave. I took some pictures to document the location and condition of the cone, and I logged the sighting on Lana Shuttleworth’s web site.

We regrouped at the top of La Tuna Canyon. By then, it was quite warm, so nobody was cold on the four-mile downhill into Sun Valley. Then we rode up past the dump and took the back streets back to Sunland Blvd.

We rode a short distance on Sunland Blvd before turning off to take Apperson, which is a nice, quiet street that parallels it. Along the way, I saw a truck parked in front of a house. It looked like another family was getting leopard-print carpet like ours.

Our snack stop was listed on the route slip as being at Oven Fresh in Montrose. But we like Berolina better, so we went there. It’s just down the block. I got a big fresh-squeezed orange juice, which is a nice treat.

From there, we headed back the way we went out. Back up Hospital Hill and then down past Descanso Gardens and back into Pasadena.

It was a fun ride.

45 miles.
cycling

Here’s the report from Halloween night. Lucinda went out with Cathy and some of the other kids from our neighborhood, while I stayed home and handed out candy. I set up my telescope in the front yard and let the kids look a Jupiter and also Comet Holmes. The comet was a special treat, since I’m usually kind of hard up for something interesting to look at if Jupiter or Saturn isn’t up.

Overall it was a good evening. Lucinda came home with 7.5 pounds (3.4 kg) of candy, which we all considered to be a good haul.

There is a large web in the back of my garage, with a nice big black widow on it. This is easily the largest one of these spiders I’ve seen around here. I guess it’s well fed on all the other creepy-crawly things that live in our garage.

I snapped a few more pictures of Comet Holmes last night. It’s a bit dimmer now. The first picture is a 10-second exposure on ISO 400. I finally figured out how to set the camera for long shutter times. Compare the second picture today with the second picture yesterday. Both are 1-second exposures on ISO 800. They look pretty similar, but for some reason, it looked a lot dimmer to the eye.

Just for the record, the telescope was a Celestron C-8 with a 32mm eyepiece, giving about 60x. The photos were all cropped and then scaled down by a factor of 1.9, so they are all showing the same size field. The camera is a Canon A560, and most importantly, it was attached to the telescope with Scotch® brand packing tape.