Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today I went out to the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona for the winter edition of the Body Art Expo. I go to all the local tattoo conventions. I have a whole circle of friends there that I see nowhere else.

Today was a beautiful day, but chilly by SoCal standards. For a tattoo convention, this is a Bad Thing. The whole idea is to be warm and comfy so that everyone can show off their decorated skins. And that all breaks down when it’s cold.

Nevertheless, I soldiered on. I saw a bunch of my tattoo friends there, which was fun. I also met a woman with a trained rat on her shoulder. She said that it was a ‘service rat’ that would alert her to impending seizures. The rat had a little leash with a tag that identifed him as a service animal. That was the first time I’ve ever seen a non-dog service animal.

God’s Girls had a booth there. My friend Erica models for them. She wasn’t there, but I stopped in and talked to them a bit, so I thought I’d put in a plug for them here.

It was a fun day. I took some pictures. I visited with friends. Pictures are in my tattoo conventions gallery.

I’ve seen everywhere else that it’s supposed to be ‘delurk’ week. According to my statistics pages, I get something like 300 people a day visiting the blog portion of my web site. On average, the whole site gets something like 2,000 visits a day.

As Butch Cassidy and Sundance said:

“Who are those guys?”

So please to be leaving comments here. Can be just an anonymous “hi”. Just make some noise or something. I can hear you breathing out there…

Momofuku Ando has died. In case you don’t know, he invented instant ramen noodles. It’s amazing how little things can change the world.

As recounted in his 2002 autobiography, “How I Invented Magic Noodles,” Ando’s eureka moment occurred in 1957, when he noticed a long line of customers waiting for service outside a noodle shop. He asked himself if there was not a faster way to serve all those busy-but-famished construction workers and salarymen

This is a story in the same class as the invention of the tortilla chip. It’s a small thing, but one that touches many people’s lives.

And I always thought it was sad that the inventor of the tortilla chip did not become fabulously wealthy. It only seems right that someone who changes the world should be rewarded. And in this case, it’s a happy ending:

The focus on convenience, taste and price turned Nissin Foods Co., his small Osaka company, into a $3-billion multinational corporation with 29 subsidiaries in 11 countries.

The full story is here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-ando7jan07,1,1366040.story?coll=la-news-obituaries&ctrack=1&cset=true

Route map and photo locations

Today’s ride was a sightseeing trip to see Powers Place. This is reputed to be the shortest named street in Los Angeles. It is 13 feet long.

Setting out from Victory Park, we rode down Sierra Madre Blvd to Huntington Drive. Then we went right and rode almost all the way to downtown L.A. Forking off on Mission Road, we skirted the east side of downtown, passing through the warehouse district. I saw my first abandoned couch of the day there. Then we turned right on 4th St and rode across the bridge. We got a nice view of the downtown towers, as well as the Metro Red Line yards.

Coming in to Little Tokyo, we went left on Central Ave and headed down into the industrial underbelly of downtown. There was a strong smell of food processing there. Then, at Pico, we went right, and I took a picture of the Coca-Cola building there. This is a famous building that was built to resemble a ship.

Riding west on Pico, we went through the garment district, and also passed the site of the oozing oil last year. Then we rode through the convention center and on to Powers Place.

At Powers Place, I stopped for a couple of pictures. It really was that short. Then we headed north on Hoover to 11th and over to Vermont.

Vermont Ave was really wretched to ride on, but the whole point of it was to get a picture of the “Porno Mania” sign at Olympic. It’s not every day that you see a store with such a straightforward name.

Turning on Wilshire, we got off of Vermont and then took some smaller side streets to get up to 2nd St, which we rode all the way over to Larchmont. Along the way, we saw the second abandoned couch of the day, as well as the Harbin Deer Antler Trading Company. We were happy to see that the health department gave them an “A”, so they are handling the deer antlers in a sanitary manner.

At Larchmont, we stopped for a bagel at Noah’s. Then we continued north, passing by Paramount Studios on Gower. Then we heard a tremendous “POP!”. I looked back and saw Jon stopping and looking at his back tire. The tire had come off the rim and blown out the tube. There was a rip about four inches long in the tube. So I took out my camera and took a picture for the Flat Tire Gallery. Jon replaced the tube, and we were on our way again.

The rest of the ride home was the standard route back from Hollywood. Across the Shakespeare Bridge and then home by way of Fletcher, Eagle Rock, and Yosemite. That was the site of the third and final abandoned couch of the day. Then we got to the Colorado Hill. We climbed the hill and then rode back across Pasadena to the park.

Aside from the traffic on Vermont Ave, it was a very pleasant ride.

43 miles.
cycling

Today we took Lucinda out to Santa Monica to Magicopolis. They have an afternoon show on Saturdays.

Inside the theater, I was glad to see that the building had been retrofitted for seismic safety. And in between the steel beams, they had had various famous people sign their names on the bricks. That was kind of fun. David Bowie’s note was just behind our seats.

The show was a lot of fun. They did most of the standard magician’s tricks, but with their own spin. The show stars Steve Spill and his wife Bozena Sparrow, and part of the act centers on her being from Eastern Europe. In one bit, she comes out on stage with a box labeled “Acme” and talks in her fractured English about how she ordered a trick from Acme Magic. It is the ‘disappearing bandanna’, but then she pulls out a banana. She follows the intructions, folding it over and totally squishing it. Then she makes it disappear. This was a new twist on an old trick.

Overall, this show was a lot of fun. They also have a little magic shop in the front of the theater. Lucinda got a set of foam balls, complete with instructions on how to do a few tricks with them.

After the show let out, we decided to walk down to the beach. It was a nice day, and it was only a few blocks away. When we got there, Lucinda ran around in the surf and collected shells until the sun went down. Then, on the way out, we saw a seagull resting on the sand next to an empty malt-liquor can. We figured he was sleeping it off.

At the top of the bluff, I got a nice picture of the sunset over the beach. Then we went home. It’s days like this where I just marvel at how much I like living in Los Angeles. It’s really and truly my most favorite place.

Today we went down to Long Beach to see the Russian submarine and the Queen Mary. Cathy and I had been there to see the submarine once when Lucinda was a baby. Now that she’s big enough to climb through it, she wanted to see it. And we hadn’t been on the Queen Mary tour since 1988. When we got married, we spent our honeymoon playing tourist in Los Angeles.

The submarine is tied up next to the Queen Mary. There is a little building with an exhibit and gift shop by the entrance. They were playing Russian martial music, which the sign said they have available on CD. Just in case you’re missing the old days of the Soviet Union.

We took the tour through the submarine. Lucinda was amused at how small it was inside, but climbing through small spaces is easy for a kid.

After the submarine, we took the tour of the Queen Mary. It was interesting, although I kind of think the computer in the radio room was not original equipment.

We stopped for lunch at one of the onboard restaurants. They had had an exhibit of Hurrell glamour photographs of Hollywood stars from the 1930s on the walls. That was interesting, and it also fit with the whole art-deco theme on the Queen Mary.

Continuing the tour, we headed up to the bow. Lucinda was amazed at how heavy the anchor chain links were. We also saw a pelican flying among the seagulls overhead, which is a little unusual. Then we headed down to the engine room. I loved the 1930s control panels. We also saw the propeller, which was interesting, since it’s something that’s not normally visible on ship like this.

Of course, I also took a bunch of pictures of Lucinda. They are in her photo album.

I went and checked my records for 2006. I’d decided to keep track of my car just to see exactly how much I was (not) using it.

During 2006, my car came out of the garage 44 times. I was a bit surprised at that. I thought the number would be lower.

I drove a total of 904 miles in 2006. This works out to an average of 20.5 miles for each time the car came out.

The longest time I went without using my car was 6 weeks from the end of July to mid-September. When I took it out after that, I had to hose it off because it was so dusty it was hard to see out the windows.

I drove to work 3 times in 2006. I was a bit surprised at this, since it usually rains more times than that in a typical winter here. But this year was relatively dry, so I was able to ride my bike almost every day.

It hardly seems worth keeping the car for this. The insurance alone costs about $18 for each day I used the car. Or, on a per-mile basis, it comes out to 88 cents per mile. I didn’t have any repairs this year. I changed the oil once. But on the other hand, renting a car 44 times would probably cost more than I spent on keeping mine.

Oh well. I guess I’ll just keep it the way it is. At the rate I’m going, it’s going to last a long time.

I woke up early this morning to the sound of the B-2 bomber circling overhead. Normally, this might be cause for some alarm, but today it just meant that the Rose Parade was about to start.

Being an airplane geek, I got the ladder and climbed up on the roof for a better view. I got a pretty good shot of it when it made the turn at Colorado and Sierra Madre. The planes banked over towards my house, so I could see them pretty well, even if they were a mile away.

A bit later, we all walked down to watch part of the parade. As always, there was a tremendous crush of humanity there, and since I don’t like crowds, it was somewhat unpleasant. But it was still worth it to see the über-geeky Stormtroopers in the parade. I don’t really understand this, since the Stormtroopers were just about the least sympathetic characters in “Star Wars”. They were just anonymous agents of evil. It was also funny to see them in the park after the parade, eating In-N-Out burgers while still in costume.

We walked back home to see the horses. They always park the horse trailers in our neighborhood. Along the way we saw a guy shoveling horse shit off the street. I always marvel at how they manage to keep our streets pretty clean despite the number of horses.

On the way back to the house, we stopped to pet a llama. That was a new experience. Its fur was very soft.

Next, we walked up the street to where the horse trailers were parked. I had a bag of carrots, so Lucinda, Claire and Rose could have some treats for the horses. We got to pet the miniature horses from the “Petite Elite” group, which were all very cute.

We also visited with some of the other horse groups. The girls got to sit on top of one of the big horses so I could take pictures of them. We hung around the horses until the carrots were all gone.

It was a fun day.

Route map

Update: Here is the ride profile

Today’s ride was Gene’s “Newton’s Nemesis” ride, which is a ride up and down the canyons above Sierra Madre, Arcadia, and Monrovia. It’s not a super-long ride, but it’s hard. Newton is the hillclimber in our group, so Gene made this route just so that he would have a chance to show us just how good he is at it.

We started out from Victory Park. Only one guy drove his car there, but then he realized that he couldn’t park there today because of the preparations for the Rose Parade. So he had to move his car, and Gene brought his bike along. Then we started the ride, heading east up Sierra Madre Blvd. We passed the area set up for the post-parade float viewing. Then we turned left at Michillinda and headed up the hill.

The first canyon climb was up above Sierra Madre. It went up a steep hill in a canyon, making a loop and coming out on the same street where we started. Then we rode down Mountain Trail almost to the freeway before heading east a little more to get to Santa Anita. Then we turned left, up the hill again.

Climbing up Santa Anita, we rode up another steep canyon road there. This was probably the hardest climb on the ride. I had to say ‘uncle’ and shift there. Then, when we got to the top, we came back down, ending up on Highland Oaks and Foothill.

Going left on Foothill, we crossed into Monrovia. Usually we ride across on Hillcrest, but this time, we rode up yet another steep canyon. Here, we saw three deer snoozing on someone’s front lawn. They were ignoring us until I stopped to take pictures. Then they got up and left.

On the last canyon climb I had a little laugh about the cars I saw parked in front of one of the houses. When you put a cover on a car, nobody can see what kind of car it is, so it no longer functions as a status symbol. Unless you’re this guy and you get car covers with “BMW” printed on them. Then you can prevent sun damage and still make sure everyone knows you have a BMW. Of course, I didn’t peek under the cover to see if maybe it was really a Hyundai or something under there…

After the last canyon, we rode out through Duarte and took the San Gabriel River bike path up to the mouth of the canyon above Azusa. Then we went south through Azusa and back west to Monrovia, where we stopped for a snack at Planet Cookies. It was pretty good. Then we rode home.

I rode part-way across Pasadena with Vikki just to see the masses of people who were already camping out along the Rose Parade route. I think they’re nuts. But that’s just me.

47 miles.
cycling

Back when I first got on the Internet in 1991, it was a different place than it is today. It was pretty much all text-based, and mailing lists were a big deal. I got hold of the master list of mailing lists and I was looking through it to see what looked interesting. Along the way, I saw a list called Skeptic, which was about discussion and debunking of the paranormal. I think that sort of thing is a grand old time, so I signed up. And I’ve been on that list ever since.

There’s not always all that much on-topic discussion there, but it’s still a good time for socializing. So when Wade from Boston said he was going to be visiting Los Angeles for the holidays this year, the local listmembers made a point to arrange a gathering.

There were seven of us there today. It was a fun time, with stories about traveling to strange parts of the world, looking at some of Dave’s photos, and of course Magic Dave pulling out his cards and doing tricks. One of the tricks even involved a deck of ESP test cards. We all know there’s no such thing as ESP, but it was still a good trick.

Overall, it was a fun time.

In the pictures:
1. Dave and his cards.
2. Scott W.
3. Dave doing his mindreader trick: “Your card is named Phil”
4. “Feeling the vibrations”
5. ESP test cards
6. Dave and Wade doing the card and yarn trick
7. Dave’s card finale
8. Scott W., GJ, Ben, Scott P., Stan,Dave, Wade