Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Went riding again on the Foothill ‘moderate’ ride. We rode through South Pasadena and Highland Park to Griffith Park and a snack stop at Priscilla’s in Toluca Lake. On the way back, we stopped off to watch a race in Glendale. I made a point to go up the announcer and donate a $20 cash prime for the race we were watching. The route home went through La Canada. 43 miles.

Riders sprint for the $20 prime I donated.

Rode with the Foothill club today. We went south down through Arcadia and Temple City to the Rio Hondo bike path. We took south, coming back on San Gabriel and Del Mar through San Gabriel. We had a snack stop at Il Forniao in Old Town. For the last part, we went by the Rose Bowl and then up Arroyo to Altadena Drive. 40 miles.

Today’s ride was “La Tuna Canyon East to West”. We went down Orange Grove and then past the Rose Bowl. Then up Salvia Canyon into La Cañada. Then we went down Hospital Hill and up Honolulu Ave to La Tuna Canyon. The day was cool and overcast, and it was sprinkling rain just a little bit. We went down the far side into Sunland, and then back on Glenoaks into Glendale. We stopped for a snack at Paradise Bakery. Coming home, we took Glenoaks and Colorado back into Pasadena.

42 miles.

I built a new gate for our driveway this weekend. Here we are posing with it at the end of the day.

We had dinner at “Renaissance” tonight. This is the restaurant at the Scientology Celebrity Center in Hollywood.

They don’t have a sign outside, so we just sort of wandered in and asked. There were lots of very friendly people in their faux-naval uniforms wandering about. One of them showed us the way to the restaurant. Inside, the place was nearly empty. I guess they don’t get a lot of people coming in off the street. The service was very pleasant and attentive. They didn’t try to get us to take a personality test or anything like that.

Outside the restaurant in the hotel hallway they had lots of displays about how wonderful Scientology is. And they had L.Ron Hubbard’s study preserved there, with a little velvet rope across the doorway.

The food was all right. Not bad, but not great. We’ve had better, but it was still a unique experience.

After this, we went to the Renberg Theater at the Gay and Lesbian Center in Hollywood to see Varla Jean Merman‘s new show, “Under a Big Top”. As always, La Merm was hilariously great. We also bought her DVD video collection, and she signed it for us. We’ve seen her three times now, and she’s always great.

People sometimes ask me why I hate Microsoft. Well, just look at the graph below. The big green lump in the middle is all the Swen viruses that infected machines sent us. I had to spend several hours configuring the mail server here to reject them. It was incredibly annoying.

No new adventure. Just wanted to put in a new picture of us.