Stan’s Obligatory Blog

A few weeks ago, Kathleen and I went to a talk at the downtown library about the St Francis Dam disaster. Back in 1978, I rode in a bike race that went up Francisquito Canyon, and I remember seeing the ruins of the dam during the race. At the time, I didn’t know the history of it, but I could see that they were ruins of something big in the canyon.

To this day, it appears that there is still some disagreement about the fundamental cause of the dam collapse. But one thing that they talked about that I’d never heard before was that the St Francis Dam was one of two dams that William Mulholland and the DWP built to store water from the Los Angeles Aqueduct. The St Francis Dam collapsed not long after being filled to capacity, while the other dam still exists, holding back the Hollywood Reservoir. Apparently, soon after the St Francis disaster, people looked up at the dam above Hollywood and realized that it was essentially the same dam as the one that had failed catastrophically in Santa Clarita. So the DWP embarked on a program to basically fill in the canyon in front of the dam with dirt, and then to plant trees on the slope. Ostensibly, this was to reinforce the dam, but it also had the effect of making the dam much less obvious. From below, it just looks like a little bit of concrete wall on top of the hillside.

“Dam? What dam? There’s no dam here!”

Of course, I decided that we needed to go see this close-up. I’d heard recently that the path around the reservoir is open now for hiking and bicycling, so I dusted off the “Chris Brown’s House” route and, with a few modifications, we were ready to go.

I told everyone that I thought that this might be a slightly easier ride than the others we do that go by Lake Hollywood, since we would not be riding up the hill all the way to the Hollywood sign. But it still turned out to be pretty hard. The climb up the canyon to the dam was quite steep. But when we came around the last bend, I could see the dam. Sort of. It just looked like a hillside. The trees that the DWP planted are all quite large now, and it’s not obvious at all that there’s a dam there.

At the gate to enter the path around the reservoir there was a sign saying that photo and video equipment is not allowed. In the modern age, I don’t see how they could possibly expect that anyone would follow a rule like that.

We went in the gate and rode across the dam. I stopped to look over the side at the slope and trees, and over the other side to look at the lake. It really took a stupendous amount of dirt to construct that slope. I found a picture of it from Popular Science from 1933 or so. Look how small the dump truck is, and then imagine how many loads of dirt it took:

On the far side of the dam, I found a little display case with a faded certificate in it. It was dated 1966 and signed by the chief engineer for the DWP.

Continuing on around the lake, we got back to the main road and groaned up the Lake Hollywood hill. Then down the other side into Burbank for snacks at Priscilla’s.

On the way back, Martha showed us how to get to the Glendale Narrows Riverwalk. This is a short walking and bike path they built along a stretch of the L.A. River. It was a nice little shortcut.

All told, it was a nice day for riding, and an interesting bit of history, too.

38 miles.

I made a 1-k this evening. That’s harder than it sounds, given that it was 1-k straight up. This is the second time I’ve done this at this building. Each time up the staircase is 210 meters of climbing, so doing it five times adds up to 1,050 meters. The last time I was here, I did my first climb for time, aiming to be at the top in 9:30. But this time, since I was able to get in the stairs right at 6:00, I wanted to take it a bit slower so I could try for five climbs before they close the door at 7:10.

The first time up, I did 9:49. That was a relatively easy pace, and even though the elevator ride back down took 7 minutes, I was on my way up again at 6:17, arriving at the top at about 6:28. This time the elevator ride down took about 5 minutes, and when I started up the third time at about 6:32, I thought I had a chance to make it. The first two climbs, including the rides back down had taken just over 30 minutes, so I figured that if I could come close to that for the second set of two, that would put me back at the bottom and ready for the fifth at just a bit after 7:00.

I slowed down a bit on the third and fourth climbs, coming in at 11:19 and 12:26. And when I got back to the bottom after the fourth, it was 7:05. So I stopped long enough to drink some water, and then I headed up for the fifth time. At that point, I wasn’t thinking about speed. I had two goals at that point. The first was to make it to the top before 7:30, and the second was to not be the last person out of the stairwell. But the last climb was pretty grim. I was tired, and I’d neglected to bring some Gatorade along, so I had no sugar in me any more. So it was a slog. Lots of people passed me, but fortunately, I passed one other person, and I could hear a few below me who weren’t catching up. So I made it up in 17:41, coming out on the 51st floor at about 7:23.

So I made my vertical kilometer. It was pretty hard. I can’t quite feature how I was able to climb the Aon building eight times last March. But still, this was a good evening on the stairs.

It’s Monday, and time to hit the stairs again. We had a good group today, with four of us from the office heading downtown on the train. My plan for this evening was to ramp up the pace just a little bit over what I did last Wednesday. I’m slowly getting back into doing my first climb of the evening for speed. We’re still climbing the Figueroa-Wilshire building. The climb is 50 stories, from 1 to 51, 1,181 steps. The typical floor in that building is 23 steps, so the climb works out to the equivalent of 51.3 ‘normal’ floors. The last two floors from 49 to 51 are taller than normal.

Two weeks ago, I did the first climb in 9:56, which seemed like a pretty relaxed pace. A week ago I made up split times aiming to be at the top in 9:30, which was a bit faster, but not too much of a strain. So tonight I was aiming to do 9:15. Now, this is starting to feel like a pretty brisk pace up the stairs, without being too punishing. That’s 5 1/2 floors per minute. I found that keeping track of the splits was a useful diversion. I checked my watch at each one-minute goal, and after passing each one, I had to mentally add 5 1/2 to it to figure out the next one-minute goal. And all that arithmetic is a good distraction from thinking, “What the f#ck was I thinking doing this again!?!” And I was pleasantly surprised to make the 45th floor in under 8 minutes, which meant I was a bit ahead of schedule. And I made it to the finish at 51 in 9:12, three seconds ahead of the target.

My plan was to continue on and do three more climbs at my ‘modest pace’, which is 4 1/2 floors per minute, getting to the top in about 11:20. The second climb, I came in a bit under that by accident. The third was a little bit over target, but pretty close. And then the fourth time up, my time sort of fell off the cliff. The last time up, I didn’t even look at my watch. And I kept thinking, “whose idea was this anyway?” It didn’t help when Chris kept reminding me that it was all my idea. Anyway, we slogged up the staircase that last time in 13:07. Not terrible for a fourth time up, but not the steady pacing I did last week when I did four climbs, all in exactly the same time.

Still, all told, it was a good outing. Four times up adds up to 2,756 feet, which is a bit over a half-mile. Not too bad for one hour.

It’s another Wednesday evening, and time for more stairs. I went downtown with two goals for the evening. One was to do my first climb at a slightly faster pace than I’ve been doing lately, and the second was to get in five climbs for a vertical kilometer. I should have made a third goal, just so I could start this with, “well, two out of three ain’t bad.”

At the last two practices, I’ve been doing my climbs at a modest pace. Basically, that’s the pace I used for when I did the vertical mile. That’s nine floors every two minutes. In this building, that gets me to the top in 11:22. Last week, I’d gone a bit faster on the first climb, and just by accident, I did the first climb in 9:56. So today, I decided to aim for 9:30 for the first climb. On the one hand, that’s almost a minute faster than I’ve been doing, but on the other hand, it’s also a minute slower than my best time for this building. So I worked out splits so I could figure exactly where I should be at each minute boundary. In this case, the plan was to do 16 floors every three minutes. So 5 1/3 per minute.

I went into the stairs at 6:02, and I started up. I was able to maintain the pace pretty well. It was definitely faster than I’ve been doing, but it was nowhere near maximum effort. At each minute boundary I managed to stay right on target. When I hit the 49th floor right at 9 minutes, I knew I had it down. I kept going at the same speed for the last two big floors, and I came out on 51 with a time of 9:29. Right on target.

The elevator ride down seemed to take forever. Looking at the EXIF information in my pictures, I can tell that it took about 6 minutes to get back down.

The plan was to do the rest of the climbs at my regular ‘modest’ pace. So I headed up the second time, aiming to be at the top in 11:22. But I guess I was warmed up or something, and I found myself getting ahead of schedule. When I got to 49, I was almost 40 seconds up, and I didn’t want to crawl up the last two floors just for the sake of stubbornly staying on schedule. So I just kept going and came out on 51 at 10:43.

Again, the elevator ride down took a bit over 6 minutes. Seemed like forever.

The third and fourth times up, I managed to keep to my schedule, getting up to 51 in 11:18 and 11:22. That was good, since I’ve never been able to maintain that pace on the fourth climb after doing a fast first climb. So that’s good. The bad news was that in between climbs three and four, the elevator ride down took a full nine minutes. That meant that I started the fourth climb at 6:55, and the way things were going, I pretty much knew that there was no chance of making it up and back down before the closed the door at 7:10. And that’s what happened. The ride back down took forever once again, and I got back to the start at 7:12. They were just closing the door, and they wouldn’t let any of us go up again. So that was the end of the vertical kilometer.

Still, it was a good outing.

It’s Monday, and time for more fun and frolic on the staircase. Today’s goal was to try and help my friend Morgan do a vertical kilometer. In this case, that’s five times up the 51 stories of the Figueroa-Wilshire building. Each time is 1,181 steps and 210 meters of climbing.

We had a good group going downtown today. We met up on the Metro and rode the train there. Walking up to the building, we saw that it has a new logo on top. It said ‘pwc’. I suppose that stands for something boring like Pricewaterhouse Coopers, but we thought it was funnier to think it stood for ‘Puking While Climbing’.

We got signed in and headed up the stairs. I did a moderate pace, aiming at climbing the 51 stories in about 11:15-11:32. That meant that we’d do nine floors every two minutes. Chris stayed with me, and I watched the time to see that we stayed on pace. We made it up in 11:21 the first time, and Morgan wasn’t too far behind. We hit the button to call the elevator for the trip down.

Last week I did the vertical kilometer at practice, and that time the elevator trips back down averaged about 5:30 each time. So I figured that if we could get up the stairs in less than 12 minutes each time, we’d have a chance of doing four climbs before they closed the door at 7:10. And as long as we could get back in the door by 7:10, we’d be good for a fifth time up.

The next three times, Chris and I went up together, and I kept the pace pretty precisely. This is the first time I’ve ever done multiple climbs at almost exactly the same pace every time. Sadly, Morgan fell off the pace on the third and fourth times up, and when we got to the top of the fourth climb it was already 7:15. So we’d missed the cutoff. But we still did four climbs, and that adds up to 1/2 mile vertical, which is still quite a bit.

The final tally was: 204 floors, 2.756 feet, 840 meters. My total climbing time for that was 45:21. That works out that I was making 230 watts of useful power for 45 minutes. I really can’t complain too much about that.

Last month, we did a bike tour of the oil fields of Los Angeles. Today’s ride is the second part of our tour of the history of oil in L.A. Today, we visited sites related to Edward Doheny and the Los Angeles City Oil Field.

The route took us downtown to start. We rode through downtown and then headed west on Adams. Then we turned into the Mt. Saint Mary’s Doheny Campus, which is the site of Doheny’s mansion. The guard at the gate didn’t want to let us ride onto the campus to see it. A college campus where bicycles are not allowed? Really? I think that’s absurd. We duly noted his warning, and rode in anyway. The mansion was quite impressive. Apparently, this tract of land used to be a gated community with lots of mansions, but over time, Doheny bought the whole thing, and in the end, he willed it to the college.

The campus is also the site of another oil drilling island, this one the easternmost of the Las Cienegas’ oil field. It had a high wall around it, so it wasn’t obvious, aside from the mechanical sounds and slight oil smell coming from it.

Heading west, we rode to Hancock Park and our snack stop at Noah’s Bagels in Larchmont Village. We saw the puppy we’d met last month there again. He’d grown considerably. After that, we started for home.

We rode east, back toward downtown Los Angeles. Then we headed up to our second stop, which is the last producing oil well in the L.A. City Oil Field. It’s one block east of Alvarado St, in a little fenced-off lot. Word is it produces something like 3.5 barrels of oil a day.

Continuing north into Echo Park, we arrived at the Echo Park Pool. The parking lot there was the site of Edward Doheny’s original well on the City Oil Field. This was the first well dug that produced significant oil from that field, and it set off an oil rush that lasted for many years.

From there, we headed north, passing through Angelino Heights and all the old Victorian mansions there. Then we rode past Dodger Stadium. They had just opened the gates for a game that afternoon. But the traffic wasn’t too bad. We rode through Elysian Park and then home by way of Figueroa St.

It was a nice ride, with some interesting sights.

48 miles.

Here’s the latest installment in my ongoing series, “I’ve never seen one of these break before!”

Yesterday, when I was riding in to work, I noticed that my bike seat felt weird. Like the seatpost was loose. So when I got to the office, I had a look, and I saw that one of the saddle rails had broken. At which point I said, “I’ve never seen one of these break before!”

So when I got home, I replaced the saddle with a spare one I had lying around. So everything is good.

Part one of the series is here: http://www.1134.org/blog/2007/12/30/ive-never-seen-one-of-these-break-before/

Part two is here: http://www.1134.org/blog/2009/03/01/ive-never-seen-one-of-these-break-either/

And part three here: http://www.1134.org/blog/2009/06/15/metal-fatigue-strikes-again/

It’s summer, and time to start practice for the U.S. Bank Tower stair climb in September. This year, the YMCA people arranged for us to practice in the Wilshire-Figueroa building downtown. This is the same building where they hold the Cystic Fibrosis stair climb in December. It’s a nice stairway. 51 stories, 1,181 steps to the 51st floor. Of course, I made a chart of it.

The practice sessions are on Monday and Wednesday evenings, from 6 to 7:30. I took the train there, walked to the building, signed the waivers, and then I was ready to go. Ready to go, that is, aside from the feeling of dread one gets before walking up the stairs for more than 50 stories. For some reason, the feeling of dread was stronger tonight than usual. So I decided to take it easy for this first time out. I figured I’d do a moderate pace, and maybe be able to do five climbs, which would add up to a vertical kilometer. I did a vertical kilometer in practice at the Aon building last winter. So even though the practice time is an hour and a half instead of two hours, I thought it was possible.

The first three were pretty easy. I started to slow down noticeably on the fourth climb. They had said that they would close the door at 7:10, so I had to start my final climb before then. But when I started the fourth, it was only 6:45, so I knew I’d be able to get in five. I got in the stairwell at 7:05 for my final climb. As could be expected, the fifth time up was a bit of an ordeal. But I made it.

Afterward, I changed into a dry shirt for the ride home. I didn’t have any place to change pants, though. So I just put my shorts on over my sweat-soaked running shorts. On the train home, I sat on the floor, since I didn’t want to make a wet sweat spot on the cloth seats on the trains. And when I got off the train in Pasadena, I was treated to a view of a very nice sunset.

The final tally was five ascents, 255 floors, 5,905 steps, 3,445 feet, 1,050 meters. Yikes. Of course, I’ll be back on Monday to do it again.

A couple years ago, I saw a guy riding a large tricycle with a tall mast on it across campus. It had Google all over it, and the guy was taking pictures for Street View.

Of course, I stopped and took some pictures. And now we can see the picture from both sides.

Here’s the link:

https://maps.google.com/maps?ll=34.137827,-118.126652&spn=0.002229,0.007446&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=34.137825,-118.126648&panoid=Ahxi8zkIsxoo6tI_fNgqbg&cbp=12,352.65,,0,11.93

Last week, I ran across a story about a tree in Silver Lake that is decorated with vintage chandeliers. So of course, I thought we should go see it. I looked up where it is, and it’s just a block off our regular route into Hollywood. So with a little modification, our Fern Dell route would take us there. It was a nice day for riding. And as an extra bonus, on the way back, we would go down the L.A. River bike path, and maybe get to see where flaming gasoline poured into the river from the tanker truck crash on the Glendale Freeway last night.

The ride down to Silver Lake went by pretty fast. We got there and turned up the side street off Rowena Ave, and there was the tree. It would be nice to see it at night some time. I brought along some quarters to put in the parking meter out front to contribute to the electric bill for lighting the tree.

After seeing the tree, we rode up into Griffith Park. We went by the Greek Theater and up to the observatory. And after a few minutes rest up there, we went down the hill to Fern Dell. When we got to The Trails cafe, there was a long line. This is a nice place, but they’re not particularly fast in their service, and with that long of a line, we thought it might take a very long time. So we turned around and rode back up over the hill to Toluca Lake and Priscilla’s.

After snacks, we headed back, down the L.A. River bike path. Just past Fletcher, the path was cordoned off, and there was a police car there to keep people from going on the section of the path where it goes under the freeway. I presume that was because that was the portion of the freeway that was potentially damaged by the fire last night. So we took the detour, which went by Rattlesnake Park. That was good for a photo-op on the rattlesnake. Then we got back on the path below the area where the fire was, and we continued on our way.

We rode back by way of Highland Park. It was a pleasant ride.

51 miles.