Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This evening was another practice session at the Wells Fargo building in downtown Los Angeles. My goal for this time was to do it in 9:09, just to see if I could generate 0.40 horsepower of usable energy. As it turned out, this did not happen.

But I did shave 5 seconds off my time from last week, so that’s a Good Thing. I made it up in 9:28, and I’m quite happy about that.

I’d decided that I was going to do it twice tonight, just because the Wells Fargo building is almost exactly 1/2 the height of the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower in Chicago. I’m signed up to climb that one in November. So I thought it might be a useful exercise to try actually climbing that many steps. But it turned out to be something of a fool’s errand. Psychologically, I tend to be very goal-oriented. I go into things with a specific goal in mind, and I’ll work like hell to reach that goal. But once I’ve reached that goal, I feel like I’m done. And it’s really hard to get motivated for something new at that point. So my goal was to make it to the top faster than last week. I did that, and so I felt like I was done. But then I went and started up the stairs again. OMG. That hurt. It was hard. There’s no physical reason why it should have been so much harder the second time. But because I felt like I’d already done my thing for the night, it felt like the worst thing ever. I guess I have the mindset that I will do whatever it takes to make it to the top, but when I get there, I’m done. So my time the second time up was a full four minutes slower than the first time.

Still, it was a good outing, since I made my main goal of improving my time from last week.

Today’s bike ride was a return to the “Art and Architecture” route we did last January. This is a route that visits three of the Arts and Architecture Case Sturdy houses in the Los Angeles area. It was cool and even a little foggy when we started out. Later, the sun came out and it was a perfect day for riding.

We rode across Eagle Rock to get to the L.A. River bike path. Along the way, we saw a house with a catfish mailbox. This is sort of a companion to the large-mouth bass mailbox we saw back in July. If I can find a couple more fish mailboxes, I could put together another theme ride.

The first house was Case Study House #1. We stopped for a look and then headed on, up through Glendale to Montrose and our snack stop at Goldstein’s Bagels.

After a quick bagel, we rode up the hill into La Cañada to Case Study House #15. Then across La Cañada and back into Pasadena. The final house was Case Study House #20B, but on the way there, we took a short detour to see the Garvey House in Altadena. Then we turned down Santa Rosa Ave to see the final Case Study house before heading home.

It was a nice ride.

43 miles.
cycling

Since school starts a week later than usual this year, I told Lucinda we could go to Disneyland one more time this week. The last time we went, we rode California Screamin’ 15 times. So it should not be surprising that she wanted to ride it some more today.

In the end, we rode it 21 times. One of the ride operators told us that the actual ride time is 2:52, which works out to 60:12, which is just a bit over an hour actually riding the coaster*. If someone had told me two years ago that I’d be doing this sort of thing now, I’d have thought that was impossible and crazy. But it was a fun time.

We rode a couple of times in the first car, which was fun. And we rode in each other car at one time or another. Enough times to become intimately familiar with how the ride experience varies depending on where in the train one is sitting. We also now know every twist and turn of every inch of the track. The only thing we didn’t do yet is bring a chessboard along for the picture at the end. Next time.

We took a few breaks along the way. Once to ride the Silly Symphony Swings, once for lunch, and once to walk over to Disneyland. We only rode Alice in Wonderland and the Matterhorn. And then it was back to California Adventure for more.

And at the end, we finished with our usual dinner at the Jazz Kitchen before going home. In many ways, it was an utterly absurd way to spend a day. But it was great fun.

Pictures are in Lucinda’s photo album.

* Wikipedia says the ride is 2:36, which is slightly shorter than what the rider operator told us, but either way, it’s a lot of time to spend zipping around on a roller coaster.

Today was the second practice session at the Wells Fargo building. I did some math in preparation. My goal for the U.S. Bank Tower climb is to do 14 minutes or less.

170lb = 77kg

1018ft = 310m
77kg * 310m * 9.8 = 233,926J
14min = 840sec
233,926/840 = 278.5W

So that’s my target power output. The Wells Fargo building is 723ft tall, but the climb is just up to the last landing before the roof, so that’s about 10 feet below roof level.

713ft = 220m
77kg * 220m * 9.8 = 163,748J
163,748J / 278.5W = 588 sec = 9:48

So my goal for today was to go under 9:48. I’d done 9:52 last week, so this seemed within reach.

Erik and I headed downtown after work to try our legs on the stairs. There was a woman there who beat me by 3 seconds at the Aon climb last April, so I started out just a little bit behind her, hoping to keep pace. I set my metronome to the same pace as last week, hoping I’d be better able to keep up with it this time. And as usual, by the time I got to about the 30th floor, I was in Great Pain. But this is nothing to be alarmed at. It’s quite normal for these sorts of things. The pain just ramps up during the first 25-30 floors and then it just stays about the same the rest of the way. The trick is to push through it and keep going.

When I got to the top I had 9:33, which I was quite pleased with. The woman I’d talked to at the bottom was there already. She said she was disappointed in her time of 9:22. Well, at least that explained why I didn’t catch up to her. Still, my time works out to almost 291W, which is more than my goal, and I’m pleased with that.

When Erik got there, we went up on the roof and had a look at the view, including the U.S. Bank Tower down the street.

Next week I’m going to try doing it twice. The Wells Fargo building is almost exactly 1/2 the height of the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower in Chicago that I’m signed up to climb in November.

It was a fun time.

Today’s bike ride was a new version of the original Topiary Tour. I’d found a couple of new topiary sites to add to it, and we even found a couple more along the way.

We began with a short jaunt up to Altadena and the Bunny Museum with its big topiary rabbit on the front lawn. Then down to the Elks Lodge in Pasadena and the elk’s heads by the door. The pegasus at the Mobil station on Lake Avenue was badly in need of a trim. It was barely recognizable.

In Arcadia, we saw what we think was a topiary swan that looked a lot more like a bathtub rubber duck. And in Baldwin Park, we passed a house that has several topiary animals in the yard. Then we went by the original topiary site. The one that first gave me the idea to to a Topiary Tour. The topiary teddy bears in Covina.

Our snack stop was at Classic Coffee in Old Town Glendora. Then, on the way back, we spotted a topiary deer, two dolphins, and a teddy bear in front of two houses along Leadora Ave.

We continued on through Azusa and back into Monrovia, where we passed the topiary hearts on Colorado Blvd. And the final topiary stop was the big rocking horse on Grand View Ave in Sierra Madre.

It was a fun little themed ride.

47 miles.
cycling

On Thursday, I took Lucinda to Disneyland. A lot of schools are back in session now, but Pasadena doesn’t start for another ten days, so we figured it would be a good time to go. We also had made a deal that Lucinda was going to ride California Screamin’ this time. She’d passed on it twice when we were there back in June.

When we got there, we went in and rode Soarin’ Over California first. For some reason, Lucinda didn’t want to go directly to the big roller coaster. But after that ride, we walked over there and got in line. Fortunately, the line was very short, since Lucinda was looking decidedly like a lamb being led to slaughter. In the pictures, you can see she was very skeptical. But when we got off, she said, “That was so fun! Let’s do it again!”. And we proceeded to do it three more times.

The girls also rode the Silly Symphony Swings once somewhere in there.

Next, we went to lunch and then had some ice cream. Then we went back and rode California Screamin’ three more times. Now we were up to seven, and Maddy and I said we wanted to do something else. So we walked over the Disneyland.

We rode Space Mountain three times, Splash Mountain once, Big Thunder Mountain twice, and the Matterhorn once. And after all that, we went back to California Adventure and rode California Screamin’ eight more times. That made a total of fifteen for the day. We probably would have kept going, but they were shutting the ride down at 8:00 for the World of Color show. So that made for a good excuse to stop.

Finally, we walked over to Downtown Disney for our usual dinner at the Jazz Kitchen.

It was a very fun day.

The rest of the pictures are here.

We went to Disneyland yesterday. This is the short version of the story:

Today was the first training session at the Wells Fargo building in downtown Los Angeles. It’s 55 stories, and that’s close enough to be a good simulation of the U.S. Bank Tower climb. I’ve been practicing with my metronome set just a little bit faster recently, so I wanted to see how that would go on a big climb.

As it turned out, it was as hard or harder than I’d anticipated. Near the end I was having trouble keeping up with the metronome. But it worked out all right. I’d calculated that I needed to to the 55 stories in 10:05 or less to be on track to do the U.S. Bank Tower in less than 14 minutes. And my time was 9:52. So things are good in my world. If I can maintain that pace, that would get me to the top in 13:30, which would be very good.

The next training session is next Wednesday, so I’m going to see if I can shave a few seconds off that time. Onward and upward.

Today was the day for entries in the L.A. County Fair’s “Culinary Styles” baking contest. I’ve been working on my recipes for several months now, and the day of reckoning has arrived.

I came home from work and baked up one batch each of my peppermint chocolate cookies and peppermint chocolate muffins. Then I picked up Lucinda and we headed over to the fairgrounds. We went into the building and dropped off my entries. This time I made a point to look and see just how much baked stuff had been entered. The long tables covered with baked goods reminded me of the final scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. And my cookies and muffins were going to be taken in and put somewhere way back at the end of the tables, possibly never to be seen again.

Well, it’s still a good adventure.

This weekend, Lucinda and I took a trip to San Diego to visit with Grandpa and to go see some animals. We were supposed to leave in the morning, but Lucinda slept in. She was at her mom’s house, so I had no way to go wake her, and her mom was at work. When it got to be close to noon, I talked to her mom and told her I was going to get my lock picking kit and let myself in to wake Lucinda up. Once again, I’m eternally grateful to Richard Feynman for teaching me lock picking. It comes in handy from time to time.

We got on the road at the crack of noon and headed for San Diego. When we got there, we went out with Grandpa for Spanish food at Costa Brava. Afterward, we went back to his place to visit for a while. I was telling them the story of the morning’s adventure, and Lucinda asked me to teach her how to pick locks. So I set her up with the desk drawer lock and showed her how to do it. Have I ever mentioned how proud I am of my kid?

On Sunday morning, we went down to La Jolla Cove to see the seals. We also went down into Sunny Jim cave again. Then we went and had lunch with Grandpa before heading up to the Wild Animal Park. We took the tram ride around the park, and I got a lot of good animal pictures. As usual, my camera rocks. We also took the balloon ride, which gave me the willies, but Lucinda liked it. We spent the whole afternoon there and we had a nice time.

It was a fun weekend.

Lucinda’s pictures are here.

The animals are here: