Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today was another practice session for the U.S. Bank Tower stair climb. It was another experiment. The last time, I dialed my pace down a little bit to see if I would be better able to keep up with it near the top. That time, I did 9:46, but that was with passing a lot of people, which slowed me down. This time, I made sure to start near the front of the group, so there were not very many people in front of me. I only had to pass a few, and so my pace didn’t get thrown off as much. And even with the same metronome setting, I came in at 9:30 this time. This is good. Based on this, I believe I have a very good shot at going under 14 minutes on Friday at the U.S. Bank Tower.

And yes, it did hurt. But that’s all right.

Today’s bike ride was the old “Larchmont Village” route. I’m going out tonight to see “The Nigerian Spam Scam Scam” at a little theater at the corner of Melrose and Larchmont, so I figured this would be a good way to scout it out so I know where we’re going tonight.

It was a perfect day for riding, and not much remarkable happened along the way. But it was a pleasant ride.

38 miles.
cycling

Today was our trip to the Los Angeles County Fair. This promised to be extra-fun, since this time I actually have winner in the baked-goods competition.

Kathleen and I went there along with Lucinda and her friend. We rode the skyride across the fairgrounds. Then the girls rode a bunch of other rides. Kathleen and I just watched. Partly because we didn’t feel like swinging 130 feet in the air, and partly because we just didn’t want to spend the extra money on more ride tickets.

We got some Dr. Bob’s ice cream. As always, it was quite good.

After that, we walked over the “Culinary Styles” exhibit hall to see my cookies on display. That was great fun. If you want to try making them, the recipe is here:

chocolate-peppermint-cookies.pdf

We got some chocolate-covered bacon for Kathleen to try. As was the case last year, we all just thought it was a bit weird.

And of course, no county fair is complete without a mechanical bull ride for the kids. We also saw the 1200-pound pumpkin. Impressive, but it didn’t seem like it was good for much else. We also saw lots of cows, pigs, and goats. No county fair is complete without them.

The girls rode some more rides and played a few carnival games. Then, at the end of the day, we had six ride tickets left over, so Kathleen used them to ride the little flying ride. It looked like she had a good time.

The rest of the pictures are in Lucinda’s photo album.

Today was the fourth practice session at the 55-story Wells Fargo building in downtown Los Angeles. This time I’d decided to try another experiment. The last time, I’d dialed my pace up a bit to see what would happen. I did a good time, but it was a real struggle to keep up with the metronome the last 15 floors. So I wanted to see if I could dial the pace down a bit and still do a good time if I set it to something I could better keep up with.

This time there was a big crowd of people there to do the stairs. I waited until near the end to go. Partly because I find it psychologically gratifying to pass people, and partly because Mark was there. Mark is very, very good at this. And I wanted to be sure to go after him, since he was the one person there who I knew would pass me if I started first. So when I went, there were a lot of people ahead of me. I passed a lot of them, but I know that that slowed me down, since I had to take the long way around them on the landings, and that added a few seconds for each group I passed.

In the end, I did 9:46, which is a bit slower than last time, but I think that if I hadn’t had to pass so many people, I would have done closer to 9:30, which was my goal for the evening. As always, I looked and sounded like I was about to die by the time I got to the top. But that’s all right. After all, if you don’t sound like you’re going to die, it means you’re not going fast enough. So overall, it was a good outing.

One more practice next Monday, and then the event is next Friday.

And I’m still in need of some sponsors to make my fundraising minimum for the YMCA, so if you can, please stop by and make a small tax-deductible donation to them. It’s a good cause.

My cookies won second place at the L.A. County Fair.

The recipe is here:

chocolate-peppermint-cookies.pdf

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