Stan’s Obligatory Blog

A while back, Kathleen said she wanted to try doing one stair climb, just for the experience. To see what it’s like. That day is fast approaching, so we went hiking in Griffith Park tonight, since that’s at least good practice for that sort of thing.

Hiking at night, it’s hard to get good pictures. But I did find one really good spot to balance the camera to get a good steady shot with the city lights behind us. And it’s still remarkable that we can hike up mountains in the middle of the city.

This afternoon, Kathleen and I went over to West Hollywood to see Helie Lee’s solo show, “Macho LIke Me.” This is her story of frustration at how she was treated as a woman, and her decision to try living for six months as a man to see if it was better.

She started out the experiment with the idea that being a man had to be better, but she found that it came with a whole different set of limitations. And of course, there were a lot of funny stories along the way.

This was a tremendously entertaining show.

Tonight Kathleen and I went with my friend Nick to see Varla Jean Merman in her new show, “The Loose Chanteuse” at a little nightclub in Silver Lake. This was her first time back in Los Angeles since we went to see her “Varla Jean Merman Loves a Foreign Tongue” show back in 2008.

One special bit of strange was that her show was sponsored by Fleet, and so, like Oprah, everyone there got a little box of Fleet enemas. And after the show, Varla held court at the top of the stairs, greeting fans and signing all the enema boxes. It was all very surreal, and weird in a very funny way. It was a very fun evening.

This evening, Kathleen, Lucinda and I went to see Cirque Berzerk again. I’d taken Lucinda to see them two summers ago. Apparently, they’ve moved uptown since then. The shows that time were in their tent, set up in the middle of a field outside downtown Los Angeles. This time, they were performing at Club Nokia at L.A. Live.

The show was every bit as much fun as it was before. The story line was basically the same, but the acrobatics were a little different, but still very impressive. Kathleen remarked that it was much more theatrical than she’d expected. As I’d told her, their show sort of defies description. But it’s very, very fun.

It was good fun and a weird evening in all the right ways.

New Year’s Day is a day when it’s best to stay home. My house is right by the end of the Rose Parade route, so it’s basically impossible to go anywhere. So we took a walk to see a bit of the parade, and also to see the floats close-up when it was over.

The day started with the B-2 flying over, which is amusing in its own peculiar way. After all, under normal circumstances, seeing one of those planes flying by would mean that Something Very Bad was about to happen.

One of my most favorite things about the parade itself is seeing floats being towed over the finish line after breaking down. Dunno why, but that’s always amusing.

There was a float this year dedicated to Ronald Reagan. And I got a chuckle from the portrait of him on the end that totally looked like Leonid Brezhnev.

And the city of Burbank float had little floral F-117s and an SR-71 Blackbird on it. More airplane fun for all the airplane geeks.

For New Year’s Eve, Kathleen and I went downtown for a nice dinner at Takami. This is the Japanese place I found last year that’s on the 21st floor of a building on Wilshire Blvd in downtown Los Angeles. The view is great, and the food is great, too. And that’s a winning combination.

2010 was a very nice year, and we’re looking forward to more fun and frolic in 2011. It was a nice way to close out the year.

Tonight, Kathleen and I went on the Museum of Neon Art’s Holiday Lights tour. This is a tour around Los Angeles to look at both neon signs and holiday lights. They rent a sightseeing bus, and everyone sits up top to look at the lights.

Sadly, it was raining.

One of the first stops on the tour was a L.A. Live to see the big LED billboards. Between that and the constant rain, we all felt like we’d entered the world of “Blade Runner“.

They got a bus with a plexiglass awning over it. The sides were still open, but we had at least a semblance of a roof over us. But the roof leaked, and so it was generally a very wet experience. We brought along a towel and blanket, as well as our fur hats, so we were reasonably warm. Overall, it was all right.

The tour went around downtown and then up into Hollywood. They had a stop at Farmer’s Market so we could get out and get something hot to drink.

The final stop was at the House of Davids. Truly a magnificent sight when it’s all lit up.

It was a good little adventure, even if we did get kind of soaked.

..we’ve got a CTA subway pass, half a granola bar, it’s freezing cold and we’re wearing shorts.

Hit it

So today was the big adventure. The stair climb up the Sears Willis Tower in Chicago. All the way up to the Skydeck on the 103rd floor.

I got up very early to be able to make it there for the 7:00AM start. There wasn’t a lot of time to think about what was about to happen. But when I thought about it, I felt like this:

I got in line at the back of the ‘Elite’ group. I knew there was no chance I’d be able to keep up with them, so I just didn’t want to be in anyone’s way. When it was my turn, I turned on my metronome and trotted into the stairwell.

The first thing I noticed was that the steps there were taller than other buildings I’ve climbed. The stairs at Millikan Library where I practice are 6.4 inches. Most skyscrapers have steps that are about 7.7 inches. These felt like they were over 8*. By the time I got to about 30, I knew that my pace was set too high, and I was burning out. I adjusted it down some, but there was no easy way to do this.

Along the way, I was passed by two other runners. This was a first. I’ve never been passed before. But by that time, I was happy just to still be moving, so I didn’t worry too much about how fast I was going.

When I got to 75, I was hit with the realization that this was as high as I’d ever climbed before. And there were still 28 floors to go. By then, it was a struggle for survival just to keep moving. Somehow I managed to keep going up. When I got to 100, I perked up a bit, since the end was in sight. I managed to do the last three floors at a decent pace and somehow stumbled across the finish line. There was a photographer taking pictures on the last flight up, and I have no memory of seeing him there. After I got across the line, they handed me my finisher’s medal and a bottle of water, and I curled up on the floor for a few minutes to work on paying down my oxygen debt.

At the top, Randy and I took a few minutes to look at the view and to go and stand in the little glass booths that stick out the side of the building. Then we went back down. They had some results available already. This time, I’d remembered to start my stopwatch at the start, so I had an idea of my time. I’d been hoping to do about 20 minutes, but that was not to be. The computer gave my time as 22:49, which was about what I was expecting from what my watch said. Still, that was good enough to be in the top 10%, which is not too bad for bein’ 51 and all. But now I have the goal of improving on that next year.

It was a fun little adventure, albeit in a kind of weird way. It’s hard to describe something so incredibly painful as being ‘fun’. But it was.

* They say it’s 1,353 feet from the lobby to the skydeck, and 2,109 steps. That works out to 7.7 inches per step, but these steps felt taller than the ones I practiced on last Tuesday.

On Saturday afternoon, we rode the train downtown to go to the Natural History Museum to see the Spider Pavilion. It’s in the same outdoor tent that they use for the butterflies in the summer, so it’s a chance to see the spiders in a more or less natural-looking habitat.

The trip down there was a bit of an ordeal. There was a USC home game, so we thought it best not to take the car. Instead, we rode the train and planned on taking the DASH bus from the train station to the museum. Of course, that didn’t take into account the fact that the DASH bus was running an hour late because of all the traffic from the game. Things will be better when they get the Expo light rail line running.

When we got to the museum, I took a picture of Lucinda with the Megamouth shark. Compare this to the picture of her there in 2003. Next, we went to see their saber-tooth cat show. We’d read about this recently, about how they’d had to find a guy who could act as a puppeteer inside the cat suit to make the cat come alive. He did a pretty good job of it. Then we went to see the spiders. There were a lot of them, and they were quite large. Made for some good pictures, and lots of spooked kids. Apparently, there are still some butterflies in the tent, and several of the spiders had caught them and made a meal of them.

It was a fun afternoon.

Monday was Columbus day, and that was a holiday for all of us who work for the government. So I thought it would be fun to take a trip out to Simi Valley to see the Reagan Museum and Air Force One.

They built a whole new wing on the building to house Air Force One. It’s set up on pedestals to look like it just might fly away at any moment. It was interesting to see the inside of the airplane and how it was set up. And the other exhibits were also amusing, including portraits of President Reagan made with jelly beans. Yikes. They also had a small piece of the Berlin Wall there, as well as a collection of other items, including the suit he was wearing when he was shot by John Hinckley, and a bejeweled saber from the Boy Scouts of Saudi Arabia. Who knew there were even Boy Scouts there?

They also had an exhibit of a miniature White House. Apparently, the model builders keep the miniature White House up to date. Looking in the windows, we saw pictures of President Obama and his family. That was a little jarring, since the rest of the day was a solid Republican experience.

All in all, it was a fun day.