Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Kathleen and I took a trip to Disneyland today. We’d planned this a couple weeks in advance. What are the odds it’s going to rain? Note that that statement is a close cousin to “How hard could it be?”, like I say before all my stair climbs. So today it rained. Not the hardest rain we’ve seen around here, but enough that it was very wet, and it was quite cold by SoCal standards.

On the other hand, this meant that there weren’t that many people there. So the uncomfortable cold and wet was offset by the lack of lines. It was a lot like the very wet day we spent at Universal a last year. Note the picture of the queue for California Screamin’. I’ve never seen it that empty before. We were able to just walk up and get on. And I did just that. Seven times. On one of them, the sky opened up and it started raining hard right in the middle of the ride. Getting hit in the face with raindrops when you’re going 60mph on a roller coaster is a uniquely unpleasant experience.

One of the good aspects of Disneyland is that there are a lot of indoor rides. We rode Space Mountain four times, and the longest wait was about 15 minutes. So that wasn’t bad at all. Even the line for the newly-revamped Star Tours was only about 20 minutes. Kathleen even got me to go to the Tiki Room. She said it was something that fascinated her as child, and I could see why. Although I found the singing flowers to be a bit nightmarish.

We finished the day off with our traditional dinner at the Jazz Kitchen. It was a day of tradeoffs, but all around, it was fun.

Here’s the story of the rest of our trip to Chicago for the Sears Willis Tower stair climb.

We flew out from Long Beach on Jet Blue, just like last year. I’m still very happy with the service we get with them. We arrived on time in the late afternoon, we got our subway passes for the weekend, and then headed over to our hotel and checked in.

For dinner on Friday, we rode the train down to Wicker Park. In one of those cosmic coincidences, the train car we were on was number 2249, which just happens to have been my time climbing the tower last year. When we got there, we had dinner at the Blue Line Lounge. I’d found it through Yelp, and it sounded pretty good. I got a chicken pot pie, which looked impossibly huge when it came, but I manged to eat it all, and it was very good.

On Saturday morning, we rode the train downtown to go pick up my race packet in the Willis Tower lobby. My old high school friend Stu came over and met us there, and we all walked over to Greek Town for lunch. That was fun, since this was the first time I’d seen Stu since he came to my wedding in 1988.

After lunch, we took the bus to the Museum of Science and Industry. I’ve only been there twice before. Once when I was a kid in 1967, and once in 1978 when the USCF Cycling Nationals were in Milwaukee, and I’d qualified to race in the 25-mile time trial. So it had been a long time since I’d seen the museum. It looked totally different, since they built an entire new building where the old parking lot used to be. Sadly, by the time we got there, the U-505 submarine tour was sold out, and the line for the coal mine tour was as long as for Space Mountain at Disneyland. So those things were off our list, but we still had a nice time there.

For dinner, we went back downtown to the Elephant and Castle to meet up with Mark and the rest of the stair climbers for our pre-race dinner. We had a good turnout, and it was a fun time.

Sunday morning was the stair climb, and since I already wrote about it, I don’t need to tell the story here. After the climb, we went back to our hotel, got cleaned up and checked out, and then rode the train back downtown for lunch before walking over the Union Station to ride the Metra train to Libertyville to visit with Kathleen’s aunt and uncle.

On Monday, we all went to the Chicago Botanic Garden. I’d not have thought of going somewhere like that in late autumn, but there was still a lot to see, even though it was late in the season. We spent a few hours there before we had to go to O’Hare for our flight home.

When we got to the front of the security line, I saw that they had a backscatter X-ray machine there. Having studied physics in college, the idea of X-rays on my skin doesn’t sit well with me. It may well be that it’s not harmful, but it’s a pretty new technology, and I don’t really want to be one of the guinea pigs. So I told them that I didn’t want to go through it. And they sent me to the Group W bench, or something like it. The place they reserve for troublemakers. So Kathleen and I both got the full-body TSA grope. But we finally made it through. The rest of the trip home was pretty uneventful.

It was a fun weekend.

Normally, for something like this, I post pictures, but I usually don’t like to have more than nine pictures for a single post. And I had well over that for this one, so I put them in a separate photo album:

http://www.1134.org/gallery/main.php/v/stan/trips/chicago2011/

For the past three years, I’ve made a point of taking Lucinda to Disneyland just before school starts. Partly because it’s a nice way to end the summer, and partly because our friend who works there has a pass that doesn’t work during the high days of summer. So today was the day. We went twice last year, and those were the days when we got Lucinda to ride California Screamin’ for the first time. And the second time last year was the day when we rode it 21 times. That was a very absurd, but also very fun day.

Lucinda is getting older now, so it’s not the same as it was a few years ago. This time we went with her friend London, and my girlfriend Kathleen. That way, I would have company, and the two girls could go off on their own and do whatever they want. So where I used to have a whole set of pictures of her on the various rides, now I just have a few. I got one when we got there, just before we went in. We ran into them around mid-day at California Screamin’, so I got a picture of them on the front row of the train, coming around the last turn. And then I got one more at the end of the day, when we had our traditional dinner at the Jazz Kitchen. They told us about what they did and what rides the rode, but I have no pictures.

Kathleen and I had a nice time. We rode Space Mountain four times, California Screamin’ four times, and we also got to ride the newly-redone Star Tours, Big Thunder Mountain, and Pirates. So we were not lacking for fun. We also got to see the Phineas and Ferb show, which is new. My friend Nick at work is an old friend of the creator of Phineas and Ferb. So I’ve heard a bit of the history behind the show and the characters. And I’m sure that the fact that there is now a show at Disneyland means that Dan is sleeping on a very big pile of money now. And that it’s well-deserved. We like Phineas and Ferb.

Overall, it was a very fun day.

Today was the after-the-last-day-of-school trip to Disneyland. But Lucinda’s friends who have Disneyland passes couldn’t come. I told Lucinda that I’d made the arrangements, and Kathleen and I were going anyway, regardless of whether she wanted to go or not. So she stayed home and we went and had a nice day at the Magic Kingdom.

When we got there, we headed straight for the newly-reopened Star Tours, only to find that everyone else had had the same idea. This wasn’t really a surprise, but I’d hoped that the line might be not more than an hour. But it was too long. So we walked over and got some Fast Passes for Space Mountain for later in the day. Getting passes for that ride is like buying savings bonds. You have wait a long time for them to mature. In the meantime, we rode Big Thunder Mountain twice, California Screamin’ four times, had lunch, and rode the new Little Mermaid ride. By then, our passes for Space Mountain were ripe and ready, so we walked over there and went in.

We got all the way down to the last ramp when something happened and they shut the ride down. They turned on the lights, which was kind of weird. And they brought all the trains down. Apparently they have something like eight or nine trains running at a time in there. After a few minutes, they reset whatever had gone wrong, and they started it up again. So we finally got our ride on it.

We finished off the day at the Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean. Both old favorites. I thought it was funny that the ducks on the jungle cruise know that the alligator isn’t real, even a lot of small children don’t realize that.

All told, it was a fun day.

Today, we went over to Glendale to a small party that they Post Office and the Museum of Neon Art were holding for the official release of a new stamp with a design based on neon art. This was held at the Americana in Glendale, which I’d never been to before. Kathleen described it as being “just like Disneyland, but without the rides.” I guess we’ll be seeing more of that area in the future, since the Museum of Neon Art is going to be moving in across the street some time early next year. They had the artist there to tell the story of how he came up with the design, and also to sign envelopes and sheets of stamps for the collectors.

We took a walk around just to see what else was there. We saw the requisite religious fanatic telling us the end is nigh. We also saw some faded old advertisements on a wall across the street. Being a cooking geek, we had to take a browse through Sur La Table to look all the overpriced kitchen gadgets.

It was a fun little afternoon adventure.

Today was a holiday for Pasadena schools and also for people who work for the government. So that meant another trip to Disneyland. This time it was me, Kathleen, Lucinda, and Lucinda’s friend London.

When we got there, we headed for Lucinda’s favorite ride: California Screamin’. We rode it twice before lunch and twice more afterward.

After that, the girls decided it was time to go to Disneyland. So we walked over and rode the Matterhorn. Then we went and got Fast Passes so the girls could drive the Autopia cars. They were not good for a bit more than an hour, so we split up. Kathleen and I bit the proverbial bullet and stood in line for Space Mountain. The ride must have broken down briefly while we were in the line, since we spent a lot of time standing in one spot. And even the Fast Pass line got long. But they got it running again and we got on. It was still fun.

When we got out, it was time for the girls to drive at Autopia. Lucinda was very pleased to see that she’d grown enough to drive. So they went off to do that and Kathleen and I took a monorail ride. When we got back, the girls were done driving, but they wanted to go again. Since we’d gotten four passes, they could do that. This time, we just stayed nearby to watch them on the ride. We also got to see a kid barf. It was just like being in a John Waters movie.

By now it was close to getting dark. So we went back to California Adventure and rode California Screamin’ one more time. Then the girls rode the Silly Symphony Swings a couple of times before we called it a day.

We all walked over the Downtown Disney. Sadly, our traditional restaurant was booked up solid, so we had to find a Plan B. The Uva Bar and Cafe had an outdoor area that wasn’t crowded, and we had a patio heater, so it wasn’t bad at all. So we had a nice dinner there before heading home.

It was a very fun day.

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

It’s now been three years since my whole divorce ordeal began. I’m finally feeling like the nightmare is over, and it shows.

The top photo is from the first time I took Lucinda to Disneyland in January, 2008. At the time, I was definitely not the proverbial ‘Happy Camper’.

The bottom photo is from our trip to Disneyland yesterday.

Life is good again.

School doesn’t start again until Monday, so I took Lucinda and her friend Maddy to Disneyland today. It was a nice day, and we had a good time. It wasn’t too crowded, although it wasn’t as empty as it was when we were there back in September. Still, we got to ride California Screamin’ eight times. And we even saw the ‘hidden Mickey’ on it.

We spent the whole day there, and we had a nice time. To finish off, we had our now-traditional dinner at the Jazz Kitchen in Downtown Disney.

It was good fun.

Addendum: The rest of the pictures from the day are here.