Stan’s Obligatory Blog

I took a vacation day today to do a house project.

Our house is very old, and part of the attic has no insulation. And so I set out to remedy this. I had to pull up some of the boards and stuff the batts of insulation into the spaces between the joists. As it turned out, I didn’t have to pull up all the boards, and the whole thing only took about two hours of fairly intense work. The worst aspect of it was that my dust mask got soaked with sweat, and air won’t go through a soaked dust mask. Which made it hard to breathe. Yick. Fortunately, I had a couple of masks, so I could switch them when one got too soaked. Fun times.

Saw this on Christmas day:

A big recliner chair, and six remote controls. Yikes.

Christmas came, and Lucinda got a Wii. And she also got a few other things, but that was the big one. Thanks to Uncle Larry and Aunt Francesca for braving the crowds to find it and buy it for her. And we also had a nice dinner and visited with the family. So overall, it was a fun time.

Pictures are here.

The ball got stuck like this tonight. This is pretty rare. In 24 years with this machine, I’ve only seen this happen once before. And I didn’t even get super-powers while it was stuck there.

Today’s ride was the Mt Washington ride. We have done this ride before, but it’s been several months, so the time was right.

We rode north from Victory Park, up into Altadena, and then over through La Cañada and down Hospital Hill. Then we went straight down through Glendale and Atwater Village, over the Los Angeles River and down Riverside Dr.

At the end of Riverside, we went north on Figueroa and then turned left up Mt Washington. This is a nice little climb. Not too steep, not too long. And they repaved the road about a year ago, so it’s pretty nice for riding now. Note in the photos how everyone is smiling as they crested the hill.

Coming down the other side, we got on Ave 50 and took a little detour over to Eldred St. This is reputed to be the steepest street in Los Angeles. The grade is something a bit over 30% at the top. I’d read that the trash trucks back up the hill so that they don’t have to turn around at the top. They are afraid the truck would tip over if they did. We made a couple of attempts at riding up it, but none of us made it all the way to the top without slipping. But we did talk to one of the residents of the street, and he confirmed the story about the backwards trash trucks.

Leaving Eldred St, we rode north through Highland Park and then into South Pasadena, where we stopped at Kaldi’s for a snack. Then we went east through downtown South Pasadena, passing a large inflatable dinosaur. From there, we took Monterey Road east, turning south to get to Duarte Road, and then made a loop back to the park. By then, it had warmed up quite nicely, and we were mostly overdressed for the temperature. So it was a good time to be done.

40 miles.
cycling

Today’s club ride was one that I thought didn’t sound like all that much fun, so it was time for the special sightseeing trip out to Westwood. The main goal was to visit Frank Zappa’s grave, as well as a number of other sights along the way.

I rode down to South Pasadena and met up with Doug and Rachele. And we headed out. We went through Highland Park, making a quick side trip to see the second-smallest house in Los Angeles. It’s been fixed up, and it looks pretty good now.

We rode through Silver Lake and into Hollywood. Riding down Hollywood Boulevard is always a surreal experience, and one that’s best done early in the morning. We stopped briefly at the Chinese Theater to see the costumed performers posing for pictures with tourists.

Going across West Hollywood, we bypassed the Sunset Strip to make another side trip to see Dicks St. Then we went up Doheny to just above the Strip to see the Garagemajal. A lot of the neighbors were upset by it, since it looked like a giant parking structure. But now it appears that it’s just a very large extension on the house.

Crossing into Beverly Hills, we stopped for photo at the tree where Lindsay Lohan crashed her car last year. Then we doubled back one block to pass by the Menendez murder house. And then west again to pass the Witch’s House.

Leaving Beverly Hills, we rode out to Westwood. We stopped briefly to make a phone call, and in the process I slipped and fell on a wet spot on the street. Apparently, this wet spot is wet all the time, and it has slippery algae growing on the pavement. Sheesh.

When we got to the Pierce Brothers Cemetery, we headed over to Frank Zappa’s grave. After that, we played tourist a bit more in the cemetery. The pictures are all in the Graves Gallery.

The next sightseeing stop was Stan’s Donuts in Westwood Village. I always stop for a picture with businesses that have my name on them. (Like these: 1 2  3  4) Then we stopped off at Holmby Park for water before heading up the hill on Benedict Canyon.

At the top of the hill, we turned and took Mulholland all the way to Cahuenga Pass. Riding west to east on Mulholland it nice, since the trend is downhill. And it was a clear day, so the views were very nice. And then we took the most direct route home to Pasadena. We had one minor incident with a car in Glendale when it looked like they were going to pull out into us. Doug yelled at the driver. A little later, she caught up to us at a light. She was rolling down her window like she wanted to say something. I pulled out my camera and took her picture. And she shut up.

Overall, it was a fun little ride.

67 miles.
cycling

Lucinda is getting better at pinball. She knows the basic strategy for playing our machine, and she’s learning to catch the ball on the flippers to set up the two essential shots.

The basic plan for playing “Future Spa” involves getting the letters to spell ‘FUTURE SPA”, Each letter is worth 2,000 bonus, and you can get up to 42,000 bonus. And the four inline targets multiply the bonus up to 6x. So there are two essential shots to learn:

• The left-flipper shot to the rollover for adding letters;
• The right-flipper shot for the bonus multiplier targets.

And she’s starting to learn how to do the Slap Save.

We’re having some fun with this.

And Lucinda set a new personal record this evening with a score of 386,430 points. She was quite pleased.

Route slip

Today’s ride was the La Tuna Classic. That’s how I refer to the route that does La Tuna Canyon from west to east. Up the four-mile hill. Call me weird, but I’d rather ride up that hill than down it any day. So today was the day.

Gene came out to the park to see us off and to deliver some new club jerseys. He can get around with a walker now. So he’s able to move around the house, but he’s not back to work yet, and certainly not riding yet. Still, he looked good.

We set out and rode across Eagle Rock and into Glendale. We took Mountain and Kenneth across Glendale and into Burbank. Then we took Glenoaks the rest of the way to Sun Valley, where we got on La Tuna Canyon Road. Then it was time for that nice long climb to the top.

At the top, we rested a bit and enjoyed the sunshine. Then we headed down into Montrose. We stopped at Oven Fresh bakery. Only one of the tables was in the sun, so we all crowded around it. If we’d been a half-hour later, they would have all been in the sun. But we just rode up the hill too fast.

After the stop, we headed back across Altadena. On one street, a dog got out of its yard and ran out at us. Rachele got spooked by this and bumped wheels with another rider, and she fell down. Fortunately, she didn’t land too hard, and she wasn’t hurt. And on that note, we rode back to the park.

The final bit of riding was back home from the park, and along the way I saw a house with one of the busiest holiday displays I’ve ever seen. And the channel 7 news truck was there to look at it. I guess it’s a slow news day.

48 miles.
cycling

Today’s club ride was over Turnbull Canyon into Hacienda Heights, with a stop at the big Buddhist Temple there. Here’s the route: http://www.foothillcycle.org/PDFRouteSheets/turnbull_temple.pdf

It was pretty chilly this morning when we set out from Live Oak Park in Temple City. We rode down the Rio Hondo bike path to Whittier Narrows. Then we went across to the San Gabriel River bike path and rode that down to near Beverly Blvd in Pico Rivera. At that point, a few of us took a little detour to go see Dork St.

When we got back on the route, the group was several minutes ahead of us. I decided that my goal was to catch everyone by the time we got to the top of Turnbull Canyon. I’ve been more ambitious about hill climbing since I beat Newton up that hill.

On the way up the hill, we saw three guys skateboarding down. They had their friends following them in a car. I managed to get a picture of one of them as they went by.

By the time I got to the middle of the climb, I’d passed everyone, or so I thought. But then I did a mental inventory of who I’d passed and realized that I hadn’t seen Silvio. This meant he was still up ahead. So I picked up the pace, and when I got to the last big switchback before the top, I saw him. But I knew he was too far away to catch in the short distance remaining. Oh well.

At the top, there was a nice view of downtown Los Angeles. And on the way down into Hacienda Heights, there was a nice view of the San Gabriel mountains with their new coat of snow from the rain last week.

When we got to the bottom, we rode over to the Hsi Lai Temple and had a look around. It was pretty impressive. Even though I’m half-Chinese, I really don’t know anything about Buddhism. So it was interesting to see.

Leaving the temple, we took Colima Road back up over the hill into Whittier. I got a picture of Silvio hamming it up at the top. Then we rode down into downtown Whittier and stopped at a little pastry shop there. They had a nice courtyard with tables in the middle of the building. It would be very nice in the summer, since it was shady. Fortunately, it had warmed up enough that we weren’t too cold sitting in there.

On the way home, we passed the corner of Citrus and Orange in Whittier. That ranks right up there with the intersection of Summit and Mountain in Pasadena, and the one I saw many years ago: Hatfield and McCoy.

When we were riding through El Monte, we heard a weird noise. Silvio had a flat. The noise was the nail stuck in his tire hitting the bike frame. This marks Silvio’s first appearance in the Flat Tire Gallery.

And that was our ride.

53 miles.
cycling

I finally got to go through and separate the pictures from the 1978 Longsjo Classic in Fitchburg, MA. Apparently this is a stage race now. But back then it was a single-day criterium in downtown Fitchburg. The course was about a mile, and it went up and down a hill in town. The race itself was something like 100km.

I don’t remember a lot about the race itself. I rode the whole thing, staying snug inside the pack. I didn’t try to do anything fancy. But it was still a fun time. About the only real memory I have of the race is that I spent a good part of it following Jon Schuster. He was a Category 1 racer with the Indy USA team, which was the big team of the day. A lot of the National Team members rode with them, including the Stetina brothers. Wayne Stetina won the race that day. But I followed Jon because he was big. Like a moose. And when he moved through the pack, it was like the Parting of the Red Sea. Everyone just got out of his way. And I just sort of followed along. It was fun.

So have a look at the photos from that day. It’s old-school late-’70s bike racing at its best.