Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This evening we went down to meet my Chinese family for dinner. Uncle Hsin always knows where the best Chinese restaurants are, and it’s always a fun time to have dinner with them.

This time we went to New Capital Seafood in Rowland Heights. It’s the usual Chinese seafood restaurant, with big tanks by the door with fish, crabs, shrimp, lobsters and various other captured marine life awaiting their fate. I remember always being fascinated by the live fish when I was kid, and Lucinda is interested in looking at them, too. She doesn’t like actually eating them just yet, but she still finds them interesting.

One of the dishes we got was squid, which was the Sunday Cephalopod. It was fried with lots of garlic. It was tasty and all, and I made a lame attempt at assembling an entire squid on my plate for a photo opportunity.

My always favorite thing since I was a kid is when we get Peking Duck. Sadly, Lucinda has not developed a taste for this. But she likes the rice chips that it comes served on, so it’s not a total waste for her. We also had a lobster and a steamed fish, which she didn’t like either. I can’t remember how old I was before I developed a taste for fish. I think I was about 10, so there’s time. And she’s learning to use chopsticks now.

Overall, it was a fun time.

Today’s ride was “La Tuna Canyon East to West”. This is the ‘easy’ way through there, since the climb up is broken up in short stages, and we go down the four-mile hill into Sunland. (I actually prefer to do it the other direction, since I like going up the four-mile hill, but I’m just funny that way.)

It was a perfect day. We headed across Pasadena and past the Rose Bowl before riding up into La Cañada. Then it was down Hospital Hill into Montrose for the gradual climb up to La Tuna Canyon.

We stopped for a minute at the top of the canyon, and then headed down the hill. This was the first time I’ve gone down that hill and not been the last guy to the bottom. That was novel. I also used the top gear on my bike for the first time in the two years that I’ve had it.

At the bottom, we got on Glenoaks and rode back into Glendale to our snack stop at Paradise Bakery. As always, I had two chocolate eclairs. Not exactly the Breakfast of Champions, but the eclairs are very good there.

After the stop, we took a slightly different route back across Glendale to get to Verdugo Blvd. Then it was back up the hill to Montrose and the obligatory trip up Hospital Hill. At the top, I noticed that I was dripping and had made a little puddle on the ground, so I took a picture of it. And I had one of those ‘what the hell happened to my life’ moments. I used to see a hill like that and think, “Hey, here’s my chance to break away”, but now I just think, “I hope I can keep up with Newton.”

Coming down the hill, we crossed back into Pasadena. Then Newton and I rode out to Arcadia before I turned around and headed back across Sierra Madre to home.

52 miles.
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Today we all went down to Orange County to Uncle Larry’s house. Cathy, Larry, and Larry’s wife Francesca all have birthdays within a week of each other, so we did a big birthday dinner for all three there.

They went to the 99 Ranch Market and got some enormous lobsters for the occasion. They were something like three or four pounds each.

Lucinda is the only kid in the family, so we brought along a friend so she would have someone to play with. They had fun in the jacuzzi, and after that they played on the stairs, sliding down on pillowcases. This was a novelty, since we don’t have stairs in our house. Later in the afternoon, Grandpa took them to the pool. They also got to play in the elaborate landscaping in Larry’s back yard.

The dinner was nice, and Cathy was very pleased with the Micro-Dermabrasion kit that she got. She is very much into beauty treatments. She is going to be 44 next week, so I guess it’s working.

At the end of the day, we headed back home up the freeway, into the sunset.

It was a nice day.

On my way home on Friday, I got a closer look at one of the giant flower pots I’d seen on Wednesday. Apparently they are made with a welded steel frame covered with plywood. So they are very sturdy. I don’t know if they found a buyer, but there was a moving van in front of the house. So maybe this is why they wanted to sell them. In any event, it was interesting to see them close-up. I still think they made wonderfully weird lawn decorations.

Route map and photo locations

Today’s lunchtime ride was the Lida Loop again. This makes something like four weeks in a row, but today we had directions to visit Charles Richter’s old house and his grave site. He is the Richter of the “Richter Scale”, which is familiar to anyone who lives in earthquake country.

We started out and rode through Old Town and down to the Rose Bowl. Then it was up Lida to the top of the hill. When we crossed into Glendale on Figueroa, we saw a deer. It was standing on the side of the road, but when it saw us coming it ran away.

Coming down the hill into La Ca&#241ada, we turned and headed back into Pasadena. Passing by JPL and the arroyo, we went up Casitas St. to Altadena Drive. Then we took a left on Lincoln to get to Villa Zanita, which is on the map as a street, but it was really just a dirt driveway that led back to several houses. We stopped and saw Richter’s old house. He and his wife moved there in the mid ’60s, after their old house was bought and bulldozed to make way for a freeway. The story I was told about this house was that when the realtor found it, Charles was out hiking in the mountains and could not be reached. But Lillian saw the house and decided that he would like it, at least in part because there was a counter that was just the right size for laying out paper seismograms. So they bought the house and he lived there for the rest of his life.

Leaving Villa Zanita, we headed down Lincoln to Ventura, and then left to Fair Oaks. There, we went into the Mountain View Cemetery. The directions I had gotten were not right, so Vikki ended up walking into the office to get a map. You know how it is. The woman always has to ask for directions. But they were very helpful. She got detailed instructions and a map, and we were able to find Richter’s grave very easily.

By this time, it was time to get back to the office. So we took the most direct way back, on Woodbury to Lake and then down Catalina and Wilson back to Caltech.

It was a fun ride.

And on the way home, I saw a house with some very large flowerpots in the front yard. The sign said that they were theatrical props and that they were trying to sell them. I don’t know if they will get any takers, but it was still a wonderfully weird sight.

19 miles at lunch, 27 for the day.

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Route map and photo locations

Today was a cool and overcast morning, which is a very nice change from the withering heat we’ve been having lately. The ride was Gene’s “Atonement Ride”, which he’s been talking about since spring. It has some big and steep hills, so it wasn’t really an appropriate ride for a hot day. So today was the day. I asked him what we were atoning for, but he said it was nothing in particular.

We started out heading west across Pasadena, skirting the Rose Bowl and then heading up past JPL in to La Cañada. Then we took a right and headed up the hill. There were several steep stretches with short flats in between. Just enough to recover a bit before the next climb. By the time we got to the top, we were up high enough on the mountain that we were inside the low clouds. We came out by the golf course on Angeles Crest and then headed down.

About halfway down the mountain, we turned off and did some more climbing. At the top, I noticed that James was making a puddle of sweat every time we stopped, so I had to take a picture. Then we headed down a very steep hill, which was kind of scary, since the road was wet.

At one of the wet turns, there was a little patch of mud, and Jon slipped and fell. Fortunately, we were going pretty slowly at the time, so he just got a little elbow scrape. After a little cleanup, we continued on, crossing into La Crescenta and then down Ocean View into Montrose.

We took a left in downtown Montrose and headed up Hospital Hill. Then we went right on Descanso and went down the hill for a bit before turning up Hampstead and up the hill again. At the top, we crossed over Chevy Chase and rode into Glendale, going up and over the hill to come out at Lida. It was here that I noticed that my bike computer had crapped out. It said I was going 0 down the hill, and I was pretty sure that wasn’t right.

Going down the hill on Lida we came out on Linda Vista by the Rose Bowl and headed south to get to Glenoaks. Then it was time to climb the hill again. That was where I saw the little squashed lizard on the road. Then it was up and over, coming down on the other side just above Eagle Rock. A left on Colorado brought us back into Pasadena.

Our snack stop was at the Corner Bakery on Lake. We all were pretty tired by that point, even though the ride wasn’t actually all that long. Still, it was nice to stop.

The last part of the ride was straight back to the park. Vikki and I took off at that point and did one of our lunchtime routes out to Arcadia. We went up Highland Oaks and back across Sierra Madre on Grand View. After that, I said ‘uncle’ and decided I’d had enough.

It was a fun ride. And I made it up all the hills in my 39×17.

About 49 miles.
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Addendum: Newton has the ride profile up on his blog.

Today’s ride was the Lida Loop again. I rather like that route for a mid-day ride. It was another hot and humid day today. Yick.

On the way up the hill on Lida, I saw the discarded packaging for a “Flexidong”. I guess someone was in a hurry to get it out of the package. This was sort of reminiscent of my days riding in the Hollywood Hills, when I used to find lots of women’s clothing scattered along the road on Sunday mornings.

Coming down the other side of the hill, I rode past JPL and back into Pasadena. I saw Shannon outside her house, sweeping the sidewalk. So I stopped and we chatted for a bit.

Continuing on, I took a side trip to Mountain View Cemetery again, this time to look for Charles Richter’s grave. But all I had was the area and not a curb number, so I couldn’t find him. I’ve asked some people at the Seismo Lab, but nobody knows exactly where he is.

The last part of the ride was down Holliston and back to the office. That two miles downhill is always nice on a hot day.

On the way home from work, I saw some more filming going on. They had the street blocked off, but they said it was all right to ride through, so I didn’t have to detour.

19 miles at lunch, 27 for the day.
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Last week I sent a link to a picture of an octopus tattoo to P.Z. Myers at Pharyngula. I thought he might find it amusing, since he’s a big fan of cephalopods. He included the link in one of his posts, and today I noticed just how many people came to have a look at it. I guess P.Z. has a very substantial readership, since that little link made a big impact here. I know from experience that only a small percentage of people will follow any particular link on a site, so I can just imagine what his daily traffic is like. It was our first day in a long time of over 3000 site visits, and our first-ever day with over 1GB of traffic.

It’s not quite the “Slashdot Effect“, but it’s still interesting to see.

Today we went over to Hollywood to The Knitting Factory to go to “Baby Loves Disco”, which is an afternoon disco party for kids. We had read about this in the L.A. Times this week. It sounded like fun, but as it turned out, it was mostly kids much younger than Lucinda. Most of the kids there were babies and toddlers. So Lucinda was older than most of them. She still had some fun, but it wasn’t as good as it could have been if there were more kids in the 6-9 range.

After that, we walked down Hollywood Blvd for a bit. Lucinda wants to get a fairy backpack for school, and we thought we might be able to find one there. We immediately got caught in a crush of people in front of the Chinese Theater. Apparently there was some sort of event there and they said that Julia Roberts was supposed to be there. So we had to push our way through throngs of people in monsoon heat to get past. We didn’t end up finding a fairy backpack, but we did find a nice zebra-pattern bag for Lucinda to use for when she goes to swimming lessons, so it wasn’t a waste. And Lucinda was very amused by the Ripley’s Believe it or Not museum at Hollywood and Highland. She wants to go back there some time.

Route map and photo locations

Today I met Gene for a ride out to Encino to the velodrome. I had heard that they were going to be doing 1/10-scale radio-controlled model car racing there. I thought that this would be something interesting and different to see.

On the way out, we stopped off at the tiny house we’d seen back in April. We wanted to see if it had sold, and indeed it had. It had a new coat of paint and an owner out tending the garden. We chatted with her a bit and we were glad to see that the tiny house had found some love.

When we got to the velodrome, some of the racers were doing practice laps. The cars were going quite fast. Oddly enough, there was a rather attractive young woman with a camera crew there. Given that radio-controlled race cars are kind of a geeky hobby, her presence seemed a bit odd. So we asked them about it. They were from The Outdoor Channel, which has a show called Inside R/C. So they asked if we wanted to be in the sign-off for the show. We stood on either side of the host, Anna Curtis, while she recited her spiel. She finished with, “and now it’s time for us to go, because these guys want their track back”, while we just smiled stupidly. It was fun. They said that the show would probably air in the fall, so if anyone has cable and can get me a screen-capture, that would be great.

We left the velodrome and headed back across the park. We stopped to refill our water bottles at the water fountain right below the sign warning that ‘lewd conduct’ would be prosecuted. I’m not sure I want to know what goes on in that park after the soccer games are over.

We took Burbank Blvd to Van Nuys and then went down to Chandler, which is a nice, tree-lined street. The shade was a good thing, because I got a flat there. So we stopped in the shade of a big tree and I fixed the tire. The eastern part of Chandler is where the Orange Line busway is, and we got a look at the big articulated bus. It was very quiet, which is maybe why when it first opened it broadsided lots of cars on the cross streets.

On Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake we saw the Barris Custom shop. He is perhaps best known for building the 1966 Batmobile, but his shop makes a lot of weird vehicles for the movies.

In Glendale we stopped at a Carl’s Jr. and got some cold drinks. I filled my water bottle up with ice and water and then drank the whole thing twice. We sat in the air conditioning for a little while before braving the heat again.

In Eagle Rock I hit the proverbial wall. There was no shade and it was well over 100 degrees. I just started riding slower and slower. On the Colorado hill I actually shifted down to my lowest gear and just crawled up the hill. Fortunately, after that there were no more hills. But we had to stop at Memorial Park in Pasadena so I could lie down in the shade and pour water on my head. I think I had heat exhaustion. It was so bad that for the rest of the ride home, I put my foot down at every light, rather than doing my usual track stand. And at the end, Gene rode with me all the way to my street just to be sure that I wasn’t going to keel over.

When I got home, the thermometer on the back porch said 110 degrees. That’s about 44C for non-USAnians. I drank my water bottle four times on the ride, which is over 3 liters of water, but I was still 7 pounds (3.2kg) lighter when I got home. Yikes.

59 miles, one flat tire, and heat exhaustion.
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