Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Every year since 2007, we’ve made a point to ride out to Culver City to visit Bela Lugosi’s grave for Halloween. This was one of the first ‘theme’ rides I came up with. We call the route “Down for the Count”. So that was the plan for today.

A few weeks ago, we did a ride to the California Science Center to see the Space Shuttle solid rocket motors being delivered. When we were riding by there, I thought we should take a short side trip to see them, since they are big enough that they wont fit into any of the existing buildings there. So we rode into the park and saw the nose cones for the solid rockets, as well as the solid rocket bodies lined up next to the main building.

From there, we picked up the bike lane that parallels the Metro Expo Line for the ride out to Culver City. Next to the La Cienega station, we saw the (W)rapper building. It’s an unusual and distinctive bit of architecture.

When we got to the cemetery, we rode up and over the hill to get to the Grotto. Somebody comes and decorates Bela Lugosi’s grave for Halloween every year, and this year was a good one. The decorations make it very easy to find.

After the cemetery, we went to Grand Casino Bakery for snacks and drinks. Then we rode back to downtown. When I got to downtown, a few of us decided to bail out and take Metro Rail home for the last bit.

42 miles, plus two more to get home from the Metro station

Route map and elevation profile

The Saturday Foothill Cycle rides go lots of different places, but I make a point to go along when they are doing one of my rides. Today, it was the ride to Studio City to see the house from “The Brady Bunch”. We’ve gone to see this several times over the years, and today we even got a little bonus sightseeing. We rode out to North Hollywood for snacks and drinks at Groundwork Coffee. After we left there, we went by the park that was turned into Holodeck 9 a few years ago. As we were riding by, I saw that someone, most likely the same person as before, had made new holodeck control panels for the park. It made for an entertaining ride.

45 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Back in 2012, one of our regular Sunday bike club rides went to see the space shuttle Endeavor as it was being moved to the California Science Center. And in 2016, we rode to Exposition Park to see the external fuel tank for the shuttle, on display next to the building where the shuttle is. I recently read that they have started construction of the new Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, where the shuttle will be on display in the full vertical ‘stack’, with two solid rocket boosters, the external tank, and the orbiter, all mounted as if ready for launch. So today, the bike club did a special ride to Exposition Park to see the two solid rockets, which were on a pair of very large trucks for transport into the museum.

30 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Last Monday, I read that John Waters was going to be getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I watched the livestream of the unveiling ceremony, and then I said, “I know where the Sunday bike club ride is going this week…”

We rode out by our usual route across Highland Park and Silver Lake to get to Hollywood. We stopped briefly to see Carol Burnett’s star, just because there’s a funny story associated with it. (you can read it here) John Waters’ star itself is in front of Larry Edmunds Bookshop at 6644 Hollywood Blvd. As we were about to cross the street to get there, I noticed that Leonard Nimoy’s star is right there on the corner of Hollywood and Cherokee Ave. We’ve been out to visit his grave at Hillside Memorial in Culver City before.

Leaving Hollywood, we rode to Larchmont Village and had snacks at Noah’s Bagels. Then we headed home by way of downtown L.A. and the Arroyo Seco.

43 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

A few weeks ago, I saw an article about Star Garden in North Hollywood. This is a topless bar that recently reopened after being closed for some time, and it now has the distinction of being the only unionized strip show in the U.S.

https://abc7.com/north-hollywood-strippers-union-los-angeles/13697889/

So of course I figured this should be a bike club ride. I made up a route, and here it is. It was kind of wet and misty this morning, but after a little while it cleared up. Of course, that meant that it was like 100 degrees by the time we got back, but it was still a nice ride.

42 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Back in 1989, I had a chance to play a pinball game called “EARTHSHAKER!” The theme of the game is Los Angeles and earthquakes, which have long been two of my most favorite things. And in 1995, after I got my job at the USGS earthquake office, I always had in my mind that someday I should have one of these games. So I recently had to have some service done on the “Last Action Hero” game. For pinball service, I always contact Pat Choy at Endless Pinball. He knows everything about these games and can pretty much fix anything. Some time ago, I’d mentioned that someday I would be interested in getting an “EARTHSHAKER!”, and this time, he mentioned that he had one that he’d come upon and restored. So one evening, we went down to Anaheim to try it out. After playing a few games, I was writing a check, and now it’s here in our house.

It’s pretty entertaining, and when I hit the right targets and ramp, the shaker motor goes off, and it shakes the whole room. It’s quite hilarious.

It’s almost Halloween, so this Sunday was time to do one of our Halloween-themed rides. It was a trip through downtown Los Angeles and nearby areas.

We rode into downtown by our regular route, and then did the short side trip to 5th St and the firehouse where a good bit of “Ghostbusters” was filmed. Then we rode down to follow the Metro Expo line for a bit, where we saw car number 1003 again. This car is special, since it’s the one that Carla and I got our pictures taken on in 2015 when we went to the open house at the new Metro Operations Campus in Monrovia.

Next up was a visit to Angelino Heights to see the house that was in the “Thriller” video. Apparently, even though it only appears briefly in the video, the neighbor across the street told us it’s a pretty big tourist draw.

Next, we rode back to downtown for drinks and snacks at Chimney Coffee. That was where we met the very friendly little cat that lives there, and just happens to look like Hitler.

The final sight was in South Pasadena, where we rode by Michael Myers’ house from “Halloween”. We’ve been to see it before, and pictures are there.

47 miles.

Route map and elevation profile.

This week has been brutally hot, at least by Los Angeles standards. And today was forecast to be about 110F again. So the Sunday bike club ride was a one-way trip to Santa Monica. It’s mostly downhill to the beach, and the beach is slightly less hot than here in Pasadena. So that was the plan.

In the past, we’ve done this route by taking Huntington into downtown L.A., but today I modified this so we started out by going down to East L.A. and Boyle Heights. This is also mostly downhill, but pads it out slightly to make the route longer. We also got to go over the new 6th Street bridge. After that, we went through downtown and down to USC before following the Metro Expo Line west. We stopped at Western Ave and got a couple gallon jugs of cold water to refill all our water bottles.

Continuing on, by the time we got on the Ballona Creek bike trail, we could feel it was getting to be slightly less hot, since we were just a few miles from the ocean at that point. In Marina Del Rey, we were all enjoying the (relatively) cool ocean breeze. The locals weren’t enjoying it, since it was still pretty hot by beach standards, but we thought it felt good. We rode by the canals in Venice, and then up Main St to our snack stop at Dogtown Coffee. We found out today that the coffee shop has a patio out back that we didn’t know about. So that was nice. After that, we rode the final mile or so to the Metro Station at 4th and Colorado in Santa Monica. The we got on the train to come home.

43 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Big news this week was the Vin Scully, the long-time announcer for the Dodgers had died. Apparently, he was the voice of the team for nearly 70 years. Later in the week, I read that an impromptu memorial had been constructed at the entrance to Dodger Stadium, so that was the sightseeing goal for this week.

We rode down through East L.A. to get to downtown, and then up through Echo Park to get to the stadium. The memorial was a random collections of items left by fans, with things going back to the Brooklyn days, and personal notes from fans. Even though I don’t follow baseball, it’s still amazing to see that any one person can cast such an impact on our culture.

We stopped at Chimney Coffee before coming home. That’s where they were plugging the Larb Burger. “Larb and in charge”

40 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Back in 2015, we took a bike ride to go see the 6th Street Bridge over the Los Angeles River. The old bridge had just been closed, and was going to be demolished and rebuilt. The demolition process led to a bike ride to see a closed-down section of the 101 freeway. Ever since then, every time we’d pass through the Arts District east of downtown, we would stop and see how the construction of the new bridge was coming along. And this weekend was the grand opening of the new bridge.

There was also a CicLAvia going on today on Western Ave in south L.A., so the plan was to go there first. Then we’d head back into downtown for the chance to ride over the new bridge, starting at 11:00.

We rode downtown by our usual basic route down Huntington Drive. Then out on Exposition to Western, where we picked up the CicLAvia route. We rode to the far end of that, and then headed back to downtown. We got to the bridge a few minutes before the 11:00AM opening. We rode across the bridge to Boyle Heights, and then back. All told, they did a pretty good job on it.

We stopped for drinks and snacks at Chimney Coffee outside downtown. Then we came home by way of the Arroyo Seco.

48 miles.

Route map and elevation profile.