Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Lucinda wanted to play dress-up with Mommy today. She picked out the clothes for both of them to wear, and then she insisted that I take a picture. They’re awfully cute, no?

Today was another chilly day, threatening to rain. The general plan for today’s ride was to get as far away from the remnants of the Rose Parade as possible. So we went west to La Tuna Canyon. Gene said that today is the one-year anniversary of the Sunday Moderate Ride. We had the one obligatory flat tire on the ride up through La Crescenta, but aside from that, the climb up the canyon was pretty uneventful. At the top, I put on my jacket so as not to freeze on the way down. At the bottom of the big hill, we turned left on Glenoaks and headed back down through Sunland and Burbank. The snack stop was in Glendale at Paradise Bakery, where I had two chocolate eclairs. They make the best eclairs there. After that, we headed back on Kenneth to Mountain Ave, where I saw the nativity scene with signs pleading for the return of the baby Jesus. Then we turned left on Verdugo and headed back up Hospital Hill. From there, we took the standard route back through La Cañada.

42 miles.

Technorati tags: cycling

Lucinda got a $100 bill from Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas. Such is the joy of being the only grandchild in the whole family. So she decided she wanted to buy one of the Barbie Power Wheels cars. We told her that $100 probably wasn’t enough, but she wanted to look. She Mommy took her to Toys-R-Us. They had the Trail Rider there and it was a floor model and the last one. So they haggled a bit with the manager and got the price down to where Lucinda could afford it. She had to throw in the money from her piggy bank at home, but she had enough. So now she’s a happy little rider.

So we had it all planned out. We had reservations for an early dinner at Cafe Bizou in Old Town. But after I rode my bike through there today, I thought that the traffic and parking would be a nightmare. But we thought we’d be able to beat that. We could take the train.

So we went to the train station, and we waited. The train station is in the middle of the freeway, which is actually a kind of hellish place. And we waited there for about 15 minutes before the train got there. This should have been a tip-off that something was wrong. We got on the train, the doors closed, and then we just sat there for 10 more minutes. Then they announced that there was some sort of problem with the tracks up ahead, and they were having to run single-track, so we were waiting for the train going the other way. And then we sat some more. Finally, we pulled out of the station. And the train went rocketing down the track at a good 15 miles per hour. When we got the next station, then the train just stopped and sat. Then the train going the other way came in. We bailed out and got on it and rode it back to where we started.

All of this ended up being a good hour spent sitting on the train. So we left the train station and went and had dinner at El Torito, which was just fine.

It’s been raining all week here, so I haven’t been able to go bike riding, and today was no exception. I even got so desperate that I brought my bike inside and hooked it up to Cathy’s air trainer thingy and rode stationary for about 45 minutes. I hate riding indoors. It’s work. I just keep looking at the clock and thinking, “am I done yet?”

But then, this afternoon, the clouds parted, and the sun came out. It was still cold, but I decided to go for a ride anyway. Then I noticed an aneurism on my back tire. It was going to blow out at any moment. I still went riding, but I made sure that my first stop was the bike shop.

I got a new tire, and then I set out. I went down Colorado Boulevard to check out all the people camping out for the Rose Parade tomorrow. So, as I promised Grace, here is my report from the butt end of the Rose Parade. This is the first of two parts.

First off, I noticed the that the Pasadena Christian Church had staked out a big chunk of the sidewalk – directly in front of our neighborhood gay bar. Was this a coincidence? Traveling down the parade route, I saw lots of stores with temporary chain-link fences over their storefronts. Office Depot was boarded up, and we aren’t even expecting a hurricane. In Old Town, there were several board-up companies doing a brisk business covering up the storefronts there. And the traffic was horrendous.

After that fun, I did a regular ride. This was a slightly shortened version of Gene’s “Just One Hill” ride. And, as always, there was just one hill. But it’s a big one, and the route goes up and down it several times on different streets. There was still a lot of water on the roads, but up in the hills it was quiet, and there were very few cars out. I noodled about in the hills for a while before coming down into La Cañada. From there, I went past JPL and back into Pasadena for the ride home.

22 miles.

Today we rode the train down to San Diego to take Lucinda to visit Grandpa Schwarz. This was an all-day affair that started by taking the Metro Gold Line from Pasadena to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles. From there, we got on the Amtrak Surfliner for the ride down the coast. The rain had stopped, so we got a good view of the mountains with a fresh coat of new snow. The train goes along the coast for a lot of the trip, so we got some nice views of the beach, as well as the San Onofre nuclear power plant.

When we got to San Diego, Grandpa picked us up and we went to his apartment there. He showed Lucinda how to hold the castanets, which she enjoyed, since it meant she could make lots of noise. They also played the piano together and drew pictures on the computer. There are more pictures of Lucinda from the day in her photo album.

Finally, at the end of the day, we rode the train home. It was really a very pleasant ride.

I added some logic to our main page to have it automatically pull out the last 10 blog posts marked with a category of ‘adventures’. It then uses these to make a list of links to the posts on the front page. All of our older adventures have been relegated to the ‘old adventures‘ index page.

The rain is falling harder now, and for the first time in years, we are getting a little lake in the back yard. This is the first time we’ve had the lake since the El Niño of ’97-’98. It’s impressive. We don’t get many thunderstorms here, but there’s lightning and thunder tonight.

Who says it never rains in California? Today was pouring down rain for most of the day. So I had to take my car to work instead of riding my bike. Trying to make the most of this, I stopped off on the way home so my car could get its every-other-year smog test. Like in an alien abduction, it got a probe up its butt and got measured. But all is well, and it passed.

And thus ended the dreary day.