Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s bike ride was another architecture tour. This week, I’d seen an item on Curbed L.A. about “big and small house”, which was a 900-square-foot house designed by Anonymous Architects. It’s on top of a hill in Glassell Park in northeast Los Angeles. In making up a route to go there, I saw that we could then continue on and go see what used to be the smallest house in Los Angeles. It was sold, torn down, and rebuilt since we last saw it, and so it’s a wee bit larger than it used to be, but it’s still pretty seriously tiny.

We started out riding out through Eagle Rock and Glendale, and then down into Glassell Park. Then we turned and headed up a fairly steep hill to go see the big and small house. It was a hard climb, but the house is in a very nice setting, perched on the edge of the hill.

From there, we rode down the other side of the hill to Figueroa St, and then turned south, crossing the L.A. River to get to Riverside Dr. Then we stopped in at the former smallest-house-in-L.A. The house that used to be on that lot was about 300 square feet. The new house doesn’t look much larger, but it’s two stories, so it’s got to be a bit more.

Continuing up the L.A. River bike path, John got a flat, so we stopped at the Frog Spot to fix it. Then we continued on up the river to the end of the path, where we turned off into Glendale and went to Paradise Bakery. They still have the best chocolate eclairs anywhere.

Coming home, we went back across Glendale, traveling up and over the hill on Chevy Chase and Linda Vista to come out by the Rose Bowl. It was a nice ride.

42 miles.

Mt Lukens is the highest point within the city limits of Los Angeles, and as such, it’s home to a lot of communications equipment for the Department of Water and Power, and other things like that. Since the seismic network uses some of the DWP network, we have a microwave link up there from the Seismo Lab. So I was curious to see it. I read a post on a hiking blog about climbing this mountain, and it sounded like a fun hike.

Karina is training for the New York Marathon, so she was busy going running, so Kathy and I did the hike. We started out from Deukmejian Wilderness Park in Glendale. The trail started out up the wash in the park, but quickly turned right and went up a steep ridge. The first couple miles were very steep, and pretty soon we were above the clouds. It was kind of gray and overcast down below, but it was a perfect day up on the mountain.

At the top of the ridge, the trail turned into a fire road for a bit along the top of the ridge before we met up with the Mt Lukens road. From there, it was an easy mile or so up the road to the top. At the top, we spent a few minutes looking at the view. To the south, it was just clouds, with some other mountains poking up through them, and to the north it was clear.

Going down, we took the Rim of the Valley trail, which came down a different ridge a bit west of the ridge we’d hiked up. The only really tricky part of the trip down was finding the turnoff, since the main trail goes down to Haines Canyon, and we needed to take the cutoff trail to get back to Deukmejian Park. The saving grace of the southern California mountains is that there are basically no trees, so it’s easy to see the different trails and where they go. So we turned off and headed down toward the park.

At one point, the trail went down into a canyon where there was actually a small stream. It was just a trickle, but it was actual running water. And there were big trees growing at the bottom of the canyon. From there, we had to climb up and out to get over the next ridge, and then we could see where we’d started. The last part of the route was an easy walk back down Dunsmore Canyon to where we started. In the end, it was nearly 10 miles in all, but it was a nice day, so it was a good time.

Here’s the route map: http://www.1134.org/routemap.php?xmlfile=mtlukenshike

Friday evening was time for the stair climb up the U.S. Bank building in downtown Los Angeles. 75 floors, and 1,664 steps to the top. I know. I counted them.

In contrast to past years, I wasn’t thinking about trying to prove anything this time. I just wanted to go up in a non-embarrassing time, and to enjoy seeing all my stair-climbing friends in the process. So my goal was to do about 15 minutes or so, since that’s a reasonably relaxed pace in my book.

I had to leave work a little early to get downtown for my schedules 4:00PM start time. When I was getting signed in, I got a message from Kathleen that she was starting up the stairs. Her start time was 3:30, so I thought that we might come out at the top at close to the same time. So I got changed and headed down to the starting line. When I got there, I was the only one there. That was decidedly weird. Usually, there’s a long line to wait in, but I just walked up to the start and went in.

I was aiming for five floors per minute, and I was able to maintain that pace pretty easily. Unlike other years doing this, there was very little traffic in the stairwell. One guy passed me soon after the start. I caught and passed him again about 30 floors later. And along the way, I passed a handful of people. I passed Kathleen somewhere in the high 50s. At that point, I was still on my pace, but my shoe had come untied at about 35, and by 58, I had to stop and retie it before it fell off. So I lost about 30 seconds doing that. But then I just continued on, and I came out on top with a time of something like 15:34. A little slower than I’d wanted, but, as I said, I’m not trying to prove anything.

After just a few minutes, Kathleen came out on the roof. We looked at the view and took a few pictures, and then headed down the other stairway to the big open space on 71. We had some water, took some more pictures. And then we took the elevator back down to the ground.

At the bottom, I saw some friends who had come up from Orange County to do the climb. So I joined them to go up again. By now, there was a line at the start, so we got to talk for a while while waiting to go. And then I went up for the second time. Part-way up, I got a message from Morgan that she, Jason, and Irving were all there. They had finished their first climb, and they were thinking of going again. So I said I’d go again with them as soon as I got back down. And when I got back down, the four of us got back in the line, and we headed up again. It’s kind of nice to take a leisurely-paced climb up the building. Not that there’s much scenery or anything, but it’s sort of like hiking up an industrial-looking mountain.

After three climbs up the building, I was done, so we got changed and headed home. It was a fun evening.

Today was the next-to-last practice session at the Wells Fargo building in downtown Los Angeles. It was also yet another day in our latest heat wave. But I wasn’t too worried, since the staircase in that building is next to the elevator shafts, and it runs up the inside of the building. And it’s generally about the same temperature in there as it is in the rest of the inside of the building. And as it turned out, that was not the case today.

It was hot and stuff in the stairwell. They had the ventilation system running, but it was blowing warm air. And beyond that, the 55th floor where we get out was hot. Which seemed odd, since it’s a mechanical floor. It has no windows and no doors to the outside. But it was stiflingly hot anyway. So in the end, I only did two climbs up the building. It just didn’t seem worth the misery.

On Sunday afternoon, we took a trip to Santa Monica to go to a talk and book-signing with Randall Munroe of XKCD. He has a new book out: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. It’s a collection of his what if? columns, and it’s all very entertaining.

The basic format was a conversation between Randall and Wil Wheaton. They talked about the book, about science in general, told stories, and took questions from the audience. It was a fun time, and at the end, we all lined up to get our books signed by Randall. And I got to thank him for the little bit of geek fame I got from when he mentioned my Pet Project in the mouseover text for this cartoon: http://xkcd.com/723/

This past week, I’d read about Mel Brooks getting his hand prints in concrete in front of the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. The article said he’d worn a prosthetic finger, just so his hand prints would have eleven fingers. I thought this would be worth a bike ride to go see, so off we went.

It was a nice day, but promising to get very hot later on. We rode over to Hollywood and joined the throngs of tourists in front of the Chinese Theater. But the guard there told us that the actual piece of concrete that Mel Brooks was on was tucked away in a back room to cure for about eight weeks before it would be hard enough to be put out on the walkway in front of the theater. So I guess we have to come back later.

Leaving Hollywood, we rode up Outpost Dr, which is a very steep hill that goes up to Mulholland Dr. From there, we rode down Mulholland, stopping at the overlook above the Hollywood Bowl. There is a drinking fountain there, so we were able to refill our bottles. We also stopped for a look at the vineyard planted on Mt Lee, just to the left of the Hollywood sign. It’s pretty obvious, so I still can’t quite understand why we never noticed it before. Then we continued down into Cahuenga Pass and over the hill into Burbank.

We stopped for snacks in the shade at Priscilla’s, and then we headed for home. It was getting very hot by then, so we decided to alter the route and not go home by way of the big hill in Glendale. Instead, we headed down the L.A. River bike path, and home by way of York Blvd into South Pasadena. By the time we got there, we were all kind of suffering in the heat, so we stopped off at my office at Caltech for a few minutes to cool off and get some ice water. That perked us up enough to make it the last few miles home.

43 miles.

After doing the hike up Mt Zion two weeks ago, I was ready for more. Karina couldn’t go today, but Kathy could, so we made plans to meet up and do part of the Mt Lowe Railway tour. When I did this last fall with Karina, we walked up Echo Mountain and then all the way up to the location of the old Alpine Tavern. This time, the plan was to go not quite so far, but to make a loop of it.

We met up at the top of Lake Ave, by the Cobb Estate gate. From there, we walked down Loma Alta Dr to Chaney Trail and walked up that road to the actual start of the trail, which was the Sunset Ridge fire road. At the start, there was a sign with a map, showing the route of the old railroad, and some of the points of interest along the way. We took the fire road up the ridge to the Cape of Good Hope, where the fire road meets up with the old Mt Lowe Railway roadbed. From there, we turned and took the railroad route back down through Flores Canyon to Echo Mountain.

At Echo Mountain, we found a small spot of shade under a tree and had a look around. We were joined by Stella, who was hiking with another group. Like most dogs, she was happy to find a bit of shade to lie down in. Looking to the southwest, we could see the big plume of smoke from a brush fire burning in Silverado Canyon in Orange County.

On the way down, there was a sign asking for people to go to Facebook and ‘like’ the Friends of Echo Mountain. Apparently, if they get enough likes, they will get some sort of funding to do trail maintenance and other good things.

By the time we got down, it was getting pretty hot, but since we had started out at 7:15AM, it was only about 11:15 when we got down, so we missed the hottest part of the day. So overall, it was a fun hike.

Here’s the route map

The big race up the U.S. Bank building is less than ten days away, and everyone suddenly thinks they need to get downtown and practice. So the line was extra-long today. I was only able to get in three climbs. The first two were reasonably consistent, but I didn’t even bother to time the third one. But I did bring along some Post-Its to hack the ‘DO NOT GO UP’ sign on the third floor landing.

My goal for this evening was to do a set of four climbs up the building, trying for as even a pace as possible. I did this reasonably well last Wednesday, but this evening, it didn’t work out so well. Oh well, they can’t all be gems.

Tonight’s stair adventure was yet another session at the Wells Fargo building in downtown L.A. Tonight, I wanted to try for four climbs, and to try and do a consistent pace for all of them. That meant not trying to go particularly fast the first couple times up. Last year, I was able to do this easily, but this year, it’s been a lot harder.

On the way through Union Station, I noticed that the monitor that’s supposed to display the Gold Line comings and goings, was instead just showing a screenful of error messages. At least Metro has the sense to be running Linux.

When I got to the building, I got in line, and headed up the stairs. I was aiming for my Vertical Mile pace, which is 4 1/2 floors per minute. In this building, that would get me to the top in about 11:45 or so. I went a bit faster the first time, but I was deliberately not pushing the pace. The second time, I was just about on pace. The third and fourth times, I was a bit off, but not by much. And my average for the four climbs works out to be almost exactly my target pace. So, overall, I’m not unhappy with this evening.