Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s bike club ride was the ‘Random Whittier Ride’. Just a meandering route that goes down to Whittier and back, with a snack stop at Merengue in Monrovia. It was cool and overcast, but not a bad day for riding. We stopped briefly in Pico Rivera, since this was Jim’s first time riding this route with us, and so we had to do the obligatory photo-op at Dork St. And that was about it. It was a pretty uneventful ride.

Route Map

43 miles.

So today was my follow-up appointment with my doctor. The X-ray they’d taken showed some disc degeneration, and a little bit of arthritis starting in my lower back, and apparently that’s the reason I was an invalid for the holidays. But after a week and a half of physical therapy, I feel much better. Not back to normal, but good enough for now. And frankly, there’s no telling if I’ll ever get back to ‘normal’ again. But at least this is an improvement.

When I was talking to my doctor, I told her I’d been feeling much better, and better to the point that I went to stair practice and climbed 51 stories twice on Tuesday. Her first reaction was, “You did what?” But when I told her what I did and that it didn’t hurt my back when I did it, she said that it was all right. And the fact that I’m in pretty good physical condition should help me to recover from this. So with that in mind, I went downtown again this evening.

I had to take Lucinda to art class after work, so I got a late start. I got to the building at about 6:00, so I only had about an hour. But that was all right. I’m still experimenting with this, and I’m not going particularly fast. I was only planning on doing it twice, and even at a slow pace, an hour is plenty of time for that.

I wanted to try pushing the pace up slightly from last time, just to see how that felt. I started out trying for my 4 1/2 floors per minute pace that I used last year when I did the vertical mile. I was able to keep that up for about halfway, and then I slowed down a bit. That pace would get me to the 55th floor in about 11:15 or so, and I got there in 12:15. Can’t complain too much about that.

The second time up, I went slower. Part of that was because I wanted to try using the railing as little as possible. I wanted to see if that would feel different, since I kind of got the sense that I might be stressing my back a bit by using the railing to swing around the turns. In the end, it didn’t seem to make any difference. Stair climbing just isn’t hard on my back, and it doesn’t hurt, even when I’m not using the railing and just standing straight upright and climbing. So I guess that’s a good thing. We’ll just have to see, but as long as I’m not in pain, I’m not causing any more damage to my nerves. So I’ll take what I can get at this point.

I had to go downtown today to visit the Federal Building and pick up my new government ID card. I brought along my stair-climbing clothes in case I felt up for some stairs afterward. I’ve been going to physical therapy for a week, and I’m able to walk a bit now, so I thought it might be a good experiment to try if I felt up to it.

After I finished at the Federal Building, it was still too early to go to the Aon building for stair practice. So I walked down the block to L.A. City Hall. I’d heard that they have an observation deck on the top floor there, and I was curious to see it. I went and checked in at the front desk, and they told me how to get up there. I asked them if I could take the stairs. They just looked at me, even though I was standing in front of them with my “Elevators are for Wimps” shirt on and everything. But I managed to convince them that I was serious, and they showed me the way to the staircase.

The climb up wasn’t bad. I figured that if I could climb to the 27th floor at City Hall without any sciatica pain, then I was up for trying the 51 floors at the Aon building. When I got to the top, I took a walk around all four sides of the observation deck. It was kind of the Land that Time Forgot. They had signs on each side showing the major buildings and other landmarks. And it was pretty obvious that the signs date back to the late 1970s. The view of Bunker Hill had the current Aon building, completed in 1973 and the Bonaventure hotel, built in 1976, but was missing the Wells Fargo building, which was finished in 1983.

After that little sightseeing trip, I headed over to the Aon building and got changed for stair climbing. Right now, I’m just trying to practice walking upright so I can learn to do it reliably without pain. So I didn’t plan on using the railing while climbing. I walked up at an easy pace of about four floors per minute, just holding the railing for balance. And I was able to make it all the way to the 55th floor without any back or leg pain. So that was pretty good.

I rode the elevator back down, and I did it again. I went a little slower the second time up, but I was still able to stay upright. So it was a Good Thing. Still, I was kind of tired after the second time up, since I’m a bit out of practice now. So I thought I’d better stop at two. I’m going back to the doctor on Thursday, so I’ll wait for that before deciding if I’m going to go downtown for practice again that night.

Last week, I read an article in the L.A. Times about a guy who owns some of the land on Mt Lee, near the Hollywood sign. And how he’s planted a vineyard there. The article said the grapes were planted in 2001, and given the number of times we’ve been up that way, I was surprised that we never noticed it before. So this Sunday’s ride was to go see it.

It was a nice day for riding, and we headed out by our standard route to get to Hollywood. We rode up the hill in Beachwood Canyon, and stopped at the Hollywood sign, and then we headed down toward the reservoir. Then, looking back up the hill, we saw the vineyard. It was big and obvious. And it looks like a tremendous amount of effort went into planting it, and maintaining it. We stared at it slack-jawed for a few minutes. And that was that. We continued on our route, going up and over the hill into Burbank. We stopped for snack at Priscilla’s, and then headed home. It was a pleasant ride.

40 miles.

Route map

Today’s bike ride was yet another installment in our continuing series of rides to explore the urban oil fields of Los Angeles. This time, it was to go see the Allenco Energy oil drilling island near USC. We were near there on our ride to see the Doheny Mansion and the location of the first oil well in Los Angeles. This time, we just wanted to go see the oil drilling operation there, since it’s been in the news recently. In particular, there were some stories in the Los Angeles Times about how people in the neighborhood complained about fumes from the oil field, so the EPA sent an inspector out to see, and the inspector became ill from the fumes. Oops.

The day started out with nice sunshine in Pasadena, and we headed south, on our way to downtown Los Angeles. And we promptly rode right into a fog bank. The fog persisted all the way to downtown, and it made for a nice picture of the Bunker Hill towers sticking up into the fog. Unfortunately, looking at the downtown skyscrapers is a bit sad for me right now. Since about Thanksgiving, I’ve been having back problems severe enough that I have trouble walking. Which is not good for climbing the stairs up 50-60 story buildings. The only good thing I can say is that it doesn’t hurt when I ride my bike, so at least that’s still good.

We came out of downtown and found the oil field on 23rd St. Like all oil fields in Los Angeles, it’s out of view, in this case, behind a high wall. The gate was closed, and it was basically impossible to see inside. But then I noticed that there was little hole so that someone with a key could reach inside to unlock the gate. It wasn’t possible to see in through this hole, but it was big enough that I could stick my and and camera inside and take a few pictures. So that’s how we got a view of the inside.

Continuing on, we passed the other oil drilling location on West Adams. Like the Allenco field we’d just seen, this one is also part of the Las Cienegas oil field. The fence around it had been recently raised. Maybe after all the bad publicity surrounding the first oil field, the owners of this one wanted to try and make it even harder to see inside.

Our snack stop was at Noah’s Bagels in Larchmont. After that, we headed home by was of 7th St, and then north through Echo Park and Silver Lake. It was a pleasant ride, even though the sun never really did come out again, and the oil field did in fact smell a bit sulfur-ish.

Here’s the route map: http://www.1134.org/routemap.php?xmlfile=allenco-oil-field

43 miles.

It’s the end of the year, and time for my annual wrap-up of the year’s adventures. And yes, being old-fashioned, I still print copies of this and mail them tucked inside physical cards. My personal rule is that the letter must fit on one side of one sheet of paper. So here it is, complete with links:

http://www.1134.org/xmas/xmas2013.html

Yes, it’s the Sunday before Christmas, so it was time once again for the “It’s a Wonderful Life” ride. This one is a bit shorter than what we usually do, but it has some sightseeing.

First stop was at Forest Lawn in Glendale. Jimmy Stewart is buried high up on the hill there, and we stopped to pay our respects. Then it was onward to our snack stop at Paradise Bakery. They apparently just had a fire in the upstairs area above the regular bakery shop, so they were running everything out of their small annex next door.

After that, we rode up the hill into La Cañada to see the Martini House. There are only a couple of scenes in the movie that were not filmed at the old studio backlot in Encino. And the Martini House in Bailey Park scene was one of them. The house still looks the same. Last year, I got some screenshots from the movie to compare. You can see them in last year’s writeup.

By the end, it had turned into a very nice day for riding.

37 miles.

I didn’t have any major inspiration for a destination for this Sunday’s bike ride, so I got out the ‘Relatively Flat Ride’ that I made up some years ago. It’s 43 miles of the flattest roads I could find around here. There are a few hills along the way, but only when they’re completely unavoidable.

There was some sort of lowrider car group meeting in the park when we were leaving. That was an odd sight. And somewhere out in West Covina, we passed the house that has the two giant candy canes on it every year. But it’s been some years since they put up the basketball-sized ornaments in the tree next to the house.

We passed the Huy Fong Foods factory in Irwindale. They are having some trouble with the neighbors, who say that making their sriracha hot sauce is causing problems for them. They’re fighting back with a small banner in front of the factory while the whole thing goes to court.

We stopped at Merengue in Monrovia. That’s where I saw the bear statue with the sign saying he was an official Old Town Monrovia guide.

All told, it was a pleasant ride.

43 miles.

Today’s bike club ride was the old “Glendale Vistas” route. This is a ride that doesn’t go anywhere in particular, but in the process of doing that, it goes up some seriously steep hills. This is the route where I broke my cassette back in 2007.

It was pretty chilly today, so we had to wear lots of layers, and even then it was cold. On the way across Glendale, we discovered a new way to cross the freeway on a pedestrian bridge. That was kind of novel, and along with a few other such bridges on other routes, it got us thinking about a possibly theme ride centered around The (Pedestrian) Bridges of Los Angeles County. Hmm. Have to think about that one some more.

Adding to the tribulations, when we got to Paradise Bakery, they had no chocolate eclairs. That’s the one thing they make that it truly outstanding, and I’d been looking forward to it.

After the snack stop, it warmed up a bit got a little less cold. And then it was time to climb the hills. At the highest point of the ride, we get a nice view of downtown Los Angeles in the distance. And I had to stop and once again point out the building that I climbed 101 times this year.

On the way home, it started to get colder again. So we cut off a little bit of the route to go home by a more direct way. Still, it wasn’t a bad ride.

39 miles.

Rain was forecast for today, so we did the route that I made up that travels around the city, never going more than 2 miles from the nearest Metro Rail station. That way, if the sky opens up and rains on us, we have a quick exit strategy at all times.

The route starts out going downtown, and then south along the Blue/Expo lines to near USC. From there, we head west, riding about mid-way between the Expo Line on the south, and the Red/Purple subway line to the north. At that point, we were passing the Angelus Rosedale cemetery on Washington Blvd. We’d been there before to visit the grave of Dooley Wilson, who is known for playing Sam in “Casablanca”. We stopped in there because last April, when we were riding in the Ciclavia to the Sea, we rode by the back side of that cemetery, and I saw a large pyramid there. I’d done some looking, and apparently there are three known pyramid crypts in Los Angeles County. One is in Brand Park in Glendale, and is not accessible to the public. The other two are in Angeleus Rosedale. So we stopped off to see the two pyramids.

After that, we headed up through the Harvard Heights neighborhood to Larchmont Village and Noah’s Bagels. We had some snacks, and then headed for home. By now, the weather was looking quite fine, with no threat of rain. But we stuck to the route, heading back on 7th St, roughly parallel to the subway line under Wilshire, and then through Chinatown and home by way of Lincoln Heights and South Pasadena, along the Metro Gold Line route. All told, it was a pleasant day, and we were glad not to have to use our exit strategy.

44 miles.