Stan’s Obligatory Blog

My blueberry muffins won second prize in the Los Angeles County Fair. Woo Hoo! I’ll be getting another ribbon to go up alongside the ones from 2012 and 2010.

The recipe is here, if you want to try making them: http://www.1134.org/recipes/blueberrymuffins-fair-2013.pdf

Today’s bike club ride was the route to Downey and the Columbia Memorial Space Center. It sits on a piece of land that used to be part of the old North American Aviation plant where they built the Command and Service Modules for the Apollo Program, as well as the second stage of the Saturn V moon rocket. Then, in the late ’70s, it was where the Space Shuttle was designed. Downey’s connection with the Apollo moon program can still be seen in things like the little strip mall called “Apollo Center”.

We stopped for drinks and snacks at 3rd Street Coffee in Downey. After that, we rode over to the Rio Hondo bike path for the ride home. The day got pretty hot, but not to the point of being unbearable.

41 miles.

This Saturday was a gallery day for us. We went to A+D to see the “Never Built: Los Angeles” exhibit. This is a show of models, drawing, and other materials from projects that were proposed, but were never built. The projects on display covered a full range from things that might have been pretty useful to things that were clearly absurd. For instance, the model showing proposed development behind Union Station was perhaps a bit grandiose, but it really wasn’t absurd. By comparison, the proposal for an offshore causeway freeway from Santa Monica to Malibu was perhaps the most absurd idea floated there. Most of the others fell somewhere in between. There was a map of the original plan for the freeway system, of which about one-half has been built. There was also a drawing showing Disney’s original plan for Disneyland in Burbank. They said it never made if off the drawing board because the city of Burbank thought it would have too much of a ‘carnival atmosphere’ and not be a good thing for the city. So Disneyland ended up in Anaheim. All told, this was an interesting exhibit.

After “Never Built”, we headed west to the Annenbery Space for Photography in Century City. The exhibit there is “Helmut Newton: White Women – Sleepless Nights – Big Nudes”, which presented a selection of his photography over the years, along with a short documentary film about his life. His style was very distinctive, and has influenced a whole generation of photographers.

This all made for a fun afternoon.

That’s a quote from Peter Athans, who is one of only a few climbers who have been to the summit of Mt. Everest seven times. He was quoted in an article in National Geographic about the importance of failure in any endeavor. I’d been reading that on the train to downtown, largely as a means of staving off the dread that comes from being on my way to an evening of climbing stairs.

So my goal for this evening was to do another five climbs for a vertical kilometer, and I wanted to try and flatten out my pace. That is, I wanted to try and have a smaller spread from the fastest to the slowest of the five. Also, I was hoping that if I could do that, my total might add up to less than the 53:57 I posted last Wednesday. And as usual, George was there, and had basically the same goal. So I had a goal, and some motivation.

The first time up, I held back a bit. I was aiming for a pace of 4 3/4 floors per minute, and I had to slow down a bit to not get too far ahead on the first time up. I was hoping that if I held back on the first climb, I’d have more energy for the later ones. And for the most part, the strategy worked. My first four climbs were very close in time, at 10:36. 10:39, 10:40, and 10:55. I was hoping to get the last climb in under 11, or at least not much over it.

I rested at the bottom for several minutes before starting the last climb. I’d remembered to bring some Gatorade, so I finished that before starting up. I managed to keep to the pace up to about the 20th floor, and then I faltered a bit. I had to dial the pace back to 4 1/2 floors per minute the rest of the way up. That’s the pace that works out to 11:22, but I was hoping that I’d go a bit faster, since I’d started out faster. And when I got to 49, I managed to eke out a bit of a sprint, just because I knew that I could stop as soon as I got to the top. And I managed to come out at the top at 11:18. That’s slightly faster than 11:22, but not by much. Still, I did manage to flatten out my times, with only 42 seconds difference from the slowest to the fastest. That’s better than the 61-second spread last week. But when I added up my times, they totaled to 54:08. So my average was about 2 seconds slower for each of the five climbs. Oh well, they can’t all be gems. As National Geographic had told me on the way downtown, there can be no success without failure. And no matter what, this one was still nothing to complain about.

Apropos of nothing at all, I just added it up, and so far in this round of practice, I’ve climbed the Wilshire-Figueroa building 49 times. One more time, and my total climbing will be 10,200 meters, which is just a hair over the height of Mauna Kea from the sea floor to peak.

Tonight at stair practice, I wanted to try an experiment. After last Wednesday, when I was able to do four consecutive climbs all under 11 minutes, I wanted to see if I could do four close to 10 minutes each. I knew I could go under 10 easily on the first climb, so I wanted to see how close to 10 I could get on the subsequent climbs.

Of course, it was probably a Bad Thing that I forgot to bring my water bottle along tonight.

The first time up, I was aiming for a pace of 5 floors per minute. That’s reasonable brisk, without being punishing. And I got to the top in 9:48. So the trick was going to see how close I could come to that pace on the second time up.

As it turned out, the answer was, “well, sort of close.” The first climb, I averaged about 11.5 seconds per floor. On the second, I did about 12.5. The third was about 13.9. I think the lack of water was taking a toll. After the third, I was pretty tired. But I still wanted to go up again, just for the sake of obstinacy and to have a vertical half-mile for the evening. But I was pretty well wiped-out by that time. So I didn’t even bother timing the last time up. I don’t really want to know how slow I was going. But I made it to the top.

After I came back down, I made a point of stopping at Famima!! across from the Aon building on the way back to the subway station. I got a quart of Gatorade and chugged it down on the sidewalk. And then I felt slightly better.

Oh well, they can’ all be gems.

It’s the last Sunday of the month, and that means it’s time for our ‘slightly longer’ Sunday morning bike ride. Today’s destination was the Veterans Administration campus in North Hills. One of the buildings there was used for filming some of the scenes outside the American Embassy in Tehran in the film “Argo“.

The route out there was basically the La Tuna Canyon ride, but with about an eight-mile side trip at the apex of the route. We rode out across Glendale and Burbank until we got to Sun Valley, where we’d normally turn right and head up the canyon. But instead, we turned left and headed out into the San Fernando Valley. It was a fair distance to get to North Hills, but it was very flat. The only real downside was that it was a very hot day.

When we got there, we had to look up which building it was. Then we followed the signs to get there. As it turns out, the part of the building that was used for filming was on the back side, so we didn’t get to see it directly from the road. Also, the main building near the entrance is apparently used in “Grey’s Anatomy”, which I didn’t know, but one of the other people on the ride recognized.

On the way back, we stopped at a gas station and got some cold drinks. I sucked down a 1.5 liter bottle of cold water. It was hot.

When we got back to familiar territory, we’d ridden a bit over 40 miles, and now it was time to ride up La Tuna Canyon. That was a real grind. I was almost happy that I got a flat along the way. At least it was a legitimate reason to stop for a while. We regrouped at the top, and then headed down the other side, in to Montrose.

We stopped for bagels at Goldstein’s in La Cañada. Then, from there it was downhill all the way home.

56 miles.

Last week, I went to stair practice and did a vertical kilometer. That was the evening that George said he wanted to try and beat my previous time of 59:12 for the five climbs. And with that, I found I had the strength of Ten Grinches, and I managed to push the pace and do the kilometer in 55:43. So this evening, George said he was going to attempt to beat my 55:43 for the kilometer. And thus, I had a goal for the evening. My goal became to also beat the 55:43, and to do it in a convincing manner.

I started off planning a pace of 4 3/4 floors per minute from the start. That works out to about 10:45 for this building. Of course, the first couple of climbs went a bit faster, since I was fresh, but overall, I was able to maintain the pace for the first four climbs. This is the first time I’ve done four consecutive climbs under 11 minutes each.

In the elevator down the fourth time, I heard George talking. I was sitting down, trying to get the maximum rest. I looked through the forest of legs in the elevator, and I saw George sitting on the floor on the other side. We compared times, and his first four times were comparable to mine from last week. That meant he had a good shot at beating my 55:43 from last Wednesday. My first four were considerably faster than last week’s, so I knew that if I could just keep pace with him on the last climb, I’d have a better time for today. And I knew that if I did any reasonably fast time, I’d get my total under 55, which was my goal. So we decided to go up together and I was going to try and keep pace with him. Just before we started, he asked me if I thought I might get under 54 minutes. I didn’t think so, but I hadn’t taken the time to do the math and see.

The fifth time up, I was pretty tired. I was aiming for my 4 1/2 floors per minute pace, which gets me to the top in about 11:22. I knew this would be fast enough to still have the total under 55. I managed to keep pace with George up to about the 35th floor, but then he seemed overcome by something, and started pulling away from me. I tried to keep pace, but by the time we got to the 49th floor, he was about 1 1/2 floors ahead of me. I could hear his footsteps and breathing, and he was obviously working hard. Just knowing this was the end, I managed to eke out a little burst of speed at the end, and I stumbled onto the 51st floor landing in 11:22. Right on schedule.

On the way home on the train, I added up my times. They came out to a total of 53:57, which was quite a bit faster than I’d expected to be able to do. I really can’t complain about that. And George did his vertical kilometer in 55:39, so we both achieved our goals for the evening. So all told, it was a good outing.

Many thanks again to George for lighting a fire underneath me.

Tonight was yet another stair practice in downtown Los Angeles. I went with essentially one goal, and that was to do my first climb for speed. I worked out a pace, aiming to be at the top in about 9 minutes. Not the fastest I can do, but a reasonably brisk pace. This worked out to about 5 2/3 floors per minute.

I got changed and got in line for the stairs. I started my watch and headed up. At each time point, I checked the watch, and I managed to stay on target almost all the way up to the big landing on the 49th floor. The last two floors are bigger than the others, and I heaved up onto the 51st floor in 9:06. Close enough.

After a too-slow freight elevator ride back down, I headed up again. This time, my target pace was 4 3/4 floors per minute. This was aiming to get to the top in about 10:45, and the magic worked. I got to 51 at 10:44.

I headed back down again. Checking the time, I knew I wasn’t going to have enough time to make five climbs tonight. But I wanted to try my ‘easy’ 11:22 pace the third time up. I’ve done this pace for four consecutive climbs before, and it’s usually pretty easy. I started up, and almost immediately, I hit the proverbial Wall. What is usually an easy climb up the stairs quickly turned into a Death March. It was so bad that I just turned off my watch about halfway up.

Of course, after that horrible experience, I had to do it again. You know. Get back on the horse and all that. I didn’t even start my watch the last time. It was just a struggle for survival to get to the top. But I made it. Four climbs. A half-mile vertical.

Fun times.

This evening was the 9th Annual Johnny Ramone Tribute at Hollywood Forever cemetery. This year, the event included a screening of “Cry Baby“, and a personal appearance by John Waters to introduce the film. Add to that that Johnny Depp, Traci Lords, and others from the movie were going to be there, Being a big fan of both the Ramones and John Waters, this was an event not to be missed.

Since Kathleen was laid up at home recovering from her surgery last Thursday, Lucinda and I made plans to go to this, along with my friend Lisa from the West Coast Labels stair-climbing team. I made us a too-big picnic to bring along, and dug out our Tommy Bahama chairs, and we were ready to go.

We set up camp on the lawn, and Lisa got in line to get autographs from John Waters. I didn’t bring anything for him to sign, largely because everything I have by him is already signed. And as it turned out, that was a good thing. She waited in line for a long time, and then they cut the line off just before she got to the front.

Lucinda spent some time sightseeing in the cemetery and taking pictures. They had Johnny Ramone’s statue decorated for the occasion, and they turned on the lights as darkness fell.

Before the film, they held question and answer session with John Waters and the others from the film on the stage. Lucinda was excited when she found out that the panel would be introduced by none other than Dita. They took some questions from the crowd and talked about making the movie. Then John Waters took the stage by himself to introduce the film. As always, he was very funny to listen to. After he finished, we watched the movie, and as always, it was very entertaining. It had been years since I saw “Cry Baby”, so all around, this was a very fun evening.

Today’s ride was a visit to what’s referred to as the Corralitas Red Car Property in Silver Lake. This is a strip of land that used to be the right-of-way for the Pacific Electric Glendale line. It runs from right next to the Glendale Freeway to the top of the hill overlooking Fletcher Drive and Riverside. At one end, the tracks used to run where the present-day freeway stands, and at the other end, there used to be a high trestle across the valley where Fletcher Drive runs now. The footings for the trestle are still visible on the hillside.

We rode out from from Pasadena, across Eagle Rock and Glendale, and then down to the L.A. River bike path near Griffith Park. We took that to Fletcher Drive and then took some streets to get to Riverside Drive, near the Glendale Freeway underpass. Then, after a short side trip up the hill behind the school on Riverside, we were there. The right-of-way is essentially a dirt road now. The people in the neighborhood park cars on it, and the tire tracks show that it’s driven on a fair amount. We rode out to the end where the trestle used to be. From that angle, the footings for the trestle make it pretty obvious where it used to be. I looked, and I found a good picture showing the trestle from about the same angle here: http://www.pacificelectric.org/pacific-electric/western-district/the-final-days-of-fletcher-trestle/

From there, we turned around and rode the length of the trail back to where it ends by the freeway. Then we got back on the streets and rode down Riverside to Stadium Way. After our experience a few weeks ago, I’d looked to make sure there wasn’t a Dodger home game today, since we’d be going right past the stadium. We rode through and down into Echo Park to Chango Coffee.

After the snack stop, we rode up the steep hill out of Echo Park, passing the gates of Dodger Stadium. We also passed the Los Angeles Fire Department academy, and the World Trade Center memorial there. Then, we turned east up Broadway and headed for home by way of Huntington Drive.

It was a perfect day for riding, and an interesting bit of Los Angeles history.

38 miles.