Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Last week, the L.A. Times had an article about one man’s experience with bicycle commuting in Los Angeles. The overall message was that it’s really not bad. This matches my experience with riding here. Of all the cities I’ve spent time riding in, L.A. is one of the best for the overall experience.

My favorite tidbit from the column:

I have the pleasure of seeing the city through a different lens. Riding at a pace between 15 and 20 mph, the city is a slide show instead of a blur.

This mirrors what I’ve said for years. The bike is in many ways the perfect sightseeing vehicle. It can cover a lot of ground, but not at a speed where you will miss anything along the way.

Still, I felt that something was missing. So I sent in yet another letter to the editor, and they published it in today’s paper:

Re “A new spokesman for the thrill sport of biking in L.A.,” Column, Feb. 19

As a longtime cyclist, both for commuting and recreation, I enjoyed reading Ben Poston’s article about his experiences cycling in L.A. But he left out the best part: Cycling in Los Angeles is exciting; it’s like doing the running of the bulls everyday.

Stan Schwarz
Pasadena

Heh.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-letters-brave-cyclists-20130222,0,2037422.story

This past weekend was a three-day holiday weekend, and we spent all three days packing and moving Kathleen out of her house and in to mine. So when Tuesday morning came, I was pretty weary, and I really didn’t feel like going for speed on the stairs tonight. Although, I suppose it’s a testament to my insanity that I never considered not going to climb the stairs today.

Since I was low on energy, I thought I’d do something like a couple weeks ago, when I did the vertical kilometer. I’ve been thinking that one of these weeks I want to try for a vertical mile. That would be eight times up the stairs from 4 to 55. Each time up is about 689 feet, so eight add up to 5,512 feet, which is just a bit over a mile. I’m pretty sure I can fit that into the two hours we have for practice. So my plan tonight was to do a vertical half-mile and see if I could do all four climbs, plus the associated elevator rides back down, all within one hour.

I rode the train downtown as usual, and when I got suited up for climbing, I got out my second stopwatch and started it. Then I just tucked it into my pocket, started my main stopwatch, and started up the stairs. As with the vertical kilometer, the plan was to aim for a pace where I would do 9 floors every 2 minutes, and that would get me to the top in about 11:15 – 11:30 each time.

As you can see, I started out a little excited, and perhaps a little too fast. But the pace seemed easy enough for the first three climbs. By the fourth one, I was starting to drag, though. I think the sore-and-tired factor from the weekend caught up with me. But when I finished the fourth climb, I fished the other stopwatch out of my pocket, and I saw that I’d done the four climbs in comfortably less than an hour. Of course, the second hour will be harder than the first, but I think if I start fresh, without a long weekend of moving boxes, I think I have a chance at making the mile in two hours.

I’ll probably try for the vertical mile some time in March, after we get back from climbing the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas.

This past week, talk of alleged misconduct by the Los Angeles Police Department was in the news again. So I thought it was time to pay another visit to the man who unwittingly became the virtual ‘poster boy’ for LAPD misconduct, Rodney King.

It was a nice day for riding. A bit chilly in the morning, but it warmed up fast. The route took us through South Pasadena and Highland Park to the L.A. River bike path. Then we rode that up to the end on Riverside Drive. Then we rode over to Forest Lawn. After our experience at the Glendale Forest Lawn back in December, we made a point to stop at the information booth at the entrance to ask directions. That way, they knew why we were there, and it’s been our experience that they tend to be more accommodating when they know we’re there to actually visit someone.

We made our way up to the back of the cemetery, up on the hill. It’s actually a pretty picturesque location. Sadly, Mr King still does not have a headstone, which seems unfortunate. Even though it always seemed like he wanted to just be left alone, he became a figure in local history. Life is strange that way.

After the cemetery, we rode over the Priscilla’s in Burbank. It was a nice day to sit outside in the sun. That was where we saw the electric BMW parked across the street. Then we rode home by way of Hospital Hill and La Cañada. On the way back across Altadena, I saw that the Senior Center is showing a documentary about Brown v. Board of Education. Since that part of Altadena is largely a black neighborhood, it’s seemed appropriate.

It was a pleasant ride.

45 miles.

Last Thursday when I was on my way home from stair practice in downtown Los Angeles, I saw a sign in Union Station that said they were having a popsicle stick bridge-building competition there on Saturday. I love going to see engineering contests, so I thought this might make for a fun destination for a bike ride. So Silvio and I rode down there this morning to see it.

When we got downtown, I saw the first gas station I’ve seen with all its prices over $5.00. A sign of the times.

There were teams from a lot of local high schools there, all showing off their bridges and the story of how they built each one. It seemed that there was a bit of convergent evolution at work, since a lot of the bridges had similar looks, but there were some that were different. In particular, we talked to the faculty adviser for one of the teams, and he said that a careful reading of the contest rules said that in the final testing, force would only be applied right at the center of the bridge span. So their design did not have a lot of bracing at the ends, but had a very sturdy arch in the center. Clever. We talked to one of the other teams and asked them about the testing they had done on their bridge. They said that they had tested it up to some absurd weight over 500 pounds. That was impressive. It was fun to get to see and talk to so many nerdy high school kids.

Afterward, we headed home the same way we’d come. It was a nice day, but I needed to get back early. Still, it was a fun little diversion.

26 miles.

It’s Thursday evening, and time to torture myself on the stairs some more.

Tonight I wanted to try a new experiment for handling the middle section of stairs from 24 to 44. Because the floors are 22 steps each, doing double steps leads to an unbalanced pattern, where one leg is doing six doubles and the other is only doing five. In the past, I’ve tried both switching off which leg starts each floor, and also doing one single step at the beginning and the end of each floor. With the single-step strategy, I was able to do a pivot turn without an extra step on the landing, but because the landing is wide, I still ended up losing a fraction of a second on each landing due to the stretch. And doing doubles and switching which leg leads makes a balanced pattern at the cost of adding one extra step per floor. So tonight I wanted to try going with the unbalanced pattern and just adding the extra step to switch sides once every five floors. On the other two sections of stairs I’ve been switching off which leg does the extra work every five floors, and that’s worked well. So I figured doing this on the middle section would be balanced enough and still eliminate unnecessary steps.

I was on schedule all the way to 22, and I had a look at my watch at 24. But at that point I kind of lost track. I was keeping track of five floors at a time to decide when to switch which leg led off, and at the same time I was trying to keep track of six floor chunks to see if I was doing them in one minute according to plan. And it got to be too much. So I just gave up on the timekeeping and concentrated on trying to maintain my pace. And it worked well. I think the ‘switch legs every five floors’ strategy is a winner.

At 44, I took a quick look at my watch with the aim of seeing if I made it to 50 in one minute. And when I got to 50, I’d made the one minute target, and it was just a few seconds after eight minutes in. At that point, I knew I had a shot at beating my best time of 8:58. So I ramped up the pace for the last five floors. And when I heaved up onto the landing at 55, I had 8:58. Again. Still, I can’t complain. Last year, when we were climbing up to 60, I did 9:48, but I was only able to do that once. Oddly enough, that was on Valentine’s Day, too. That I’ve managed to do 8:58 twice is a good thing. Maybe next time I can beat it.

After a few minutes of rest, I headed back down to start up again. The second time up, my goal was just to follow the step pattern and try to go up non-stop. When I got to about 39, I could hear someone coming up behind me. I looked over the side and saw that it was Veronica, and as usual, she was moving fast. So I put on a little burst of speed just so I could make it to 44 ahead of her. Then I was able to hold open the two fire doors for her so she could go faster. Then I just sort of cruised up the last 11 floors to the top, and I was pleasantly surprised that I had made it up in 11:32. That’s not bad for a second time, especially when I’d gone fast the first time.

I went back to the bottom and hung around there talking for a while. I wasn’t sure I wanted to got up again. I was sort of hoping Amber and her entourage would show up and I could walk up with them. But they weren’t there tonight. So I finally just decided to do it.. Again, I was just sort of cruising. I was hoping to do about 12-12.5 seconds per floor, and I managed to get close to that. And when I got near the top, I could hear someone ahead of me. Leland had started up a little ahead of me, and I was catching up to him. So that gave me a little boost, and I picked up the pace for the last 10 floors to see if I could catch him. I didn’t catch up before the top, but I came close. And I did 11:14, which is really remarkable. I don’t think I’ve ever done a third climb that was faster than the second.

So all in all, it was a good evening in the stairwell. And on the way home, I saw a sign that they are having the popsicle stick bridge competition at Union Station on Saturday. I think I may have to ride down there to see it. I like seeing engineering contests.

It’s Tuesday, and that means time for more stairs. After doing the vertical kilometer last Thursday, I was ready to make another attempt to see if I could beat my best time so far of 8:58.

I brought my metronome tonight to try using it again. The last time I used it, I did a 9:01, which is my second-best time this season so far.

I set the metronome on 71, and I was all right with keeping up with it up to 20. I did all right through the little bit of weirdness between 20 and 24, but when I started up the second big set of stairs from 24 to 44, I was having trouble keeping up. I was fine while climbing the stairs, but I was losing time on every one of the big landings. The stairway has wide landings in this section, and I figured out a way to do a one-foot pivot turn on them, but it’s a stretch. And that stretch takes a non-trivial fraction of a second. So I was losing about half a beat on the metronome on every landing. If you look at the width of the landings and the number of them, you can see how this could add up to losing significant time:

So when I came out on the final set of stairs at 44, I was about 10-15 seconds behind schedule. I kept going, and when I got to 50, I looked at my watch and saw that it was just after 8 minutes. I figured I still might break 9 if I hit it for the last five floors. I ramped up the pace as best I could until I ran the last floor up to 55. I flopped on the landing and looked at my watch. I had a 9:01. Not a new best time, but tied with my second-best, so I can’t complain too much about that.

After a few minutes rest, and looking at the sunset colors, I headed back down to do it again. My plan for the second time was to go slow and steady and just try and make it up without stopping. And I did that, pretty much. But as you can see, it was considerably slower than the first time.

Still, all told, it wasn’t a bad outing.

This Sunday’s bike club ride was the ‘Random Ride to Whittier’. We haven’t done this once since 2011, so it was time again. We even had a couple of new riders along this time, so we made a point to stop for the photo-op at Dork St in Pico Rivera.

It was chilly and sort-of-partly-cloudy. We rode down the Rio Hondo bike path, and we could see off in the distance that it was solid overcast down south of us. But then, seemingly without warning, we were under that overcast, and it got colder. I was very glad at that point that I’d overdressed.

We stopped for at Dork St. It looked like they got a new street sign since the last time we were there.

The ride goes down into part of Whittier, and then loops back to the San Gabriel River bike path. When we were going over the Whittier Narrows Dam, we saw some people with little-kid trailers on their bikes. But then we saw that each trailer had a German Shepherd in it. That was novel. We took the bike path north all the way to Lower Azusa Rd, where we got off. We rode up Peck Rd into Monrovia and our snack stop at Merengue.

The route home was the direct way through Siera Madre, and it was time. It felt even colder by then, so we were all pretty glad to be done.

44 miles.

People in other parts of the country are fond of saying that there are no seasons in southern California. But we know that’s not true. Right here, we can see the changing seasons.

One morning, I was riding my bike to work, and I saw a film crew setting up some fake autumn trees in the front yard of a house near Caltech. Some time later that day, when they packed up the trees, some of the leaves fell off. So on my way home that afternoon, I picked up some fake fall leaves. And that evening, it changed from fall to winter. There was an ice truck parked in front of the house, and the next morning when I went by, there was snow on the roof of the house. We had two complete seasons in less than 24 hours.

It’s much more efficient that way.

Today, when I was thinking about stair practice this evening, I really didn’t want to push it for speed tonight. I got a little cold this week, and it’s in its final stage now, which means I’m coughing a lot. Add that to the stair-climber’s-cough, and that would make for an unpleasant evening. So I hatched a plan. I said, “I’ll just go there and do low-intensity. I’ll go slow. It’ll be easy. And since it’ll be easy, I’ll plan on going up five times. That will make a vertical kilometer. How hard could it be?”

Where have heard that before?

So that was the plan. A slow-paced vertical kilometer. That’s five times up the 51 floors from 4 to 55. 210 meters each time, for a total of 1,050 meters climbing. I planned on doing each time up in somewhere between 11:00 and 11:45, and I planned on trying to maintain a steady pace for every climb. The pace was about the same pace I did at the Towerthon in San Diego last summer, so it seemed reasonable.

When I got to the building, I signed in and got changed. There was no feeling of dread, since I knew I wasn’t going to go so hard that I’d end up collapsing on the floor or anything like that. So I just started my watch and headed up the stairs. I figured I should be at 13 by 2 minutes, 22 at 4 minutes, 31 at 6, and 40 at 8. That was aiming to be at the top in about 11 1/2 minutes. And when I got to the top, I just walked out of the stairs and went straight to the elevator to ride back to the lobby to do it again.

The first four times up were actually pretty easy. I maintained my pace, and my times were all pretty close. But the last time was hard. I was really dragging the fifth time up the stairs, and I was behind schedule by the first checkpoint. By the time I was halfway up, I knew I wasn’t going to make my cutoff of 11:45 on this trip. So, since it was the last one, I figured I’d push the last 10 floors or so and at least try to make it under 12 minutes. I ended up running the last four floors, but it wasn’t quite enough. Still, I can’t complain too much. I climbed the building five times. That’s 1,050 meters, 3,445 feet vertical, 5,630 steps total. The five climbs add up to 58:08 of actual up-the-stairs time. Each trip down in the elevator added about 4-5 minutes between trips up. At that rate, maybe one of these times I can try doing a vertical mile. I’d only have to go up three more times. I think I could fit that in in two hours. How hard could it be?

It’s another stair-climbing night, but nothing special happened this time. I went there with the intention of trying the same mental trick I used last Thursday, and seeing if I could equal or better that time. But it didn’t work out that way.

On the first climb, I was in trouble right from the start. My first time checkpoint was at 10, and I was already a couple seconds behind. I tried to pick up the pace, and I made it to 16 on schedule, but it kind of fell apart after that.

At 24 I started up the big middle third of the building, and I was dragging. I tried going back to my technique of doing the big pivot turn on the wide landings. That means a bit of a stretch on each landing, but it’s balanced, and it saves an extra step. I’m still not sure whether or not it’s worth it. More experimentation is in order. But tonight, even though the pattern felt smooth and steady, I kept falling off the pace by just a few seconds in each six-floor section. My goal is to do each six floors in one minute, and I was consistently falling behind by about three seconds each time. And when I finally heaved up onto the landing at 55, I had 9:10, which is a full 12 seconds slower than last Thursday.

After a few minutes of rest, I headed up a second time. I wasn’t trying for speed this time. Just to make it to the top without stopping. And I did, but I didn’t even bother timing it, since I know it was very slow.

Back at the bottom, I gave out some of the chocolate chip cookies I’d brought along, and thought about whether or not I wanted to do it again. But then I saw my friend Amber and her entourage show up, so I figured I could walk up with them. Then we could get to talk, and that would be a useful distraction from those intrusive ‘what the HELL were you THINKING doing this again!’ thoughts that come up when I’m climbing alone. So that made for a good third climb. Again, I didn’t time it, but that’s all right.

It was a good evening.