Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today was the latest practice session at One California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles. So far this season, I’ve been doing well at these, doing way better times than last year, and improving my times nearly every time out. So far, my best effort was 7:21 last week on Monday.

Today was not a very promising start. My knee was hurting a little bit yesterday when I did the Millikan Library stairs. So I took some ibuprofen before getting on the train to go downtown.

All the usual crowd was there. Again, I let a big group go ahead, just for the sake of having people to pass. I figure it’s good practice, and it’s also a psychological boost. So when I started up, there was a fair amount of traffic. But that was all right. I got past all of them by about the 20th floor, and then it was kind of lonely the rest of the way up. I’m really not sure which I like better.

I took a quick look at my watch at about 37, and I saw I was on track to do a good time. That was nice, and it sort of perked me up for the last 5-6 floors. And when I got to the top, I saw that I’d made it up in 7:16. This is my best time to date, and it’s five seconds faster than my previous best. And perhaps best of all, this marks the first time I’ve generated 300 watts of usable power in a stair climb:

77kg*175m*9.8 = 132,055J
7:16 -> 436sec
132,055J/436sec = 303W

And this works out to be just a tiny bit over 0.4 horsepower. This is great!

The only downside of the whole adventure was that the Gold Line was having mechanical problems. There was a a problem with the overhead wire and a couple of dead trains blocking one of the tracks, so they had to run single-track, and that turned the trip home into an epic journey. But it was worth it.

There was a fairly large earthquake in Virginia today. Magnitude 5.8, which was strong enough to be felt as far north as Toronto. This is an unusual event, and it brought the news trucks out to the office for the first time in quite a while.

My Pet Project told me about the earthquake first, with a message that it had been detected by the Alaska Tsunami Warning Center’s seismic network. Given that this was an unusual location for an earthquake that large, I wanted to get independent verification that it was real. So I had a look at Twitter. And sure enough, there were people talking about it already. So I had a look at the web servers to see that they were doing all right, and I checked on the ENS (aka My Pet Project) database to be sure it was doing all right. Then I headed across the street.

Channel 7 was the first to arrive. Seeing that first news truck after an earthquake is like seeing the first robin of spring. Soon, we had a large collection of them parked all around the building, and they filled up the media room for the quick press conference that was organized for the occasion.

It’s always entertaining watching the media frenzy after an earthquake. So it made for a fun afternoon. And ENS picked up over 2,600 new subscribers today. It still boggles my mind that something I invented is being used by more than 280,000 people.

Today was another practice session at One Cal Plaza in downtown Los Angeles. Last week, I’d made my best effort to date, climbing the 42 stories in 7:21. I was hoping to better that today.

There was a big group there for the practice. When they started letting us into the stairs, I didn’t try to get in front. I wanted a lot of people to pass this time, since that always gives me a good psychological boost. So I waited a few minutes before starting out. And I passed a lot of people. There was only one time when the traffic got thick enough to slow me down a bit, and I managed to get through that pretty fast. I had a quick look at my watch at the halfway point and saw that I was on track for a decent time.

At 41, I managed to pull out a little extra energy, and I sprinted up the last two floors. At the top, I stopped my watch and saw that I’d done it in 7:25. A classic example of regression to the mean. So it wasn’t unexpected, and I’m not unhappy. 7:25 is still my second-best time yet on these stairs. I’m consistently going much faster than I was this time last year.

Today’s bike club ride was another odd sightseeing route, this time featuring two items I found on Roadside America. One was the sea monsters playground at Vincent Lugo Park in San Gabriel, and the other was the F-86 Sabre Jet in Palm View Park in West Covina.

A number of our regular riders rode the Cool Breeze Century on Saturday, so we had a small group today, but that’s all right. We headed down through San Marino to San Gabriel. When we got to the first park, it was closed off, and the grounds were all torn up. It looks like they are redoing the landscaping. We rode around the block to the back of the park, and we could see that the playground was still there. It’s just closed for the time being while the rest of the park is being renovated.

From there, we headed straight east out to West Covina. The Roadside America listing made it sound like the airplane was a real airplane body, but when we got there, we found that it’s actually a full-size model cast in concrete. Still, it’s just the sort of thing that certain kids would really enjoy.

Our snack stop was at Panera in West Covina, and then we came home by way of Santa Fe Dam and the bike path. It was a nice ride.

44 miles.

Some years ago, I read a very funny book called Eat this Book: A Year of Gorging and Glory on the Competitive Eating Circuit. It was hilarious. So when Kathleen found out that there was going to be an IFOCE-sanctioned eating contest right here in Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles, I knew we had to go see it.

The contest was gyoza eating. The time was 10 minutes. The record was somewhere over 200. So this promised to be quite a spectacle. When we got there, the announcer was stirring up the crowd and getting everyone ready for the main event. There were two tables. One for amateurs, and one for the professional eaters. One seat at the amateur table had been reserved to be auctioned off for charity, and the winner paid $60 to sit in it.

They had a big parade and introduction of the pros. All were ranked in the top 50 in competitive eating. Like professional wrestlers, they all made their own distinctive entrances, and each had a theme song. The eating hadn’t even started, and this was already a tremendously entertaining spectacle.

Then it was time for the contest. The announcer counted down, and the eating commenced. And it was epic. I’d figured out that they would have to average something like one gyoza every 2.5 seconds to even have a chance at winning. But I really had no idea what that would look like. But I saw that that translated into the gurgitators stuffing many gyoza into their mouths at once. The chewed a little bit and then washed it all down with a little bit of water or whatever was their drink of choice.

One thing that I think would have made this better would have been a large clock to count down the time. The announcer counted down, first by minutes, and then by seconds the last minute, but I think that having a large clock would have really helped the drama. In any event, he counted down the last 10 seconds and called time. Apparently, the rules allow for the contestants to stuff as much food as they want into their mouths before time is called. As long as they swallow it, it’s all all right. So the final seconds had all the contestants stuffing massive numbers of gyoza into their mouths, and they ended up looking like demented chipmunks with their bulging cheeks.

Along the way, only one contestant suffered a ‘reversal of fortune‘, and that was the guy who had won the charity auction for the final seat at the amateur table. Well, regardless, he had a unique experience.

When it was all over, they tallied the results, and the winner had eaten 264 gyosa. That works out to an average of one gyoza every 2.36 seconds for the 10 minutes of the contest. Just the thought of that makes me queasy. At last, I’ve found a sport that’s even more insane than the one I like to compete in.

It was a fun little outing.

Today was yet another stair climbing practice at One California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles. 42 stories, and, well, a weird sort of ‘fun’.

There was a big group today, and by the time I got there, there were already many, many people on their way up the stairs. Of course, that meant that there were many, many people for me to pass. So I headed on up.

It’s kind of a mixed bag for me when there are a lot of people on the stairs. On the one hand, I get a psychological boost from passing people. But on the other hand, passing people tends to break my rhythm and slow me down. So it’s good and bad at the same time. Last fall, when I was doing the U.S. Bank tower stair climb, there were several times where I had to pass people, and it sometimes took me several flights to get past them. This was frustrating, since the flights are very short, and if you don’t get past someone on the first flight, you have to take the long way around on the landing, and you lose most of the ground you gained. So this time, I resolved that I was not going to lose ground. Any time I was forced to pass on the outside, I was going to just have to put on a little burst of speed. Just enough to get past them on one flight. Yes, that hurt. But it was better than the frustration of having to spend several flights passing.

I only looked at my watch at the 7th and 20th floors. At the time, I could see that I was on track to do a decent time. I was hoping to do as well as I did last Monday, or maybe a second or two better. But when I got to the top, I saw that I’d done it in 7:21. That’s a full seven seconds faster than my time last Monday, and 45 seconds faster than my time last year.

This is great!

It’s Art Walk night in downtown Los Angeles again. We missed it last month, but this time we didn’t have any conflicts. So Lucinda and I went downtown for it. We met up with Kathleen, who brought Melissa and Emily along.

The first order of business was to find the fabled gourmet food trucks. Every time we go, it seems like they are in a different place. This time, they were all in one parking lot at the north end of the gallery district. We wandered around, looking at all the choices. Kathleen and I both decided to have the Guerilla Fried Chicken. It was a bit odd, and very good. Never had fried chicken with bearnaise sauce before. We followed that up with an ice cream sandwich with chocolate chip cookies and salted caramel ice cream. Yum.

After that, we got down to wandering the galleries and looking at the art. As always, there was a wide variety of things on display, ranging from meh to good to very disturbing. I like the disturbing ones. We wandered around until the galleries started closing down, which was around 10. It was a fun little Thursday night outing.

Today was another stair climbing practice session at One California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles. So far, I’ve been doing very well at the practice climbs, since I’ve taken more than 30 seconds off my time from last year. But sadly, today was not another record for me. This time, I made it up the 42 stories in 7:33. This is 5 seconds slower than last time.

After seeing my time, I wanted to try again to see if I could do better. What was I thinking? I’m very goal-oriented, and my goal in these things is to make it to the top of the stairs. After that, it’s really hard to get motivated to do it again. So the second time up was hell. Not Hell, but just hell. Just sort of a low-grade “what was I thinking, doing this again” sort of thing. I started out strong, but by the time I got to the 20th floor, I knew that this was not going to a record-setting climb. But I toughed it out and made it to the top. I was about a minute slower than the first time, but that’s all right.

They can’t all be gems. Still, that’s pretty good compared to my time from last year. And (dare I say it?) I think I’m on track to do the U.S. Bank tower climb in 14 minutes or so. That would be great.

On the way out, I had a chance to look up a the U.S. Bank tower. And I had a brief “what the HELL was I thinking when I signed up for this?” moment. But then it passed. So overall, this was a good evening.

Today was yet another stair climbing practice session at One California Plaza in downtown Los Angeles. 42 floors. 577 feet. I have no idea how many steps, but probably about 900*. Yes, it was time for more ‘fun’.

I didn’t have to go anywhere afterward, so I rode the train in from Pasadena. For some completely unexplained reason, they lowered the price of the Metro Rail day pass from $6 to $5. Well, I can’t complain about that. The train dropped me off at Pershing Square, and I walked over to the downtown YMCA.

I tried a new experiment today. Every time I’m going to go practice, I always wish I had something to wear that had a way to carry my wallet, camera, keys, and so forth. And today I just realized that I have lots of such things. I wear them every time I go bike riding. So, armed with this knowledge, I brought one of my Caltech bike jerseys along to wear for the climb. And it worked well. I had to put the camera in a plastic bag to protect it from the sweat, but aside from that, the scheme worked well.

There was a good group there for the practice session. When I got there, there were a lot of people already on their way up, including at least one fireman in full gear. I stood at the bottom for a few minutes, wondering what the hell I was thinking when I’d decided to do this yet again. But I finally started up the stairs. I passed a lot of people on the way up, and I made it to the top in 7:28, which is a good two seconds faster than last week. Even though going a second or two faster isn’t all that significant, it still beats last Spring. When I was practicing at the Aon building, I was going six seconds slower every time. That was frustrating. So I’m not complaining at all now. This is good.

* That’s based on 577 feet divided by the typical skyscraper stair step height of 7.7 inches.

Today’s bike club ride was the route out to La Puente to see the Donut Hole. The last time we did this ride was back in January. That was the day we saw the Weinermobile. It was a perfect summer day for riding.

ON the way out, we passed the original In-N-Out Burger location in Baldwin Park. The sign is all that’s left now.

At the Donut Hole, there was an empty bucket of apple filling. That was perfect to balance the camera on for our picture.

Continuing on, we passed the house with the plastic reindeer permanently mounted by the driveway gate. It was right around there where I first heard my bike making a little ticking noise. When we got to a nice shady spot, I stopped and had a look. That was when I saw the staple stuck in my tire. So Carla took the camera and got my flat tire picture.

On the way back, we stopped off to see the big new Huy Fong Foods building in Irwindale. They’re coming along nicely, and when it’s done, they’ll be able to make veritable oceans of hot sauce there.

When we rode up the bike path through Santa Fe Dam, we could see that there was still quite a bit of water coming down from the mountains. For August, this is remarkable.

Our snack stop was at Merengue in Monrovia. Then we headed home. It was a nice ride.

44 miles.