Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Route map

Today’s ride was the “Newton’s Nemesis” route. This is the one that travels from Pasadena to Duarte, going up each steep canyon hill along the way. It’s got something like 3,200 feet of climbing. We’ve done this ride before. And it never fails to please. Or to hurt, for that matter.

We headed out from Victory Park and rode up the first canyon in Sierra Madre. Then we went down the hill all the way to Foothill, and then back up Santa Anita to get to the canyon in Arcadia. This is the steepest hill on the route, and it’s the only one where I had to say ‘uncle’ and shift. We were pretty high up. When I got to the top, I saw a house for sale with a sign promising “View! View! View!” And yes, there was a view.

Gene and Karen had skipped the Arcadia canyon hill, and when we came down, we found them fixing a flat on Karen’s bike. So I took the requisite picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

When we got to Monrovia, we rode up a couple more steep canyons. We saw some deer munching on someone’s front-yard garden. Then we came back down and started the flat portion of the ride.

We rode out to Duarte and then got on the San Gabriel River bike path and rode down to Santa Fe Dam. Randy and Newton took off and decided that they wanted to go fast. So I just got behind them and drafted all the way around the top of the Dam. I told them I wasn’t going to pull, but I just stayed on their wheels and enjoyed a nice fast ride.

Our snack stop was at Planet Cookies in Monrovia. They had run out of orange juice, so I got an enormous piece of carrot cake instead. For some reason, it seemed like the thing to do at the time.

On the way home, we passed a little drive-in dairy in Monrovia. It has new owners, and they now have a big fiberglass cow wearing a lei out front. So of course I had to get a picture of it. Maybe next time I’ll get my picture taken with it, too.

It was a fun ride.

42 miles.
cycling

Today’s club ride was out to Claremont, which I wanted to go on , since Claremont is a sentimental favorite place for me. It was where I first spent time away from home, and it was also where some of my best bike racing memories come from.

We met at Arcadia Park and headed out. The route was pretty much straight east, and it was pretty flat. About the only unusual thing that happened was when I got a flat in Azusa. We were riding down Foothill Blvd when I noticed that my front tire was going soft. It was odd, since it wasn’t leaking very fast. So we rode a bit more until we turned off on onto a quieter street, where I sat down to fix it. That was when I saw the nail in the tire. At least it wasn’t a mystery. I put in a new tube, and Gene took the obligatory picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

When we got to Claremont, we went to a bagel place the Gene knew. The town looked pretty much the same as it did back in 1978, which is pretty remarkable. We had our bagels and then we started back.

The route back went down Gladstone, which is a nice street for riding. It’s about 1% downhill. Not enough to see, but enough that you can ride really fast and feel like a champ. Gene set the pace, and he towed us all the way back to Irwindale at high speed. I said he was riding like he’d just remembered that he left the iron on at home.

We rode into the Santa Fe Dam area and then up the bike path to get back to Duarte. Then it was straight west to home. When I got home, I had 58.5 miles, so I rode around the neighborhood a bit just so I could see “60″ on my odometer.

60 miles.
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There’s a vacant former furniture store on Colorado Blvd here, and the windows have been given over to local artists. Cathy and I were walking by there recently, and we both liked this one. I can’t really explain why.

Route map

Last weekend we went to the “Cone Migration” art show at Bandini Art in Culver City. This was a show of art made by Lana Shuttleworth, using orange traffic cones that she released on city streets and later collected. It was also sort of an interactive art show in that visitors were encouraged to take a cone to “release into the wild”. Of course I thought this would make for an interesting and amusing bike ride with the regular Sunday group.

I strapped the 8-pound cone on my back, using a Jansport pack, a belt, and some packing tape. The trick was to get it to stay point-down. Once I figured that out, it was fine. I rode down to Victory Park to meet the group.

As it turned out, there were a lot of people on the ride this week who had not been there last week when I had suggested this activity. So I had to tell them the story of the the cone migration and art and all that. They all thought it sounded funny, so we were off.

Riding with the cone wasn’t too bad, aside from the weight of it. It was attached pretty close to my center of gravity, so it didn’t throw my balance off. I was even able to trackstand normally at traffic lights. I also could not feel any difference in wind resistance, even though it certainly looked like it had to be adding a lot of drag.

We rode out of Pasadena, across Eagle Rock and into Glendale. At one point, a guy who wasn’t with our group passed us. I couldn’t resist chasing him, and I was able to settle into a fast pace line with no problem. The cone didn’t cause any problems with drafting.

We rode into Griffith Park and then down to Los Feliz. We had to stop for a bit to fix a flat, but that gave me some time to take a sightseeing picture with the cone in front of the Mulholland Fountain.

Next, we headed up into Elysian Park. We were going to make a sightseeing stop and release the cone at the Los Angeles Fire Department training center and the World Trade Center memorial there. When we got there, the gate was closed, but then some of the other riders found another gate that was open. So we all went in and looked at the steel column and plaque there. Then we placed the cone just outside the gate, recording the location and date on the cone label, and also taking a picture of the GPS unit to show the actual coordinates of the release.

After the release, I felt much lighter. We continued down the hill into Chinatown. We stopped for a shack at Philippe’s on Alameda. Then we headed home by the direct route. Up Main to Mission, and then Huntington all the way back to San Marino. Then straight up Sierra Madre Blvd back to the park.

It was a perfect day for riding, and it was a fun ride and fun to participate in an art project.

Because this was a special ride, I made a separate gallery for the photos. They are here:

www.1134.org/gallery/conereleaseride

42 miles.
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Today was the Last Lunchtime Ride. Or at least the last the Vikki will be on. She’s moving back to Canada next week. So Eric and I went riding with her today to give her a good send-off.

We did a slightly different route today. It was similar to the Lida Loop that we do, but climbs the hill on Inverness and St Katherine. But the rest of the ride was the same. It was a perfect day, and we had a nice time.

18 miles at lunch, 27 for the day.
cycling

We got new carpet today. After 12 years in this house, the carpet was pretty well worn out. We went looking at the beginning of the summer, and nothing really impressed us. But then we saw a sample of leopard-print carpet. That one spoke to us. Everyone who knows us will say something like, “Stan and Cathy got leopard carpet? Yeah, that fits.” And Lucinda likes it, too. You know what they say about the fruit and the tree.

So here it is, in all its glory.

Route map

Today’s ride was a flat one. Out to the east through Monrovia, then out to Gendora and Covina. And then back to Monrovia for a stop at Planet Cookies. The route map above is accurate, except for the part where we took the bike path from Duarte to Azusa. Google Maps doesn’t know about bike paths.

When I was on my way down to the park to meet the group, I saw a bunch of Marines running down the road. I’d heard them going by my house and chanting earlier.

The ride was very flat and we went pretty fast. One odd thing that happened was when Don got his chain wedged in the front derailleur, and the cage got bent a little bit. So we stopped and he used the hook on the end of his prosthetic arm to bend it back into place. We were wondering if he had a vise-grip attachment for it.

When we got to Planet Cookies, we managed to get Vikki to tell her story about the geology field trip to the Yukon and the bear. And once again, it was a good story, complete with pointy sticks, guns, and trying to make a bear carcass ‘disappear’ Mob-style.

After the stop, we headed home. It was a nice ride, and we did it quite fast. I was home quite a bit earlier than normal. But this was good, since I had to get cleaned up so we could go see “In the Shadow of the Moon” today. And yes, the movie was very good.

46 miles.
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Our afternoon art adventure was a trip out to Culver City to Bandini Art to see the “Cone Migration” show. This show is all art made from traffic cones. Lana Shuttleworth placed cones all over Los Angeles and let them get beat up by traffic. Then she collected them and made art out of them. It’s an interesting idea, and the art she made was very nice.

It’s also an interactive art in a way. They had a pile of cones in front of the gallery, and visitors are encouraged to take one and ‘release it’ somewhere. So of course, we had to do this. I thought it would make for an interesting piece of performance art to take the cone along on a bike ride and place it somewhere. When we were leaving, we picked out a cone to take along.

Since we were out on the West Side, I wanted to go see the Museum of Jurassic Technology. This is sort of an art project museum on Venice Blvd. It’s kind of like entering the world of “Eraserhead“, which I thought was amusing, but Cathy found somewhat disturbing. It’s filled with lots of strange things, including an entire room devoted to memorializing the dogs of the Soviet Space program. They had large oil portraits of the dogs, including a special shrine for Laika with a little candle and a quote from Tsiolkovsky.

We all enjoyed the cone exhibit. And I liked the Jurassic Technology. It was all very deeply weird, but I like stuff like that.

I didn’t have time to do a long ride today, since we are heading out to some art galleries later. So I went for a short ride.

I saw a couple of abandoned couches. I rode up and over a nice steep hill in Glendale. I stopped in at Forest Lawn to look for Joe Besser’s grave. I wasn’t able to find it, largely because I didn’t have my reading glasses and I couldn’t read the tiny names on the map. But on the way home, I found Waldo. So I did accomplish something today..

29 miles.
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Route map

Since Vikki is going to be moving back to Canada soon, we’re not going to get to go on our lunchtime rides for much longer. So we did one today. It was the usual ‘flat’ route out to Monrovia and back.

On 5th Ave in Arcadia I got a flat. So of course, we had to get a picture.

There is a little mouse-hole of a tunnel under the railroad tracks in Arcadia, and we take that to continue north on 5th Ave. Today, there was an actual train on the tracks there. In 12 years living in this area, this is first time I’ve seen a train on those tracks. It wasn’t much of a train. Three locomotives and no cars. But it was still interesting, since I like trains, and I didn’t even know they still ran on those tracks.

And that was it. It was a nice ride.

19 miles at lunch, 27 for the day.
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Route map

Today at lunchtime I did the regular Lida ride again. I like this one on hot days, since it ends with two miles downhill.

There wasn’t much remarkable along the way, aside from the Edison electric car that passed me in Altadena. It was nice and quiet. I wish there were more like it on the road.

On the way home, I had to stop off to do an errand, and so I ended up taking a slightly different route home. That’s where I saw a very odd house. It looked like it wasn’t quite done yet, since the driveway was dirt, and it looked like there was still construction going on. It’s not quite as odd as Rubel’s Castle in Glendora, but it’s easily a match for the Viking house in Tujunga. But no matter what, it was an odd house. I like it.

18 miles at lunch, 27 for the day.
cycling

Last night, we were awakened at 02:45 by chain saws and a wood chipper running down the street. A big branch had fallen off one of the trees, and a city forestry crew was out cleaning it up.

This has happened before. And as always, I marvel at how efficient the city services are here in Pasadena. But at the same time, I was wondering if perhaps there might be a point where they are too efficient. It might not have hurt to let that branch just stay in the street until morning…

Route map

Today’s ride was a new route that Gene calls “Green Olive, but no Martini”. As you can see, we went on Green and Olive, so there you have it.

Before we even got out of Pasadena, JJ got a flat. So I got a picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

We headed up into La Cañada, where I saw yet another mailbox with hot-rod flames. This makes five now. Pretty soon, I’ll have to make a special photo album just for them.

A little while later, in La Crescenta, I found yet another abandoned couch. So I got a picture for the Abandoned Couches Blog.

After lots of fun riding up and down the hills in La Crescenta, we headed down the hill into Glendale. Then we turned left and went up Mountain Ave. This street is aptly-named. It’s a good climb, and it just keeps on giving. Every time it looks like you’re at the top, there’s a little more. But there was a nice view of downtown Los Angeles from the top. It made a nice backdrop to the pictures of Ben and Gene cresting the hill.

We came down the hill and headed back into Pasadena. Our snack stop was at the Corner Bakery on Lake Ave. And then we headed home. It was a perfect day and a nice ride.

42 miles.
cycling

Route map

Today’s ride was Gene’s “No Tuna for Me” route. This is a ride through Burbank to Sun Valley, and then back by a route that completely avoids La Tuna Canyon. Not that La Tuna Canyon is a bad thing. Some of us like riding up four-mile hills. But Gene’s route is a nice quiet way through the horse territory of Los Angeles, so it’s pretty nice.

We headed out under perfect skies. It was another insufferably nice day in Southern California. We crossed Eagle Rock and into Glendale. That was where I saw the telephone pole that has apparently had a few signs posted on it over the years.

When we got up to Sun Valley, we saw a sight that should strike terror in just about anyone: a bus with “Student Driver” on the back. Apparently, there’s a bus driving school there. Who knew?

Heading up into the hills, we left the garbage dump and auto wrecking yards behind, and entered the place where all the houses have horses. We saw one house with what looked like a sculpture garden in the riding ring.

Coming out on Sunland Blvd, we crossed the 210 freeway and then turned off for the ride through Tujunga. We rode up Apperson, which is a nice quiet street. We thought we’d be able to see the Viking House we saw a few weeks ago. But it was not to be. We turned off on Tujunga Canyon Road to head down to Montrose. That was where we saw a couch apparently abandoned after a hard night of partying.

When we got to Montrose we stopped at Berolina Bakery. The eclair there was quite good, yet not quite as good as the ones at Paradise Bakery in Glendale.

Finally, we headed home by the usual route. When I got back to the park, I had 46 miles, so I rode around for a little bit more just because “50″ looks so nice on the bike computer display.

50 miles.
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So I’ve been writing down my old bike racing stories, and I told the story of how I got my Category 2, back in 1977. But there’s one more piece to the story. After the race in Maine, I sent my license off to the USCF New Jersey representative. A few days later, it came back with a nice little “2″ sticker next to “Category”. I was immensely pleased. So pleased, in fact, that I wanted to use it immediately. And I had a perfect chance.

On Sunday, September 4th, 1977 there was a race in Harrisburg, PA. This was a criterium around the State Capitol building. The course was four corners, flat, and just under 1 mile around. The first picture is a screenshot showing the location of the course. The feature race that day was 40 miles for Category 2 and 3. This was unusual, since 1 and 2 usually rode together. So of course I decided that that was the race I was going to ride.

The 2+3 pack was pretty big. Probably close to 100 riders at the start. I remember that two guys broke away relatively early, and I missed it. But a little later, I took off to try to start a second breakaway. A guy I knew named Clarence came along. He was from New York, and I knew him from racing at Kissena Velodrome, and I knew he was strong. So we were good to go. A third guy joined us, but I didn’t know him. The photo shows when we were first starting the breakaway. I’m on the right, and Clarence is on the left. We got within sight of the front breakaway, but we weren’t able to catch them. But we still got a good lead on the pack, and we held it to the finish.

Coming out of the last corner, I didn’t even try to contest the sprint. I just rolled across in 5th place. I figured that that was a pretty good showing for a Junior rider’s first outing in Cat 2.

Route map

Noel Coward said “Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun“. and I guess that includes me now, too. Today we all went to Orange County for the day. Cathy was going out for her birthday lunch with her sister. Lucinda was going to spend the afternoon with Grandma and Grandpa. So I brought my bike along to go for a ride. I figured it was bound to be cooler there, near the coast.

When we got there, it was in fact cooler. It was only about 100, rather than the 105 or so in Pasadena. Yup, that helped a lot. But my plan was to ride down to the beach at Dana Point. I figured it would probably be cooler there.

The first part of the ride felt like standing in front of a 15,000,000-watt blow dryer. The heat was searing my eyeballs. I stopped off for a picture at the Federal Building in Laguna Niguel, aka “The Ziggurat”. I went to a bike race there back in 1978. I watched, but didn’t ride, since there was no race for my category that day. But I remembered the building, so I wanted to see it again.

As I got closer to the beach, I could feel a difference as I crested each hill. It got, well, less hot. But it was still hot when I got close enough to see the ocean. It wasn’t until I got on Pacific Coast Highway that it actually started to feel cool.

I stopped at the park by the beach to refill my water bottle. I rode along the beach for a few miles. It was still hot by beach standards, but it felt good. I saw the southbound Amtrak Surfliner go by right before I turned around to head back.

When I turned to head home, I realized that I’d been having a tail wind all the way down there, but it wasn’t bad. It was a cool headwind, so it felt good. I headed back up into Dana Point, stopped at a liquor store to buy a bottle of orange juice, and then I turned north and headed up the hill away from the beach.

It got hot again as soon as I was out of sight of the beach. Then I got a flat. I was alone, so I had to fix the tire and take the picture myself.

The rest of the ride back was pretty uneventful. South Orange County is in many ways a bicycle paradise. Most of the major roads have bike lanes, and the drivers are generally pretty well-mannered. But Orange County is also Master-Planned and Sanitized for Your Protection. This is the part that I don’t care for. But there are aspects of it that are funny. Costco has its own traffic light and street sign.

By the time I got up to Irvine, I was out of water and looking for somewhere to get something more to drink. Then I noticed my bike making a weird noise. I looked and saw that I’d lost one of my front brake pads. I took this as a sign that it was time to stop. So I turned and headed straight for home. I found another liquor store and bought a quart-bottle of Gatorade and chugged it. Then I finished the ride.

It was a fun time, even with the seared eyeballs.

40 miles.
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Route map

It’s still hot as hell here, but that didn’t stop us from riding today. We just didn’t go quite as far as usual, and the route was pretty flat. There really wasn’t much remarkable about it, aside from the heat. Our snack stop was at Noah’s Bagels on South Lake Ave in Pasadena. And the rest of the ride was one of those ‘just noodling around going nowhere in particular’ rides. But it was still a fun time.

38 miles.
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Route map

It’s #$%^&! hot today. Today’s ride was into Downtown Los Angeles, and then up into Griffith Park.

We met at the Elks Lodge in Pasadena, and then headed out by way of Highland Park to get into downtown L.A. Then we headed straight west on Olympic to Western Ave, which took us up to Griffith Park. I found two photo opportunities on Western. The first was Stan’s Adult Superstore. I make a minor hobby of collecting pictures of businesses with my name on them. The second was Pink Elephant Liquor. Not quite as funny as Hammered Liquor, but it’s still pretty good.

Then we got to the park and headed up the hill. We stopped for a snack and drinks at The Trails in Fern Dell. It was very pleasant there in the shade. It couldn’t have been more than 95 degrees.

When we left there, we headed up the hill to see the newly reopened Griffith Observatory. It looks pretty good. You can hardly tell that they dug up the whole hillside to build a big building underground. We also got to see where the fire burned up the park last May.

Coming down the hill, we took Avocado St to get to Rowena so we could take the regular route home through Eagle Rock. When we were riding across the L.A. River, I noticed that my front tire was going soft. So we found a shady spot and I sat down to fix it. I put in the spare tube and pumped it up. Then, when I went to put the wheel back on the bike, I saw that the back tire had gone flat. So I had to take the tube out and patch it. But then we finally got back on the road.

It got hotter and hotter as we headed back to Pasadena. When I got home, the thermometer on my back porch said it was a nice even 106 (42C). But aside from that, it was a very pleasant ride.

41 miles.
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