Stan’s Obligatory Blog

A few days ago, I got a reminder email from the Academy Museum that the “Cyberpunk” exhibit was closing Sunday. I hadn’t even heard about this, so I decided I needed to go see this. So I made arrangements with my friend John to go see it on Friday.

The “Cyberpunk” exhibit was smaller than I’d hoped, but still very good. There was a video presentation with clips from films from “Tron” to “Ex Machina” to the present day. Then, in the second floor gallery, they had some artifacts, with a phone booth from “Blade Runner”, a costume from “Tron”, concept art drawings and props from several movies. All in all, it was entertaining.

And when we came out of the second floor gallery, we saw that the big 50th anniversary exhibit about “Jaws” was next door. So we went to see that. There were a lot of original props from the movie, and video presentations about topics from making the film, including some Super-8 film clips taken on the set. One piece was about John Williams and the music. They had a little keyboard with keys that lit up as cues so you could play the shark music right there. There was also a montage of clips from many, many films and TV shows with a “…gonna need a bigger…” scenes. Which gives an idea of the cultural impact of the movie.

Overall, it was a fun afternoon.

On Friday, I went to the Southern California Railway Museum in Perris. I’d been there once before, back in 1995, and I’d been thinking of going back again. When I looked at their web site, I saw the Run One Program, and I immediately thought of Sandi, who I met some years ago through Atlas Obscura. She likes to do unusual and obscure things. At first I guessed she’d already done this, since she finds ways to see and do lots of things. But when I asked her, she said she hadn’t done this yet. So I told her I thought we should go do it.

They have two operational examples of the Pacific Electric Red Cars, so I made arrangements for us to have a one-hour session in each of them. That way, we could both drive and ride in each of the two cars.

First up was the 717 “Hollywood” car. They had set it up on the loop track around the museum grounds. We were met by Carson, who is in charge of maintaining the Red Cars. He gave us a short tutorial about how to operate the car, and took us once around the loop. After that, it was my turn to drive. I ran the car a few times around the loop, which was a fun little experience. Then Sandi had a turn to drive it. And before long, our first hour was up, and it was time to move on.

The second Red Car was the 418 “Blimp” car, so-called because it was much larger than the 717. It was set up for us on the “main line” track, which is about a half-mile of straight track. We got the tutorial on how to operate it, and Sandi took the first turn. At the end, we had to turn around, which involved setting the car up to run in the opposite direction. We had to put the pole on the back end of the car up on the wire, and bring the front pole down. I was able to put the pole on the wire, but I couldn’t see the hook on the roof to stow the pole we took down, so Carson had to help us out there. Turning the car around also involved closing and opening valves for the air brakes, and moving the brake handle and operator’s key to the other end of the car. We drove it back and forth several times, and it was an interesting experience.

Each car had a “dead man” switch that had to be held down all the time the car was in motion. The throttles and brakes felt very different on the two cars, so driving each one was a distinctly different experience.

Overall, this was a fun little adventure, and I’m glad to have done it. Also glad to have found something that Sandi hadn’t already done, and to help her to have the chance to do it.

It’s not generally well-known that we have the Wende Museum in Culver City, which is a museum dedicated to the history of the Cold War. And because of the Wende Museum, we have the largest piece of the Berlin Wall outside of Germany. It’s on Wilshire Blvd, across the street from Hancock Park and the tar pits, and it’s just a few blocks from Park La Brea and the Jessica Cafe inside.

The day started out cold, but it warmed up nicely. So it was a good day for riding.

45 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Back in 1998, I went to an airshow with some restored WWII bombers. Over the years, I went to see them a couple other times:

bombers in Burbank 2003

bombers in Burbank 2012

Each time, they offered rides in them, but was only this time that I decided to sign up for the ride.

The actual flight was only about a half-hour, and it was impossible to forget for even a second that we were flying in an actual antique airplane. These machines were built for a very specific purpose, and the comfort of the occupants was very low on the list. It was amazingly loud in there, even with some pretty serious earplugs. Once we were stably airborne, they let us get up out of our seats and walk around, with the important caveat to always, always be holding on to something. This airplane is really quite small by today’s standards, and it bounced up and down a good bit. We never got terribly high up. They said we had to be at least something like 2,000 feet above the ground, since we were flying over suburbia. I’ve been through that area many times on the freeway, but you just don’t get a sense of how many houses have been built all over the hills there. And any place that didn’t have houses on it, was obviously graded and set up to build streets and still more houses.

In any event, it was in interesting adventure, and I now have much more of an appreciation of what the guys who flew those planes during the war went through. Sure, when they were flying them, the planes weren’t antiques, but at the same time, they were being shot at, which is far, far worse.

A couple weeks ago, my friend Gordon called me up and said, “They’re having an Open House at the Trinity Site on April 2nd. Want to go?” Gordon and I met sharing a cubicle at McDonnell Douglas back in 1982, where our department was all about nuclear weapons effects. And back then, we talked about wanting to someday go visit the Trinity Site. And it only took us 40 years to get around to it. But here we are.

We made arrangements to fly in from Los Angeles and New York, and meet in Albuquerque. I’ve been thinking about how much fun it was back in the ’80s when we had convertibles, so I arranged to rent us one for this trip.

On Saturday morning, we headed south on I-25 for something like 80 miles or so from Albuquerque to get to the site. Apparently this is a Big Thing, since there were many hundreds of people there, all for the same reason we were. There were tables set up at the edge of the parking lot with information about the Trinity test, and people to answer questions. There was a table with some samples of trinitite, along with Geiger Counters to show us that it was in fact radioactive. There was also a big trailer with a full-scale mockup of the Fat Man bomb, which was the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, as well as the same design as the ‘gadget’ that was tested at Trinity. And of course, there was the monument built at the spot that was under the tower where they assembled and detonated the ‘gadget’. Everyone wanted to get a picture with the monument, and we were no exception.

They had told us that it was still possible to find little bits of trinitite around the site, so we walked around a bit, scanning the ground, and we found a few pieces. They were small, about pea-sized. They were green, glassy on one side, and visibly fused sand on the other side. And after taking pictures, we left them on the ground for the next group to find.

The find part was the bus ride to the McDonald Ranch house, where they assembled the core for the ‘gadget’. That was several miles away, but certainly part of the complete atomic tourist experience.

Afterward, we headed out, stopping for lunch in Socorro before heading back to Albuquerque. When we got there, it was still daytime, so we headed out to see the three little cinder cone volcanoes on the west side of town. I’d seen them when I visited my college girlfriend Cindy in Albuquerque in 1980, so I was curious to see them again. The area they’re in is now part of the Petroglyph National Monument, so we couldn’t drive up dirt roads to the cones like back in the old days. We parked and hiked in to see them this time.

All around, it was a fun day, and I’m glad we finally got to do it, even if it did take us 40 years to get around to it.

We finally made it out to the Skirball Center to see their exhibit about “Star Trek” and its legacy in our culture. It was a good collection of stuff, some of it even dating back to the original series. Since back then it was just considered to be a stupid little TV show that would never amount to anything, it’s surprising how much stuff survived. And of course all the artifacts from the later series and movies were kept for their historical value. All told, it was a pretty amazing thing to see the legacy of this particular stupid little TV show.

Last week, I found out my friend Sue from the office was going to be one of the Grand Marshals for the Doo Dah Parade. So that was the plan for the Sunday ride today. I made a slightly shorter route, so we could make it back by 11:00. When we got there, I rode around to the staging area to find Sue and her crew. When I got there, Morgan wrapped a feather boa around my neck, and I got to be an honorary Seismo Sistah. We did two laps of the parade route, dodging a hail of flying tortillas. It was a weird and entertaining experience.

33 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today was a day involving a lot of subways. First, we rode the subway to Brooklyn to go to the Transit Museum, which tells the history of the subway system in New York. I’ve been there before, but only in 1985. The exhibits include lots of old trains, and even some so old that they were in regular service the last time I went to the museum.

We stopped in at the Transit Museum gift shop. I got an antique metal strap from a retired subway car. And also a hat and shirt with the number “1”. I’ve long said that the IRT number1 train is my spirit animal.

Then we rode the Q train back to Manhattan. We rode it all the way to the end of the line. This was largely because the last three stations on the line are new, part of the Second Avenue Subway. This is the newest subway line, and I had to see it, since I can still remember everyone talking about how it was the Next Big Thing, and how it was Coming Real Soon. And that was when I was in high school in 1976. But they finally got some of it built and running. Riding it was like seeing a unicorn in the wild.

Today was a big walking tour around Manhattan to see the two big things we wanted to see. Kathleen wanted to go to the Met, and I wanted to go to the Natural History Museum. The Hall of Dinosaurs there was one of my most favorite things when I was a kid.

At the Met, we saw the “Camp” exhibit, which was very entertaining. Then we walked across Central Park, stopping for lunch at the boathouse for lunch. At the NHM, we saw the two big dinosaur halls, and also the special T-Rex exhibit, where we got to see the new vision of T-Rex with feathers.

All around, it was a fun day.

Today’s adventure was to play tourist in Lower Manhattan. We started with dim sum in Chinatown, which was good. After that, we walked a bit to get to the Tenement Museum. We took the “Hard Times” tour, which was recommended as a good overview of the sorts of experiences and problems that recent immigrants had to deal with. And seeing the tiny apartments inside the building – yikes.

After the tenement tour, we went to the Eldrige Street Synagogue. This dates back to around the same era as the Tenement Museum. And we never knew that there was a large Jewish settlement in northern China in the late 19th century, populated largely by Russian Jews.

After the museum tours, we walked back to the World Trade Center and took the ferry back across the Hudson to Hoboken.