Stan’s Obligatory Blog

It wasn’t all just stair-climbing agony. We made our long weekend in Chicago into a little adventure.

We flew out on Friday. In what was going to turn out to be a harbinger of things to come, our flight was delayed two hours. Something about the airplane having to be fixed in Portland, so they had to find another plane to take us to Chicago. But once we got going, it was a pleasant enough trip. When we got there, we got our subway pass and took the train to our hotel, which was pretty near O’Hare. Then my old friend Deirdre and her husband Marc came and took us to dinner at Morton’s Steak House. We thought the mid-America ambiance was just the thing. It was a fun evening.

On Saturday, we headed downtown and I registered for the climb Sunday morning. Then we went and did a bit of sightseeing. That was our second big delay. At one point, we’d ridden the train up north a bit, and when it was time to come back, we had to take a detour, since they were rebuilding the track on the southbound side. But I like trains, so it was all right. When we got back downtown, we met the stair climbing group at the Elephant and Castle for dinner.

Sunday morning was the stair climb. Ow. After that, we went back to the hotel, and I got cleaned up and changed. Then we went back downtown. We had pizza for lunch at Giordano’s, which was right around the corner from the tower. Then we got on the Metra train for the ride up to Libertyville to visit Kathleen’s aunt and uncle. We spent the night there and had a nice time visiting.

On the Metra train, I noticed that the cars all had plaques saying that they were designed and built in Chicago. I thought that this was rather refreshing, since there’s not much that’s made in the U.S. any more these days. But then I noticed the bottom of the plaque that said they were built by Nippon Sharyo. Sheesh.

On Monday, we went back to O’Hare for the trip home. Once again, the airplane needed fixing. Everyone was grousing about the delay, but looking out the window, I could see the mechanics opening up the engine to work on it. So I figured that it’s better for them to take their time on that, so we didn’t complain. And they finally got it fixed and we got on to go home. As always, when I put on my seat belt, I found myself wishing airline tickets were sold by the pound. I’d save a lot that way.

The trip home was pleasant, and we only got in about 1/2 hour late, since they pad the schedule for flights out of O’Hare.

Overall, it was a most excellent little adventure.

..we’ve got a CTA subway pass, half a granola bar, it’s freezing cold and we’re wearing shorts.

Hit it

So today was the big adventure. The stair climb up the Sears Willis Tower in Chicago. All the way up to the Skydeck on the 103rd floor.

I got up very early to be able to make it there for the 7:00AM start. There wasn’t a lot of time to think about what was about to happen. But when I thought about it, I felt like this:

I got in line at the back of the ‘Elite’ group. I knew there was no chance I’d be able to keep up with them, so I just didn’t want to be in anyone’s way. When it was my turn, I turned on my metronome and trotted into the stairwell.

The first thing I noticed was that the steps there were taller than other buildings I’ve climbed. The stairs at Millikan Library where I practice are 6.4 inches. Most skyscrapers have steps that are about 7.7 inches. These felt like they were over 8*. By the time I got to about 30, I knew that my pace was set too high, and I was burning out. I adjusted it down some, but there was no easy way to do this.

Along the way, I was passed by two other runners. This was a first. I’ve never been passed before. But by that time, I was happy just to still be moving, so I didn’t worry too much about how fast I was going.

When I got to 75, I was hit with the realization that this was as high as I’d ever climbed before. And there were still 28 floors to go. By then, it was a struggle for survival just to keep moving. Somehow I managed to keep going up. When I got to 100, I perked up a bit, since the end was in sight. I managed to do the last three floors at a decent pace and somehow stumbled across the finish line. There was a photographer taking pictures on the last flight up, and I have no memory of seeing him there. After I got across the line, they handed me my finisher’s medal and a bottle of water, and I curled up on the floor for a few minutes to work on paying down my oxygen debt.

At the top, Randy and I took a few minutes to look at the view and to go and stand in the little glass booths that stick out the side of the building. Then we went back down. They had some results available already. This time, I’d remembered to start my stopwatch at the start, so I had an idea of my time. I’d been hoping to do about 20 minutes, but that was not to be. The computer gave my time as 22:49, which was about what I was expecting from what my watch said. Still, that was good enough to be in the top 10%, which is not too bad for bein’ 51 and all. But now I have the goal of improving on that next year.

It was a fun little adventure, albeit in a kind of weird way. It’s hard to describe something so incredibly painful as being ‘fun’. But it was.

* They say it’s 1,353 feet from the lobby to the skydeck, and 2,109 steps. That works out to 7.7 inches per step, but these steps felt taller than the ones I practiced on last Tuesday.

Today was a holiday for some of us, but not for our friend who works at Disneyland. So we were able to go and have a day there.

Right away, we headed straight into California Adventure to ride California Screamin’. One of the ride operators even remembered us from the last time we were there, when we rode it 21 times.

The place was kind of crowded, so the lines were longer than we were used to. We rode the big roller coaster twice. Then we had lunch and went back to ride it again. After that, we headed over to Disneyland. The line for Space Mountain was too long, so we skipped that. We went to Tom Sawyer Island for a while. Then we rode Pirates, Thunder Mountain, and the Matterhorn. By then it was starting to get dark, so we went back to California Adventure and rode California Screamin’ two more times.

It wasn’t our best day at Disneyland, but it was a fun day none the less.

Today’s bike ride was the classic La Tuna Canyon route, with a short detour in Glendale to see the giant steampunk drill Halloween display. We’d been by here two weeks ago when construction had just started. So we wanted to see it in its finished state.

We got to meet Peter, and he treated us to a full tour of how it worked and how it was built. The talking animatronic figures were especially impressive. I took a short video of the rotating drill tip and the talking skeleton and crow in the cockpit.

After that, we continued on the ride. The climb up La Tuna Canyon was fun, as always. Just below the top, Don got a flat. And to add just a little more excitement, we spotted two new topiaries today. A giraffe family in La Cañada and a pair of baskets in Altadena. These will be added to the Topiary Tour West route.

It was a fun ride.

44 miles.
cycling

Today’s bike ride was the “Down for the Count” route we do for Halloween. Out to Culver City and Holy Cross Cemetery to visit Bela Lugosi’s grave.

We rode out from Pasadena and through downtown L.A.. We got to see the progress they’re making on building the new Expo light rail line. It looks like it will be done pretty soon.

When we got to the cemetery, Bela’s grave was decorated by fans as it always is for Halloween.

Our snack stop was at Noah’s Bagels on Venice Blvd. Carla got me a bagel and put some birthday candles on it. That was very nice.

On the way back, I got a flat.

Aside from the flat tire, it was pretty much a perfect ride.

52 miles.
cycling

On Saturday afternoon, we rode the train downtown to go to the Natural History Museum to see the Spider Pavilion. It’s in the same outdoor tent that they use for the butterflies in the summer, so it’s a chance to see the spiders in a more or less natural-looking habitat.

The trip down there was a bit of an ordeal. There was a USC home game, so we thought it best not to take the car. Instead, we rode the train and planned on taking the DASH bus from the train station to the museum. Of course, that didn’t take into account the fact that the DASH bus was running an hour late because of all the traffic from the game. Things will be better when they get the Expo light rail line running.

When we got to the museum, I took a picture of Lucinda with the Megamouth shark. Compare this to the picture of her there in 2003. Next, we went to see their saber-tooth cat show. We’d read about this recently, about how they’d had to find a guy who could act as a puppeteer inside the cat suit to make the cat come alive. He did a pretty good job of it. Then we went to see the spiders. There were a lot of them, and they were quite large. Made for some good pictures, and lots of spooked kids. Apparently, there are still some butterflies in the tent, and several of the spiders had caught them and made a meal of them.

It was a fun afternoon.

Wednesday was originally supposed to be a day off school for Lucinda. But at the last minute, the school changed the listing on the web site calendar. They told me it had been an error, and there never was a day off scheduled for that day. But I had already made arrangements for us to go to Disneyland. So I called Kathleen and the two of us went. This marks only the second time I’ve ever gone to Disneyland on a date. And it was great fun again.

We headed down there, and when we got there, we could tell it was going to be a good day. There was no line for the parking, which meant that it wasn’t going to be crowded. We rode the tram in and met Mike by the gate. He let us in with his pass, and we headed straight for Space Mountain. The line was only about 15 minutes, so we picked up Fast Passes and then waited in the line and rode it once.

By then it was lunchtime, so we went off and had some food. By then, our passes were ripe, but we thought we’d take in the Haunted Mansion and Thunder Mountain, since neither one had a line. Then we went back and rode Space Mountain a couple more times.

Then we walked over to California Adventure. We rode California Screamin’ three times together. And I rode it seven more times on my own. Even though Kathleen used to work summers at Magic Mountain when she was in college, she’s not up for spending an hour on the roller coaster. But no matter. My ten rides today brought my total up to 50 times on that ride. Which still strikes me as completely absurd. But it was Great Fun.

Finally, we headed over to the Jazz Kitchen for dinner. It was a very nice day.

Photo by Tom Henneman

Four weeks from today I’m going to be in Chicago to try my legs on the stairs at the Willis Tower. As I’m fond of saying, “103 stories – How hard could it be?”

Of course, since I’ve done a number of big stair climbs before, I know the answer to that. Competitive stair climbing is easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than any bike race I ever did. There’s really nothing else that compares for the sheer intensity of effort.

That said, I’m hoping to turn in a time right around 20 minutes, just based on my times for other climbs. So we’ll just see how that works out. I’ve started practicing again on the stairs at Millikan Library at Caltech. It’s only 10 stories, but it’s the biggest thing I have easy access to. I’ve been doing it six times in each session, and I’m going to work up to ten times, since that’s approximately the same climb as the Willis Tower.

The event is a charity benefit, so if you can, please make a small donation in my name to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Monday was Columbus day, and that was a holiday for all of us who work for the government. So I thought it would be fun to take a trip out to Simi Valley to see the Reagan Museum and Air Force One.

They built a whole new wing on the building to house Air Force One. It’s set up on pedestals to look like it just might fly away at any moment. It was interesting to see the inside of the airplane and how it was set up. And the other exhibits were also amusing, including portraits of President Reagan made with jelly beans. Yikes. They also had a small piece of the Berlin Wall there, as well as a collection of other items, including the suit he was wearing when he was shot by John Hinckley, and a bejeweled saber from the Boy Scouts of Saudi Arabia. Who knew there were even Boy Scouts there?

They also had an exhibit of a miniature White House. Apparently, the model builders keep the miniature White House up to date. Looking in the windows, we saw pictures of President Obama and his family. That was a little jarring, since the rest of the day was a solid Republican experience.

All in all, it was a fun day.

This evening was the long-awaited “Stair Climb to the Top” at the U.S. Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles.

I went into this event with the goal of cutting a minute off my time from last year and finishing the climb in under 14 minutes. Ambitious, yes. But I cut more than a minute off my previous year’s time at the Aon Tower climb back in April. So I thought it was within reach. And after the practice sessions at the Wells Fargo building, I thought I was on track for 14, or even maybe 13:45.

Sadly, this was not to be.

They had nearly twice as many people doing the climb this year. And the schedule slipped somewhat, so it was nearly dark by the time they started the individual categories. When they called us to the line, I tried to get near the front of the group. As much as I like passing people for the psychological boost, I’ve found that that slows me down quite a bit. I figured I was good for third place or so in my age group, so I wanted as few guys in front of me as possible. As it turned out, I passed a bunch of people, including all the 60-69 women who had started before us. There were a couple of times where I kind of got stuck behind groups of people and had to sort of elbow through to get by. When I got to the top, I passed by the people with the finishing medals and bottles of water and crawled under a table and curled up for a few minutes to catch my breath.

After a few minutes, my friend Susan got to the top. She had her camera with her, so we took a few pictures before they hustled us down off the roof to make room. We rode back down to the ground to join the party on the street outside the building. They had a cake in the shape of the building. We went to the little beer garden and waited for them to post the results.

In the end, my time was 14:34. That was the bad news. On the other hand, this was still 30 seconds faster than last year, and only three guys older than me went faster. That was good. Then my training partner Erik beat me by a full minute. That was bad. But I finished on a high note when I found out that I’d placed second in the 50-59 age group. There’s nothing like a little podium time to brighten up one’s evening.

Results are here: https://www.runraceresults.com/Secure/RaceResults.cfm?ID=RCLC2010