Stan’s Obligatory Blog

I was recruited for this by Carol. I’m not usually a ‘joiner’, but here goes:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book would you want to be?

Not being familiar with this story beyond the barest essentials, and because Carol already staked out 1984, I’ll have to go with another Orwell story: Animal Farm. I read this when I was about 10 or 11, and I really liked how the animal characters allowed us to see human behavior from an outsider’s viewpoint.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Hrm. Not recently. I don’t read much fiction. When I was 11 or so I read A Wrinkle in Time and I remember thinking that I’d like to meet a nerdy smart girl like Meg.

The last book you bought is:

Astro Turf by M.G. Lord. A kind of weird mishmash of history of JPL and the space program along with musings about gender roles and her father. It was tremendously entertaining.

The last book you read:

Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut. Paul Krassner’s memoir of the Sixties. Lots of funny stories about life in the counterculture. Krassner was one of the original Yippies. I still remember all the talk about Yippies and the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. It’s funny to find out a lot of it was all a joke. Highly recommended.

What are you currently reading?

This month’s Scientific American and National Geographic. I guess I’m between books right now.

Five books you would take on a desert island:

Rivethead by Ben Hamper. Fear and loathing and lotsa laughs on the assembly line at General Motors.
Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition by Ed Regis. Weird science and even weirder scientists doing it.
The Control of Nature by John McPhee. When it’s Man vs. Nature, guess who usually wins? A very entertaining collection of stories of human hubris.
Floating off the Page by the Wall Street Journal. Funny articles from the center column of the Journal. Radium water tonic, rat restaurants, a reporter eating a five-pound steak. It’s all in here.
Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman by Richard Feynman. I learned lock-picking from this book. It’s also very funny.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 people) and why?

I dunno. Most of the people I know who read interesting stuff don’t have blogs. If I break the chain, am I going to die?

Since Lucinda is off school this week, we made arrangements to go to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. Cathy scored some free tickets a while back, so the conditions were perfect. We went with Heather and Jacob from up the street, as well as their mom.

When we got there, we wanted to see the otter feeding, but the tank was empty for cleaning. I guess the otters were in a motel somewhere. So instead we went outside so that Heather and Lucinda could pet the rays and touch the starfish and anemones. Then it was feeding time for the sharks in the touch tank. That was entertaining, even if they are all fairly docile sharks.

We also saw a diver in one of the tanks, cleaning the kelp leaves. I wonder how they put that into a job description.

We went into the Lorikeet Forest, and Lucinda managed to persuade one of the birds to land on her arm, so she was happy.

They had one exhibit of shark eggs with little windows in them. We could see the little sharks wriggling around inside. Very Alien-esque.

Later on, we went back inside and saw feeding time at the South Pacific exhibit. They had three divers in the tank handing out food and being mobbed by the fish. One of the divers had a microphone and she talked to us and described what was happening. That was an interesting addition to the show.

When it was time to leave, we took a moment to see the driver’s-eye view of a bit of the Long Beach Grand Prix course, since we had to cross the street to get back to the parking structure. Then we headed home, getting immediately stuck in traffic on the freeway. Have I mentioned recently that I love living in L.A.?

There are also a few more pictures in Lucinda’s photo album.

It was 1986. Dinosaurs roamed the earth. I was a programmer at McDonnell Douglas. In the evening, I went to aerobics classes at Golden West College in Huntington Beach. It was the ’80s and all.

It had been three years since I embarked on my self-improvement program to defeat my innate shyness through sheer Spock-like force of will. Overall, I’d made great progress, but it still required some conscious effort to maintain. So I made a point of going out on dates just to ‘keep in practice’.

There was this exceedingly cute girl I always saw at aerobics. I decided to ask her out. I figured it would be good practice. So we went out. It was April 4, 1986. We went to Walt’s Wharf in Seal Beach.

We had a pleasant evening. Later on, we went back to her apartment in Long Beach. The earth even moved for us while we were chatting on the couch. We even made plans for a second date.

And now, here we are nineteen years later. It’s all a bit hard to believe that we’re old enough to have been together for so long. But it’s been a fun journey, complete with buying houses, two cross-country moves, pets, family trauma, and a child. And I wouldn’t have wanted to do it all with anyone else.

Today’s ride was a pleasant ramble with no mountain climbing or anything extreme.

We started out going east through Sierra Madre, Arcadia, and Monrovia. We took the rolling-hills route, since it has less traffic. We ened up going through Duarte to the San Gabriel River and Santa Fe Dam area. It was a perfect warm spring day, but we could see the snow up on Mt. Baldy off the distance.

We went south on the San Gabriel River bike path down to South El Monte, and then headed back west through Temple City. We passed the old Driftwood Dairy there. It’s a bit of a throwback to an earlier era here.

After passing Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, we took Huntington Drive through San Marino. From there, we went north, climbing the scarp of the Raymond Fault to get back into Pasadena. We stopped for a snack at Corner Bakery on South Lake Avenue.

Next, we headed east, across the Caltech campus. We stopped at one of the pools there to look at the egret. Then we continued on, back across Pasadena.

When we got back to the park, we only had about 37 miles, so Kevin and I continued on up Altadena Drive. We went and looked at the massive landslide that has buried the old Mt. Wilson toll road. It was pretty impressive. Then we continued on across Altadena to the top of Lake Ave and Alta Loma. Just below Rubio Canyon, we saw the historical marker for the old right-of-way from the Mt. Lowe Railway.

At the top of the hill, we continued on Alta Loma to Lincoln Ave, and then down to Mendocino. We took Mendocino back across Altadena, and then back to the park.

It was a very pleasant spring ride.

50 miles.

cycling

We went to the Museum of Neon Art today. This is the last weekend for the current exhibit, so we wanted to see it before it went away. And we were not disappointed.

The exhibit had two parts. One part was neon beer signs and old neon business signs from the ’50s. There were some great old signs there, although sadly, the ceiling was too low for some. So we had to make do with the neon sign for “Al’s LIQ”, because that was all that would fit. The other part of the exhibit was neon and other electric sculptures. One piece we particularly liked was “A Dime a Dance”. This was a four-foot-tall Satan puppet on strings. He was standing on top of a lucite box with a neon sign inside it. The card said, “Insert a quarter to activate the Devil”. We just couldn’t resist that. The speakers began to play “Pipeline”, and the Devil danced for us. It was great fun.

After dancing with the Devil, we went outside and Lucinda played in the park next to the museum. Then we went to Chinatown and had Dim Sum at Empress Pavillion.. We’ve been going there since it opened in 1989 or so. It’s always packed, even though I think the food is a bit overrated. The restaurants in San Gabriel are just as good or better. But Empress Pavillion is still one of the best-known Dim Sum places in L.A. And it was good.

The egret was back on campus today. This is the same one that likes to hang around the ponds at Caltech.

I got a nice close-up shot of it this time, as well as some of the turtles and tadpoles in the pond. The tadpoles were easily the biggest I’ve ever seen anywhere. They were as big as a Six Dollar Burger. No wonder the egret likes to eat from the ponds. I don’t actually think the egret could eat one of them, but it probably eats the ones that haven’t had time to grow quite so large.

Who knew? The Boulevard of Broken Dreams is also a place to go bike riding. Since tomorrow is Easter, I can’t go on the regular Sunday ride. So I convinced Gene, Newton, and Matt to go on a ride today in the Hollywood Hills.

We started out on the standard route out of Pasadena and across Eagle Rock, and then into Los Feliz. After crossing the Shakespeare Bridge, we went south and got onto Hollywood Blvd. On the east end, it’s Little Armenia for a bit, and then it becomes Thai Town. That was where we saw the Thai food place with a big hot dog on the roof. We also passed the infamous Jumbo’s Clown Room. Legend has it that several now-famous women did turns stripping there.

After Thai Town faded away, we were on the part of Hollywood Blvd that every tourist sees. The Walk of Fame. We just passed most of it by, but we did make a point to stop and see the star for Godzilla, since he is one of only a few completely fictitious characters who have stars there.

Most tourists think that Hollywood Blvd ends at La Brea Ave. The locals know that it goes on to Laurel Canyon, but I know that it goes even farther than that. On the other side of Laurel Canyon, there is a little street that goes up the hill. That is the continuation of Hollywood Blvd. It’s a little residential street in the hills, the kind that looks like a noodle on the map.

We rode up the hill, stopping to look at one house with a weird chimney. We only took one wrong turn on the way up, which was surprising, since a lot of the intersections up there are not well-marked. A lot of times, it’s hard to tell which way is the continuation of the street and which is the cross street. We continued on until the Boulevard of Broken Dreams merged into Sunset Plaza on top of the hill. From there, we went down the other side on Lookout Mountain Road, down into Laurel Canyon.

At the bottom of the hill we did a quick left and right on Laurel Canyon Blvd, passing by Houdini’s old house, and then up Willow Glen. This is a very narrow and steep street that climbs up the side of Laurel Canyon to the Mt Olympus area. I always remember reading about Mt Olympus in the October 1969 issue of National Geographic. The article was about the floods and mudslides that year in Los Angeles, and it had a photo of Mt. Olympus, which was a new development at the time. Part of the caption read:

To protect Mount Olympus in Hollywood, right, developers graded slopes and moated lots with storm drains. Sites near the summit sell for as much as $85,000.

Needless to say, $85,000 sounded like a staggering sum back in 1969, but it seems ludicrously cheap by today’s standards.

After passing the faux-greek temples on Mt Olympus, we went down into Nichols Canyon. Turning left on Nichols Canyon Road, we then climbed up out of the canyon to the top of the ridge at Mulholland Drive. Crossing Mulholland, we took Woodrow Wilson down to the freeway.

Crossing the freeway, we were back in the city, but we took one more detour, going up Wonder View to Lake Hollywood. This was one more climb, but it was worth it to avoid the traffic in Cahenga Pass.

After all that excitement, we headed home across Burbank, Glendale and Eagle Rock. For some reason, I was pretty tired from all that climbing, so I was actually quite glad to be taking the relatively non-hilly way home.

52 miles.

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Just a postscript to the story about Fargo Street from yesterday. I guess I really did give it maximum effort, because I’m sore today. My legs, arms, and back are all sore from the exertion. I really can’t remember another time when I got sore arms from a bike ride. So it’s just one more reason why Fargo Street is something special. And of course, why I’ll have to try it again in the future.

This afternoon was kind of strange, but in an interesting way.

Cathy and Lucinda gave Buddy a bath. Most dogs hate getting a bath, but not Buddy. He seems completely content to be sitting in the water, and he even likes the blow dryer. It’s strange.

After that, they made Easter cookies. Cathy cut the cookies, and Lucinda acted as the artist and decorated them.

Then I sat down and got ethnic. I got in touch with my Chinese heritage and made chaio-tzu (aka ‘dumplings’) and siu mai. Hand-made and all that. Just like Mom used to make when I was a kid. It’s all part of the Master Plan to help pass on the Chinese food meme to Lucinda.

Today’s ride was down to Echo Park for the fabled Fargo Street Hill Climb. Word on the street is that Fargo is the steepest hill in Los Angeles, and I’m inclined (so to speak) to believe it.

We started out going through San Marino, South Pasadena and Highland Park. We passed Flor y Canto, which is a little art gallery, bookstore and community center. We went there once to see Keith Knight, the creator of the K Chronicles.

When we got to Echo Park, there was already a big crowd at the bottom of the hill. Looking up at it I had my first “oh shit” moment. I’ve been practicing on Nolden St. in Eagle Rock, but Fargo really did look a lot steeper. I went and did a little practice run part-way up the street one block over just to see if I could turn the pedals and keep the bike moving.

When my turn came, I tried to just apply the same formula that’s worked for me many times before: just knuckle down and power straight up the hill. As programmers know, there’s often nothing better than sheer brute force to get something done. I got about half-way up the hill before the intensity of the effort caught up to me. That’s the problem with trying to apply brute strength at age 45. It was truly a struggle for survival just to turn the pedals. I knew there was no way to maintain that level of exertion, so I started to tack back and forth across the street. Then, on one of the turns, my back tire slipped. That was the end of that run. I didn’t fall, but I was forced to dismount. After a few minutes rest in someone’s driveway, I managed to get moving again and made it the rest of the way to the top. But I needed to make it non-stop to get the official patch.

After coming back down, I rested a bit and then tried again. This time I went a bit slower and tacked across the street from the start. This helped, and I made it a little farther than the first time. But still, when I was doing one of the turns, my front wheel came up off the pavement, and this time I did fall. Plop! Right down on the pavement.

I sat on the pavement for a couple minutes thinking about what a Revolting Development this was. I pulled out my camera and snapped a picture of the view from up there. It was clear, and I could see the Hollywood sign. Then I walked down, pausing for a moment to get a picture of John making his attempt at the hill. He made it about as far as I did before he slipped and fell too.

Wow. In over 30 years of riding my bike everywhere, I’ve met my match. Fargo St. is the only hill I’ve ever met that I couldn’t just grit my teeth and power up. It was humbling. On the way back, John and I were comparing notes and marveling at just how tired we were after just a few minutes of truly maximum effort. I think part of it also has to do with the ‘agony of defeat’ effect. When I used to race, whenever I won or placed highly in a race, I always felt good afterward. No matter how hard the race was, if I did well I had energy to do a little dance, spike the bike, or whatever. But defeat always left me exhausted.

So after the hill experience, we rode back by way of Griffith Park. We passed the Mulholland fountain just outside the park. A fountain seems the most fitting tribute to William Mulholland, since he brought water to L.A. and thereby made the Owens Valley what it is today. No problem of urban sprawl there, nope.

From there we went into Glendale, passing a man in a chicken suit outside El Pollo Loco. Then we went up the hill into La Crescenta. We sort of noodled around in the hills there a bit before heading into Montrose and stopping at a bakery there. Then we headed home up “Hospital Hill” and back down the hill into Pasadena.

44 miles.

cycling