Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This evening we went down to South Pasadena for dinner at Shiro to see my old friend Gordon and his wife Bei. They are passing through Los Angeles on their way to Death Valley and Las Vegas. I’ve known Gordon for over half my life now. We worked together at my first job at McDonnell Douglas from 1982-84, and we’ve remained friends ever since, even as we’ve gone our widely separate ways.

I first met Gordon when I was on my plant trip to McDonnell Douglas in 1982. I’d been offered the job, and they flew me out from college in Texas to visit. We got along right from the start. The prospect of moving across the country by myself at 22 was kind of a scary thought, but I felt like I already had a friend there, and that made it better. And after I got there, we became good friends. Gordon even took this picture of me in the Douglas parking lot when we were on our way to our joint going-away party when we both left the company.

Now we live on opposite ends of the country. We’re quite a bit older, and we’re both more settled in our lives. But we’re still friends, and that’s really a special thing.

Today we went to see the second Body Worlds exhibit at the science museum. The big attraction here was the “Suicide by Fat: Obesity Revealed” exhibit. Lucinda and Daddy went to the museum and met Aunt Maggi there. We had a quick lunch at the McDonald’s in the museum, since there’s nothing like having a Big Mac and fries before seeing an exhibit on the horrors of obesity. I also made a point of eating at McDonald’s before going to see “Super Size Me”, so there is a pattern here.

The new exhibit was as big as the first one, but with different specimens. They even had a camel, which was kind of novel. The human specimens showed a range of different things, from the muscles used for skateboarding to various horrible diseases. It was all quite gruesome and also quite interesting.

Afterwards, we went outside and Lucinda played on the “Big Lever” exhibit outside. She wasn’t quite able to lift the truck by herself, but she did it with the help of another little girl.

Today at lunchtime I took a ride over to Memorial Park in Old Town Pasadena. The American Friends Service Committee is putting on an exhibit about the human cost of the war in Iraq. They had 1,519 pairs of boots laid out in the park, each with a name tag, representing the soldiers killed in the war. The concept is simple, much like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in that the exhibit is just there. You are free to look at it and draw your own conclusions.

Seeing so many boots lined up across the park was impressive. It really makes the numbers tangible in much the same way as the time we saw the AIDS Quilt. Most of the boots had just a name tag, giving the soldier’s age and hometown. Others had pictures or other bits of memorabilia donated by their families. Alyssa Peterson’s had an essay that she had written in 5th grade on the meaning of patriotism. I saw a small memorial for Michael Pedersen donated by his mother, Lila Lipscomb. Lila is known for her appearance in “Fahrenheit 9/11″. A few of the boots had tags saying that they had their names withheld at the request of their families. There weren’t many of them.

In another section of the park, they had several thousand other shoes lined up to represent the Iraqis killed in the war, along with plates listing thousands of names of Iraqi civilians killed in the war.

The exhibit is going to be traveling around. The web page lists the dates and places. It’s worth a look.

I like riding up hills. It’s fun, largely for the sense of accomplishment I get at the top. I’ve always been this way. When I was a kid, we used to go to the White Mountains in New Hampshire for vacation every year. We hiked up and down lots of the mountains there, and it was great fun.

When I first got interesting in serious cycling, I remember that one of the first things I thought of was, “I’m going to ride my bike up the Mount Washington Auto Road“. The thought just came naturally, since it was the biggest hill I knew of. Everyone I told about this thought I was crazy, which I guess is pretty normal, since I get that reaction about lots of things.

I didn’t get to do it until 1976, when I was sixteen, but it was as much fun as I thought it would be. I rode up to the toll gates at the bottom of the road and they waved me through. I rode across the meadow, and then started up the hill. And it was steep. It was steeper than I’d thought it would be. Steeper than it felt when we’d hiked on parts of it before. In those days the road was about half paved and half dirt. But it was all right. I just kept going, up and up. My parents drove the car up and stopped along the way to watch me ride by. Sadly, we didn’t have a camera, so I don’t have any pictures.

When I got to the top, I parked my bike along the wall where hikers put their packs. I rested a bit and then headed down. I had to stop a couple of times to let my brakes cool off. They were getting really hot, and I was worried that this might make my tires blow out from the pressure, or melt the rim glue, since I was riding the old-fashioned sew-up tires. But when I got down I was elated. I’d ridden up the biggest hill I knew, and had fun doing it.

I rode the Mt. Washington Valley bike race in 1977. The second part of the race was a hillclimb up the auto road, but the weather was bad that day and they only ran it to the Halfway House.

I rode up Mt. Washington one more time in 1981. It was also fun. I even saw two other riders on the road that day.

Sadly, I see that they no longer allow bike riders on the road. They hold a bike ride once a year, and that’s it. I guess that a lot of people want to do it, since the registration fee is something like $300. So I’m glad that I got to do it back in the days when it was just an oddity. I still remember watching all the people gawking at me from their cars when I was riding up the first time.

And I still like riding up hills. Next Sunday is the Fargo Street Hillclimb. This isn’t a particularly big hill, but it’s reputed to be the steepest hill in Los Angeles. I tried it once before, back in 1990, but I didn’t get very far. I didn’t have the right gears. This time I think I can do it. I’ve been practicing on Nolden St, which is almost as steep as Fargo, so I think I’m ready. And I’m looking forward to it. Riding up ridiculous hills is fun.

cycling

A few months ago, there was a story posted in Slashdot about how to hack Kryptonite bike locks. Apparently someone discovered a very easy method to pick the tubular cylinders on them. For 30 years, the Kryptonite has been the gold standard of bike locks, so this was a Big Deal.

I went to their web site and put in the serial number of my lock. They then sent me a prepaid UPS shipping label to send it back to them. My lock was 10 years old. Most companies balk at standing behind any product that old. I thought they might send me a coupon for $2 off a new lock or something like that. But today, exactly two weeks later, I got a new lock in the mail. I’m sure that this whole replacement campaign must be costing the company a fair bit of money, but it’s really refreshing to see them pony up and stand behind their products. They did the Right Thing.

Six of us showed up for the ride today, even though it was cold and wet and drizzling at the park. Since our usual leader Gene wasn’t there, we just decided where to go. I suggested going south or west to get away from the mountains. A lot of times we get weather like this in Pasadena when it’s perfectly nice everywhere else. So we headed west.

We went past the big Federal Court building on Grand Ave. I recently read that that building used to be the support center for the Los Angeles area Nike anti-aircraft missiles.

As we crossed into South Pasadena, the drizzle stopped and from then on it was dry, although still gray and dreary. But we still got a laugh from the bus ad for Spay and Neuter Month. Sort of reminiscent of the Ron Jeremy PSA for the same cause.

We went south through Glassell Park, passing the old Van de Kamp’s bakery. Then we crossed the L.A. River and got on the bike path. We took the bike path all the way up around Griffith Park to Riverside Dr. Along the way, we could see that the trees in the river bed were all bent over and covered with debris. It’s just more of the effects of all the rain we’ve been having this winter. Then, after the bike path ended, we took streets the rest of the way to Priscilla’s in Toluca Lake.

After the stop at Priscilla’s, we were all complaining about being cold. It took a few miles to warm up. We came back by the southern route, since we thought that it was probably still raining up closer to the mountains. We came back across Glendale and Eagle Rock on Yosemite Dr.

We took a short detour in Eagle Rock to make an attempt at climbing Nolden St. I thought it would be good practice for Fargo St. next week. Four of us made the attempt. Matt, James, and I all ended up slipping on the damp pavement and had to stop. But John made it all the way to the top and was therefore the Hero of the Day.

After that bit of fun, we headed back into Pasadena, whereupon it began to rain again. On the last street we saw someone trying to give away a treadmill. I guess that’s just one of those New Year’s resolutions gone bad. But maybe he thought that giving away the barbecue with it would somehow make up for it.

When it was all done, it was actually a pretty good ride.

42 miles.

cycling

I’ve been at my job for 10 years now. This is a first for me. I’ve never stayed anywhere for that long before. So I got a little certificate and the boss took us out to lunch at Hooters. (Sadly, there’s not a real strip club that serves lunch anywhere near here, so Hooters had to suffice.) Anyway, it was a fun time, even if today was otherwise kind of a bear. The air conditioner in the computer room broke down, and I had one other computer die today, so I was busy fixing stuff.

Still, I like my job. I realized recently that this is the only job where I’ve ever not used all my vacation time, and the only job where I’ve never called in sick when I wasn’t really sick. So I guess that says something. When I first started, I figured that working in the earthquake business in Los Angeles pretty much had to be an adventure. During the time I’ve been here, we’ve changed from using VAX and VMS to using Sun and white-box commodity PCs with Solaris, FreeBSD, and Linux. Computers that used to cost $50,000 now cost less than $1,000. We’ve had one M7.1 earthquake out in the desert, but nothing big in the city, and the long-awaited Parkfield Earthquake happened. It’s been tremendous fun, and I’d be quite content to just stay here until I retire.

The Caltech Women’s Center had a lunchtime screening of “Tupperware!” today. The film covered the rise of the company in the 1950s and the role of Brownie Wise in building the Tupperware empire. It was a very interesting and amusing story, complete with lots of old archival footage from the time and interviews with people who were there. If you’re a big ol’ documentary geek like me, that made it a true must-see.

Ultimately, though, it was a sad story. Brownie was ousted in 1958, ostensibly so that Earl Tupper could sell the company and retire. Still, what she did was impressive by any measure, and it was a very interesting story.

There is an egret who sometimes hangs around the Caltech campus. There are a few little pools that are stocked with frogs and mosquito fish, and apparently the little fish and tadpoles are very tasty. So the egret hangs around the ponds and eats. It’s an interesting bit of actual nature, red in tooth and claw, in the middle of the big city.

I just read that Hans Bethe has died:

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14079-2005Mar7.html

He was one of the giants of 20th-century physics. When I was in college, his name came up often in the quantum mechanics and nuclear physics textbooks.

One day not long before I graduated from college in 1982, I stopped by the Bonner Nuclear Lab at Rice to talk to my professor, Dr. Phillips. While we were chatting, his secretary buzzed him:

“Dr. Phillips, I have Hans Bethe on the phone for you.”

So he excused himself and picked up the phone:

“Hello Hans! How are you?”

I thought it was really amazing that I knew someone who was actually on a first-name basis with one of the legends of physics.