Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Last year, we hiked up Echo Mountain on the 4th of July to watch the fireworks. The big Rose Bowl display was right below us, and we could see the shows at Dodger Stadium, Exposition Park, and even all the way down to the Queen Mary. It was impressive. So we decided to do it again this year.

We set out on the hike a little earlier this time, in hopes of getting a better spot on the top of the mountain. It wasn’t as hot as last year, and the hike wasn’t bad at all. I’d gotten the MapMyHike app for my new iPhone, and I set it to record the trip up the mountain. When we got to the trail junction near the top, the sign said it was 2.7 miles back to the start, but the GPS on the phone said we’d gone 3.7. I thought this was odd. It was hard to believe that all the guidebooks compiled over decades could be that wrong. But either way, at that point, we were at the top.

There was already a good crowd up there, and we ended up setting up camp in the same place as last year. That was all right, and we spread out our picnic that we’d brought. Then, when night fell, we were ready to watch the fireworks.

On the way up, we’d noticed that it was hazier than last year, but we thought that might dissipate after sundown, when the inversion layer over Los Angeles goes away. But when the fireworks started, we could see that there was a layer of low clouds that were obscuring our view of a good bit of the show. We could see the lower fireworks, but ones that went higher in the air went into the clouds, and we could only see the glowing bits that fell down from them. And then, just as we were absorbing all of this, the marine layer decided to move in. In a matter of minutes, low clouds condensed below us, and blotted out the entire city. So that was that.

We gathered up our things and headed down the mountain, along with the hundreds of other people up there. We’d brought real flashlights this time, and that worked out well. And it made for an odd sight on the trail, with a line of several hundred people with flashlights all walking down the trail.

So overall, even though the fireworks were a bit of a dud, it was a nice time.

Tonight Kathleen and I went to the Greek Theater in Griffith Park to see the B-52s. We’d seen them last summer at a nostalgia show at the Hollywood Bowl, and it was enough fun that we wanted to see them again. It was a nice day today, so it looked like it was going to be a good night.

We got tickets in the side terrace area. I like that section, since the seats are cheaper than anywhere else except the benches in the back, and it’s raised up, so we get a good view of the stage. And as long as we get our tickets early, we get to be close to the edge, so we’re not that far off to the side. We did think it was funny that they had an entire section of seats there closed off, with camouflage netting over it, as if to try and make it so we wouldn’t even notice that there were seats there. The potted tree just added to the absurdity of it.

The show opened with Squeeze, which is another vintage band from the early ’80s. I’m not all that familiar with them, but once they started playing, I found that I recognized a lot more of their songs than I thought I would. They finished their set with their best-known songs, “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)” and “Black Coffee in Bed”. And then it was time for the B-52s.

There was a brief break while they set up the stage, but the Greek runs a tight ship. They have to be finished by 10:30 or 11:00 due to sound restrictions in the area, so they don’t waste time.

Once again, the B-52s did a great show. It was a lot of fun, and it was almost as if it was 1980 again. Nothing not to like about that. They played all their well-known songs, although Kathleen was hoping they would play “Quiche Lorraine“, and I was pretty much resigned to the fact that they weren’t going to play “She Brakes for Rainbows“. Still, we enjoyed the show. I shot one short experimental video with my camera:

It was a good chance to quietly weep for our lost youth. All around, it was a fun evening.

Today was a new adventure. We’ve gone to San Diego twice now for the Lung Association stair climb, and that’s been fun. But it’s been mostly an excuse for a weekend in San Diego and to visit my father. At 31 stories, the climb itself just isn’t all that hard. But this weekend was the first San Diego Towerthon. This was a stair climb up Columbia Center in San Diego. We were only going to climb up to the 25th floor, but this time, the race was to see how many times we could do that in two hours. This sounded both insane and intriguing to me. After all, back in my bike racing days, I always did better in longer races than I did in short ones. So I thought this would be an interesting experience.

The climb was early on Saturday, which made it difficult to plan to come down that morning. So I hitched a ride with some of my other stair climbing friends on Friday and spent the night at one of the guest rooms at my father’s place. In the morning, I took the bus to the trolley, and rode the train downtown. This was my first time riding the San Diego train, and it was really quite pleasant.

When I got to the building, I checked in and got changed. Then we lined up, and they sent us into the stairs. They had timing mats in the entrance and at the top, and the computer was going to time each of our climbs up the building, and we had two hours to climb, starting from the time when we first stepped on the starting line mat. When it was my turn, I started my stopwatch and headed up.

At the top, we came out in the hallway on the 25th floor. There were volunteers handing out bottles of water and towels. Then they had other volunteers operating the bank of six elevators doing a continuous shuttle from 25 down to the lobby. That worked out well, and we never had to wait more than 20-30 seconds for an elevator for the trip down. One of the elevator operators was a priest, and when he had a look at us, he reminded us that he was qualified to perform last rites, just in case any of us needed that service.

I’d planned on being conservative and taking about 6 minutes to climb the building. But that turned out to be too slow. In the end, I averaged about 5 minutes each time, and in retrospect, I think I could have gone faster. After all, look at the picture. I’m smiling. So that definitely means I could have been going faster.

In the end, I climbed the building 17 times. I was pleasantly surprised by that, since I’d thought I’d only be able to do something like 15 at the most. The stairway was very consistent, and I was able to adapt the stepping pattern I’d worked out at the Aon building last spring to find the minimum-steps method to climb. And because I went up it so many times, I was able to make a chart of it to add to my collection. Sadly, it’s pretty competitive in the over-50 age bracket, and the overall winner, with 21 climbs, was Michael, who’s in the first picture. And I was fourth in my age group. The number three guy also did 17 climbs, but he did them a little bit faster than I did, so he got the medal. But that’s all right. I still got a medal for being part of the West Coast Labels/X-GYM group, which was by far the fastest team there.

After the race was over, I met up with Kathleen and Lucinda. The drove down in my car. We went and checked into our hotel for the night, and that was when I realized that I’d developed a huge blister on my left thumb from swinging around all the left turns on the stair landings. Ow. And also, I thought it was funny that our room number was 408, which is also the exact number of floors I climbed that morning:

Climbing from 1 to 25 = 24 floors;
17 x 24 = 408

What are the odds?

The 408 floors add up to 8,602 steps. That times 7 inches per step means the total climb I did was just a bit over 5,000 feet. Yikes.

Results are here: http://www.geminitiming.com/posts/san-diego-towerthon-2/

I also made a graph of how many runners did how many climbs. The bars represent the number of people who went up N times. The far left bar is the 26 people who climbed it once. And the far right bar is Michael, who climbed it 21 times. I’m fairly pleased to be pretty far out on the tail on the right-hand side of the graph:

On Thursday night, Kathleen and I went downtown for the monthly Art Walk again. We’ve gone several times before, and it’s usually a fun time. This is the first time we’ve made it there since March, and it was a nice night for it. It was a pleasant evening and not too chilly.

As always, when we first got there, we set off in search of the food trucks. This time, we got some wrap-things from Cheer Burger. They were quite good. And while we were waiting, we saw the manufacturers plate on the back of the truck. So now we know where food trucks come from.

After eating, we wandered around the galleries. We saw lots of things we liked, a few that we didn’t, and that’s about normal for these things. I do think that someday we will have to get one of those jellyfish-looking lighted sculptures to hang in the house. And we didn’t come home completely empty-handed. We bought one small print from an artist in one of the smaller galleries. It was an odd little drawing of an armadillo with flowers growing out of its back. It’s kind of a weird size, so I need to order a special frame to put it in.

All told, it was a fun evening.

Today’s bike club ride was one that didn’t really go anywhere in particular, aside from up and down a bunch of hills. But we did have a brief sightseeing stop at the 15-mile mark of the Pasadena Marathon. My stair-climbing friend Veronica was running in it, and based on her previous time of 3:44, I figured she’d be passing the 15-mile mark at about 8:40. Which gave us just enough time to ride up there from our 8:00 start at Victory Park. And she was right on schedule, running by us at 8:40:28 on her way to a new personal best of 3:42:49.

After that, we continued on, riding up through La Crescenta, back down to La Cañada, and then up and over the big hills past Sacred Heart school, and also Patrician Way. It’s all one hill, but we rode up and down it twice by two different routes. Then we rode to South Pasadena for cold drinks at Kaldi’s.

By then, it was pretty hot, and the last part of the ride didn’t include any more big hills. We just rode home at a leisurely pace. It was a pleasant ride.

42 miles.

Tonight was time to go back to the Doll Factory in Los Angeles to see another L.A. Derby Dolls match. This was our third time going, and we’ve enjoyed it every time. Like last time, the game was a bit of a blowout. But it was still a fun time.

We got some drinks and then dinner from the Mesohungry truck again. And I got a cookie from Freshly-Baked. It was quite good, and I know my cookies. Lucinda tried it and then she and London went back and they both got the ice cream sandwiches from them. As I said, their cookies are quite good.

The game was entertaining to watch, although next time I’m bringing real earplugs. The wadded-up bar napkins just didn’t quite cut it. Still, it was a very fun night. I recommend it highly.

On Saturday afternoon, Kathleen came with me to go see the Collings Foundation’s restored World War II bombers on display at Burbank Airport. This is my third time going to see them, and I still think it’s amazing and terrifying to think of what the guys who flew these planes went through.

This time, they also had a P-51 fighter plane there, and people were taking rides in it. The airplane rides were $425 per person for the bombers, and $2200 for a half-hour in the P-51. A bit beyond our means, but it still meant we got to see the P-51 fly. I had my camera on ‘fast action’ mode, but I had no idea that it would be quick enough to freeze the propeller of the plane when it was under full takeoff power. Wow.

We took the walking tours through the bombers, and I’m still amazed at how tight the space is in there.

The actual veterans who flew these airplanes in combat are getting pretty rare these days. There were only a couple on hand, and only one who was able to talk about his experiences. Soon, all we’ll have left are the books they’ve written and recorded interviews.

It was an interesting adventure.

Since the Museum of Neon Art is in the process of moving to Glendale, they held a special Neon Cruise on Saturday night, beginning and ending at the Americana there. This was our third time doing a Neon Cruise, and it was fun like always.

The actual cruise route was very similar to the others. There are some neon signs in Glendale, but apparently, not all that many. We headed into downtown Los Angeles by way of Angelino Heights. The cruise is not just neon, but also takes in a lot of local history, so the old Victorian houses on Carroll Avenue were a nice sight. When we got downtown, we had a brief stop at Phillippe’s for snacks, drinks, and neon signs. I think this may have been the only time I’ve ever been to Phillippe’s when I wasn’t on jury duty.

I brought along some cookie’s I’d made and shared them with the other tourists on the bus. It’s a good way to try out new recipes, since I’m doing development now of recipes to enter in this year’s L.A. County Fair.

Heading out of downtown, we went up into Hollywood for a trip down Hollywood Boulevard, and a stop at the Cat and the Fiddle. After that, we headed back to the Americana for the end of the tour.

It was a fun evening.

Today is Obscura Day. It’s a day to see and do odd and obscure things. And today, I noticed that there was an event very close to my house. The Bunny Museum was hosting an event for Obscura Day. They’ve been on my list of things to go see for a long time, so today was the day.

We went up there after I got back from bike riding. I knew where they were, since the giant topiary rabbit in the front yard is one of the stops on my Topiary Tour bike ride. We signed in and took the tour.

There were bunnies. Stuffed plush bunnies. Porcelain figurine bunnies. Real, live bunnies. Freeze-dried former live bunnies. Pictures of bunnies. Household objects in the shape of bunnies. Books about bunnies. Books with ‘bunny’ in the title. It was impressive.

It was an amazing and amusing afternoon.

Today was the springtime Castle Green tour day. Castle Green is an old hotel in Pasadena that has been converted into apartments. It’s a unique place. I’ve been here for the tour once before, but that was years ago, so it was time to see it again.

The tour starts when we walk into the lobby. The sign said that the lights were deliberately left exposed without glass globes so that we could see that they were using electric lighting, which was a new thing when the building first opened.

We walked up the stairs one floor at a time, stopping to see the apartments that were open for the tour on each floor. We got to see one apartment that Tim Burton used to live in. That was most likely back in the days when Old Town Pasadena still smelled of urine, and was a relatively cheap place to live.

The building and decor in Castle Green are very interesting and amusing. We enjoyed seeing how each apartment was decorated. I particularly liked seeing how each person who has one of the end apartments decided to decorate the round room in the turret at the south end of the building.

We made our way up one floor at a time, until we came out on the roof. After that, we went back down to see the rest of the first floor, and also the one open suite in the basement.

It was a fun afternoon.