Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This past weekend was a grand adventure. Last fall, when I did the “Stair Climb to the Top” at the U.S. Bank tower in downtown Los Angeles, a woman I talked to there told me about the stair climb up the Stratosphere tower in Las Vegas. I looked it up, and it looked like fun. The climb was on Saturday, March 13. And as an added bonus, if I could make the cut and be in the top 50 climbers, I could do it a second time on Sunday in the ‘run-off’ to determine the winner. And besides, it seemed like a good excuse for a weekend in Las Vegas.

Kathleen and I drove out there on Friday afternoon. The trip was pretty uneventful, and we got there just after dark. I was pleased to see that the middle-age-mobile averaged over 30 miles per gallon for the trip. After checking in to the hotel, we took a walk to go find some cheap prime rib, since that’s one of the things Las Vegas is known for. We got a good nighttime view of the tower, and I took a moment to contemplate it a bit. And after dinner, we rode the elevator up to the observation deck to see the view. When we were up there, we asked the security guard where the stairs were, and he showed us the door and the top of the staircase. It looked simple enough. How hard could it be?

Saturday morning, I got dressed in my running gear and got ready to climb. The starting order was pretty random. They said it was just the order that we’d signed up in, so I knew I’d be able to catch and pass at least a couple people on the way up. When we lined up, they gave us a small lecture about the tower stairs. The staircase goes up the central core of the tower. it follows the side of the elevator shafts, so it’s in a roughly triangular space. There are landings on each end of the base of the triangle, and the staircases go back and forth across the space. One way, the staircase is attached to the wall. The other way, it goes directly across the space, about 6-8 feet away from the wall. So that leg is about a 20-step staircase that is just anchored at the ends, and there’s nothing on either side of the railing. This is known to give some people the willies.

When I started climbing, I saw immediately what they were talking about. And yes, it gave me a slight case of the willies. So when I was on those staircases, I just focused on the middle of the stair about three steps ahead and just blocked out the fact that on my right side there was a 300-foot drop. This went on for the majority of the climb. Probably on the order of about 600 vertical feet. I’d been practicing my pacing on the stairs at the library at Caltech, and I set my watch to beep every second to act like a metronome so I could maintain a steady pace. And I managed to do that all the way up. At the top of the tower core, the stairs entered the ‘pod’, which is the round space at the top where they have the bar, restaurant and observation deck. From there it was just a normal staircase for about eight floors up to the observation deck. The stairs let us out into a hallway where they gave us each a towel and a bottle of water. When I got there, I just flopped down on a chair and gasped like a fish out of water. Yow.

As always, I had the “Climber’s Cough” at the top. And everyone else did, too. It was easy to tell who had just finished the climb, because we were all hacking up phlegm. Apparently, this is a known phenomenon caused by high blood pressure in the lungs from the exertion of climbing.

After catching my breath, I had a look at the results that they were tallying on a large monitor. I was pleased to see my time was 11:35.96. I’d hoped to do about 12 minutes, so this was a pleasant surprise. And at the end of the day, it was good for 23rd place overall. This meant that I’d made the cut and could climb in the finals on Sunday.

We spent the rest of Saturday doing Las Vegas-y things. It was good fun.

On Sunday morning, I got dressed again and ready to climb. This time, the starting order was the same as our rank from Saturday. Between that and the fact that they sent us off at one-minute intervals pretty much guaranteed that nobody was going to be passing anyone else today. This meant that it was going to be a solitary climb. Just me against the stairs. Before starting out, I did a little warmup by walking up on the down escalator. Sort of like a stair treadmill. Again, I set my watch to maintain pace, and again I was able to maintain the pace all the way up. For some reason, it hurt a whole lot more the second time. Go figure. But I managed to shave a second and half off my time to finish at 11:34.50, which was good for 26th overall, and 3rd in the 50-59 age group.

I did the math, and my power output for the climb works out to about 0.35 horsepower for the 11.5 minutes it took to get to the top. I’m pretty happy with that for being 50 years old.

So now it’s onward and upward to the AON tower climb next month. And this one is also for charity, so if you can, please stop by and make a donation, however small, to the American Lung Association.

And that’s when a young man’s fancy turns to the ME72 Engineering Contest at Caltech. I’ve gone to see this several times over the years, and it’s always great fun. The 2008 contest featured machines hurling a ball across a field. In 2007 they had to place a small piece of chain high up on a net. And the rules explicitly allow machines to interfere with their opponents’ machines, which makes the whole thing much more entertaining to watch.

So next Tuesday, I’m going to walk over to the gym and see this. It should be fun.

This Sunday’s bike ride was to visit the Portal of the Folded Wings at Valhalla Cemetery in North Hollywood. It’s a monument to people who you’ve probably never heard of, but who played key roles in the early development of aviation. It was a nice day for riding.

We rode straight out across Eagle Rock and Glendale into Burbank. Then we took Victory Blvd to the cemetery. We spent a little time looking around before we headed out. On the way, we stopped to see Oliver Hardy and “Curly Joe” DeRita, who are also buried there. Then we headed south to our snack stop at Priscilla’s in Toluca Lake.

The route back took us down the L.A. River bike path, where we saw trees bent over from the rushing waters that filled the channel last week when we had some hard rain. Then we headed home by the standard route through Highland Park and South Pasadena.

It was a very pleasant ride.

44 miles.
cycling

Since Lucinda and I had the Presidents’ Day holiday off today, we decided to go back to Universal again. They only sell tickets with the ‘buy a day and come back any time for a year’ thing, we figured we’d take them up on it. Since today was a nice sunny and warm day, we figured there would be more people than last time, but the upside to dealing with crowds was that we weren’t going to get soaked. So we gathered up Kymber and we all headed over there this morning.

When we got there, we immediately headed down to the lower lot, since the sign said that the lines for the rides down there were not very long yet. We rode Jurassic Park once, then the Mummy twice, and then back to Jurassic Park again. In between the first and second Mummy rides, I stopped at the snack bar and got a napkin to make some earplugs. And then I was much more comfortable. As I’ve mentioned before, riding a roller coaster with two ten-year-old girls can involve a lot of screaming. The first picture on Jurassic Park had me stoically holding my ears to block out all the screaming on the final drop.

We had lunch overlooking the end of the Jurassic Park ride, and then we went back up and saw the “Waterworld” show. After that, we did the obligatory tram tour. I got a chuckle from the Los Angeles Fire Department golf cart. We usually think of the fire department with lots of gear going very fast to put out fires. And the image of them puttering around in a golf cart was just a bit absurd.

After the tram tour finished, we went back down to the lower lot for the “Backdraft” show. And then one more time on the Mummy. By then, it was getting late. I figured we had time for one more ride, so Kymber and I got in line for Jurassic Park again. This time Lucinda didn’t want to go for some reason. So while we were waiting, I texted her and said that we were going to send her a message from inside the ride. I wrote up a short message:

AAAAAAAAAA!!!

and saved it in the ‘Drafts’ folder on my phone. Then, when the boat was just tipping over the edge of the final drop, I pulled out my phone and hit ‘Send’. The ride photo shows me holding my phone in the air as the boat plunged into the water at the bottom.

All around, it was a fun day, even if we did have to wait in line some. The rest of the pictures are in Lucinda’s photo album.

Today was a random day off for Pasadena schools. For the past two years, Lucinda and I have made a tradition of going to Disneyland on these random days off. Since most other schools aren’t off, the parks tend not to be very crowded. But this time, our friend who works at Disneyland is off on family leave with his new baby, so he wasn’t available to let us in. So we decided to try something different and go to Universal Studios. I haven’t been there since 1996, and Lucinda has only been there once before. So we got her friend Kymber and the three of us went there today.

The school schedule dictated when we had to go, and the fact that it started raining today wasn’t going to stop us. It was cold and wet there, and we got pretty soaked walking around in the rain. But we still had a fun time. A lot of the rides are indoors anyway, so those gave us a chance to get in out of the rain for a bit. We rode the Simpsons ride twice, and eight times on the Mummy ride. In the afternoon, they opened the Jurassic Park ride, and we rode that one three times. Well, actually, Kymber and I rode it three times. Lucinda didn’t come the first time. But we dragged her along for the second time, and she decided she liked it enough that we all went around for a third time. This was the upside of the rain and cold. There were no lines for anything today. We just walked up and got on.

So even with the wet and cold, it was a fun day. The rest of the pictures are in Lucinda’s photo album.

This evening, Kathleen and I met up to go hiking with the Tuesday evening hiking group in Griffith Park. I’ve gone hiking a lot with them over the last two years. And since Griffith Park is about halfway between my house in Pasadena and her house out in the Valley, it seemed like a good weeknight date.

The group meets at the parking lot by the Merry-Go-Round, and it’s usually just us hikers there. But tonight there was some filming going on nearby, and the parking lot was filled with dressing room, prop, and food trucks. And there were a bunch of NYPD police cars parked there. So I guess it was a movie or TV show set in New York. Still not quite as weird as when I saw the New Jersey Transit commuter train at Union Station in downtown L.A.

This evening’s hike was the ‘easy’ one. Rolling hills on a fire road, ending with a short but steep stair climb up to Amir’s Garden. After doing the U.S. Bank Tower last fall, I’m not intimidated by stairs, but most everyone was panting on the way up. At the top we had a short rest and looked at the city lights. Then we headed back down by way of a fire road.

It was a nice evening.

I signed up for the ‘Scale the Strat‘ stair climb up the Stratosphere Tower in Las Vegas. When I did the U.S. Bank tower stair climb last fall, some of the other climbers told me about the Las Vegas event. They said it was fun, and I think it looks like it will be.

It’s a two-part event this time. The first round is on Saturday, with a ‘climb-off’ for the top 50 runners on Sunday. I was in the top 10% at both the U.S. Bank and the Aon Center stair climbs, so I think I have a decent chance of making the cut.

As always, it’s a fundraiser for the Lung Association. It’s a good cause, so if you can, please stop by and make a small donation to them. The page for that is here

.

On Monday and Tuesday, Lucinda and I went to San Diego again to visit my father and to go to Sea World again. When we got there, we had lunch with Grandpa. After that, we visited for a while at his place. We watched “Fly Away Home”, which Lucinda liked. After that, we went to our hotel to register and then we came back for dinner with Grandpa.

On Tuesday, we got up early and went to see the seals in La Jolla. They were all lounging on the beach, but we saw a few sea lions swimming around in the surf. We also walked over to Cave St and took the tour of Sunny Jim Cave. Lucinda was a bit spooked to walk through the tunnel down to the cave, but I managed to coax her down there. After that, we went to Sea World. We walked around and saw a lot of animals. We also took the Skyride, which gave Lucinda serious willies. At the end of the day, we went to the Shamu show, where we made a point to sit above the stadium rows that get wet. That might be fun in the summer, but not so much in December.

It was a fun little trip.

Pictures from the day are here:
Lucinda’s photos
Nature and Animals photos

I had occasion this evening to go to the Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank. This is the original one, built in 1949, and it’s something of a SoCal landmark. And it has great neon signs. So I got some pictures while waiting for my date to arrive. Fortunately, there were a lot of newpaper boxes on the sidewalk, and they made great platforms to balance the camera for steady night shots. So I got pictures of the Bob’s signs, and also the neon hot dog across the street at Papoo’s Hot Dog Show.

On the day after Thanksgiving, Lucinda and I had some little adventures around San Diego. We started out at La Jolla Cove to see the seals. Then we went down to Mission Beach to ride the Giant Dipper roller coaster. After that, we went to Cabrillo National Monument to see the lighthouse and the tide pools. And finally, we went to Sea World. At the end of the day, we went back and had dinner with Grandpa before heading home to L.A. It was a long, but fun day.

Pictures from the day are in Lucinda’s photo album, and also in my Nature and Animals collection.