Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Thursday night, we signed up for a bar crawl tour in Hollywood, on the east end, near Silver Lake. It sounded like fun, so we signed up. And it turned out to be a lot of fun.

The tour met up and started at El Cid. This used to be the Jail Cafe in the 1920s. It doesn’t have the prison theme any more, but it did have a nice outdoor bar and patio area. We were there for a little while before the group headed up Sunset to our next stop. Along the way, we stopped at the Elliott Smith tribute wall. Then we crossed the street to get to Tiki Ti.

Tiki Ti is an odd place. We’d heard of it on the Neon Cruise tour, since it’s a local landmark, and also, because of a quirk in the law, it is the only bar in L.A. where smoking is still allowed. They had a big menu of the drinks they make there, and we just sort of picked a couple to try. In the meantime, somebody down at the other end of the bar ordered something special, so the bartenders brought out the little animatronic bull and had it walk down the bar. It was all a very odd and entertaining experience.

Our next stop was at the Good Luck Bar, which is right around the corner from the Vista Theater. So we stopped along the way to look at the walk of fame of the B-list stars. I’ve been there before with the Sunday morning bike club ride. The Good Luck was also an odd place. It was decorated in a Chinese theme, which is not something I usually associate with a bar.

The last stop was the Dresden Room. On the way there, we took a walk up Lyman Place, which is an entire block of apartments that are all built and decorated to evoke old-time Hollywood, and each building is named for one or another old movie star. There was a Monroe, a Bogart, a Valentino, and others. When I saw that, I knew this was going to be a sightseeing stop on the Sunday morning bike ride soon.

The Dresden Room is another distinctive place. I’d been there once before, in 2008. That time was early in the evening, but this time it was later, and Marty and Elaine were performing. Apparently, they have been playing there for over 30 years. We ordered more drinks and some food. Overall, this was a very entertaining evening.

This weekend, we all took a trip to San Diego to visit my father, and also to go see the seals at La Jolla Cove. Late January and early February is the pupping season, and there truly is nothing cuter than baby seals. I first saw the seals back in 2007, and we’ve been coming to see them almost every time we come to San Diego since then. And in particular, we always make a point of coming to see them when the seal pups are being born. There was a volunteer from the Seal Conservancy at the beach, and he pointed out the new pups and told us a little about them. Sadly, there are some people who actively dislike the seals, and like to chase them away. But fortunately, since marine mammals are protected, the courts have ruled that the beach can be closed to people during the pupping season.

After seeing the seals, we headed back to my father’s place. Along the way, we stopped off at the Torrey Pines Gliderport. I’d only seen that once before, back in 1985, and I remember it being pretty spectacular to watch the hang gliders soaring along the cliffs there. But sadly, there was nobody out flying today. Still, it was interesting to see it again.

Today’s adventure was yet another tour arranged by the Obscura Society. This time, it was a visit to the Marine Mammal Care Center in San Pedro. This is sort of a companion to our visit to the Marine Mammal Center near San Francisco last summer.

The Marine Mammal Care Center is the place to go for treatment and rehabilitation of rescued seals and sea lions in Los Angeles. It’s a relatively small place, with just a handful of pens with small pools for the animals. There’s also an office/lab/classroom building there, where the director of the center told us about the place, and about the animals they treat. He passed around a sea lion skull for us to look at. Apparently, the takeaway from all this is that sea lions have sharp teeth. That, and that harbor seals may look cute, but they also bite. So don’t get too near them.

After the talk inside, we went outside to see the animals. There were mostly sea lions there. He had said that they get a lot of malnourished and dehydrated animals there, and he described the procedure for tube-feeding sick animals. And when we were outside, we got to see three people wrestling a small sea lion to hold it down for tube-feeding. Afterward, the little pup looked like he’d just endured an alien abduction.

There was another pen that had several sea lions in it. They said that they were all nearly healthy enough to be released back into the ocean. They were being fed, but they were feeling good enough that they were playing with the fish. Which was fine with the very large bird sitting and watching them. Whenever they would toss a fish out of the water, the bird would come down and steal it.

It was an interesting morning. And since were were already in San Pedro, we took a short side trip to see the Korean Friendship Bell in the park down the street. Then we went home by way of Dim Sum in Chinatown. All together, that made a for a fun time.

Last month, when we climbed Mt Baldy, Karina had mentioned that she thought that the hike up Cucamonga Peak was actually a bit harder than the Baldy hike. Given how hard Baldy is, I was a bit skeptical. Still, I’d always wanted to try Cucamonga Peak, since it’s one of the highest mountains in the front part of the San Gabriels.

We started up the trail at 9:23 in the morning. It was promising to be a nice day, although we thought that there might be a bit of snow up high, since it had rained a tiny bit a couple nights ago. Starting out up Ice House Canyon, we passed by several cabins, and several more ruins of former cabins. Judging by the size of the boulders in the canyon that had pretty obviously fallen from high up, it was not surprising to see that some of the cabins had been destroyed. As we got a little higher up the canyon, we could see that there was a thin layer of snow on the south wall of the canyon. The north wall was in sunlight, and the snow there had melted. There were just some small patches in the shade of trees or rocks.

At that point, the trail got steep, and we went up a series of big switchbacks to climb up out of the canyon. And then we came out in Ice house Saddle. At that point, there were trails going off in different directions to climb various nearby peaks. It was here that I realized how cold it really was, and I put on my sweatshirt and sweatpants.

The trail to Cucamonga Peak goes around the side of Bighorn Peak, and the first part of the trail is across the north side of the mountain. There was quite a bit of snow there. The side of the mountain there is very steep, and the trail is just a narrow path carved into the steep slope. With snow on it, it was really kind of scary. I got out both my poles to use for balance and stability.

As we came around to the saddle between Bighorn Peak and Cucamonga Peak, the snow went away, although the trail was still crossing some intimidatingly-steep slopes. When we got to the saddle, we stopped and had lunch. From the sounds we were hearing, it sounded like the wind was blowing pretty hard higher up, so we figured that it was probably better to stop in the relatively-sheltered saddle for lunch. While we were there, another group of three hikers passed us. We had passed them on the way up Ice House Canyon, so I said we should make it our goal to catch them before the summit.

Leaving the saddle, the trail started up some more steep switchbacks, including a couple of crossings across a big scree slope that kind of gave me the willies. Fortunately, it was on the west side of the peak, so there was no snow there. There was more snow farther up the trail, but the north-facing slopes there had a fair number of big trees on them, so it didn’t feel so exposed. We caught up with the other group just a short distance below the summit.

At the top, I made a point to climb up and stand on top of the highest rock, just, you know, because. We had a look at the view down into Cajon Pass, where we’d been on the office field trip last week. I was particularly impressed by how steep and rugged the south face of Etiwanda Peak was. After a few minutes, the other group came up to the summit, and we got them to take our souvenir picture with the view. I also gave them some of my water, since I wasn’t going to use all that I’d brought along.

When we started back down, we made much better time than on the way up. It first, I thought we’d make it back before sundown, but we really missed that extra hour of sunlight that we had for Baldy last month. And sunset came when we were still about a mile from the end. At that point, i was glad that I’d thought to put a flashlight in my pack. It wasn’t a particularly bright one, but it helped. And we made it back to the end. On the way home, we wondered what had become of the group we’d seen at the top, since we didn’t see them at all on the way down, so they must have come down much later than us. Anyway, it was a fun hike, and yes, I agree now that it’s harder than Mt Baldy. I also think that a hike this long was perhaps a bit over-ambitious for this time of year. We really didn’t like walking that last mile in the dark. Still, it was a good time.

A few weeks ago, Sue Hough sent an email out to the office to see who would be interested in a field trip to tour the San Andreas Fault in the Antelope Valley, a bit north of Los Angeles. The sights would be taken from her book, Finding Fault in California. As it turned out, there was quite a bit of interest. In the end, it was enough interest that we rented a 24-passenger bus and driver for the day so we could take the trip.

We met at the office early Wednesday morning, and then we headed out. We went past JPL, which is located right on the trace of the Sierra Madre Fault, and has a very nice, steep scarp right behind it. Our first real stop was the small fault scarp next to the McDonald’s at 1955 Glenoaks Blvd in San Fernando. This scarp was formed in the 1971 San Fernando Earthquake. I took the bike club there to see the scarp last June.

Continuing on up the freeway, we went through the 5/14 freeway interchange. This interchange fell down in the 1971 earthquake. It was rebuilt, and then fell down again in the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. Then we went up the 14 freeway, through the mountains, coming out in Palmdale. We went one exit farther up the freeway than we needed to, since that let us go through a somewhat-famous road cut on the freeway. It’s where the freeway crosses the trace of the San Andreas Fault, and in that cut, the rock layers look particularly jumbled and twisted from the motion of the fault.

Heading east out of Palmdale, we went along the northern edge of the San Gabriel Mountains. We stopped for a photo-op at a place where some people put up signs on the road to mark the trace of the fault. Makes it really easy to find, when there’s a big sign pointing it out. This site was very near where Kerry Sieh did his first trenching studies on the fault, back in the ’70s.

A little while later, the road started to climb into the mountains, still following the trace of the fault. We stopped at another road cut where the cut went right through the fault gouge. The side of the cut was basically packed sand and pulverized rock. Digging into it with our hands, there were some solid pieces of rock buried in there, but as Sue showed us, those solid pieces were actually shattered, and we could crumble them to sand in our hands. We also saw a tree there that was kind of bent at the top. There has been some research done on trees in that area that grow along the fault line. There are trees that show signs of having been broken off in past earthquakes.

In Wrightwood, we took one small side trip to look at some recent debris flows, and how the town has attempted to guide future debris flows to minimize damage to the town.

Coming down the east side of the mountain from Wrightwood, we ended up coming out by the 15 freeway in Cajon Pass. We took one more side trip to see Lost Lake, which is a small sag pond on the fault there.

This made for an interesting day of sightseeing. Have I mentioned lately that I really like my job?

Last year’s government shutdown involved a good bit of hiking in the local mountains. Since there was no furlough-cation this year, we had to take a weekend day to go climb Mt Baldy. We wanted to do it before November, since it’s going to get cold up there, and there could be snow. So today was the last available day in October.

Like last year, I went with Karina from my office. We went up to Manker Flat to the trailhead. On the way up there, I collected a new animal crossing sign for my collection. When we started up the trail, we got a nice view of San Antonio Falls. Even with the drought, there was still a little bit of water going over the falls. Just hearing running water is such a novelty for us these days. We also heard a woodpecker, and we were lucky enough to see it going at the trunk of a dead tree.

Because it was Saturday instead of a weekday, there were a lot of people on the trail. That was all right. It was just strange, since last year’s hikes left me with the impression that all these trails are deserted. There was a small crowd at the hut about halfway up the mountain. And a very friendly Golden Retriever named Butter, who begged snacks from everyone there.

Leaving the hut, we walked across the bowl to the place where the trail climbs steeply up the ridge to the south of the summit. In the bowl, there is a big field of boulders, and it’s pretty obvious that they all fell from the crags at the top of the ridge. I couldn’t help but wonder what that must have sounded like.

The last part of the climb to the summit was hard. Just as hard as it was last year. But we made it, and we settled in for lunch on top of the mountain. Just us and about fifty other people. At least with that many people up there, there were lots of people for the bees to bother, so they didn’t bother us so much as when we were the only ones there.

On the way down, I stopped to take a picture of the waning crescent moon hanging just over the rocks below the summit. And I also got some pictures along the trail. I’ve decided that there are parts of the Devil’s Backbone trail that really give me the willies. But that’s all right. We made it down just fine. At the ski area, they were getting ready for ski season. There were some crews practicing rescuing people from the chair lift, and there were CPR dummies spread out on a blanket nearby. We went in the restaurant so I could refill my water bottle. And we got a picture, looking back up at the summit. Then we started down the service road back to Manker Flat.

Like last year, the service road seemed to go on forever. It’s long. But I was expecting that this time, so it was all right. And we made it back to the car just fine. According to my little GPS thingy, it was 4 1/4 miles from the start to the top, and it was 10.9 miles for the whole loop. Good fun.

Last year, I finally got to do the hike to “The Bridge to Nowhere”. And today I got to do it again. The main difference this time is that it was a Saturday, rather than a Friday, and there was no government shutdown in effect. Last year when we did this, the place was deserted. We saw just a handful of people on the trail. But today, when we got to the trailhead, we had to park about a quarter-mile back down the road, since the little parking lot was completely full.

I’d gone up there with my hiking friend Kathy, and we were going to meet up with my stair-climbing friend Crystal and her boyfriend Barry. When I saw all the cars there, I thought it was going to be hard to find them. But when we parked, it turned out they were in the car right in front of us. That was convenient.

We started out down the trail. The first time, I didn’t really know what to expect, so it was easier this time. I knew the basic pattern for following and finding the trail, and we made good time. It only took us a little over two hours to make it to the Bridge. When we got there, the bungee-jumping people were out in force. It was a far cry from the deserted bridge I remember from last year. We crossed, and then followed the trail down into the gorge below the bridge so we could watch the bungee jumpers. Here’s a sample:

We had lunch down there in the gorge, and then we headed back. The hike back went pretty fast. It was a perfect day, and all around, it was a fun time.

Tonight’s adventure was a trip up Mt. Wilson with the Obscura Society for an evening of looking at the stars with the 60-inch telescope. We headed up to the top of the mountain, where we were met by our guide, Shelley Bonus. She led us in to the telescope and told us the history of it while we were waiting for nightfall. And once it was fully dark, we were able to get started. And since Matt from the Obscura Society had suggested bringing baked goods along for the evening, I brought a batch of my blue-ribbon-winning chocolate cookies. They disappeared fast, so I guess that’s a good sign.

Shelley explained that the telescope has its strong and weak points. It’s great for observing stars and small star clusters. Because it has such a long focal length, it is best run at what would be considered impossible magnifications for a small amateur telescope. There was one night back in 1997 when the air was very still and I was able to run my 8-inch Celestron up to 300X. But normally, about 100X is as far as I can go. But with the 60-inch, we were routinely running close to 400X, and the image in the eyepiece was rock-solid and clear.

We started out with Epsilon Lyrae. Splitting the two double stars is a test of the resolving power of any telescope, and the big telescope did it easily. And while we were in the neighborhood, we had a look at M57, The Ring Nebula. This is another thing I’ve looked at with my telescope, but it was much bigger and more detailed here. We also had a look at the Dumbbell Nebula, but it wasn’t such a great sight. It’s a relatively large object, so it didn’t fit well into the field of view a high magnification.

We looked at a couple of globular clusters, which were very nice. They actually looked like balls of stars, rather than the round patches of fuzz they look like in smaller telescopes. And we ended the evening with a look at Neptune. It was nice and big and blue, and its moon Triton was clearly visible. Triton has a visual magnitude of about 13, which is beyond the reach of my little 8-inch telescope, but it was obvious here.

All in all, it was a good evening of nerdy fun.

Addendum: I didn’t make the connection until the next day, but I knew Shelley before. Back in 1990, I took a class at UCLA Extension called “How to Perform Stand-Up Comedy”, and she was the instructor. But because it had been so long, and being in a completely different context, I didn’t put it all together at the time. But in any event, it was a very weird coincidence.

Mt Lukens is the highest point within the city limits of Los Angeles, and as such, it’s home to a lot of communications equipment for the Department of Water and Power, and other things like that. Since the seismic network uses some of the DWP network, we have a microwave link up there from the Seismo Lab. So I was curious to see it. I read a post on a hiking blog about climbing this mountain, and it sounded like a fun hike.

Karina is training for the New York Marathon, so she was busy going running, so Kathy and I did the hike. We started out from Deukmejian Wilderness Park in Glendale. The trail started out up the wash in the park, but quickly turned right and went up a steep ridge. The first couple miles were very steep, and pretty soon we were above the clouds. It was kind of gray and overcast down below, but it was a perfect day up on the mountain.

At the top of the ridge, the trail turned into a fire road for a bit along the top of the ridge before we met up with the Mt Lukens road. From there, it was an easy mile or so up the road to the top. At the top, we spent a few minutes looking at the view. To the south, it was just clouds, with some other mountains poking up through them, and to the north it was clear.

Going down, we took the Rim of the Valley trail, which came down a different ridge a bit west of the ridge we’d hiked up. The only really tricky part of the trip down was finding the turnoff, since the main trail goes down to Haines Canyon, and we needed to take the cutoff trail to get back to Deukmejian Park. The saving grace of the southern California mountains is that there are basically no trees, so it’s easy to see the different trails and where they go. So we turned off and headed down toward the park.

At one point, the trail went down into a canyon where there was actually a small stream. It was just a trickle, but it was actual running water. And there were big trees growing at the bottom of the canyon. From there, we had to climb up and out to get over the next ridge, and then we could see where we’d started. The last part of the route was an easy walk back down Dunsmore Canyon to where we started. In the end, it was nearly 10 miles in all, but it was a nice day, so it was a good time.

Here’s the route map: http://www.1134.org/routemap.php?xmlfile=mtlukenshike

On Sunday afternoon, we took a trip to Santa Monica to go to a talk and book-signing with Randall Munroe of XKCD. He has a new book out: What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. It’s a collection of his what if? columns, and it’s all very entertaining.

The basic format was a conversation between Randall and Wil Wheaton. They talked about the book, about science in general, told stories, and took questions from the audience. It was a fun time, and at the end, we all lined up to get our books signed by Randall. And I got to thank him for the little bit of geek fame I got from when he mentioned my Pet Project in the mouseover text for this cartoon: http://xkcd.com/723/