Stan’s Obligatory Blog

It’s now the third week of the government shutdown, and Karina is back in L.A., so we’re going on the traditional furlough-cation hikes. We did this during the 2013 shutdown, and it was a good way to fill the time.

Today’s hike was Josephine Peak. I’ve doing this one once before, but that was back in 1995, so it’s been a while. The trail is a fire road, so it’s not terribly difficult. The road wraps around the mountain, so we got lots of good views in all directions. At the top, we sat down for some lunch. There used to be a fire lookout at the summit, so the foundations of it made a good place to sit.

8 miles.

I forgot my GPS, so I don’t have a map this time.

Since Lucinda and Melissa are both home from school right now, I suggested that we take a hike out to the famous “Bridge to Nowhere” at the Narrows on the east fork of the San Gabriel River. So today was the day. This was my third time doing this particular hike.

I had it lodged in my memory that we were supposed to have to cross the river four times, but in the end, it turned out to be six times. The river is higher than it was the other times I’ve been out there, which made the crossings a bit more difficult. In the end, I had to stop and take my shoes off to wade across about three of the crossings. Between that and losing the trail a few times along the way, the trip out there took longer than the other times. And when we got there, it was pretty cold and windy, so we didn’t spend much time at the Bridge. Coming back was a lot easier, though. We’d made all the mistakes on the way out, and so we were able to avoid them coming back.

The L.A. Times had a photo a few days ago of a float for the Rose Parade being built at Fiesta Parade Floats in Irwindale. I looked up where it was, and it turned out to be right near the Irwindale Metro Rail station. I also knew of another shop where they build floats in Irwindale, and I also looked up the location where the city of Sierra Madre builds their float. And then we had a theme for the ride. The plan was to ride out through Sierra Madre, and go to Classic Coffee in Glendora, and the come home by was of Irwindale.

At the Rose Float Barn in Sierra Madre, we got a chance to peek inside and see the float being decorated. The one float shop that I already knew about in Irwindale wasn’t much to see. There was an awning with nothing under it, and just a sign that the float they’d built was parked over in Pasadena to be decorated. But the scene at Fiesta Parade Floats was pretty good. They had 8 or 10 floats under construction inside, and the door was open so we could see them. There was a big crowd of people there to help, and there were pallets of flowers outside, ready to be put on the floats. There were even about five local news trucks there, which I thought was funny, since the only time I ever see that many news trucks in one place is at Caltech after an earthquake.

40 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today’s bike club ride was our annual “It’s a Wonderful Life”-themed ride. It’s a combination of celebrity grave and movie location tours. The first stop was at Forest Lawn in Glendale to see James Stewart, since he was the actor who brought George Bailey to life. Then we went for snacks at Paradise Bakery in Glendale. The final stop was to see the house that was used for the Martini family home in Bailey Park. The brief scene of them moving into their new house was the only scene in the movie that was filmed on location. Finally, on the way back, we rode over Devil’s Gate Dam to have a look at how L.A. County is trying to dig out the sediment that has collected behind the dam.

39 miles.

Route map and elevation profilue

This past week, I saw an article in the L.A. Times about how a neighborhood group in Koreatown wanted the L.A. Unified school district to paint over a mural on the wall of the RFK Community School. The mural depicted Ava Gardner and some palm trees, with a red and blue sunburst background. Apparently, they thought the sunburst pattern looked too much like the Japanese battle flag. Granted, Japan has a history of using Korea as their punching bag, and they have been behind a lot of bad things happening to Korea, but this seems like a bit of a stretch. But in any event, I thought we should go see it.

The route went through downtown and past USC. On the way into downtown, we stopped to see an AIDS memorial in the park just outside downtown. After passing USC, we headed north to Koreatown. We stopped to see the mural, and the for bagels at Noah’s in Larchmont. Then home by way of Chinatown and the Arroyo Seco bike trail. And just to top it all off, we saw the two-legged dogs again. It’s been several years since we first saw them, and if I didn’t have pictures from the first time, I’d think that they were just part of a weird fever dream. But we saw them again today.

44 miles.

Route map and elevation profile.

Today’s bike ride was a trip to Downey to visit the oldest operating McDonald’s, and the to the Columbia Space Center museum to see the boilerplate model of the Apollo Command Module on display outside. We stopped for snacks at 3rd Street Coffee, and then came home by way of the Rio Hondo bike trail.

46 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today was the final Ciclavia of 2018. It was the “Heart of L.A.” route, which is basically from East L.A. to the west side of downtown. So the plan was to ride down to pick up the route in East L.A., and then ride through downtown, and then on up to Echo Park. We stopped for snacks and drinks at Valerie Confections in Echo Park, and then home by way of Highland Park and South Pasadena.

42 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Last Sunday was the 11th, which we know as Veteran’s Day, but was originally Armistice Day, commemorating the end of the First World War. But the smoke from the Woolsey Fire was blowing east that day, so we ended up cancelling the ride. So this Sunday we did our Armistice Day ride. The theme was to go see a pair of memorials to the war here in Los Angeles. The first was in Pershing Square in downtown L.A. General Pershing was the commander of the U.S. forces on the Western Front in the war. The second was a grove of trees near Dodger Stadium that were planted in the 1920s in memory of the dead from the war. Aside from that, the route was just a meander around central Los Angeles.

47 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today was the latest version of the San Andreas Fault tour with Atlas Obscura. This is about the fifth time we’ve done this tour, which is based on Sue Hough’s book, Finding Fault in California: An Earthquake Tourist’s Guide. Back in 2014, Sue took our office on a tour based on her book, and I knew immediately that this tour would be a hit with the Atlas Obscura crowd.

The first stop was the McDonald’s in San Fernando, which has a nice little fault scarp between the drive-through and the parking lot. This is a remnant from the 1971 San Fernando Earthquake. After that, we headed up the 14 Freeway, passing over the famous interchange that fell down in 1971, and then again in 1994, and then on to the Antelope Valley. We stopped at the scenic overlook by Lake Palmdale, and then took a short walk up the hill to see the famous road cut where the freeway cuts through a hill that was pushed up by motion on the fault.

WE stopped for lunch at Charlie Brown Farms in Littlerock, and then we went on to Pearblossom. We stopped for a photo-op at the signs marking where the fault crosses the road. There was a pair of signs there that someone installed decades ago, but those signs were vandalized some time in the last year or so. So Morgan and I had made a new pair of signs, which we took a field trip to go and install back in May. The new signs are still there, and still look nice and clean and new. After that, we went just a short distance down the road to go see the Pallett Creek trench site, which was the birthplace of the relatively new science of paleoseismology.

Heading up into the mountains, we stopped to dig a bit in some fault gouge in a road cut near Big Pines. Then we went through Wrightwood, and on down into Cajon Pass. That was the final stop, at Lost Lake, which is a small sag pond. It’s a pretty unlikely place for a lake, which is the charm of it. After that, we headed back to Pasadena.

After our visit to the In-N-Out Burger museum a few weeks ago, I was looking at the In-N-Out Burger web site, and in particular, their page about the history of the company. And from that, I put together another little In-N-Out-themed tour.

The first sight is the In-N-Out on Foothill in Pasadena. It turns out that that’s the oldest In-N-Out still operating in its original building.

They currently have 335 locations in six states, and of those, only five do not have a drive-through window. And it turns out that one of them is in Glendale. So that was the second sight.

Another tidbit about the company was the the founder, Harry Snyder, was a big fan of the movie, “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World”. So beginning in 1972, he started having a pair of crossed palm trees planted in front of new In-N-Out restaurants. He said that In-N-Out was his treasure, so the trees were his nod to the “Big ‘W’” where the treasure was buried in the movie.

So that was our theme for today.

45 miles.

Route map and elevation profile