Stan’s Obligatory Blog

The results are in:

In 2007, I used my car 38 times. Of those, 5 were when I took a trip to San Diego when my father had his knee replacement surgery. I drove to work a total of 4 times.

I put 1,020 miles on my car. This works out to an average of 26.8 miles on each day I used the car. The average is a bit higher than last year because of the trip to San Diego, which involved two days of 100+ miles.

I didn’t use the car at all in August and September. The car sat in the garage for 75 consecutive days.

One funny thing that happened was that 2007 was the year I had to take the car for its smog test. I took it to the same place as in 2005. The guy there remembered me. And he chuckled a bit when he read the odometer and saw how few miles I’d driven in those two years.

My car didn’t have to go in for repair at all this year. The only thing that went wrong was that I had to replace the battery in December. The old battery lasted for exactly 7 years.

I bought gas four times: January 13, April 29, June 8, and November 12.

Adding up the cost of gas, insurance, registration, and a new battery, it works out to 58.5 cents per mile.

Today is New Year’s Day, which means the Rose Parade here in Pasadena.

And my two most favorite things to see at the parade are:

• The look on the face of the kid who just marched 5 miles carrying a Sousaphone;
• Seeing a broken-down float getting towed away.

And what’s up with that ‘chin strap across the nose’ thing?

Anyway, my day was complete very early on. After that, we headed back home to see the horses. Along the way, we saw the band kids all sitting and chowing down on In-N-Out burgers. For some reason, I find that amusing, too.

We went to the parking lot where they had most of the horse trailers. Lucinda and her friend got to pet and feed carrots to the horses. While they were doing that, I watched a guy practice rope tricks, and I also got to see Miss California Rodeo.

When we went back home, we were treated to the always-surreal sight of horses grazing on suburban lawns, and people riding past our house.

It was a fun day.

Route slip

Today’s ride was the “Glendale Vistas” route. We haven’t done this one since June, so it was time. It was chilly this morning, but we had a good group of ten riders. Michael came out for the first time in months, which meant that there was going to be competition to be first to the top of the hills. And Vikki is visiting from Canada this week, so she came to ride with us, too.

We rode out of Pasadena to La Cañada. Then we turned up Chevy Chase for the first hill of the ride. The hill up the north side of Chevy Chase is long and winding, with a steep pitch at the end. Then a nice long downhill into Glendale.

At the bottom, we made a loop through Glendale, ending up on Glenoaks, where we stopped at Paradise Bakery. I had my usual two chocolate eclairs, since theirs are the best. And I wasn’t even worried about eating them before the steep hills in the second half of the ride.

Leaving the bakery, we rode back across Glendale and started up into the hills. The first big hill started out on Royal Blvd, which wasn’t too steep. Then we turned on Old Phillips Rd, which was close to flat. Finally, we took a right on Kidonan Dr, which is the steep pitch to the top. And that was where Things Went Wrong.

I was riding up the hill in my usual 39×17 gear, and I was pushing pretty hard to try and stay ahead of Michael. Then my chain skipped. I head the sound of pieces of metal falling on the ground, and the cranks spun free. I managed to get my foot out before falling over, and I looked down to see that the 17-tooth cog on my cassette had self-destructed. It broke into three or four pieces, and the chain was just wedged down into the space where the cog had been. I’ve been riding seriously since 1973, and this is the first time I’ve ever seen something like this break.

Needless to say, this was a problem. First, we took the obligatory picture, and I stuffed a couple of the pieces into my bag for a souvenir. Then I walked up to the next flat spot. I was able to get the chain onto the next larger cog. The picture shows the chain on the 9 speed 8 speed cassette. Then I rode very carefully the rest of the way to the top. The other cogs didn’t seem to be going too far out of alignment, so the bike was rideable, but shifting was probably not a good idea.

Fortunately, we were getting close to the end of the ride, so just continued on. We rode down into Montrose and then up Hospital Hill. Then straight down and back into Pasadena and back to the park.

It was a fun ride, even with the broken cog. Things like that are rare enough that the inconvenience was worth it just to have the story to tell. And it was nice to see Vikki again.

41 miles and one broken 17-tooth cog.
cycling

Today’s ride was the Fall Foliage route through Monterey Park. Apparently there are some areas that have trees with leave that change color and fall in the autumn. And there are some very steep hills, too.

We met at Arcadia Park and headed out. The first part of the ride was pretty uneventful. The first funny thing I saw was a pet grooming place with a sign that said that they had “The Furminator”, which is apparently a line of anti-shedding products. Well, I thought it was funny.

In Alhambra, we saw a couple of abandoned couches. One on the side of the road, and a second one that was being picked up. So now we know what happens to all those abandoned couches.

We crossed over the 10 freeway on a pedestrian bridge, which was kind of novel. And it gave a good view of the freeway, and the lack of traffic at 9:30 on a Saturday morning.

Then we did the first little hill. It was something like 17%, but it was short. Then we had a short downhill, and that’s where we saw the big fountain. No idea what the reason was for it being there, but it was a nice fountain.

The next turn was up Cadiz St. This felt like the steepest hill of the bunch, but Frank said it wasn’t. But it was longer than the others, so the joy was long-lasting. And this was the hill that made me say ‘uncle’ and shift down a couple of gears. We regrouped at the top, and that was where we noticed that part of the group had taken a different route to avoid the hill.

Coming down off that hill, we crossed Atlantic Ave and then rode up another nice hill. And that was where we saw the purple house. Then we came down the other side and rode up into Alhambra. We stopped at the golf course and had snacks at the little coffee shop there. Jon and I were comparing our cleats. Mine are a lot less worn than his. I think that may have something to do with my rarely putting my foot down. We were also all amused by the display of golf energy bars.

Finally, we rode the flat route back to the park in Arcadia. When we were almost there, Bob got a flat. This is Bob’s second appearance in the Flat Tire Gallery.

Overall, it was a fun little ride.

44 miles
cycling

Success is mine. After many test runs, and tweaking the recipe many, many times, I have created what Lucinda and I consider to be the Perfect Blueberry Muffin.

And in the spirit of Open Source, here’s the recipe:

http://www.1134.org/recipes/blueberrymuffins.pdf

I took a vacation day today to do a house project.

Our house is very old, and part of the attic has no insulation. And so I set out to remedy this. I had to pull up some of the boards and stuff the batts of insulation into the spaces between the joists. As it turned out, I didn’t have to pull up all the boards, and the whole thing only took about two hours of fairly intense work. The worst aspect of it was that my dust mask got soaked with sweat, and air won’t go through a soaked dust mask. Which made it hard to breathe. Yick. Fortunately, I had a couple of masks, so I could switch them when one got too soaked. Fun times.

Saw this on Christmas day:

A big recliner chair, and six remote controls. Yikes.

Christmas came, and Lucinda got a Wii. And she also got a few other things, but that was the big one. Thanks to Uncle Larry and Aunt Francesca for braving the crowds to find it and buy it for her. And we also had a nice dinner and visited with the family. So overall, it was a fun time.

Pictures are here.

The ball got stuck like this tonight. This is pretty rare. In 24 years with this machine, I’ve only seen this happen once before. And I didn’t even get super-powers while it was stuck there.

Today’s ride was the Mt Washington ride. We have done this ride before, but it’s been several months, so the time was right.

We rode north from Victory Park, up into Altadena, and then over through La Cañada and down Hospital Hill. Then we went straight down through Glendale and Atwater Village, over the Los Angeles River and down Riverside Dr.

At the end of Riverside, we went north on Figueroa and then turned left up Mt Washington. This is a nice little climb. Not too steep, not too long. And they repaved the road about a year ago, so it’s pretty nice for riding now. Note in the photos how everyone is smiling as they crested the hill.

Coming down the other side, we got on Ave 50 and took a little detour over to Eldred St. This is reputed to be the steepest street in Los Angeles. The grade is something a bit over 30% at the top. I’d read that the trash trucks back up the hill so that they don’t have to turn around at the top. They are afraid the truck would tip over if they did. We made a couple of attempts at riding up it, but none of us made it all the way to the top without slipping. But we did talk to one of the residents of the street, and he confirmed the story about the backwards trash trucks.

Leaving Eldred St, we rode north through Highland Park and then into South Pasadena, where we stopped at Kaldi’s for a snack. Then we went east through downtown South Pasadena, passing a large inflatable dinosaur. From there, we took Monterey Road east, turning south to get to Duarte Road, and then made a loop back to the park. By then, it had warmed up quite nicely, and we were mostly overdressed for the temperature. So it was a good time to be done.

40 miles.
cycling