Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s bike club ride was our regular route to Whittier, but this time with a short side trip to see a giant suspended teapot fountain outside an Asian shopping center in Temple City. When we started out, it was kind of misting and damp, but thankfully, that stopped once we got a few miles away from the mountains. We also discovered two new topiaries in front of a preschool in Temple City. And finally, we did the photo-op with Jen at Dork St in Pico Rivera. So all around, it was a fun little ride.

46 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

So Metro says that the construction of the Regional Connector is halfway done. So they had a little party about it. Which wasn’t all that big of a deal, but on the other hand, they were offering quick tours of the construction site in Little Tokyo. We got to go inside the fence and look down into the pit where they are constructing the new light rail station. They also had displays about the other projects under construction around L.A. I also saw that the Japanese museum is having a new exhibit as a follow-on to their Hapa Project exhibit from 2001. Being Hapa, I think this is something I need to go see.

Today’s bike club ride was the Ciclavia “Heart of the Foothills”. This was the first time that there was an official Ciclavia event inland. The route went from San Dimas to Claremont. When we ride to Claremont, it’s about a 58 mile round trip, which is a bit beyond our normal 40-45 for a Sunday ride. So the plan for today was to start by taking Metro to the end of the line in Azusa. From there, we rode to San Dimas, where we picked up the Ciclavia route. We rode the route out to Claremont and back. We didn’t stop in Claremont, since we wanted to get back before it got too crowded.

Back in San Dimas, we stopped for snacks at the Bagelry. Then we rode back to Pasadena. This made a total of 44 miles riding. When we first got off the train in Azusa, I forgot to turn on my GPS thingy, so it missed the first few miles. And it also didn’t count the initial two miles from the park where we start to the Metro station at Allen.

44 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Yesterday, I was at the Aon building stair climb. While we were there, there was a crew setting up for shooting a scene for Marvel’s “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” on Wilshire Blvd. They had lots of fake rocks and fake broken chunks of pavement, as well as a couple of fire cars, like the ones we saw in Griffith Park once that turned out to be for an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy”. The setup crew said they were going to be working all day to set the scene, and the actual filming would be done of Sunday morning, so that was our sightseeing destination for today.

We got an early start today, so we made it downtown in time to see the 8:46 Metrolink train to Lancaster go by. If we see that train, that means we made good time getting downtown.

When we got down to Wilshire, it was pretty obvious that this shoot was a Big Deal. There were a lot more prop cars, and hordes of extras in business suits with dirt smeared on their faces milling about. We even saw Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson there. Apparently, her super power is the ability to create earthquakes, which Jen and I thought was pretty funny, since that meant her character had the power to make us have to go into work.

After gawking at the shoot for a few minutes, we continued on our way. We made a loop out and back through Hancock Park. Then up Benton Way through Silver Lake and then to the L.A. River bike path. We stopped for snacks at Spoke. Then we headed home by way of the Arroyo Seco bike path.

41 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today’s bike club ride was a trip to Chinatown in Los Angeles to see the bronze statue of Bruce Lee there.

We rode out across Eagle Rock and Glendale, and then down the L.A. River bike path. Then through Elysian Park to get to Chango Coffee in Echo Park. I’d remembered this time to check the Dodgers schedule to be sure there was not a game today, since that park gets pretty crowded on game days. We had snacks at Chango before taking Bonnie Brae St down to 7th St. This was novel, since we ride Bonnie Brae fairly often, but this was the first time we ever did it in this direction. It looked like a whole new street. We noticed The Bonnie Brae House for the first time today. We were wondering what was special about it.

Just before we got to 7th St, we passed 666 Bonnie Brae. The police and fire department were there in force today, for reasons that were not entirely clear. Then we turned on 7th and rode back in to downtown L.A. Then up Figueroa St to Chinatown. There, we went to see the Peephole Cinema, and then across Hill St to the Bruce Lee statue.

The route home was back up Huntington Drive, which is another route we do frequently, but not in that direction.

40 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

This week I was a bit short on inspiration of things to go see, so we took a trip to Hollywood to see just a small random selection of items that we hadn’t gone to see before. Also, I’d been sick the previous week, so I wanted to do something a little on the easy side. And according to my logs, we hadn’t ridden out that direction in a while. The two bits of sightseeing on the route were RuPaul’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and the mural of silent movie stars underneath the Hollywood Freeway on Argyle Ave.

We rode through downtown Los Angeles, and then up through Hancock Park to get to Hollywood. When we got there, we found RuPaul’s star on Hollywood Boulevard. It was right in front of a storefront that was completely dedicated to advertising RuPaul’s Drag Con. Seemed appropriate. Then we headed across Hollywood on Selma Ave. We had to carefully pick our way through the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. Then we found the mural under the freeway, It’s right across from Castle Argyle. Both of those made brief appearances in “La La Land“.

We stopped for snacks at Spoke. And then headed up Figueroa St to go home. In South Pasadena, I bailed out and took Metro back, just because I was still getting over being sick last week.

38 miles, including the ride home from the Metro station.

Route map and elevation profile

This past week, I saw an article on KCET about unusual and interesting parks in the L.A. area. In particular, I saw the pictures of the sea monsters at Whittier Narrows. These look a lot like the ones at Vincent Lugo Park in San Gabriel, which we’ve been to see before. So I thought it might be interesting to go and visit both sets of sea monsters on our Sunday ride this week.

We started off heading down to San Gabriel by way of Alhambra. The sea-monster playground is all the way at the back of Vincent Lugo Park there. We climbed a bit on the sculptures and took some photos there. Then we headed east to get to Whittier Narrows. We’ve been by there hundreds of times, but never actually gone into the park. I’d looked at the aerial views in Google maps to see where a couple of the sea monsters were, so we started by heading for the first one. When we got there, there was a map showing the locations of the others. We ended up riding all the way around Legg Lake to see all of them. It was actually a very nice park.

Our snack stop was at Merengue in Monrovia. We took the San Gabriel River bike trail all the way from Whittier Narrows up to Duarte, and then streets to Monrovia. We had some snacks and drinks there, and then headed home.

42 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

This past week, I saw an article in the L.A. Times about how they believe that, after 80 years missing, Amelia Earhart has been found. So we had a theme for this week’s ride.

The first stop was at Valhalla Cemetery in North Hollywood. This is the home of the Portal of the Folded Wings, which is a shrine to aviation. We’ve been to visit it before, although not for almost two years. I knew that there is a cenotaph for Amelia Earhart there, so that was our first sightseeing stop.

After the Portal, we headed back into North Hollywood to the park at Magnolia and Tujunga. That is the location of the Amelia Earhart library, as well as a statue of her on the corner.

Our third sightseeing stop was Amelia Earhart’s former house in Toluca Lake. From what I’d read, the house looks just about the same as it did in 1937. After that, we went to our snack stop. Because it was right there on Riverside Dr, we decided to try out Sweet Salt. This is a small cafe opened by a former “Top Chef” contestant, and it was quite good. So I think it will be added to our list of regular places to visit.

49 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

It rained all day Saturday, and there were still supposed to be scattered showers on Sunday, so the bike club ride for today was the Metro Rail Tour East. This is a ride to Glendora and back, and the route is designed to always be within two miles of the nearest Metro Rail station. That way, we have a quick bailout option available if it starts raining. We’ve done this ride many times before, so there wasn’t anything to take pictures of.

37 miles.

Route map and elevation profile

Today was the ME72 robot contest at Caltech. I’ve been going to see these things for over 20 years, and it’s always entertaining. The theme this year was “Tank Wars”. Each team had to build three tanks, and the tanks had to fight for control of three bases on the playing field. Each base had two buttons on it, and to take control of a base, one team’s machine had to push the button corresponding to the color of that team. One base was on the ground in the middle of the playing field. One of on a see-saw, and the third one was on top of a platform with ramps leading up to it from both sides. The ground base was worth one point for each second of control. The see-saw was worth 1.375, and the platform base was worth 1.75 points per second. As a result, most of the time, machines from both teams would go up to the platform, and a lot of times they ended up just alternating control of it for the duration of the match. So the point advantage of the platform wasn’t that much of a factor in most matches.

One funny thing was that they had a fire extinguisher handy by the playing field. This was because of the incident two years ago when one of the machines caught fire in the middle of a match.

The first match was won by the Riveters team. They had a clever strategy. In each match, they had one machine go and take control of the see-saw base. Then the machine would drive to the center of the see-saw and balance there, so no other team’s machine could even get on the see-saw. This worked well for them, and in the end, the Riveters were the only undefeated team of the day. And that included the final. Very well-done. They deserve both ears and the tail.