Stan’s Obligatory Blog

This evening, I went over to Hollywood to the Center for Inquiry to join in their monthly Skeptic’s Book Club. I’d heard about this when Jodi mentioned it last month. This month’s book was Astro Turf. I’d read this book last year and really enjoyed it. So when I heard that M.G. Lord was going to be at the meeting tonight, I figured it was worth the trip.

The group was very pleasant. We got to ask M.G. questions about the book and about the process of researching and writing it. And M.G. signed my copy, and was even nice enough to sit for a souvenir picture. It was a very fun evening.

Route map and photo locations

Today’s ride was through Turnbull Canyon to Whittier. It was kind of a chilly day, and still wet from the rain last night.

We started out from the park, heading south and east. In El Monte, Jon got a flat. Of course, I took the obligatory picture for the Flat Tire Gallery. While he was fixing it, I had a look at the Army recruiting office there. They had a big rack outside the door with brochures in English, Spanish, and Korean. I’d never seen Army recruiting literature in Korean before.

After fixing the flat, we continued on, turning onto the San Gabriel River bike path. We rode that for a short distance to Ramona. Newton had ridden in from West Covina to meet us there. At that point, James, Jon, and Grant all missed the turn. So Newton took off after them. We figured if anyone could catch them, it was him. A few minutes later, my phone rang. It was Newton. He said that James and Jon had disappeared off into the distance and Grant had gotten a flat. So we rode down a mile or so to watch him fix it and so I could get a picture. Then we went back up to Ramona and continued on the ride.

In Baldwin Park, we passed In-N-Out Burger and their big “In-N-Out University”. Then we rode down to the north side of Turnbull Canyon Road.

Up to this point, the ride had been fairly flat, but Turnbull Canyon is a nice little hill. We rode up and regrouped at the top. I took a picture of the view of downtown L.A. from up there. Then we rode down the south side into Whittier.

Just before the bottom, Philippe got a flat. So we stopped while he fixed it. Then, when he was pumping up the tire, the valve stem snapped off. I’ve seen this happen before. I consider this to be a second flat, even though we hadn’t actually moved since the first one, so I took another picture.

When Philippe was finally inflated again, we continued on down into Whittier. We stopped at a little bakery downtown. It was pretty good, but it was kind of cold to be sitting outside.

Leaving Whittier, we rode back along Workman Mill Road to Durfee and then over to Whittier Narrows. At this point, Philippe got his third flat tire. We cheered, because this broke the old record of four flats on one ride.

From there, we took the direct route home, straight north through San Gabriel and San Marino. For some reason, this ride seemed much longer than it really was. Perhaps it was something to do with fixing all those flats. In any event, we were all ready to be done.

46 miles.
cycling

This evening, I looked out the back of the house and I saw a glow coming from the next block. So I went outside to see what it was.

Around the corner there was a film crew with a big light on top of a crane. They were lighting up a couple of houses bordering on the former hospital up the street from our house. They do a lot of filming there, so this wasn’t anything unusual, aside from the big light. I didn’t see any snow there this time.

I took a walk around to the back and saw that the parking lot was packed as full as I’ve ever seen it. The guard told me that there were two crews working there. The big light crew was filming for “Shark“, and there was another crew filming for “Rush Hour 3” inside the hospital building. The scenes that they were filming must have taken place during the day, since they had big tents and lights set up around the windows so that it would look like day from inside.

I walked around the building and had a look at the ‘crime scene’ that the “Shark” crew had set up outside.

It’s always fun to see a little bit of how they make the illusion.

I got a new book yesterday. The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in the New Yorker. It’s a collection of cartoons by regular New Yorker cartoonists, but they are all cartoons that were rejected for one reason or another.

They range from Politically Incorrect to just plain Bad Taste, and many of them are utterly hilarious. It’s sort of a peek into what the New Yorker would be like in Bizarro World.

I like this book a lot.

Route map and photo locations

Today’s ride was Gene’s “Wild Oats” route, named for the fact that the snack stop is at Noah’s Bagels, right next to the big Wild Oats store on South Lake Avenue.

It was chilly in the morning, but it was sunny and clear, so it promised to warm up later on. Yesterday was the big USC-UCLA football game, and UCLA won. So Vikki showed up in her full UCLA team kit. Not that she cares about football. But she said that she knew it would annoy any USC fans who saw it.

We started out going east on Sierra Madre, all the way out to Santa Anita. Then we turned south and rode all the way down to South El Monte. There, just before Whittier Narrows, we took a small side trip. There used to be a Nike anti-aircraft missile site in South El Monte. The radar site was on top of a hill a bit to the east, and the missile launch pads were on Potrero Road. Today, it’s an army reserve site and part of Whittier Narrows Park.

Continuing on, we got on Lincoln Ave, going south into Montebello. That was where I saw another couch for the Abandoned Couches Blog.

We rode through Montebello and then back north into Monterey Park. There were a couple of nice hills, including one steep pitch that was something like 15-18%. Then we headed up into Alhambra.

Along the way, some of us missed a turn, and we ended up shortcutting about a mile off the route by mistake. But that was all right. We headed north through San Marino and up to Wild Oats and Noah’s Bagels.

We got a table outside and had our bagels, while the local pigeons pecked up crumbs around our feet. They seemed to have no fear of people.

The last part of the ride was back to the park, but by a roundabout way. We went south, and then took a small detour to pass the mansion we’d read about in the paper recently. It’s for sale for a mere $52 million. Oddly enough, they didn’t have any “Take One” flyers outside.

From there, we rode back across San Marino, up into Pasadena, and back to the park.

40 miles
cycling

Dunno what the story is here, but I saw this van on the way to work recently, and I thought it was funny. It’s sort of reminiscent of the big subway-car graffiti I used to see in New York back in the 1970s.

In today’s Pasadena Star-News, there is an article about a survey of riders on the MTA Gold Line:

Light rail user survey shows preference over car use

They said that a large portion of the riders on the Gold Line own cars, but prefer to take the train. This is Not News. If they didn’t prefer to take the train, they wouldn’t be riding the train, and they wouldn’t have been part of the survey. Duh.

If they’d like, I’ll take a survey to show that people who own cars prefer to ride bicycles. Just because some people do it doesn’t mean that everyone will.

Yet, they are touting this survey as justification for spending the money to extend the line out to Montclair. While I like the Gold Line, I’m not sure that it is necessarily the best place to spend scarce money.

Route map and photo locations

Today’s bike ride was Gene’s “Verdugo Park” route. It was a slightly chilly day, but not bad for riding. The holidays are a-comin’ as evidenced by the Christmas Tree lot going up on Sierra Madre Blvd by Victory Park.

We started out with an easy ride up through La Cañada, then down Hospital Hill into Montrose. That was where the fun began. We took a detour up through the hills there, which added some steep climbing to the route. After that fun, we came down by the park at Cañada Blvd. The Pasadena Athletic Association was having a cyclocross race there today. We stopped to watch for a little while.

Continuing on, we took Mountain and Kenneth across Glendale, coming out on Glenoaks and Paradise Bakery. As always, I got two chocolate eclairs, since they have the best eclairs around.

After the stop, we headed back across Glendale on Glenoaks all the way to Chevy Chase. Then we took a left and headed up the hill. At the top, we turned right and took Regent Park and Inverness around the hill and down to Highland and Linda Vista.

We rode on Linda Vista around the Rose Bowl and then took Holly St up to Orange Grove. Then a left turn sent us back across Pasadena on Orange Grove to the park where we had started.

It was a nice ride.

43 miles.
cycling

Today we went over to West Hollywood to meet our old friend Jenny for lunch. She lives in London now, so we don’t get to see her very often.

We met at the French Market Place and had a major lunch feast that involved absolutely no turkey, which was very nice. Lucinda looked at the koi fish in the pond there, and we also browsed around in the shops for a bit.

After lunch, we headed down to Hancock Park to the Tar Pits and also the L.A. County Museum of Art for Magritte and Contemporary Art: The Treachery of Images. I always thought it was kind of funny that the art museum is at the tar pits. After all, ‘art’ and ‘tar’ are anagrams and all…

Lucinda had some fun playing around the tar pits. She climbed a tree and got some tar on her arm. As always, a visit to to the tar pits is just not complete unless she gets tar on herself. One of the pits was making big tar bubbles, which were kind of fun to watch. There was even a palm tree growing like a weed in the middle of one of the tar pits. We also saw some people playing croquet on the grass. Playing on the grass in that park is always a bit dicey, since you never know where there might be a new tar seep hidden in the grass.

After playing in the park, we went into the art museum for the Magritte exhibit. I’d seen some of Magritte’s work in art museums in New York when I was on a school field trip back in 1974 or so, and I like the surrealist style. So we went through the gallery and looked at the paintings. We even saw the two works that I remember seeing way back when. It was a lot of fun.

Since I missed work this week due to the holiday and also Lucinda and Cathy being sick, I needed to go in to the office this morning to water my plants. So I rode down there to take care of them, and then I came home the long way.

After I left the office, I did a variation on the Water Tower Ride. I rode down through San Marino and South Pasadena, and then up the hill to the water tower.

Coming down off the hill, I crossed the railroad tracks and went down into the arroyo. Then up La Loma and then up Patrician Way up the big hill. After that, I rode down the other side on Glenoaks and took Linda Vista up to Devil’s Gate Dam and then back into Pasadena.

On Ventura St in Altadena, I saw an organ on the side of the road. It wasn’t a couch, so I can’t post it on the Abandoned Couches Blog, but it’s certainly not something that you usually see abandoned on the side of the road.

I rode back across Altadena on Mendocino, and then went home by way of some little side streets. Along the way, I passed the Bunny Museum with its big topiary rabbit in the front yard. Again, that’s not something you see every day.

25 miles.
cycling