Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Since Lucinda asked for Chinese food for dinner, I took a trip to the 99 Ranch Market in Arcadia to get in touch with my roots and stock up on food. Being half-Chinese is not an odd thing any more, but it was cosidered pretty peculiar when I was a kid. And the food is really my only connection to Chinese culture.

Today I noticed more signs of cultural assimilation at the store. The PA announcements giving the week’s specials are now in Chinese and English, which was kind of novel. And the shopping cart ads are also different than what we see in the regular supermarket. Who knew that Chevrolet has a Chinese web site?

So I got home with my 25-pound sack of rice and lots of other stuff that we can’t find in the regular grocery store. And I’m ready to get down and cook.

Cathy is out of town on a trip, and Lucinda had a sleep-over at her friend’s house, so I went for a little ride this morning.

I rode out through Arcadia and Monrovia as far as Mountain Ave. Then on the way back, I went up Santa Anita to Chantry Flat. The road up there was closed for a long time after the winter rains and landslides last year, and it’s been over a year since I was up there. But it’s still a nice four-mile hill, so it’s great fun.

The road is mostly repaired. There was just one spot near the top where it was only one lane due to the outside lane threatening to fall off the mountain. The rest of the road was really quite nice. The pavement was smooth and clean, which is one benefit of having cars around. Mountain roads that are totally closed to traffic tend to be kind of wretched to ride on.

Overall, it was a fun little ride. Now I have to go grocery shopping, since I promised Lucinda I’d make Chinese food for dinner.

25 miles
cycling

We went to see “Borat!” over the weekend. It was tremendously funny. And today I saw this article in the Los Angeles Times about a Russian who traveled to L.A. to stalk Hilary Duff:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-duff7nov07,1,3641208.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=1&cset=true

Man is arrested in stalking of Hilary Duff
…Myaskovskiy “apparently came to Los Angeles a little over two years ago for the sole purpose of meeting and becoming romantically involved” with Duff, according to court papers…

Presumably he wanted to have “sexy time” with her. No word yet on whether or not he brought the traditional wedding sack.

I don’t usually write about politics here, but I had a funny thought today.

Tuesday is Election Day in the USA. And right now, the talk is that the Republican Party is in trouble. Something about incompetence and corruption. But that doesn’t matter. The thing is…

We should all vote for Democrats this time. Because it’ll be a larf.

If the Democrats take control of both houses of Congress, they can launch simultaneous impeachments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Now comes the fun part. If they are removed from office, the new President will be… the new Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. At this point, the entire Republican Party will shit their pants. And that would be fun to watch, and easily worth the price of admission.

So in about 18 months, you might be seeing Rush Limbaugh squirming on TV, and it won’t be because he’s making fun of people with Parkinson’s Disease. No, it will be because he has a big, fresh, steaming dookie in his pants. And that would be a laugh riot.

Today’s ride was a revised version of Gene’s “South Lake” route. He added some more miles to it because the last time we did it, I apparently said something in my writeup to the effect of ‘it was too short’. It was a perfect day for a ride, clear, sunny and warm.

We had a big group today. One of the biggest ever for the Sunday Morning Ride. We rode east through Monrovia and Duarte to the Santa Fe Dam bike path. Then we took the bike path down to Lower Azusa Road. Usually we have to ride to the south side of the road and then cross to go west, but this time the gate was open on the north side. This is the first time I’ve seen that gate open.

At El Monte, I saw the Surprise Chinese Restaurant. For some reason, I thought that was funny, so I took a picture. Then we continued on up to Longden and then west through San Gabriel.

At San Marino Ave, there was some confusion about which way to go. Gene’s directions didn’t say which way to turn, so we went right. Then we realized that we should have gone left. This was the beginning of the added portion, which was a big loop through Alhambra. It was all right, and it added about five miles to the ride. So I wasn’t complaining.

Coming back up into South Pasadena, I saw a campaign lawn sign for Stephen Sham, who is running for City Council in Alhambra. I don’t know how hard it is to get people to vote for a Sham, but his sign said that he favors finishing the 710 freeway, so if I lived in Alhambra, I’d vote for him.

When we got back into Pasadena, we rode up El Molino. That was where I got a flat. I don’t know what I ran over, but the tire went flat immediately. So I stopped to fix it, and Vikki took the obligatory picture for the Flat Tire Gallery.

After the fixing the flat, I saw a couch on the side of the road, so I picked it up for the Abandoned Couches Blog.

The snack stop was at the Corner Bakery on South Lake, which is why Gene calls this the “South Lake” ride. The line there was out the door, and I only wanted a drink, so I walked upstairs Trader Joe’s and got a quart of orange juice. While we were sitting there, Vikki showed us her special socks. They are supposedly to prevent blisters, but she said that she just found them annoying.

After the stop, we rode across Caltech and down San Pasqual. At this point, we all headed for home by different routes. Newton had ridden in from West Covina, so I decided to follow him a bit and go home by way of Arcadia. And I saw a pair of leather couches there.

It was a nice ride.

52 miles.
cycling

Route map and photo locations

Today at lunchtime we did the Lida ride again. It was a perfect fall day. The sun was warm, the air was cool. Perfect for riding.

When we passed the Rose Bowl, we found Parkview St closed. I had thought that when they closed it last weekend it was just for the game, but it looked like they were doing some actual work on the street, and it was completely blocked off. So we had to take Salvia Canyon up the hill instead.

On the way Lida, I saw that the coyote paw that we’d seen before was still there. It looked like something had been chewing on it since last time, but the end of the paw was still intact.

Aside from that, there really wasn’t anything remarkable about this ride. But it was fun anyway.

19 miles at lunch, 27 for the day.
cycling

Since 1998 I’ve set up my telescope in front of our house and handed out candy and looks at whatever was up in the sky. Tonight there was just the moon, but that’s interesting enough for most kids.

The first time I did this was when Cathy was pregnant with Lucinda. I figured that I should do something to get some practice talking to kids. And it turned out to be a big hit. The kids liked it, and over the years they come back again and again. So it’s sort of taken on a life of its own now.

There was actually a comet up this evening. I spent a little time early on finding it. Comet SWAN was up in the western sky. Even here in the city, I was able to see it. In the telescope it looked like a fuzzy star. Our neighbors across the street are interested in astronomy, so I showed it to them when they brought their daughter over for candy. Everyone else just looked at the moon, since that has a better ‘wow’ factor.

Overall, it was a fun evening.

Today is our 18th wedding anniversary. So in honor of the occasion, we went out to dinner at Shogun here in Pasadena. This is one of those teppanyaki restaurants. So I didn’t have to cook, Cathy didn’t have to clean up, and Lucinda got to have a drink with maraschino cherries and watch the show. So it was a fun time for all of us.

Of course, the fundamental problem with all of this is that neither of us can believe that we’re old enough to have an 18th anniversary.

Route map and photo locations

Since this is the weekend before Halloween, I thought it might be fun to do a theme ride today. My first idea was to ride out to visit Bela Lugosi’s grave, but that turned out to be about a 60-mile round trip from Pasadena, so that was too long for a Sunday ride. So instead, we visited Hollywood Forever and Forest Lawn to visit a few music legends.

We rode west from Victory Park, taking Orange Grove, Colorado, and Yosemite to get to Eagle Rock Blvd. Then we took a left and headed south, turning right on Ave 36 to get across the L.A. River and into Silver Lake. Then we crossed the Shakespeare Bridge and took Franklin Ave into Hollywood.

Just before we got to the turn at Bronson, we saw a couch on the side of the road. So I stopped and collected it for the Abandoned Couches Blog.

At Bronson, there was a cutout bird hanging from the wires overhead. I’d read recently that there is someone going around hanging up these little cutout birds above streets in Hollywood. Then we turned and took Bronson south to get to Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

The guard at the gate was very unpleasant, and he insisted that we were not allowed to ride our bikes into the cemetery. This seemed a bit odd, since we’ve been there many times before and never had a problem. Normally, the people at the gate are very pleasant and helpful. But they were having some special events there this weekend, so maybe that was why they had a guard there.

So we agreed to walk our bikes into the cemetery. John, Jon and I all walked in. The rest of the group decided to just continue the ride. We walked in, going back to the pond to find Bianca Halstead’s grave. She was the singer and bass player for Betty Blowtorch. They were just on the verge of making it big in 2001 when Bianca died in a car accident after a show in New Orleans. It’s a sad story, but it’s pretty clear from her grave that she still has a lot of fans who miss her.

Just a few feet away was Dee Dee Ramone’s grave. We’d been there to see it before, but this was the first time I’d noticed lipstick kisses on his stone. Again, it’s plain that he still has fans who miss him.

Leaving Hollywood Forever, we retraced our steps back up to Franklin, and then headed up Beachwood toward the Hollywood sign. The route took us up a very steep hill to just below the sign, and then down the other side and past Lake Hollywood. Then we rode down into Burbank to Priscilla’s for a bagel. And after riding up that hill, we really appreciated the bagel.

After the snack stop, we rode to Forest Lawn. We entered the cemetery and rode to the Courts of Remembrance. There, we saw the graves of Bette Davis and Liberace. Not at the same time, though. Bette is at the front of the building, and Liberace is buried with his mother and brother near the back.

Leaving Forest Lawn, we rode back across Glendale, going up the big hill on Chevy Chase and Linda Vista. There was about a 50-foot stretch of road that was closed for no immediately apparent reason. So we portaged the bikes over the barricades and kept riding. Then we rode down Lida and went around the Rose Bowl. Then we took Orange Grove back to the park, picking up a couch near Fair Oaks and another near Lake.

It was a very pleasant ride.

50 miles.
cycling

Lucinda’s school had a Halloweeen carnival on Saturday night. They have games set up for the kids. The parents are all strong-armed into volunteering to run the games. In our case, we had to run a simple shell game. The funny thing is, Lucinda came with us when it was our turn to run the game, and she wanted to try running it. So we showed her how, and she did it for our whole time. Later on, she wanted to go back and run the game some more.

I thought that perhaps this might point her towards a career as a carny. Or at least a sideline. Maybe she can earn a little money on the side. In any event, she had fun.