Stan’s Obligatory Blog

10/13/2011

Artwalk October

Filed under: — stan @ 10:50 pm

This Thursday was time for the monthly downtown Los Angeles Artwalk. So after work, I got on the train to meet up with Kathleen downtown.

The food trucks were out in force again. Kathleen got a lobster roll from Lobsta Truck, and I got Korean BBQ cheese steak sandwich from the Kogi truck. Odd, but quite tasty.

After that, we headed out to make the rounds of the galleries. I took a few pictures, but not many, as the lighting is not really conducive to that sort of thing. Still, we saw lots of art of all kinds, as well as the insides of a lot of ornate old buildings downtown. As always, it was a fun time.

10/10/2011

“I am not a crook” and other great moments in history

Filed under: — stan @ 9:01 pm

Monday was a government holiday, so Kathleen and I went down to Yorba Linda to visit the Nixon Library and Museum. I’d been there before, many years ago, but I’d read recently that it had been taken over by the National Archives, and that they’d reworked the exhibits into a more fact-based form. So that made it worth the trip.

Some of my earliest childhood memories are of my mother ranting about how much she hated Richard Nixon. She’d gone to high school for a year in Whittier in about 1953 or 1954, so I guess he was prominent around there then. And of course, he’d run for President in 1960, just after I was born. Then, in 1973, my mother and I spent the summer watching the Senate Watergate Committee hearings on TV. This, of course, culminated in watching Nixon’s resignation in August of 1974. So you might say that Richard Nixon was a big part of my upbringing.

The museum isn’t nearly as glamorous a setting as the Reagan Library, which we visited on this holiday last year. But it’s still interesting to see. The first portion of it covers Richard Nixon’s life from the beginning up to his second term as President, with a small detour with a gallery devoted to Pat Nixon’s life. A lot of interesting and significant things happened during his time in office. The trip to China was one that he could take credit for. The moon landings, not so much, but he was still there for it.

Then we came to the final gallery. The color scheme changed, and we went into Watergate. The old museum had a gallery devoted to Watergate, but it was told from the Nixon point of view. Which is to say, it was a sort of bizarro-world version of the story. There used to be an exhibit where you could listen to an excerpt from the so-called ‘Smoking Gun tape‘ where Nixon and Haldeman are discussing the cover-up of their involvement in the Watergate break-in. And the sign on the exhibit told us that we could listen to it and hear clearly that they were not talking about a cover-up. But listening to it, it seemed pretty obvious that they were. So now, the exhibit has a series of touch screens where you can listen to excerpts from the tapes, and the synopsis on each one actually tells what it’s about, and the pieces of the story all fit together.

And then there was an entire exhibit devoted to the 18 1/2 minute gap. They had a picture of Rosemary Woods stretching across her desk to show how she might have ‘accidentally’ erased part of the tape. They also had a listening station where you could listen to the entire gap tape, complete with the clicks that indicated where there were multiple erasures. The only thing missing was the song.

They even had the lock picks that were found on the Watergate burglars. Being that lock picking is a hobby of mine, I found this amusing.

After that, we went outside to take a tour of the former Marine One helicopter, which was the Presidential helicopter for Presidents from Kennedy to Ford. We finished up with the tour of the family home and a visit to Richard and Pat’s graves.

It was an interesting day.

Chantry Flat

Filed under: — stan @ 11:05 am

It’s a holiday, and I had a little free time this morning, so I did a short ride up to Chantry Flat. I haven’t been up there for some time, and it was a nice day.

It was a pleasant ride, or at least as pleasant as 3.5 miles up a sort-of-steep hill can be. And the view was nice, even if it was a bit hazy today.

21 miles.

10/9/2011

Another urban bike tour

Filed under: — stan @ 12:53 pm

Today’s bike club ride was a sort of random tour of L.A. It was also the day of the third CicLAvia, but we decided not to go to that, since the last time, it was crowded enough that it didn’t feel safe riding in that group. Too many people seem so have the attitude that if there are no cars around, they don’t have to pay attention to anything or follow any sort of rules of the road. So that was out.

A few weeks ago, I read in the L.A. Times about a place in Echo Park that has a room full of vintage pinball machines and hosts a pinball league. So that was one stop on the tour, mostly just to see where it is. On the way, we went past a car club meeting in Echo Park. The Nash Metropolitan hot-rod was pretty funny.

When we crossed Alvarado St, we found ourselves facing a hill that looked like a wall. But it looked flat on the map…

Continuing on through Silver Lake, we went into the east end of Hollywood, where we had a brief sightseeing stop at the Vista Theater. This is the place that as a small Walk of Fame composed of the hand and foot prints of some of the lesser-known stars of cinema.

On the way back, we stopped off at Antigua Cultural Coffee for snacks and drinks.

It was a nice ride.

40 miles.

10/4/2011

And yet another odd thing I saw while riding my bike

Filed under: — stan @ 9:36 pm

It’s the Google Maps Street View bicycle. Well, tricycle, but you get the idea. I saw this guy riding around through the Caltech campus today. He said the idea is so that Street View can work along bicycle and walking routes.

10/2/2011

Another bike ride to nowhere in particular

Filed under: — stan @ 5:32 pm

This week found me with no special ideas for where we should go on the Sunday bike ride. There are some interesting destinations coming up, but there was nothing appropriately interesting for today. So we did the ‘Relatively Flat Ride’. That’s my attempt to come up with a route with as few hills as possible.

It was a nice day for riding, but since we didn’t really go anywhere, I only took a couple of pictures. But it was a pleasant ride.

43 miles.

10/1/2011

More odd things I see when I’m riding my bike

Filed under: — stan @ 3:16 pm

This morning I went for a little ride. My usual route makes a big loop, and I pass by the Rose Bowl on the way home. It’s not unusual to see some sort of event going on there, but today’s was a bit different. The road had countless thousands of muddy footprints on it, and I saw people running, covered in mud.

When I got home, I looked it up. (Can anyone even remember how life was even possible before we had the Internet?) It was the Gladiator Rock’n-Run. I rode along part of the course just to see what they were doing, and it actually looks kind of fun. And I hate running.

And then, to top it off, I finally got to see the Altadena Wallabies on my way home. There were two of them out in the front yard today. So overall, it was an amusing morning.

30 miles

9/30/2011

Office spelunking

Filed under: — stan @ 6:59 pm

We’re redoing the computer room at my office. So the last couple of weeks have been very busy. We got new racks for the computers, and we’re putting them in in a single row across the room. Being that we do earthquakes, everything has to be bolted down. So today I did a little spelunking. The guy who usually does this was on vacation today, so I brought a change of clothes and a flashlight. Besides, as I always say, “how bad could it be?” I crawled around in some seriously tiny caves in Texas, and got very, very dirty, and that was fun.

The foundation of the building is kind of weird. It’s not just a big open crawlspace. It was a kind of a maze to get there, but when I got under the computer room, it was pretty obvious. The air conditioning ducts run under there, so they take up a good bit of the height, which is far from generous to begin with. So yes, it was pretty difficult and not too pleasant. And the caves in Texas were all wet inside, so the dirt was all in the form of mud, which doesn’t raise dust like the bone-dry dirt underneath the office. Yick. But I bagged my bolts and got that rack attached to the floor. In any event, it certainly made for an unusual day, although I did feel kind of dirty and dusty for the rest of the day.

9/25/2011

Tour de Topiary

Filed under: — stan @ 5:52 pm

Today’s bike ride was the Topiary Tour West. I’ve actually found enough topiary around here to make two complete tours. Today marks the first time we’ve done the western route in over a year. It was just me and Carla today, so we headed out across Eagle Rock.

The first topiary stop was at the south entrance to Burbank Airport, where they have a topiary jet airplane. It’s pretty nicely done. Then we headed south, passing the kiddie-ride boneyard on Clybourn Ave on our way to the second topiary stop, which was a pair of winged horses and a sea monster at a gas station in Burbank.

Next up was the topiary Bugs Bunny on Riverside Drive in Toluca Lake. Then we stopped off at Priscilla’s for a snack.

Coming home, we went up Glendale Blvd to see the topiary dolphins at a gas station there. Then it was time for the four-mile uphill to get to La Cañada. Then down the other side of the hill to see the topiary giraffe family on Berkshire Drive.

Coming back into Altadena, we passed the topiary baskets on Mendocino Ave, and finally, the giant topiary rabbit in front of the Bunny Museum.

It was a fun little ride.

48 miles.

9/23/2011

Are there stairs on Nantucket?

Filed under: — stan @ 10:20 pm

Today was the day for the YMCA “Stair Climb for Los Angeles“, formerly known as “Stair Climb to the Top”. This is the climb up the U.S. Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles. About 75 floors, 1,018 feet, and 1,500 steps to the top. This was my third time doing this event.

This morning, while I was getting ready for work, I stepped on the scale. It said 170, which is about normal for me these days. But when I was riding my bike to the office, I was thinking, “one hundred and seventy pounds”, and thinking that that phrase just might be the first line of a limerick. So by the the time I got to the office, I had this:

One hundred and seventy pounds
That shouldn’t be cause for a frown
Though the stairs are so long
My legs are still strong
And I’ll make lots of loud panting sounds

I left work a little bit early to go home and pick up my stair climbing gear. Then I went to the Gold Line and got on the train to go downtown. Along the way, Morgan, Jason, Chris, and Irving from my office at Caltech all got on. This was quite novel. We had a whole crew to go climb the stairs tonight.

After doing a fair number of these events, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people who are regulars at this. So this made for a fun time visiting before it was time to climb. But as our start time approached, the usual feeling of dread began to creep in. The first time I did one of these things, I went into it with an attitude of “How hard could it be?” And by the time I got to the 25th floor, I had realized that this is the hardest athletic thing I’ve ever done. So now I know what I’m getting into. And I know that I’ll hit the wall at about the 45th floor, and I’ll be thinking, “What the HELL was I thinking signing up for this again”. Or in limerick form, that looks like this:

Passing the forty-fifth floor
I don’t think I can climb any more
Cross-eyed in pain
This sport is insane!
“Yet I must go on,” I swore

Morgan’s friend Chris had started right behind me, and he shadowed me all the way up. He’s very strong, but this was his first race, so he’s still learning how to pace for the long run. I had a look at my watch at about the 25th floor, and it said something like 4:15, so I knew I was on target. At 55, it was just a little bit over 9 minutes, so I was still on track. But the last 20 floors were pure hell. They always are. It’s just the nature of the beast. By the time we got to 60, my lips were tingling, and I had tunnel vision. At least that helped me to not look at the floor numbers. The highest numbered floor is 73, and there there are about two more before the finish line on the roof. When we came out on the roof, I flopped down on the big steel window-washer crane track. It was a big steel girder, and it was nice and cool. I just laid on it panting for several minutes.

To the finish line we sustained
Endeavoring not to wane
Collapsed on the floor
Panting and sore
I can’t wait ’til I do this again

In the end, my time was 14:11. Once again, I fell short of my goal of going under 14 minutes. But on the other hand, I did improve my time by 23 seconds over what I did last year. But last year, I got a medal for 2nd place, and this time I was 8th. There were a lot more people doing it this year. So I finished 8th out of 111 in the men’s 50-59 category. Still, I did some math, and my time was in the 94th percentile among men, 97th overall, and 93rd percentile in my age group. Nothing not to like there. And working out my power production:

77kg * 310m * 9.8 = 233926J
233926J / 851sec = 275W
275W * 0.001341 = 0.37hp

While it’s not the 0.4hp I managed in practice, it’s still good, since this climb was longer than the practice climbs.

Overall, there’s nothing not to like about this. And I looked through the results, and even though there were over 2,000 people participating, there were only 6 guys my age or older who went faster. And at my age, that’s a Good Thing.

It was a fun time.

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