Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s bike ride was an odd one. It was kind of chilly and sort of drizzling at 8:00, and nobody else showed up for the ride. So I went ahead and ride the route myself, and I used the opportunity to test out a new variation. The original destination for the route was Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills to see Lock Martin. He played Gort in the 1951 film, “The Day the Earth Stood Still“. The variation was a test of another route I’ve been thinking about. Last week, the Los Angeles Times had a feature on “The Ten Best Houses in L.A.”. When I was looking at this, I realized that we could go see five of them on a single bike ride. So I thought that today would be a good time to try it out.

The first house was the Gamble House in Pasadena. We ride past it all the time, and we usually don’t pay any attention to it. But it’s really quite nice. From there, I rode the regular route through Eagle Rock to get to Los Feliz. Then I headed up the big hill to the Ennis House. This and the Hollyhock House are two that we’ve visited before on the “Five Wrights” tour. And even though it’s not on the ten-best list, the witch’s house down the street from the Ennis House was also nice.

After stopping off in Barnsdall Park to see the Hollyhock House, I headed across Hollywood. They had Hollywood Blvd closed off at Highland. I guess maybe there’s some awards show tonight.

Heading into West Hollywood, I passed Gardner Elementary School and its Michael Jackson Auditorium. Then I made my way west to Kings Rd and the Schindler House. That was the fourth of the five, and the one farthest away.

From there, I headed back to Hollywood. I took a little detour to go through the staging area for the Gay Pride Parade, since that’s always an amusing time. Then I turned and headed up Nicholls Canyon. About this time, it started raining again. That wasn’t much fun. But I made it to the top and then headed east on Mulholland. At Torreyson Dr, I turned and went up the hill a bit to see the Chemosphere. It’s visible from the street just a little bit beyond its driveway.

Coming down Mulholland, I headed down into Burbank and then turned into Forest Lawn. It took some looking to find the number markers, but I finally located Lock Martin’s grave. This concluded the sightseeing portion of the ride, and it was time to go home. The ride home was pretty routine. By now I was pretty tired and hungry, so I was looking forward to getting home.

When it’s damp like today, my bike computer craps out, so I didn’t get the exact mileage. But putting the route into Google Maps give the total as about 53 miles.
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Tonight was the monthly Art Walk in downtown Los Angeles. We’d gone to this back in April, and it was a fun time. Lucinda and I went downtown and met up with Kathleen there. We made the rounds of the galleries and the food trucks. We got ice cream from the Lake Street Creamery, which was good, as always. We found the Grilled Cheese Truck, but sadly, the line for it was too long. I suppose that’s a recommendation. The Lobsta Truck also had a really long line.

We started out the evening at the Museum of Neon Art, since this is their last week downtown before they move to their new home in Glendale. From there, we just sort of randomly wandered around, looking in the galleries. There was lots of nice art, some old signs, and lots of neon. One of the galleries was in the old Los Angeles Stock Exchange, which was a very ornate and interesting building. There were even swastikas decorating one of the very old bank buildings on Spring Street.

All told, it was a fun evening.

I signed up for the Sears Willis Tower stair climb today. 103 stories. How hard could it be?

On Thursday night, Kathleen and I met up downtown to go to a little art gallery party at Art Share in downtown Los Angeles. This is a small community art center in an old warehouse and the gallery was showing art by five artists who have been active in the downtown art scene for many years. It was a small show, but fun. There was even some minor excitement when Malia K showed up with her entourage. We have no idea who she is, but everyone seemed to think she was some sort of Big Deal.

In the end, I bought a print of Mirpolsky’s “Sharks” for my house.

All in all, it was a fun evening adventure.

I had occasion to be in Old Town Pasadena on Thursday, and I saw a couple more faded signs painted on the sides of the old buildings there. And apparently, I’m not the only one who likes looking at these things.

When Kathleen and I went to see the movie about Star Wars fans and George Lucas, we saw a trailer for “Dumbstruck“. This is a documentary about ventriloquists, and it looked interesting. So last night we made the trip over to Westwood to see it.

The film begins and ends at the Vent Haven convention in Kentucky, and it follows five ventriloquists. They range from a 13-year-old kid just learning the craft, to Terry Fator, who won on “America’s Got Talent” and went on to a $100-million contract performing in Las Vegas. We’d seen billboards all over town advertising his show when we were there last month. The film also visits the Vent Haven Museum for some history of the art.

All told, this was a really fun little movie. It’s got a good cast of nicely strange characters, and that’s just the people. We enjoyed it a lot.

I’d noticed a while back that Kathleen had an ice cream maker in her garage, so I asked her to bring it over this weekend. I thought that this might make for a nice little culinary adventure.

I looked up a couple of recipes for homemade ice cream. I mashed them together and scaled them down a bit, since we were going to make a small batch for the first test of the machine. I thought chocolate chip sounded good, so I got out my little rotary grater with the shaving attachment and made a bowl of chocolate shavings. We scalded some milk and then chilled it in an ice bath. Then we put that and the cream into the ice cream maker and started it up. We packed it with ice and salt, and things were off and running. It took a bit longer than the instructions with the machine said, but in the end, we could see the ice cream forming nicely inside the can. When it was ready, we mixed in the chocolate shavings and put it in the freezer to harden.

And yes, it was quite good.

I’d read recently that Michael Jackson’s doctor was being prosecuted in connection with his death, I thought we should take another ride out to visit the scene of the crime. We’d gone there once before. It was a perfect day for riding, and we were in for a lot of it. Since my wheel mishap last week, I’d gotten a new wheel. Since it’s been 3 1/2 years, I thought I’d better change my chain and cassette again, lest I have a repeat of the broken gear incident of 2007. So I took a picture of my clean new drivetrain. It won’t stay that way for long.

We headed out by way of Highland Park, where we got to see Chicken Boy standing next to a billboard advertising a McDonald’s chicken sandwich.

We rode across Hollywood and down the Sunset Strip. The banners told us it was “The Street that Rock Built”. I suppose that’s a fair statement. After that, we crossed into Beverly Hills and rode across to just past the city limits, where the road went back into Los Angeles. That’s where we saw Michael Jackson’s former house. The notes and flowers were gone from the gate, and there was just a realtor’s sign out front.

From there, we headed over to Benedict Canyon, and along the way, I had to stop to admire what I think is one of the greatest mailboxes I’ve ever seen. Then we turned and headed up the canyon. We took a short side trip up Westwanda Dr to see Yvette Vickers’ house. She was in the obituary pages recently with a rather bizarre story, so I wanted to see her house.

At the top of the hill, we regrouped and then headed east to Coldwater Canyon. Mulholland Drive is a pretty nice road to ride on. Then we went down into the Valley and our snack stop at the gelato place in Studio City.

The trip home was pretty straightforward, passing across Glendale and Eagle Rock. It was a very pleasant ride.

56 miles.
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This is from one of my office mail servers:

Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE (EQINFO) #0: Wed May 14 10:10:17 GMT 2003

Welcome to FreeBSD!

This is eqinfo3.geo.berkeley.edu.

%date
Wed May 25 12:07:21 PDT 2011
%uptime
12:06PM up 2192 days, 1:34, 1 user, load averages: 0.15, 0.05, 0.01

Yes, that’s right. Six years without a reboot. FreeBSD is up to release 8.2 now, but the old system is ticking along just fine.

I recently saw an item in the Los Angeles Times about the last remaining Greene and Greene house in L.A. being for sale. So I looked it up and we took a ride out to see it today.

We rode into downtown L.A., and then down through to Adams, near USC. Along the way, we passed the convention center and its sign for the “Everything to do with Sex” show. Then we headed west on Adams. The house itself is in the “Harvard Heights Historic District“. Which is apparently a fancy name for a former high-class neighborhood that’s kind of gone to seed. The house across the street was quite large and ornate, but it had broken windows and just did not look like it was being maintained.

Our stop was at Noah’s Bagels on Larchmont. Then we started for home. David got a flat, and while he was changing the tube, I checked the true on my back wheel. It was way off, and a closer look showed that one of the spokes had pulled out of the rim. This sort of thing is never a good sign. So I trued the wheel as best I could and we continued on.

After just about another mile, David said his tire was going flat, so we had to stop again. This time, I took a close look at his tire and found a staple stuck in it. Mystery solved.

Going up Benton Way in Silver Lake, I spotted a new topiary. I don’t know if it can be incorporated into one of the existing Topiary Tours that we do, but I will keep it in mind.

In Eagle Rock, my bike started making a weird noise. Turned out the spoke had come loose from the rim and was flapping around. So I stopped and twisted it around the spoke next to it to hold it still for the ride home.

When we got back into Pasadena, we saw a roadblock in Old Town, so we went to see what it was, and we rode into the middle of a Ferrari show.

It was a kind of strange, but very fun ride.

41 miles.
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