Stan’s Obligatory Blog

Today’s bike ride was the “Glendale Hills” route. The idea was to take a tour through Glendale and see the Halloween decorations, and to see the beginnings of the single most elaborate display I’ve heard of yet. It was cool and generally a perfect day for riding.

The hills were every bit as difficult as we’d all remembered. But still much easier than any stair climb I’ve ever done. I’m finding that competitive stair climbing is making me a faster bike rider. Simply because I’ve learned to reach new levels of pain. Whatever works.

The Halloween decorations were amusing, although the giant steampunk drill wasn’t anywhere near complete. Our snack stop was at Paradise Bakery, and I had my usual eclair. It was good, as always.

It was a fun ride. Not as long as our usual, but it was plenty hard.

38 miles.
cycling

Photo by Tom Henneman

Four weeks from today I’m going to be in Chicago to try my legs on the stairs at the Willis Tower. As I’m fond of saying, “103 stories – How hard could it be?”

Of course, since I’ve done a number of big stair climbs before, I know the answer to that. Competitive stair climbing is easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Harder than any bike race I ever did. There’s really nothing else that compares for the sheer intensity of effort.

That said, I’m hoping to turn in a time right around 20 minutes, just based on my times for other climbs. So we’ll just see how that works out. I’ve started practicing again on the stairs at Millikan Library at Caltech. It’s only 10 stories, but it’s the biggest thing I have easy access to. I’ve been doing it six times in each session, and I’m going to work up to ten times, since that’s approximately the same climb as the Willis Tower.

The event is a charity benefit, so if you can, please make a small donation in my name to the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

I had a bike ride planned for today, but when I woke up, it was raining. That’s a little odd for this early in the season, but not unknown. Still, I went down to the park just to see if anyone else was there. On the way, I saw the sprinklers going, which always looks absurd. Nobody was there, so I went home and that was that.

Monday was Columbus day, and that was a holiday for all of us who work for the government. So I thought it would be fun to take a trip out to Simi Valley to see the Reagan Museum and Air Force One.

They built a whole new wing on the building to house Air Force One. It’s set up on pedestals to look like it just might fly away at any moment. It was interesting to see the inside of the airplane and how it was set up. And the other exhibits were also amusing, including portraits of President Reagan made with jelly beans. Yikes. They also had a small piece of the Berlin Wall there, as well as a collection of other items, including the suit he was wearing when he was shot by John Hinckley, and a bejeweled saber from the Boy Scouts of Saudi Arabia. Who knew there were even Boy Scouts there?

They also had an exhibit of a miniature White House. Apparently, the model builders keep the miniature White House up to date. Looking in the windows, we saw pictures of President Obama and his family. That was a little jarring, since the rest of the day was a solid Republican experience.

All in all, it was a fun day.

Today was the day of CicLAvia. They closed 7 1/2 miles of Los Angeles streets to cars and let the bikes run wild. When I heard about this, I thought it would make for an interesting addition to the Sunday morning ride. And as it turned out, the route worked out well for a bit of sightseeing involving monuments to the 442nd Infantry. This was the Japanese-American unit in World War II. They were one of the most-decorated units in U.S. history. Was that just another case of typical Asian over-achievers?

It was a perfect day for riding. The route started in Boyle Heights, so we headed out from Pasadena, going south into Rosemead, and then over to East L.A. When we got there, we stopped at Evergreen Cemetery to see the memorial to the 442nd there. Then we headed over the Hollenbeck Park, which was the start of the CicLAvia route. The mayor was supposed to be giving a speech, but they said he wouldn’t be there until later, so we headed out. We rode into downtown and Little Tokyo. There, we stopped at the monument to the 442nd next to the Japanese American Museum. Then we rode across downtown and out to Mac Arthur Park. The route went north from there into the east end of Hollywood, where it ended.

We turned around and rode back along the route to near Mac Arthur Park, where we turned up Benton Way. We took that up into Silver Lake. Our snack stop was a LA Mill Coffee. Then we headed home by way of Figueroa St. In Highland Park, we saw an art project where someone had knitted covers for parking meters, signal boxes, and other things that are on the side of the street.

Coming home through San Marino, GT got a flat. This marks his first appearance in the Flat Tire Gallery.

It was a fun ride, and we’re hoping to see more events like CicLAvia in the future.

45 miles.
cycling

Today’s bike ride was the old “Turnbull Canyon” route through Whittier and La Puente. It was a nice cool fall day. Perfect for riding.

We rode south, down the Rio Hondo bike path to Whittier Narrows. Then south some more to Whittier, where we rode up and over Turnbull Canyon. This is a pretty big hill, but all the way up I kept thinking, “No matter how fast I go, this doesn’t hurt anything like climbing stairs.”

We regrouped at the top and then headed down the other side. In La Puente, we passed a lot of houses with signs in Spanish advertising that they were selling “puercos, chivos, y conejos”. And I remembered the woman from “Roger and Me” – “You want pets or meat?”

Our snack stop was at Merengue in Monrovia. I was admiring Carla’s nails and how they matched her phone. And she found my helmet hair very amusing.

The route home was the flattest way back, through Arcadia and back to the park. It was a nice ride.

45 miles.
cycling

…another chocolate soufflé. It’s actually kind of refreshing to be making something different. Seems like I spent the whole summer making peppermint chocolate cookies.

Today’s bike ride was the “Five Wrights” route through Hollywood to see five different Frank Lloyd Wright houses. We did this one back in June, so it seemed like it was time to go see them again. Of course, I had no idea just how hot it was going to be today.

We started out from Victory Park at our usual 8:00 time. It was pleasant, but it was promising to be warm. By the time we got to Hollywood, it was hot. And of course, all the houses designed by Frank Lloyd Wright are on top of big hills. But we rode up each of them and saw the houses. And then we rode up and over Sunset Plaza, stopping to admire the single most imposing-looking driveway gate I’ve ever seen anywhere. We passed some concrete alligators and then stopped for water at the Fryman Canyon Overlook on Mulholland Drive. Then we rode down into Studio City to the little gelato place there. But sadly, the freezer was broken and there was no gelato. We soldiered on, heading west across the Valley and back to Pasadena. By the time we got to Eagle Rock, we were all dragging. The ride up the Colorado hill was a slog. Our water bottles all had hot water in them, and it was generally pretty miserable. We made one more stop for water at a little park and then finished the ride home. It was fun, but it would have been a lot more fun if it wasn’t hot as hell.

52 miles.
cycling

This evening was the long-awaited “Stair Climb to the Top” at the U.S. Bank Tower in downtown Los Angeles.

I went into this event with the goal of cutting a minute off my time from last year and finishing the climb in under 14 minutes. Ambitious, yes. But I cut more than a minute off my previous year’s time at the Aon Tower climb back in April. So I thought it was within reach. And after the practice sessions at the Wells Fargo building, I thought I was on track for 14, or even maybe 13:45.

Sadly, this was not to be.

They had nearly twice as many people doing the climb this year. And the schedule slipped somewhat, so it was nearly dark by the time they started the individual categories. When they called us to the line, I tried to get near the front of the group. As much as I like passing people for the psychological boost, I’ve found that that slows me down quite a bit. I figured I was good for third place or so in my age group, so I wanted as few guys in front of me as possible. As it turned out, I passed a bunch of people, including all the 60-69 women who had started before us. There were a couple of times where I kind of got stuck behind groups of people and had to sort of elbow through to get by. When I got to the top, I passed by the people with the finishing medals and bottles of water and crawled under a table and curled up for a few minutes to catch my breath.

After a few minutes, my friend Susan got to the top. She had her camera with her, so we took a few pictures before they hustled us down off the roof to make room. We rode back down to the ground to join the party on the street outside the building. They had a cake in the shape of the building. We went to the little beer garden and waited for them to post the results.

In the end, my time was 14:34. That was the bad news. On the other hand, this was still 30 seconds faster than last year, and only three guys older than me went faster. That was good. Then my training partner Erik beat me by a full minute. That was bad. But I finished on a high note when I found out that I’d placed second in the 50-59 age group. There’s nothing like a little podium time to brighten up one’s evening.

Results are here: https://www.runraceresults.com/Secure/RaceResults.cfm?ID=RCLC2010

Today was another practice session for the U.S. Bank Tower stair climb. It was another experiment. The last time, I dialed my pace down a little bit to see if I would be better able to keep up with it near the top. That time, I did 9:46, but that was with passing a lot of people, which slowed me down. This time, I made sure to start near the front of the group, so there were not very many people in front of me. I only had to pass a few, and so my pace didn’t get thrown off as much. And even with the same metronome setting, I came in at 9:30 this time. This is good. Based on this, I believe I have a very good shot at going under 14 minutes on Friday at the U.S. Bank Tower.

And yes, it did hurt. But that’s all right.