Appendix C. Preparatory Outings

2002 January 23, Wednesday

Preliminaries to John’s trip extend back for several years and are written up in different places, like last winter’s trip down to see the Dominator. Last week I took a day off to get my stuff together and one of the list items was “get started with John intentionally.” We did this today.

He was open to the idea of being brought down after karate to go on a test walk home with me. This in itself was a surprise. Past attempts at such structure have met with some resistance, but we’ve been talking about starting and what we might do for a while. Maybe preparatory discussion makes a difference. He’s a big sixth grader now too.

Viann and John called on the radio leaving Jakes Karate and I left the requirements and flames, personnel problems, logged off the computer, and departed the office. We met out on the horse trail across from the Park Service office. Viann turned the van around at Rose Bowl Riders and came back. John jumped out in his walking shoes and sweatshirt with a Dr. Pepper in each hand. Jake’s has a machine and he’d bought them with his own $2. This largesse would prove to be characteristic.

Would John have the stamina to make it home? He walked like Katy, that is, stomping ahead full speed, except when he would stop to pick up a stick and fire it at whatever was nearby. “Shoosh Shoosh, 50 Caliber anti-aircraft fire!” he would shout but at a “talking-voice” volume. He went roughly my normal pace, 3 mph all the way up the normal north route past Paradise Canyon and up to Green, 5 miles, and only wanted to rest once, just where La Granada turns right to parallel the freeway. We were about to sit on the brick wall for a minute when he says, “We’re nearly home, let’s go on.” Then we joked, “We’re tired, lets stop at one of these houses.” “Yeah, I know one up Ahlin over here.” “What, the one coming up right here?” “Yes, Oak, then Ahlin, then there’s some nice people that have good neighbors, we can go to their house,” “OK, let’s go there.” (We were talking about our house.)

Earlier on the trail, we talked about the Flintridge Riding Club where people were riding horses and that they leased the West Lot to JPL and what that meant. This probably was a major source of their income, I thought, probably keeping them in business.

At the top of the trail beside JPL is the high point, the best view. I pointed this out, the sun had just set in the gap. “We’ll go that way next time,” I said pointing to the south.

“I go there all the time dad, I’ve been up there a jillion times; that’s where the repeater is.”

I tried to point out the houses of various hams along the way starting with Dick Wetzel, WA6JBZ Jenny Wetzel’s dad. Their back yard was on the trail. “Dad, I have to tell you something,” he was continuing a story and had to say it before he forgot. “Did you know a guy was skydiving and his friend hit him and knocked his legs off and when he got to the ground everything was OK when he touched down and the doctor came and told him he didn’t have legs but they put them back on.”

“Was he OK?”

“Yes, but his legs didn’t work the same. This wasn’t the same guy who lost his hand in the car wreck.”

“You know, that is why we want to avoid too much adventure.”

“Why?”

Walking with a boy was going to be different.

2002 January 30, Wednesday

We were planning on doing this every Wednesday more or less.

The repeater was off; we were trying out Caltech’s. Just in the window of opportunity a drive-time QSO came on. I started walking anyway and we were able to make contact just before I go to the RoseBowl Riders Gate.

John had to tie his shoes, took more time. Had 2 Dr. Peppers again.

We walked Sheridan (Viannah’s dog) up the trail beside Flintridge Riding Club then west a few blocks then down the trail to St. Frances. Sheridan didn’t want to approach Foothill. Something about it made him balk and stay. Talked to him, he went on. Across the street, he charged up the freeway footbridge. No trouble up there.

Spent much of the walk managing the dog, and managing the boy managing the dog.

We were on the sidewalks of the Foothill route the rest of the way. It was cold but not cold enough for all my stuff. I was hot. My nose was running. We both needed to potty. Stopped in Memorial Park facilities

“Dad, what if you lost all your senses but touch and hearing, and smell. No, not smell. Could you tell a person was there from their smell?”

”Yes, we are supposed to be able to do that but we use so much soap and stay so clean that our sense of smell is underused and underdeveloped.”

“Yuck.”

“If you lost your sense of smell, you could get a “smelling nose dog.” Here, Sheridan, is this pizza going to be good?”

Slurp slurp slurp, “yes it was good,” the dog would bark.

Proceeding straight up Foothill we had to stop at all the lights and intersections. The dog got slow, needed encouragement. He wasn’t like this on the trails even when he was tired. He would slip sometime and stop in the way to smell something and get stepped on.

Missed each other on 16 (Caltech) and 20 (JPL). Got home about 6:40.

Got home tired. Had a big fight with Katy after supper and after Viann had gone to her ladies group.

2002 February 7, Thursday

Third walk. This time from RoseBowl Riders around south then east of JPL, under the bridge up to the Arroyo road, Gould Campground and up to the truck at the substation on the Angeles Crest Highway.

John got tired of Sheridan about half way up the steep grade, I took him the rest of the way. I reminisced about the first time I had been there, when Viannah was four. She had fallen in the water (high water from snow runoff, it was March) and I’d carried her most of the way up this road on my shoulders, not knowing until the end how long it would turn out to be.

Saw mountain bikes, a couple of other dogs (one asked if Sheridan was friendly, took my hesitation as a “no”) and a car on the JPL end and going up the road to the highway. A car down her was unusual in itself. It was dark as we got to the campground, a little lighter as we climbed out but kept getting darker.

In the car (parked at the top at the beginning of the day), coasted nearly to the freeway, John said I was exceeding the speed limit.

2002 February 13, Wednesday

Went the long south route this evening. I left as quickly as I could so as to meet them at the southmost end of Hahamongna Park where there is a turnaround in the road. That was about 4:50 p.m. We got home about 6:50 p.m.

Under the Oak Grove bridge it was cavernous. “This would be a bad place to be in an earthquake,” John remarked.

“This place has been in many earthquakes and is still standing.”

“A 10.4 or something dad.”

“Well, you know where would be worse?”

“Where?”

“Here.” We were going under the freeway portion of the bridge.

John had made “contact points” at Jakes today, using some weapon, as part of his training. I asked him if he beat the tar out of somebody. He said he’d beat the tar out of me if I didn’t quit asking. Viannah (at dinner later) said I could put my hand on his head and he couldn’t reach me. … yeah but not for long… he’s growing. Katy and Viannah were exactly the same height now.

Crossed the stream. I didn’t even have to ask, John recognized where we were as being a place we drive past on the way to school everyday. It was very like something I would do to recognize a place from different perspective.

We started to catch up with other dogs being walked. They went a little way up a side street.

We started solving math problems starting with “2 bits.” They used to break coins up into 8 pieces. “2 bits” became known as a quarter.

“How many times do you have to break the coin to get 8 pieces?” He thought a long time.

“Seven.”

We worked on other cases, Four – Three, Two – One, One – Zero (“Zip”, he got this). So, in general, what? He worked hard “2x plus one where x is the number last time.” I tried to work him off of this. “Y is this time, what is that in N?” Hung on X and Y, we finally decided it was N-1 breaks. “So, if you want 851,247,614 pieces?” “One less than that, whatever you said.”

Which brought to mind the song, “Infinity bottles of beer on the wall, infinity bottles of beer, take one down and pass it around, then you have infinity minus one.”

“You’d run out of earth before you had infinity bottles.”

“Yes, or filled them.”

For our next problem we estimated the number of sand grains on the surface of La Canada. John thought 12 per millimeter, so 144 per square millimeter, then I estimated 7 kilometers long and four kilometers wide so, after considerable discussion of multiplying millions (not thousands of meters but millions of millimeters) we had 28 million million square millimeters. Then we estimated one and a half hundred times 30 million million and got 45 hundred million million, 4.5 quadrillion, but John said there wasn’t dirt everywhere, so I said, “a few quadrillion”

Then as we climbed the hills above Cherry Canyon, we estimated the interest payments on the National Debt ($5-6 Trillion at 5%) at $10 a second, then I explained that the money came from people (etc.) buying bonds and we figured out that we made about 1 cent per minute on our part. That was right, but meant that we had about 1/60,000^th of the debt which seemed quite high. I decided there had to be a factor of 1000 missing in there somewhere, but $10,000/second on the entire debt that this implied seemed high too. But it was right. That’s frightening.

We stopped above Verdugo Hills Hospital and watched the rotating light flash green/white/yellow then went down the steep trail in the dark, dog pulling as we went.

Two police cars were stopped, talking under the bridge. We went on down and I went in Von’s to get some Vanilla cake Icing for Viannah. John stayed out by the re-Planet recycling bin with the dog and my backpack.

We went on home, around behind Marshall’s, looked like a homeless person might live there. John asked about the shopping carts. Katy called us on the radio as we went under the freeway. We were nearly there.

We reported on all this at supper, going over most of the detail again, then I showed the way I got of finding perfect squares, having thought about it on the same route Monday before being picked up by Viannah.

John showed the N-1 problem on the board with Xs and Ys.

3 + 4 = 5

5 + 12 = 13

7 + 24 = 25

9 + 40 = 41.

I’d gotten the insight from the simple FORTH routine that went something like:

: SQRT ( n -- sqrt-n ) -1 TUCK DO 2 + DUP +LOOP 2/ ;

All the perfect square formulas start with odd numbers (since perfect squares that are odd must be squares of odds) and these in the form (n + n –1) tell you how to find the second term

(int) n^2 / 2

Ok, whatever.

I called my mother and told her the interest payment on the debt was $10,000/second and that was about what I paid in taxes in a year!

2002 February 21, Thursday

We missed yesterday because Viann and I had to go see Mary Rotzien about Viannah. This left Viannah to take John to karate and pick him up herself.

Today we made up. Viann was at work but Viannah brought John and the dog down to meet me at the Rose Bowl Riders stop just outside of work. We walked home along the north route to where I had parked the van at Armstrong’s Nursery this morning, just before missing two busses in quick succession.

This lasted until dark. Immediately on the trail John wanted some more math problems to work on. We discussed the value of pi and how it is calculated. We did the problem about what if you had a string around the earth and raised it uniformly by a foot. How much longer would it need to be? (2 pi feet, and this is true in general for a circle of any size.)

We discussed how many moons would fit in the earth, and how many earths in Jupiter and how many Jupiters in the sun and how many earths in the sun and how many moons in the sun and Pluto and Plutino (Charon). Also, flattening. I did in my head that the flattening of the sun is probably not as great as that of the earth (which is about 1/300, 21 km at the poles).

We met three or four dogs. Sheridan is not trained well yet on meeting other dogs.

At home, helped Viannah complete the square in the “y” term to do her homework, finding the location and radius of circles from equations in x^2, y^2, x and y and constants.

2002 February 24, Sunday

Went with Martin and Vivian, John and I (no dog) to Sheephead Canyon up the East Fork road off of highway 39 and hiked about 2/3 of the way to the Bridge to Nowhere. Sunday after church, stopped to eat, didn’t get to the hike until about 2 p.m. Had to turn back to try to make it back to the lot by 5:30. Did by 6:00. Nearly ran out of gas, got home at nearly 7:00, late for Viann’s Family Night.

The hike was similar to Arroyo Seco in the streambed. Lots of hopping over the running stream; impossible to keep feet dry. My GPS didn’t work at the end point. There were trails along both sides. We got just past a little bridge, met another party coming back who said we had another hour to go. It was after four. We looked around the next corner then started back. Back at the car just as it was getting pretty dark.

John talks a lot, about anything. Is cynical like I am. Vivian didn’t talk much but at least she had waterproof shoes. Martin laughed when I stepped in the water without ceremony; they both took their shoes and socks off for some crossings. Martin found a gold panning pan and gave it to John.

2002 February 27, Wednesday

Back on the normal schedule, but I was late. Viann and John came down to the south end of the park road but had to come back up to RoseBowl riders to meet me. John’s choice, we went south to the fire watchtower on Cerro Negro and thence home. This put is in about 7:30 and since Viannah wanted to go to Hollywood for GSA, meant that Viann had to go with her instead of going to her ladies group. I always say when these conflicts happen that we want more notice, but afterwards we don’t do much about it.

As was becoming habit, John wanted to work on math problems. We discussed degrees, radians and circles. At home in the evening I drew some pictures that might help but on the walk it was all in head. “How many degrees in half a circle?” “180”. “How many radians in a half circle?” I had backed off from asking up front for a conversion from degrees to radians, rather was doing examples to see if he would notice the pattern and maybe we could work from there. “Pi”.

How many degrees in a quarter circle? 90, Radians? Pi over two. And so it went, we got 30 degrees was Pi over six, 15 degrees was Pi over seven, 0 degrees was Pi over eight. What? He was seeing the wrong pattern. I worried.

There were many interruptions. A pair of horses went under the freeway ahead of us then turned back at the creek while we went ahead. John and Sheridan, to catch up, ran far enough ahead that I lost sight. Did he have his radio with him? No. Was I worried? No.

We went on Owl Trail from above Hampstead. It was getting quite dark as we discussed radians, radiuses, and other things. At the end of Owl Trail there was a choice: left to the top or right back to the road. John picked straight ahead, up the tough grade to the road. This didn’t go directly to the top, but ten minutes beyond it. Viann called. Without much breath to talk with we agreed that I wasn’t going to be home by seven so if Viannah was going and not by herself, Viann would have to be the one to go.

It was well dark at the top. We could see the little “power on” light at the repeater site. We went and stood on the marker at the very top. It’s never really dark in the city. The clouds were beautiful, in an urban sort of way. We started down; it was too dark to see a watch, though John’s had a backlight. I dialed up the time via IRLP on the repeater, Braille on the keypads.

As Viann and Viannah were leaving, we were coming down behind Verdugo Hills Hospital. A glow turned into the moon against the hills to the east. Just past new. John said, “Harvest Moon”. I tried to explain different. Named moons are full moons. Harvest is in September. Viann, alerted by radio said, “Harvest Moon.” Katy might walk out back at the house and see it.

John tied his shoe by the light of the helicopter beacon on top of the hospital. We started down the dark trail and were in front of Von’s as Viann and Viannah arrived at the place in Hollywood. We’d seen several other dogs on the trail. Sheridan was getting less bad about the encounters and now wasn’t noticing dogs behind fences at all. We’d used the pedestrian light at Chevy Chase and it had stopped a car.

Went around the outside of Marshall’s this time. Another dog was going around the fenced off spot. Whew. All our legs were tired, we thought. The humans noticed, we thought. Sheridan still dashed back and forth, continually being collared.

Had fish for dinner at home.

2002 March 8, Friday

Viannah was driving, bringing Viann, John, Alex from next door and Sheridan the dog. They picked me up at Rose Bowl Riders and we went to the Gould Substation to hike back down to the truck in the park below. With me, it was a big crowd in the car, me, that is, the two boys and the dog in the back.

The boys yelled video game strategies at each other the whole way down. Viann and I tried to talk. There were stops. It was quite dark when we got down the park and encountered three people who claimed to be playing Frisbee golf in the dark. We were cutting across to the rest rooms instead of the truck. Got home about 7:40 p.m.

2002 March 26, Tuesday

It has been a while since we hiked and we’re not going to make it tomorrow. I called home about 4:00 and asked if John and the dog wanted to come down when Viannah and Katy came to guard practice. He did, but I had forgotten about Children’s Choir tonight. Viann brought them down instead and we walked as far back as the Edison easement. John had to be picked up there at Olive and the easement to go straight to choir.

We talked about college and undergraduate and graduate degrees and dissertations and theses, and coursework and high school. At the end I asked him to tell Viann the story on the way to choir then tell Viannah when they all got home. Viannah might listen to John.

2002 April 3 Wednesday

I was walking out with Martin. He was just bringing his car around from the park to on-lab. We were talking about space elevators and FCC rules for ham callsigns. Certain problems concerning space elevators are interesting enough that I think I could do a PhD on them. I thought I might chat with John about them some of the way today, but he wasn’t interested.

He did use the “Magic Paper” (toilet paper) in my backpack. First time it has ever been used, except to blow my nose. We went the south route and were picked up where the trail comes down to the dead-end service-like street by the Highway 2 underpass. We did talk about Krishanu’s problem, where on earth can you go 100 miles south, 100 miles west, 100 miles north and end up where you started. Well, the North Pole, and there were other cases.

Sheridan now fights with dogs across the fence but not the ones in the trail, much. This is a reversal of behavior. He got loose once but didn’t run away, just kept going around extra like he does. John fell down twice trying to run in loose rock/sand.

For a couple of hours on the trail I don’t remember anything else. I’m kind of tired. Up to 25 push/sit ups. Oh, we took the shortcut from the bend in the trail up the wash then cut across to the water tank under the power lines and around the trail from there back up to the road. Sheridan doesn’t pull as much uphill as he used to either. He’s either mellowed or is out of shape.

2002 April 10, Wednesday

Eric and John and the dog came for a walk down the trail to the truck in the park. The only memorable thing about this (besides Eric and John stopping for long periods of time to throw rocks) was that Eric and John handled Sheridan first, and when they handed him to me, he wouldn’t go forward when they were in front of us. Finally, I dragged the dog out in front and that was the end of my problems getting him to go.

He had a little fight with an unleashed dog, but is getting better and it didn’t get out of hand.

2002 April 14, Sunday

John, Katy, and I were joined by Martin and Vivian for another attempt to hike to the Bridge to Nowhere. We left church at 1:30 p.m. and hiked away from SheepHead at 2:30. I was already running on yellow before we started. Hadn’t slept well Friday night because Viannah had a new friend over until 1:00, then we had to talk to her until 2:00. Viann and I both felt poorly Saturday and didn’t eat much. Sunday I got up late, prepared for the hike, and was a little late getting to church. With all the arrangements, rides, lunches, and so forth, I got in about a five minute non-nap before Martin and Vivian showed up and we started up the trail.

We did do a little better at the outset this time, having said that we wouldn’t fret too much at the crossings and would realize that there didn’t need to be so many of them if you found the side trails. The little bridge that we called the “Bridge to Somewhere” was indeed about half way. This is about where we had turned around before. We rested some a little further up. We would ask people coming down and would get varying responses on how much was left. “Lots” was the consensus.

And they were right. After a while, the streambed widened up and the trail ascended steeply up to the old roadbed up above, several times. At one of these ascents Martin thought he had encountered a rattlesnake. On consensus, we decided to carefully go by and not try to bother him. I didn’t hear the rattling, but wouldn’t have recognized it if I had. Later Martin asked me what my odds were getting help with my radio if someone had been bitten. Better than 50% I thought and described the problems involved.

I led up a long upgrade, hoping that the bridge would be just around that bend up there. After pushing harder than I should have for the half hour or so, we rounded the bend and found a sign that we were entering private property. Bottom line was that the Bungee Club of America owned the bridge and the land around it and we were allowed to pass but not to use the bridge (or bungee from it!).

I collapsed and lay on the ground resting. Katy stayed with me. John and his radio went on. In less than five minutes he reported back to me that Martin was seeing the bridge. After some more rest, we got up and finished the trip, staying at the bridge to take pictures and inspect things. There wasn’t much to it really, maybe 70-80 feet above the chasm below, the bridge was less than 100 feet long and banked as if it were to be part of a turn to the right. At the other side it ended in a cliff face with a precipitous walking trail continuing on. I rested some more then we had to start back.

Martin and Vivian had already started back. It was 6 p.m. and I had given them a set of keys to the van. They had poorer flashlights and were worried about being out after dark. We feared that we wouldn’t get back until 8:30 when it would be well dark. As we started back, Martin came back our way and met us. He said, “Vivian was bitten by a rattle snake.” We all started worrying, but he was just kidding! Good thing.

They then headed off, our group of three and their group of two; the agreement being that we would keep our own paces. Martin was somewhat faster than us and would have beaten us except for a number of missed turns. They went up and down places where we just waded extra to keep from climbing. More than once we would come to a crossing or a fork in the trail and find them retracing steps or stalled by the stream.

It took so long to get back to the Bridge to Somewhere that I was afraid several times that we had somehow missed it. I crossed at 6:50, the kids a few yards ahead, and started making calculations. If it was really half way, we would be at the car at 7:40. If it was 2/3 way up, then 8:30. Last time we had been here it had been 4:00 – 6:30 returning from this point but we had not been efficient. I thought 8:00 maybe.

We had been nearly out of water at the Bridge to Nowhere. I was rationing now and had about a cup left for myself. This hike, taken with an extra hour’s worth of rest and sufficient water would be a challenge, but it was beginning to get dark; I pointed out to Katy that the sky and clouds were now pink, indicating sunset. We hadn’t seen the sun from down here in over an hour.

We knew it was a long way and kept going downhill fast as we could. I was feeling pretty poorly. We passed Martin and Vivian for the last time. We were on the west side of the stream following the side trail. I was going to follow it until it was obvious we should cross over to the road back to the van. Martin was trying to cross with Vivian on his back, but the other side of the stream here wasn’t promising.

After another half hour we came to a choice between going on and crossing. I had to stop, as I was making rock-choice mistakes and was getting careless. Everything hurt, the list of things that didn’t hurt was much shorter. I lay there nearly out of water, not having eaten well in a couple of days, thinking I’d never feel like exercising in any form again. Katy and John went down to the stream:

“Dad! This is the last crossing here’s the road over here.” I looked … Hallelujah.

I got up and we waded through, ankle deep, getting wet in the cool (not cold) water one last time. Climbing out, I started shivering. It didn’t seem like it was from the cold. Now I was starting to worry. I remembered from GPS that this spot was 800 meters from the car. Not far by today’s standards. Not close.

Katy and John carried on like troopers. They were tired and thirsty but not in trouble like I was. I patted each of them, complimenting them on their fervor.

As at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, that last half-mile had seemed like two more. We got to the car, it was flashlight darkness now, but being on a good road, we didn’t need them, and there were parking lot lights. Martin and Vivian were not there.

I had no strength for such things, but changed into dry clothes and shoes and socks anyway after filching through my pack for the other set of keys, the only use of the flashlights for us. As this was settling down a fisherman came up and asked if we were with another couple. We were. He described them. Yes, that was them. The fisherman had seen them down at the bathrooms at the end of the road. They were going back in to look for us. Great. I had no energy to go back down looking for them. We would give them several minutes. Finally, after ten or so, they came up; surprised to see us, unsure how we had gotten ahead.

We compared notes and stories on the way home. Again, the road out of the area was backed up. Lot’s of 20 mph strings of people coming down the mountain. Got into Azusa and repeater range to call Viann at 8:45. She was in fact beginning to worry. John tried to sleep in the car back to the church.

Once we had left Martin and Vivian and their keys off there, John says, “I’m glad Martin doesn’t have his radio yet, you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because if he did you guys would still be talking!”

At home I soaked in the tub for half an hour, hardly able to move, afraid to stand up for fear of fainting. Didn’t sleep well Sunday night. Drug in from 10-11 a.m. Monday morning just to run my meeting then went back home and slept some more. Didn’t sleep well Monday night either. Woke up with a stress shoulder and headache at 2:30 and didn’t get back to sleep until at least 4:00. The headache was splitting at 7-8 when everybody else left. I went back to bed then around noon got up and went to work.

Now, Tuesday evening, I’m feeling nearly normal. But I don’t know that I’ll ever make it to Alaska on my bike. Maybe I’m missing some knowledge about pacing.

2002 April 17, Wednesday

Hiked up Foothill (on the north, behind McDonald’s, behind the Post Office, through Memorial Park) today after Jakes. I was in regular shoes, my hiking boots still being wet from Sunday.

Shouting over traffic (we went a short route to avoid … wearing out again) we talked about what John did at school today. Started pre-dissection measurements of the owl pellet in Science, did analogies in Social Studies, sang “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in another, prepared for play (“Granny Awards”) tryouts in English.

John already has the homeowner part in “Through The Roof”, the children’s musical that Pasadena Covenant will do this year.

Stopped at Memorial Park to play on the equipment briefly.

The dog was anxious, pretty much his old self, trying to start fights with bigger and littler dogs. He lapped up a drink of water out of a mud puddle in the park. At the end, I told John about the shuttle scale calculation I had done walking along here. At our speed, 5 km/hour, that’s a scale of 5000:1 putting the SRTM orbit altitude at about 35 meters, about twice as high as a telephone pole, and the size of the shuttle at about half an inch.

Fast indeed.

Then, this evening we actually saw and reported it:

Subject:

Just saw space station/shuttle.

Date:

Thu, 18 Apr 2002 03:24:21 +0000

From:

Courtney Duncan <cbduncan@earthlink.net>

To:

Ralph Wallio <wallio@crosspaths.net>, Jan Tarsala <Jan.A.Tarsala@jpl.nasa.gov>,

John Zittzelberger <donnaz@gte.net>, Wilda Duncan <WldWmn64@aol.com>,

Elizabeth Skemp <leowensskemp@earthlink.net>, Michael Owens <mhowens@gvtc.com>,

Rob and Charlotte Aanstoos <aanstoos@ev1.net>, Viann Duncan <vowensduncan@earthlink.net>,

Viannah Duncan <truechaos@gurlmail.com>, Katherine Duncan <katylouduncan@earthlink.net>,

John Duncan <jccool3@earthlink.net>, cbduncan@earthlink.net, Susan Smith <creativelysp@earthlink.net>,

mregehr@huey.jpl.nasa.gov

The shuttle undocked today and we just watched them both go over here

together, the shuttle a couple of degrees ahead (maybe 30 seconds or

about 150 miles!). They disappeared into earth shadow just after

maximum elevation to the south.

I usually presume the shuttle is ahead after undocking since the most

efficient separation maneuver would lower the orbit slightly causing it

to drift ahead.

We nearly gave up, the pair was about 6 minutes behind schedule,

possibly because one of the last things the shuttle would have done

before leaving would have been to raise the station orbit to give it

more longevity. This would make my week-old ephemeris go out of date by

minutes per day like this. Raised means slower, so they should be

behind.

It was a beautiful sight, the station about half a magnitude brighter

than the shuttle and both somewhat brighter than Jupiter which each

barely "missed" in the west. They also passed "alarmingly" near the

fairly new moon.

We have poor viewing here, the only segments of clear sky are out in the

street in front which is flooded by three big street lights but these

objects were plenty bright anyway. Everybody runs out in the street and

starts yelling, this time John in his bathrobe. As usual, we attracted

a few neighbors too.

There's another opportunity here in the LA area tomorrow about ten till

8 PDT. (Well, make that five till 8.) They will be separated

substantially more and will pass to the north and east rather than west

and south. The twilight will not be as deep, the sun only 5 degrees

below the horizon then. I checked predictions for Austin, Norfolk and

Des Moines. Des Moines has a pass to the south about 8:20 p.m. CDT

tomorrow which is similar to ours. The others don't have anything

reasonably high above the horizon this time around. Future sets of

evening opportunities at our mid-northern latitudes will be in late May

and mid June.

Viannah, forward to Chris. (Chris Stones, Viannah's friend who is here helping

her paint her room, thinks the most ... unusual ... things happen around

this family.)

Courtney

2002 April 24, Wednesday

Walked up the north trail to Crown then across the Stop Sign to nowhere and up Commonwealth past Dwyers house, across the little butted roads between La Canada and Highway 2 and to Memorial Park where John played on the equipment again while I rested for quite a while. Listened to the radio about an autistic kid who has gotten going by playing jazz piano. It showed him dictating form, playing sets, acting like a kid (9).

Don’t remember what we talked about.

2002 May 2, Thursday

Couldn’t go Wednesday (yesterday) because I had to work late with the IIPS crew then went straight to church for Rob Johnston’s lecture, “Movies and the Spirit.”

Today we did roughly the same routine, leaving work about 4:00 and getting home about 6:30. We were trying the south route, but as we came near the Berkshire bridge undercrossing, John, who was trailing behind noticeably caught up a little and said, “Dad, I like this part of the trail, but I don’t want to go up into the mountains,” by which he meant that he didn’t want to cross into the Cherry Canyon area. Couldn’t find anything to talk about today, when he was in earshot. As often happens, everything I said was followed by “What?”

He stayed behind, thrashing the dirt and bushes with a stick, not really wanting to go forward. I finally asked if he was sick and wondered if he shouldn’t take off his sweat shirt and be cooler. He had to pee about four times too, still, not as much as the dog.

So, at Berkshire and Chevy Chase we got off the trail and followed Alta Canyada up to Verdugo and down in front of the hospital to SavOn where I picked up prescriptions and Lucky Charms. People on the street and in front of the stores wanted to stop and talk about our dog. John stayed out front of SavOn while I went in and had more dog conversations.

The intersection at which we came out on Chevy Chase and Berkshire was where I had gotten a ticket for running a stop sign on my bike when the girls were little and riding in the bugger. John knew this and I told him the whole story of getting the ticket and the court proceedings and how I prepared and how it went. I also told him some anecdotes from sitting in other traffic courts (and traffic schools).

He had taken SAT-9s today and didn’t want to talk about SAT’s. He thought he didn’t want to hire anybody just because they got good grades. I asked him how he would become the hiring boss. He didn’t know, maybe he would be a lawyer. I asked if he had ever heard of LSAT’s. He didn’t want to talk about it. Or bikes or bike wheel sizes and gear ratios. We do plan to research and shop for a bike over the next week. Tomorrow through Sunday he goes to Alpine with the Jr. High. Viannah will take him to church in the van at 4:15 tomorrow and trade for Barb Petitt’s car while I work late, then go on to church myself for the band discussion of worship at 7:00.

May 11, 2002, Saturday

Today, in a rather long shopping spree, we went by Pasadena Cyclery and bought John a $300 class mountain bike, and helmet. He’s out riding it now (5/15/02 7:20 p.m.)

He wanted to ride it immediately. We went and rode around “the neighborhood” that evening a bit. He and Alex wouldn’t go up Spook Hill, but, through sheer determination, I did. I’m going to have to have lower gears, and a gravel-responsive bike for this. Probably a $300-400 class bike myself.

Sunday around 5 p.m., we rode up under the Freeway and up the dead end road by the VHH overlook and the apiary, then down to the Tire Swing Park. He didn’t want to stop and play, wanted to keep on riding. Though I was being protective in traffic, it was me who nearly ran out in front of somebody going too fast down the Mentor alley. From behind a dumpster.

I wanted to get Viannah to bring him and the bike down Monday but the telephone was broken and nobody answered the radio. I struggled home on the south route by myself. He’s eager to go and wanted to go today but we went to Mary Rotzein’s with Viannah again (and will again next week, and did also last week) and so will have to do it tomorrow if at all.

Tonight we’re at the midnight showing of the new Star Wars (Episode II) movie. Viannah is insisting and she and Chris Stones are holding our place in line. All of us but Viann are going. I may not get up and go early tomorrow, and I don’t know about riding. We’ll see.

2002 May 16, Thursday

John and the bike were brought down today for the trip home. (It was also “ride your bike to work” day.) We went down into the arroyo, as I was wanting to try out his bike on gravel, dirt and sand. This expanded up to Liz’s Loop in the hills. I spent a bunch of time swearing at my (recumbent) bike for not staying on the trail or just throwing sand downhill instead of tracking. Fell over twice. I guess I really have to break down and get a real off-road bike for this.

John was tired and his seat sore by the time we got home, but, aside from running a red light in front of traffic, he did quite well in terms of pumping and staying online.

We got in at three this morning after Episode II. Viannah didn’t make it to school and I didn’t get to work until 10:30. Other than that, everybody was “normal.”

We finished our meeting about computer use at home. John fell asleep in Viann’s lap before the vote.

Doing all this makes me feel noticeably better. I didn’t hardly notice Tuesday’s blood donation, for example.

2002 May 18, Saturday

Viannah drove us in the truck to Huntington Beach Laemelle theater where Revolution OS was showing. We filled up the truck at Exxon then ate at Subway afterwards. Talked about Linux, philosophy, religion, love and everything on the way home.

2002 May 26, Sunday

On impulse we went up about 6:00 p.m. to the Crystal Creek ranger station wanting to ride a little up that fire road. It was too steep and loose for my bike and was road blocked just above the water tank anyway. Instead, we rode around the ranger station, checkpoint, and up and down the busy highway a little before starting back down.

Pulled into the fire station just north of LC and rode a ways up that fire road, five or six switchbacks, enough to get tired. I told John that mountain biking was the process of doing this all day rather than just a fraction of an hour. We decided we needed to work up to the bigger rides. I’ll need to come up with some sort of plan and schedule.

2002 May 30, Thursday

I wore my hiking boots and wanted John to come walk the dog home with me today. When I called to arrange this he said he wanted to ride his bike Saturday and that it was Viannah’s job to walk the dog. I walked myself along the northern route back to the truck behind Armstrong’s Nursery. By and large, this looks like the end of the hikes.

2002 June 1, Saturday.

We went to Pasadena Cyclery (http://pasadenacyclery.com/) today and got me a mountain bike, a “Trek 4300 Alpha”. It is roughly the same model (next up from basic entry level) and price as John’s but in a much larger frame. “My size.” The guy said I should keep the shocks at maximum stiffness “for my weight.” Also got a Cateye Enduro 2 “computer”. John “I want an odometer on my bike too” Duncan also wanted one. Since he chose silver, I got the other color, black, so we could keep them separate. Mine is set for metric (km, 24 hour time), his for miles.

They installed the speedometer (“computer”) free of additional charge while we went home and brought John’s bike up for them to do the same on it. Then, we drove around looking for a KFC where we could have popcorn chicken but didn’t find one so ate at Jack in the Box. Leaving there, we left Katy at the Anime store across from Pasadena Community College while we picked up both bikes, then went home. It was hot and the air conditioning in the truck wasn’t working well.

At home, turned around and went back in the van to pick up Viannah’s futon, the beginning of the end of moving her back into her room after painting and carpeting. How long has it been? Months?

In the first day I put 11.6 km on the new bike. At home, I immediately rode it right up Spook Hill. The lowest gear was much better for this sort of thing than I was used to but Spook Hill is still something like a 20% grade. Later, John and I rode up through the Taco Bell drive-through (“dad, is that legal?”) and up the back way to Palm Crest, where we rode around in the playground sand to see just what the bikes would take. Then we went up the fire road behind Chris Chafin’s house maybe a half a mile. John tired quickly on the 10%+ grade and walked a lot, but for me it was great. I’d never been on a bike that could be handled on a road like this before. The gears were low enough; many times I was in 1-2 rather than the lowest 1-1. The best thing was not that the bike seemed to know where to go under these conditions, but that it didn’t matter where the front wheel went. Sand, curb, plant life, rocks, erosion, or whatever, it was all negotiable. A far cry from the recumbent where I’d be pushing down hard as I could in the not-low-enough first gear, kick dirt down behind me without making progress, and notice that the front wheel was hard over, effectively blocking the slight progress that might otherwise have been possible.

I was in good enough shape to run off from John going up hill, at least this first time. We’ll put in a training regime and he’ll catch me pretty quickly, I bet. We came back down and took the fork to Palm Drive, but crossed over to the Edison Easement and went down the two long blocks of it to Armstrong’s Nursery, then sidewalks along Foothill to La Granada, and down the fast hill to home. The “Trek” doesn’t coast like the recumbent, it’s big tires “wow wow wow wow wow” down the road, and it peaked maybe 20% slower at the bottom of the hill than the street bike would have.

Drawbacks, now I’m back to the seat pain, wrist pain, craning neck style of riding. The front wheel will hardly stay on the ground under most low-gear conditions.

2002 June 3, Monday, Viannah’s 17^th birthday.

I rode over to the High School at 16:30 where John and the bike were brought. Which way to ride home? Riding is enough faster that many more choices are possible.

I gave John choices; he picked one. I don’t think he understood what I was talking about, but we headed that way anyway. We crossed Foothill at Oak Grove and went down under the horse tunnel and into the park, out on the road behind the Frisbee golf course with the “pot inlet” and down across the arroyo to the JPL east lot, then up the access road to Gabrielino Trail. From there we went up over the seven bridges and rode through the stream in the three places without incident, then rested a few minutes before starting up the Gould access road. I hoped to go without stopping and it looked good at first, the bike will easily do 3-4 mph and the gearing was low enough to maintain that at first. John would jet ahead, then walk, then rest, he was typically nearly out of view either behind or ahead. On one passing I said, “John, this is a tortoise and hare thing!”

In the middle the road gets rougher and steeper. I couldn’t make it anymore. It was much easier than on the recumbent but still not easy. After putting my foot down, the next goal attempt was just to pedal, that is, not walk, the whole way up. I was able to do this, with some startup difficulty in many places. The road is rutted with erosion and the bike can’t always stay out of it. Rougher surfaces seem to need a little higher speed, tough at 10%+ grades.

Just before 18:00 Viann called on the radio, waiting with Viannah’s birthday dinner (spaghetti). We were just reaching the top where we would start “roaring down the 2”.

We wiped some of the dried mud off our bikes (it wasn’t that bad) and I gave John instructions. We started down the hill. He would brake in what I thought were odd places. Once, seeing a black streak emerging from his rear tire onto the road, I slowed down nearly precipitously and yelled at him to keep coasting. It was hard for me to balance safety versus going for it. Soon we reached Vista del Valle where we got off the highway and pedaled up the light incline, then left down La Canada to Green. When we crossed the Edison Easement, he wanted to stop and go down the dirt rather than the nearby street. From half a block ahead, I came back and we did this.

In the last big hill before coming home I maxed 59.5 kph while John did 31 mph. He brought the speedometer in to dinner and talked endlessly about the thrill of this. We commented that “max speed” would be = important information for the emergency room personnel. When we get out in remote areas we’ll probably need a first aid kit and some bike tools.

2002 June 5

Arranged to ride home with John after karate but a last minute meeting was called 4-4:30 and I didn’t actually meet him until 5:07 (having just walked out at 5:00). It was hot here today by local standards, 90-95 F. We went up the trail and streets to PCY where we rested and had water, then went on home on streets, not the trails. We were hot and worn out at the end. Not like Wichita Falls, but challenging for us pampered SoCal people.

Called mom at Bennie’s house. She was fine after right eye cataract surgery. Everything had gone well. She’s to go home tomorrow.

2002 June 8 about 2-5 p.m. Saturday

Overdid it on what I will call “Whine Road”.

We rode up to Indian Springs and up Valihi and Strancrest under the freeway to the dead-end Stancrest Frontage Road, which was closed for installation of speed bumps. From there it was up the single trail to Verdugo Overlook, which was difficult at our skill and strength level, and up Descanso Mountainway past one summit, then to Cerro Negro.

At this point, John was tired and ready to go home, especially since that meant mostly downhill. In retrospect, that was would have been the correct thing to do. We would not have gotten so sunburned and would have been out for about an hour, which appears to be John’s limit at this point.

Instead, however, we continued on a precipitous dirt/rock access road called “Ridge Mountainway” which passes the Glendale Sports Center in the west valley and parallels Camino San Rafael on the east. The views of Flint Peak and surrounding hills were grand. We ended at the dead end overlooking the Camino San Rafael cut up into the half million dollar crackerboxes and the 2 and 134 Freeway interchange.

I had been here with Viannah six years before. We got on from the last chance at Camino San Rafael and had an argument about whether to proceed south to explore the end or north towards home. I wanted to go south, then backtrack then north. Viannah threw a fit. I talked her into going south. There were costs, then and later.

I had talked to her about boys on that walk. I asked John if I needed to talk to him about girls yet.

“What?” This was the standard reply to anything I said.

“Do you need me to talk to you about girls yet.”

“No.”

“OK.”

Stopping at the overlook, we looked around. John watered the grass. “Don’t pee uphill, I advised,” starting out. There was no reply.

We started back. This was a lot more uphill than I had expected. John really likes the fast going down. It was all I could do to safely keep him in view ahead. When going uphill, even light grades, he would get off and walk. I had to gruffly tell him to keep going a few times.

We got on a paved road, Camino San Rafael, soon as we could. This wasn’t very soon.

There was some downhill and some level then some real downhill, then a bunch of uphill on Hampstead before we could coast down to Chevy Chase. Once on Chevy Chase, the uphill started again. Mild and smooth as it was, John could barely carry on.

Randy Hammock, KC6HUR was riding his horse from Hahamongna up to Cerro Negro on the trail that I’d used frequently for years. He knew about each end but had never been on it before. He had IRLP up and was talking to Anchorage, Alaska then England, then San Diego about it. I’m surprised we didn’t see him up there as we wound around ahead and behind. Finally this chatter dropped off. I felt it would have been useless to call Viannah; they would probably have the radio off at home due to all the talking. They did, but Viannah needed to know where an extension chord was so she took advantage of a minute of quiet to call and ask. We got her to come down to Descanso Gardens where we rested in the grass near somebody’s wedding pictures and waited. We were picked up at nearly 17:00.

John now understands the basic problem of bicycling. By distance it’s 50% up and 50% down, but by time it’s 90% up and 10% down (at least at these grades). When walking up is harder but not that much harder and down is nearly as slow as up.

He needs much more gradual training and, as always, I need outside training. The whole plan will have to be redone. We probably won’t culminate with anything major this year after all.

2002 June 22 ARRL Field Day

http://www.arrl.org/news/features/2003/02/25/1/?nc=1

http://cbduncan.110mb.com/Family/Adventures/JohnOnPch/ARRLWeb_AFieldDayMountaintop.pdf

2002 October 12, Saturday

We went out for about an hour (1545-1645) for a “flat” ride today. Went down to Montrose, then west to La Crescenta Ave. area mostly along the sidewalks, then down looking for the park that is down there, but turned the wrong way and ended up just following the stream down back to the east. Went by Farrington’s house but nobody was there. Came back to one of the up/down streets, La Crescenta, I think, and rode that up above the freeway then back east to Briggs and up the steep hill to Foothill where we followed sidewalks again back towards home. Stopped and looked at the new future parkland up above our little housing area, then finished up. My odometer showed around 10 km but except for that big uphill in the middle, it was pretty flat (or downhill) and easy. More traffic than I’m comfortable with – as always on road.

Earlier in the day, John and I brought in the bike, counted spokes, measured wheel and pedal strokes, and did up a spreadsheet of all the gears and ratios and forces and things. He seemed interested, and dolled up the graphs we made with color when we were done. We made use of the information during our ride.

It was a cool, gray day.

2002 October 13, Sunday. Cool, clear day.

I raised John’s seat to the proper height and he rode up all the hills without stopping in the highest gears possible, bragging all the way. Now he was winding me. Guess we can try some of the tough stuff again, once we’ve developed some control.

We went up La Granada and Foothill to Memorial Park where I went up the switchback to the locked LCE playground gate, then we went up towards Jake’s house up Alta Canyada, but turned around before getting there because it was a long way and steep. Then we went up La Granada (private) above Foothill adjacent to the fire station to see what was there. John thought it was a waste, but we saw a nice quiet neighborhood in a wash with several high priced houses for sale.

He rode around some more just in the local block after we got home.

Subject:

Leonids

Date:

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 08:35:44 -0800

From:

"Courtney B. Duncan" <courtney.b.duncan@jpl.nasa.gov>

To:

"Mark M. Schaefer" <Mark.M.Schaefer@jpl.nasa.gov>, donnaz@gte.net, Jan.A.Tarsala@jpl.nasa.gov,

Courtney.Duncan@jpl.nasa.gov, jccool3@earthlink.net

CC:

wallio@crosspaths.net, vowensduncan@earthlink.net, geminiangelus@yahoo.com,

katylouduncan@earthlink.net

References:

1 , 2

John and I got up at 2:25 local, climbed up on the roof, and watched until about 3:15.

From up over the front door, we had a view with Regulus (alpha Leo) in a tree to the right, the Big Dipper standing on its tail to the left, and a Big Streetlight blocked by eaves just below and left (north) of that. From a horizon at about 10 degrees we could see all the way up to and beyond zenith with the moon and Orion behind us. Stars to 3 or 4 magnitude were easily visible, the sky was unusually clear, the moon and the street lights were equally damaging, and the freeway was Noisy!

This view is about one steradian, maybe a fraction more, in a sector north of the radiant. We also saw a few meteors in a sliver of sky between the Leo tree and a tree further right, south.

John saw six meteors right off while I was still fooling with the radio. I wasn't able to hit anything on 445.78 PL 100 and heard nothing. We then settled in to watching, moving from on top of to inside the sleeping bag when we got cold. I doubt it was below 55F, we were dressed warm but not terrifically bundled.

The difference between a 12 year old with perfect eyesight and his old man with bi-focals is kind of similar to the difference between Precedence B and A (respectively) in SS. I was only able to get about half of our steradian in the distance-vision part of the glasses at any moment and was often unsure whether I had just moved my head and seen a glint of ambient light in the lens edges or an actual meteor out of the corner of my eye. He saw many that I missed, I saw some he missed, and we saw several together. Sometimes we'd see one together then I'd blink and he would see two more. Once I was really focused, I'd think I saw something then wonder whether I'd imagined it, kind of like those really weak ones in the noise. (Turn the noise up enough and you can imagine nearly anything, just ask Rush!)

Most were tiny, short trails lasting a fraction of a second, but maybe 20% had colored trails (green, blue, yellow or some combination) several degrees long that persisted for a second or two. Wow! All were fast, the 70 km/sec being believable. John asked if any ever got into orbit around the earth. I'm not certain but said no. Orbit is at 8 km/sec and the object would have to survive a graze of just the right amount. None of these appeared to be surviving.

They seemed to come in clumps. Often there would be two or three or four right together (in time and sometimes in space but not always) within five seconds, then nothing for a minute or two, then a big one right through the Big Dipper, then in half a minute, a little dash right out of Regulus.

In the ~40 minutes we were watching, John counted 79 and I counted 43. We're not sure if we were counting right 100%, it gets giddy at moments, he'd start talking about getting 50 wishes or government pronouncements or how big those rocks (grains of sand and less) are, but these counts are within "a few" of correct. Also we were counting aloud and often confused each other. It was three in the morning. We didn't mechanize or use any technology aside from a ladder. No curtains or sheets of meteors, but these are the highest counts I've ever seen. (I haven't typically been out at the good ~3 a.m. hours,

Any radio reports yet?

I also saw the penumbral eclipse of the moon last evening (such as it was) from the top of Cerro Negro and then from out in the street at home. Not much to see but does prove that the moon was full.

And I am drinking extra coffee this morning.

Courtney

At 5:52 AM -0800 11/19/02, Mark M. Schaefer wrote:

Just got back from Charelton Flats. Saw 85 meteors from 1 to 4AM. Not bad for a full moon. Most from 2 to 3 AM. The whole family went. Took about 15 photos on Fuji 400 may have caught at least a couple of thick ones breaking up. Hope your wishes on a shooing star come true.

mark

At 2:53 PM -0800 11/18/02, donnaz@gte.net wrote:

Do any of you have plans for the Leonids?

I will try to get my lab out as early as I can but that could be 10pm at

latest. Then I am going to come home and see how the WX looks here. If it

looks reasonably clear will stay. Jim said we could use the Castro machine

on 445.78 as long as we use the 100.0Hz PL. I will be listening there.

Any other suggested places to try meeting on the radio?

John

--

Mark M Schaefer WB6CIA

Jet Propulsion Laboratory 818-354-6504 Office

Member of Technical Staff 818-393-6875 Fax

4800 Oak Grove Dr. 161-213 800-SKY-8888 PIN 1414357

Pasadena, Ca. 91109

--

courtney.duncan@jpl.nasa.gov

818-354-8336

M/S 301-125L

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?" -- Einstein

2002 November 23, Saturday

I’ve been swamped. This is the time of year when we always get swamped (while other people are dutifully putting out their Christmas letters which will swamp us further). Haven’t worked on DSP-10 for over a month. It’s stalled. Meantime, I bought a second kit from TAPR.

The plan had been to go out La Tuna Canyon road to Sunland then Stonehurst then Wentworth, around Hansen Dam and back this direction on Foothill. This was to take about three hours. We left at 2 p.m. We went about a third that far; it was a “lessons learned” trip.

After a stop in the Montrose Post Office, we followed Montrose to Honolulu and, after it crossed under the freeway and we were facing the choice of La Tuna Canyon or something shorter, elected to go up Tujunga Canyon Blvd. This is an awful street for biking. Narrow, lots of traffic, and under construction. When we had the chance we veered up Pali, but this dead-ends into hills, which we climbed by foot, only to find that they peak behind businesses on Foothill that are fenced in. We came down in somebody’s back yard on Creemore Place and were able to get back up to Foothill.

Returning, mostly on sidewalks, we stopped at a new fast food place, “Everest” next to Papa John’s and had quesadilla’s for lunch. John liked the place and will recommend going there after church tomorrow.

Then we remounted, it was about sunset in the hills, a little before 4, and we started back. Traffic was busy. Neither sidewalks nor the street were safe. People on foot or in cars amble around without paying attention to what they’re doing and John doesn’t know what to look out for yet. Although, he did lay rubber in one driveway when someone nearly turned in on him. So he’s not totally oblivious, like everybody else is.

We stopped at Pedrini’s Music, known to John as “the drum store.” He bought a $5.95 set of drumsticks with his own money. Nylon tips. They had a drum set on sale for layaway, $400. That’s what he wants for Christmas. Viannah wants a computer. Viann wants a bicycle for Katy.

In the last leg, from Pedrini’s to home, we were getting cold. The sun was down; it was dropping below 60; and I was wearing shorts.

This riding was not hard by my standards, but was much more dangerous than I’m used to and John doesn’t really understand about traffic yet. I’m struggling with how to put the fear of instant death into him so he’ll pay better attention, and to train him in what to look for. All things I learned in a gentler (but not totally safe) world.

We took the shorter route because he was whining and walking and stalling. He was not mentally prepared for the scope of this outing. That’s my fault.

I need to add several things to the list before we attempt this again:

Comprehensive traffic training.

Overview of training rides with respect to the goal.

Active, joint planning for the next ride, whatever it is.

Oh, and we shouldn’t have left at 2 p.m. without having already had lunch. Things were better after we ate, and going downhill.

2002 November 24, Sunday

For Family Night (Viann’s) we went back to Everest, which everybody liked, by way of (roughly) the route we would have taken if we had gone all the way over to the lake. It was 20 miles to Everest by that route, 26 miles all the way around back to home.

2003 January 20, Martin Luther King Holiday.

I thought I might go to work today anyway, but that might be seen as racist, so I stayed home and tackled my discriminatory problems at home instead. One was to do a next training ride with John, something we hadn’t even attempted since October. This is not the only thing that has been on hold since October. Something about the end of year festivities takes over our lives. Do we have anything to show for it all?

I’d said we would leave about 9:00 a.m. but didn’t sleep well last night due to a caffeine withdrawal headache. Finally I slept pretty well starting about 4:30 after I got up for some Tylenol. When I did get up at 9:35, John chastised me for being late and squirted me with a squirt gun like thing. The day started with a snap.

We finally got our bikes checked out, aired up, and underway about 10:30 and were hoping to be home by 12:30 so John could finish his homework before Billy Shuman’s birthday party at 2:15 (and have time to go by the store for a present too).

The plan was to go up to Palm Crest, then across to Highway 2, and up to the Gould Substation from which we would descend the mountain road that I ordinarily ascend in my daily workouts, then down the trail to JPL and back home via some route to be determined at that point, maybe challenging, maybe minimizing.

I made the same mistake I’d made last time with this, I didn’t involve John in the planning so he didn’t know what to expect, at least not after JPL. To my surprise, he was expecting to be picked up down there when we had perfectly good bikes we could ride home! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We went around Crescent and up to the intersection with Foothill where JoAnn, Taco Bell, and Kinko’s are. While I waited for the light, John turned right and started up the sidewalk towards the YMCA. I yelled after him but he didn’t hear me and kept on going. When the light changed, I crossed, then road through the parking lot, still yelling without results. There’s a lot of loud traffic there. Stopped at the edge of the lot thinking I’d wait for him to come back but the more I thought of it the more it seemed like this would result in me getting a call on the radio in about 30 minutes: John had come home by himself, where was I?

So, I went down the left sidewalk He eventually saw me and crossed in front of the Y. Didn’t want to go up Palm Drive, but that’s what we did, having missed the back-playground opportunity back there. He kept needing to stop to rest and I kept complaining that he needed to use lower gears. His idea of what gear to be in wasn’t adjusted to his stamina and/or he didn’t realize it needed to be, that it is better to keep going for longer periods of time.

Eventually we made it to Palm Crest where we made use of the water fountains that smelled like an elementary school, then it was on east towards the highway.

This route had some more up (complaining) and down. At every choice, John wanted to go down but I said you could only go down so much. We stopped at all the stop signs and John used the hand signals he’d learned on the safety video Saturday. We got on the highway and headed up. He would use the whole right lane and weave around, alarming my driver’s sensibilities. I told him he’d cause a wreck if he didn’t stay on the right side of the lane, he complained that he was going uphill and couldn’t stay straight. We rested some more times.

Finally we were at the Gould Substation road. After a stop for water we went down the hill with me in front to set a safe descending pace. John only had one wipe out, minor.

At the bottom we nearly scared a horse, then rested while the horse went on ahead. The trail was busier than I was used to (being a holiday) with hikers and bikers.

Downstream from the campground there are three stream crossings before the bridges start where you have to wade through or carry across on stepping stones. At the first, we stopped and carried bikes across. One woman on a mountain bike scared me by splashing through as I was starting. Her consort, trailing, waited a while so as not to do this to John while he was trying to cross but finally went ahead while John was in the middle.

“John, don’t get it wet, that’s the whole point of carrying,” his rims and tires were down in the water. We discussed this further. Stepping stones are tricky even when you’re not carrying a bike. Finally he was across.

We decided we’d just pay the price later (drying and oiling bikes after we were done) and ride through the next one. I told him to follow me and went on through.

“[Was] this where my friend (Larry Young) had broken his nose?”

“Yes, I thought, but it wasn’t his nose that he broke.”

I was just coming out, about to get off and wait on the other side when I heard splashing and swearing. John had fallen over in the deep part and had waded out to the bank, trying to stay dry. “Well, go in and get it,” I said, his bike was lying, gears down, in the water.

“I can’t, I’ll get wet, my socks and shoes and pants bottoms are soaked, I’ll have to change everything!”

“John!”

So, I put my bike down and went in on the stepping stones to retrieve his, rode it through the rough part and left it with him in the middle, returning via the stepping stones. He then finished the crossing and we continued.

The third crossing was comparatively uneventful. No one fell down.

Going downhill here was rare for me, I always wondered at those other bikers who I’d meet speeding down when I was going up after work. Now I was going their speeds.

We came up behind the horse and warned her as she’d asked. She moved off the trail so as not to get spooked, although bikes are lowest in the right-of-way triangle and horses are highest.

Nearly to JPL, I told John that I’d come across a biker having a seizure here one day.

“Did you get help, dad?”

“I talked to the guy until I was convinced he was able to get down to where help was by himself. He told me not to call anybody.”

We started down to the east lot, but the gate was closed and locked. Martin Luther King Holiday.

So, back up on the trail, we came out to the street and followed it, coasting, down to Woodbury where I waited for John to catch up. We went down, then across the freeway to Berkshire. He wanted to be picked up. It had been his understanding that Viann was taking him to the birthday party at 2:15 and that she was going to pick him up here near JPL and go get a present.

“What?” I thought…. “We’re on bikes, it’s a travesty to call to get picked up unless you’re injured or have a breakdown!” This was the point where he’d just stop, or get off and walk anything that was more of an upgrade than level. I called Viann on the radio. Contrary to her plans, she hadn’t left yet and would be glad to come do just as John wanted. My battery ran down in the middle of this exchange, the first such on our new repeater home, Caltech, 445.44. This was not a good area for it and we both needed high power.

John and I waited at Berkshire and Woodleigh. Viann and Katy came along in the van and picked him up. At this point my odometer was showing about 16.7 km. I went ahead and rode the rest of the way home, about 22 km in all, via Hilldale, but still arriving there before they did.

Went ahead and wiped off my bike and applied WD-40 to everything that had gotten wet. When they got home, I did John’s bike too. Easier to just do it than to try to interfere with his homework and party schedule to teach him today. Viann burned grill cheese sandwiches for our lunch then left for her Sigma Tau Lambda board meeting at work. John struggled with his map of Africa. We finally got through on the phone (actually, Viannah did after all numbers were either busy or disconnected for any of the rest of us) and found out where Billy Shuman lived.

He was ready to go, we got in the car (with recently re-adjusted clutch, it’s days are numbered, another long story) and started towards Viro.

“You know,” I said, wanting to avoid the negative long-term consequences of just yelling about poor performance without explaining expectations, “you’re not in good enough shape to do anything big on a bicycle. We’ll have to work on that.”

“OK,” John, not threatened, was agreeable.

There was some silence.

“Maybe we should do a hike like, what is that place? From Switzer’s like I’ve done with everybody else. You’re supposed to do some that everybody else has done and some that nobody else has done. This is one that everybody has done.”

“OK.”

“While hiking, we can talk about our other plans. It’s easier to talk while hiking. Not so much yelling.”

”OK.”

I took him on up and left him at Billy Shuman’s house, a place under construction nearly at the top, 4917. It was Movie, Dinner, Burbank.

Back home I was working on Companion’s in Christ for today. The assignment was Matthew 6:31-33. Read several times, then list your anxieties around a circle. In the center of the circle write the priority that might change your life with respect to these things. Of 18 anxieties that I listed, one was “won’t be able to do enough with John.”

The conclusion priority was “look for the good Spirit in each of these, let God be responsible.”

Looking for the good, the glass half full, makes the best of any issue, not necessarily the optimum or the ultimate, but the best that one could do. Letting God be responsible for outcomes allows me to not be God myself and to not be responsible for things that are far beyond my control. Look for and promote the best in the sphere of influence, but realize that the sphere of control is much smaller, perhaps vanishing.

I also wrote a new proverb which had occurred to me just before arriving at today’s summit, the Gould Substation road. Thinking about Neil’s house which was nearby:

“He who lives at the top of the mountain must always go uphill to get home ..”

2003 February 8

(written March 1)

Hike down from Switzer’s

It was about 60F all day at home. We left the house about 9 a.m. and Viann drove us the 12 miles up to the Switzer’s drop off place (where it was 44F). We hiked away at 9:26, noting that several vans were coming in behind us. Boy Scouts? Campers? Bikers? We hurried down the road.

A father and son were struggling on mountain bikes along the first segment of the trail. We passed each other several times so had similar rates. Their bikes were worn and they wore packs like they had experience but they didn’t seem used to such a rough trail.

Around 10:00 we stopped to rest, have a drink, and take off our jackets overlooking the falls themselves. I tied the jackets to the backpack where they stayed for the rest of the day.

On into the side canyon away from the stream, John started complaining about getting a blister. This was very similar to Viannah in the second hour in the Grand Canyon. Same boots too. Two or three sets of three or four mountain bikers passed us. In addition, we met one jogger, who later turned around and passed us going back down, and a party of seven Korean looking backpackers seemingly on their way up.

It was very quiet up here, could barely hear anything from Highway 2 nearby. Saw a road along an out-jut that we had hiked years ago when all the kids were little. Never saw that from up here before. Saw big drops to the canyon to the east. We threw a few rocks down and talked about how to calculate how far down it was. Here, 200-300 feet maybe? Couldn’t throw in that far.

The complaining about the blister got more and more insistent. I was trying to keep the pace moderate but consistent, told John we would stop at that tank on the side where we usually rested on this trip. It is just around this bend, I thought, I thought for a dozen bends, another half hour worth. Finally I agreed to stop somewhere where the trail was wide enough that we wouldn’t be in the way. Met a couple of bikers. Finally, a little chilly, we stopped at 11:05 in the middle of the narrowest part of the side-canyon trail in a tiny patch of sunshine and spread out all our stuff where it would be impossible for anybody to pass until we continued ourselves.

Inventory, yes, I had Mole Skins (no moles or other rodents destroyed to make this product…) left over from the Grand Canyon but no scissors or even knife. I don’t carry a knife anymore because it would get confiscated if I tried to fly with it. I fly so little, I should just put the knife back in there. The one with the little scissors in it….

So, we used a ball point pen and a lock-box key to raggedly tear the moleskin into about the right shape. Applied it and didn’t have any trouble the rest of the day. The stop was ten minutes and we were already able to hit 445.44 (Caltech) from here.

At 11:28 we came to the confluence with the main stream. Not much water flowing anywhere today. At 11:34 we passed the tank. I hadn’t remembered it being in the next section of the trail. How many times had I been up here? Over a dozen?

11:45-11:55 rested at Shangraw’s rest stop. I had forgotten this too. This is where the jogger passed us on return.

12:10-12:55 Stopped at Oakwilde for lunch. Told the story of the 1996 helicopter rescue when Viannah was with me but the trees and things were different so it wasn’t obvious to me anymore where the helicopter had landed that day. We might have eaten at the same table that I stood on to make that initial call but wasn’t sure about that either. Another table was damaged, looked like vandalism. The pit toilets all along the trail, including in this campground, were largely empty and obviously not maintained anymore. There were signs to this effect some places but in Oakwilde, they were just run down. In Paul Little they were blocked off.

Could hit all of 445.44, 445.20 and 147.15 from here, but no rescues today. Four bikers in a hurry went through the grounds on the way down.

While we ate a three plane formation of vintage planes flew slowly over. This resumed a talk about grand-dad and his flying career and my experiences learning to fly from him. In fact we had been talking about these things, the techniques of stalls, S-turns, etc., the fact that I started flying lessons before I could drive so (at least once) rode my bike to the airport, the day the cold front came through while we were in the pattern and we reversed patterns from downwind and so forth. I talked about the ratings and costs as they were when I learned them and the costs (that I knew about) now. The first (Student) pilot’s license is just a Class Three medical.

Met some more Korean hikers on the switchbacks coming down from the dam overlook.

We’d been barely ahead of some bikers in that segment, but they couldn’t go fast up the trail or down the switchbacks. Just as we turned into the campground, they asked John which way to JPL and he directed them. Across that broken bridge.

At 13:35 we stopped at the dam above Paul Little campground. For all the times I had hiked here, I’d never taken the 200-yard detour up to the dam before. It was something like 50 feet high, with trees from the other side hanging over and leaks in various places. USFS 1942 was at the top. We climbed around on slippery, muddy concrete near the waterfall - swimming basin. I did my sit ups and pushups for the day (only ten each I think that particular day). Two bikers stopped, we continued at 13:50. We said maybe sometime we’d go down from the top and see what that was like, something else I’d never done on this route. Scoped out the possibility of climbing to the top. It would be possible but not safe or easy.

Now starting to get close to familiar territory, we stopped for rest and snack at Nino. I was getting tired. I was in good shape for hour-sized outings such as those I did working out nearly every day on the commute, but much more than two and I start to go under. Same today even though it was easy hiking.

Saw a horse being ridden by somebody in a hat that looked like Tad Stones, but it wasn’t him. The bridge just above (before) Gould had construction materials all around it and a sign that it would be closed 2/15 to 3/30 and that the trail would be closed at that time! We were barely in time.

Saw three other horses.

We talked about our plans. That was one of the purposes of today’s outing.

John wants to go camping somewhere and bike around there.

I suggested coming down the old (closed) 39. Similar to today but on bikes. We’d explore the unknown and come out in Azusa, probably get picked up there rather than trying to ride another 20 miles on city streets to come home.

We could come down this trail on bikes. Soon as we passed Gould, John said every 100 yards that he had been here on a bike and wished he was on one now since he knew he could do it. The people we were encountering now were too numerous to keep track of. And there were more horses.

We could bike between campgrounds.

All these ideas were major, we still needed more workups.

At 14:58 Viann called from church and we talked about pick up arrangements.

There were even street bikes in this portion of the trail.

The last interesting thing we saw up in the Arroyo was a man on a green mountain bike headed up with a green cockatoo-like bird riding on his back. The bike, the bird, and the man’s clothes matched. How does he keep him on? What does he do if he gets off? Maybe the bird knows who feeds him and doesn’t leave. Maybe there’s a tether we don’t see. John and I stood there with our mouths open.

When we were in the Gould – JPL territory we started counting bridges as I’d learned to do all those times hiking here. “Seven Land” was long.

Passing around the east end of JPL, we found a piece of insulation from a mobile building. “Columbia Tile?” we said looking at each other, it was JPL after all, but it wasn’t anything from the crashed space shuttle. We picked it up anyway, carried it to the van and put it in our own trashcan at home. Whatever it was it was still litter. There had been windstorms recently. That was doubtless the source.

This was the first time I’d passed the closed Forest Service station since it had been fenced off and locked up. The radio-arranged rendezvous was smooth at 16:05. Home at 16:11. 59F. Seven hours.

2003 February 16

Rode bikes to church.

Picked John up at Krishanu’s overnight birthday party at 9:10 a.m. Neils and Max were leaving at the same time, everybody looked very tired. They had all slept from about 5:30 to 6:30 a.m.

We left the house at 9:41 and arrived at church 10:41, 13.7 km.

John went really slowly down Foothill. “Dad, you have 35 years experience at this.” Down Foothill past the high school, around Woodbury then down some cross street and over to El Molino and down that to church on Santa Barbara. The traffic was more than I cared for.

We got into church late. Not in time for the opening set, but for the next one. There were no bulletins left. It was crowded, in the balcony and even more so below. John slept on my arm through the service.

Afterwards we went to eat during Miriam Singers then decided to load his bike in the van and have him go home with his mother. I rode home by myself, down Orange Grove and up Linda Vista back to Berkshire and thence home the usual “Marshall’s” way. This was tiring; I was sweaty. I was not used to doing this on Sunday or this length of ride any time on this consistent uphill without much coasting. Next Sunday my mind wasn’t really at church and I was bugged by David sitting behind me on the synth. Didn’t do well.

This hadn’t worked out like it was supposed to. We’d have to try it again.

On my own, I think I could make it to church in 45 minutes and could do so routinely in the presence of car conflicts but in the absence of rain. Maybe when gas gets to $5/gallon we’ll just move down there. Riding or being brought home would be a time-per-time option.

March 8, 2003

Today we went on a bike ride around the area. Viannah had one of the cars down in L.A. at some “act up” event and Viann was off at APU giving a speech to potential APU students from Honors, so we were without car.

Around 2:00 p.m. I started looking at maps while John continued to play Mario on Katy’s PS2. (Katy was at camp this weekend.) I had in mind something more major than what there was time for, maybe to loop through the Verdugo Mountains using Hosstetler and Whitting mountain roads, or to go to the Tujunga end of the Lukens road (actually, Haines Canyon) and go up just a ways as a test. These would both be too much for a couple of hours.

“Two Hours! I don’t have time for that!”

“Stop Whining!”

At some length I got the TV off and John’s shoes on. While he impatiently stood on his head we discussed options. He doesn’t really like going on these rides, he doesn’t have “enough spare time.” “John,” I said, “If you’re playing Mario, you have spare time!” Something like 30-45 minutes of begging, cajoling, and ordering was needed to get him on the bike.

We decided to ride up to Mountain Avenue School and see what we’d do from there. I still wanted to go further into La Crescenta then maybe loop back down to Montrose Avenue for the return trip. Paving work at Waltonia and Crescent complicated things.

I don’t know exactly when we got started, but we got off slowly as usual. John doesn’t go fast, even on the level. I tried re-perfecting my “wheelie” skills. To the point where John said, “Dad, stop doing wheelies!” But he did see one that went for a good 3-4 seconds, maybe 7-8 cranks on the pedals. I was never able to pop a wheelie, stop the front wheel, and keep it up long enough to see the speedometer go to zero.

So we went up Rockland, annoying the drivers with my wheelies (this was their detour around the paving work) and rode/walked up Rockland into the shopping area. John gets off and walks at any hill that requires me to use the 1-2 gear or lower. I continue to try to get him to use lower gears, but he doesn’t get it. “I get tired and out of breath,” he says.

He went down Foothill while I tried to proceed up Castle. I waited. After a while, he came back and we both went up Castle, then across Cross, then up Ocean View (John mostly walking, me popping wheelies on the left sidewalk in 1-2) to the Mountain Avenue footbridge crossing.

We rode across then turned up El Sereno where he stopped. We had agreed to stop and discuss the situation here. I wanted to go on up to Orange and see how flat it was. Maybe that would be a nice ride after all the climbing.

John didn’t like going uphill 90% of the time and downhill 10% of the time. I showed him on the map our intended larger ride. The first half-day of that would make this ride look like nothing. That wasn’t going to work.

After a long rest and visits from two walked dogs, we continued up to Los Amigos, over to Briggs, and up to Orange. The first block of Orange was downhill. This was better. Then we crossed Rosemont, jogged up and continued on Orange, up, down, and level, but none difficult. This passes Monte Vista Elementary where he asked me what MTG meant on all the marquis signs. “Meeting.”

Some places along the ride were so quiet I could hear my tires humming in curves. Others were so busy with cars that I was very irritated. These are nice neighborhoods up here. We looked around at different houses similar to ones we had thought of buying when we were in the market ten years ago.

When John was three.

Orange crosses Pennsylvania then changes to Santa Carlotta when crossing Maryland. I would have gone on east but finally gave in to John wanting to go downhill and back towards home. At least we had gone uphill first, I pointed out.

John would like to go downhill the whole time. That would be the profile of the ride down the closed Highway 39 around Crystal Lake. He was interested in that.

So we started down Maryland. This is the street Rob Kursinski used to live on. He’s at University of Arizona now. Don’t know if he’s even still married.

Maryland dead-ends into Los Olivos. I turned around in the dead end cul-de-sac there, noting that another guy had antique furniture in his open garage and another house had bright yellow trim. John wondered what I was doing in the dead-end.

We went on down (and up and down) Los Olivos, learning how to treat stop signs, until it dead-ended into Raymond, forming an acute dead-end at Rosemont Junior High. There was that house that we had looked at, in the acute inclusive lot. Someone was happily washing their car in its driveway. I decided not to stop and talk to them about their house. We rode into the school grounds. Some kind of basketball game was going on in the gym, one kid was shooting hoops out on the playground. Other parts of the playground were under construction and all but one gate was locked. This gate led into a drainage ditch that we followed down to the Mormon church.

“We’re behind Ralph’s!” John had figured out. A woman and her small girl were trying to get the door to the church unlocked. Behind that building was a huge satellite dish. What do they do with that there?

We headed east through the main parking lot. “John, if we’d bought that house do you think we’d be Mormons now?” He didn’t think we would change from Covenant. An abandoned kids bicycle was there in the lot. How come? No injured…

We then went down Rosemont, across Fairmount, and down the left sidewalk of Briggs past the Pickens Flood Control Yard and the Sheriff’s Station to Foothill, where we followed the left sidewalk to Altadena Dairy Express. John wanted Ice Cream.

I was thinking by this point that bicycling was not the positive experience for him that it historically had been for me. Stopping for ice cream here might help and we could sit and talk.

We bought Dove Bars for about the same money I’d spent this morning for a toilet flapper. I’d also “fixed” the printer this morning by buying a new “does all” model for about the same price as one of the bikes.

We sat on the wall and ate our Dove Bars. This was going to be my supper (but the plan was “extended” with popcorn after we got home…

“Maybe we should do hiking. It’s easier.” John wanted to do kayaking and motorboating like I’d done with Katy. “But that was training, her trip was about water and boating.” But he could still do kayaking. Maybe we could do a trip where you take a ferry to an island and ride bikes around it, like Donna Sider had done. Such things were done in Washington State. Also places on the east coast, but they were out of scope. He didn’t say anything about that idea in any case.

I mentioned that I would be off from church in two weeks and we could go camping. He had wanted to go camping. More-so than biking or anything else, actually. We could drive the intended Frazier Park – Lockwood Valley – Casitas – etc. route. Stop and camp someplace, ride bikes around there, etc. That seemed interesting.

I don’t want to do bike camping, at least not at this stage. Camping with biking is likely easier.

We rode on home – Foothill, Rockland, Crescent, La Granada, home about 5 p.m. John bounded into the house toward the PS2. True, it was a major concession for Katy to let him use it while she was gone, but what a waste of time! Viannah was already home from the thing in L.A., watching Andromeda, mad at John because he hadn’t turned off the VCR so it would tape from the beginning.

Lacking our big goal, I was flailing at how and what to do about training.

2009 March 21 – 23

An e-mail to Wilda about the camping weekend:

Subject:

Camping, Viannah, etc.

Date:

Mon, 24 Mar 2003 09:35:48 -0800

From:

"Courtney B. Duncan" <courtney.b.duncan@jpl.nasa.gov>

To:

duncanwl@bonhomme-richard.navy.mil

CC:

vowensduncan@earthlink.net, jccool3@earthlink.net

Viannah is on the way back from New York. If you can get to the web, go to jetblue.com, "Track My Flight" and pick flight 209. Right now (8:37 my time) it's listed as "Awaiting Takeoff, expected 11:26" (from JFK) so the info is a little old, but will be updated with live radar as soon as they are actually in the air.

Expected arrival in Long Beach is 14:40 and back at LCHS is 17:00.

I'm having my usual post-camping blues this morning, worse than usual for several reasons.

I have post-camping blues, I think, because it's a return from a self-sufficient fantasy world in some remote place and style I might dream of living in back to the real world where most of my real life is.

In the past, we've packed on Thursday and headed out Friday after work (sometimes from work), setting up camp somewhere late that night, then spending two nights and a full Saturday in the "wilderness." This time we were only in camp for 20 hours. Also, it was just John and I. We miss everybody else, though it is nearly impossible to get everybody loose on the same weekend anymore and one of us is about to leave home for good.

When they were little kids it was different. But as Viann points out every time we see somebody with little kids, "They're not little for long." And it's true.

At the campsite there was nearly nobody there and nearly no facilities. We used our three gallons of water and had only a swallow left by the time we got back home. Not that we need or want facilities when camping, but when the Forest and Park Services are doing well they will have water systems and rangers driving around checking on people and maybe a camp host in place to collect fees and take care of situations. The campsites are maintained too. Ours had a tree in it that had suffered some ice damage. I used my saw to make some firewood from it Sunday morning. This never happens in a maintained campground, which this once was. There was none of that this time. It's kind of sad to see what happens to public facilities due to massive budget cuts. Federal, State, and Local.

On the other hand, being left alone is nice.

And then there were the drives out and back. We shared the road with lots of hogs, most traveling in packs of 20-40 cycles. About 75% of the guys had their girl on the seat behind them. It's interesting what the rest of the people do every Sunday. We've always gone to church. You probably sleep in. Other people read the paper in depth or go on a day-tour with their motorcycle gang. Many places we passed were bike bars, dozens, sometimes hundreds of bikes parked outside, people in black leather milling about.

I think there's some patriotism involved in all this hog riding, but didn't see many flags.

And we drove by Elizabeth Lake where Katy and I had canoed. It is a collection basin right in the San Andreas Rift zone. The lake was low. One place we'd paddled around was high and dry, maybe 5 feet out of water. People were lying on the bank sunning where we had once cruised above through the dead treetops.

Coming back we drove through some beautiful farming country and then some mountainous areas, all of which stir old dreams of simpler more fundamental lives that we might have had. But you only live the once and you have to make choices. City or country. High tech or low, plains or mountains, or beaches, or oceans.

Those little mountain communities were showing lots of patriotism, flags on balconies, or painted onto sheds. In Frazier Park at what must be the main intersection, people were standing in the corners with signs saying "Honk to show support." People were honking, but I couldn't figure out "to support what?" before we drove away. I suppose we were supporting the war effort, given the conservative nature of people who would be enjoying the benefits of the good life by living in a place like that, but you can never be sure these days. For all I know they were supporting the Academy Awards which I don't really support. Not only do I more or less disdain all that showery, I don't think I'd seen any of the movies featured, or even know much about them apart from the hype. Real life is bad enough.

Anyway, all these lives seem safer. Being on a farm you're on the land and [probably] wouldn't starve in bad times like you surely would in the Big City. Those mountain resorts are isolated, would be hard to attack and occupy and maybe nobody would want to. And you feel self sufficient while camping.

But it's all an illusion. Camping in any comfort requires a great deal of support from home. We probably spent $200 on the weekend, shopping on the way out of town, filling up the tank ($41.00) on return, etc. We have a lot of specialized equipment, and we put some things, like baths and computers, on hold while we're gone. Although we enjoy being away, we look forward getting back to our toys and junk and comforts too. Camping is not how we would want to live on an indefinite basis nor would it be possible if things were really bad (or even if they weren't). So the safety is just an illusion and all that's left is the serenity while you're actually out there.

Which I guess is all you ever really have anyway. The moment, whatever it is.

And those people on farms and in the mountains depend on the cities and communications and transportation for everything else that they don't produce, which is a lot. They all have high tech vehicles and farm implements and pole barns and such. A guy growing wheat and horses might not go hungry, but would get bored eating just wheat all the time that he had had to tend by hand with hoes.

…if things were really bad.

And you couldn't survive in a mountain resort without outside groceries and stuff. Or at least bullets and knives. All brought up by diesel and gasoline. Most of the people up there have never gone except by auto where, when the going gets rough, you just push the accelerator down another 1/4" and blast on up the hill. Not like the settlers who walked or rode horses. Horses are recreation now, not transportation.

One interesting thing we found at a bar called "Half Way Station" where I bought an Adventure Pass. They have no telephone service within ten miles of the campground where we were, which was four miles from this business and it's little community. It's all

National Forest Land and the Service doesn't want any additional stuff on the existing telephone poles (that bring in power). Hanging lines would cost the neighborhood $20,000. Trenching phone lines in would cost them $350,000. Satellite phone is $2.65 / minute, whether the call is incoming or outgoing. And cellphones don't work either.

You have to bring landlines within line-of-site in order to have wireless coverage, so they can't have that either. So, these people have been living without telephones for a long time. They only have "911" (via VHF radio probably).

And then there was the evaluation of possible routes for the bike trip that might be John and My Big Thing Together. I realized driving along through the mountains that there is a non-freeway route all the way to where we would want to go, indeed there are mountain roads (non-car) most of the way, probably, but this would not be your typical Texas cross-country bike ride, it would be a pretty big ordeal and although I'm right now in the best shape I've probably ever been in, I'm not ready for something like that yet. The first

leg, from our house to Gorman and Frazier Park, would not be one 75-80 mile day, it would be two, or even three or four days depending on the route. These would be tough days with lots of vertical through beautiful scenery. If the weather was good, it would be a big, painful, memorable achievement. If not, it could get pretty miserable.

My evaluation was that the straw-man plan that we had been thinking about would be about 1.5 as much work as the crossing of the Grand Canyon was, it would require about the same level of support from the rest of the family (camping, sag wagon, etc.) and it would require 5-10 times the training, all training that we haven't really started

yet. Crossing the Canyon was two big ordeal days with a rest day in the middle.

Are we up for this? Perhaps. I want to have an all-family meeting to discuss it, similar to what we did six years ago right now with Viannah, just before we had to commit by making back-country reservations and such.

Or maybe we'll do something completely different, in which case I'm looking for ideas.

So I'm a little low about that too. It's important to do this and it's important to do it big, but it still has to fit into reasonably available time and resources.

It's misting here today even though weather.com gives is "cloudy and 0% chance of rain."

And, I'm in the car today for several reasons, another reason for being low. Viann had to go supervise her students at ECT this morning. Psychiatrists still use Electro Shock Therapy, called ECT (for some reason) and they do it at Huntington at 6 a.m. Viann's students all have to witness a session and she has to be there when they do, so she left just after 5:30. I slept for a while longer, then listened to the briefing from Tommy Franks, then got up and took John and Katy to school. Since it is misting here, it didn't seem worth going home and returning via bike. Home is 4.5 miles from here. LCHS to JPL is 0.6 miles. So I just came on over. And, I'll be here with the car if at 17:00 I need or want to be involved in Viannah's arrival. Probably so, but this means no biking exercise today, which usually leaves me a little low. Not exactly lethargic, but just not usually "energetic."

I know, "usually energetic" are not words you'd use to describe me typically. But there are times.

News at the moment is that our forces are about 50 miles out of Baghdad, facing a severe sand storm. The opponent is playing their old Saddam pep talk tapes. The Chinese reporters are asking us if we are engaging in "lies and deception" because we didn't publish our entire battle plan, accurately and in minute detail, in advance. Is everybody jerks or does it just seem that way?

As I'm not hearing anything now, I presume outgoing mail is off, which seems reasonable given the current news. Our talk about AOL billing notwithstanding, I'm going to go to daily checking and forwarding of aol/yahoo/hotmail for now so as to keep your inbox busy if for no other reason. Stand by for that next.

Now, flight 209 says it's up, as of 11:42 eastern, over south central Pennsylvania, and expected to arrive here at 13:53, nearly an hour early. Maybe they will get back to LCHS early too. The radar tracking map also shows weather. There's what appears to be a cold front system running from northwestern Colorado through Minnesota and Wisconsin. Looks like they plan to fly 200-300 miles south of it most of the way here.

Though I bathed pretty thoroughly, I still smell a little like campfire smoke. Maybe it's my clothes, some of which went on the trip and came back “clean.”

Courtney

--

courtney.duncan@jpl.nasa.gov

818-354-8336

M/S 301-125L

"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called

research, would it?" -- Einstein

2003 March 22

(reported from notes on 2003 March 31)

On Thursday, March 21, Viann called me at work. This weekend’s camping trip had been on calendar for a couple of months and Joan had already called to confirm that I would indeed be away from church this weekend. Nothing had interrupted; there was no reason not to go. Not a stitch of planning or preparing had been done except a little daydreaming and that not very focused. I’d been working a tough problem at work, not getting home on time for several days. Today and tomorrow would be no exceptions.

“Can you really do this this weekend?” she asked?

“I, uh, I don’t think I have any choice.”

She agreed.

Under circumstances like this, the strategy was to locate the camping list in the computer or elsewhere, go over it, find what we could, make a shopping list for the store, load up Friday evening, shop Saturday morning on the way, and just see what happened. We had no reservations, indeed no good idea that there would be any campgrounds with space or even open Saturday afternoon. That was part of the risk. We weren’t going so far that we couldn’t just bail and come home if worst came to worst. It would be the first weekend of spring.

I got home late Friday. Viann and John were already stacking stuff they knew we would need by the van. I found the list in the computer and printed a copy. We were all exhausted. It got a little punchy. We took both bench seats out of the van and started throwing stuff in. Tents, sleeping bags, other camping gear, pillows. We were taking food for two meals and would eat out the rest. We would make up our clothing bags and toilette during the evening. It was like packing for a trip, my least favorite part.

We read through the list, confirming or scratching things summarily or running to fetch them. Not much had been forgotten, a knife, a lighter, gloves. It was easier to pack for just two people. Just throw stuff in the big, empty van, pile it up.

Saturday morning, being now a week overdue, I had to pay some bills. I paid them. Wilda was deployed to the war; I answered her e-mail. Viannah was in New York with Chamber Singers. Viann and Katy were going to Chatsworth to have their hair cut. They said their goodbyes and left at 9:45. Katy would have her karate purple belt test today.

This was not a radio trip. I took only my handheld and the loaner for John to use if the occasion arose. It didn’t. But one thing on the list was AA batteries. We were totally out somehow. Beyond out, actually, and many things, the loaner radio among them, needed them.

We drove off at 10:15, already 82 F. Went by OSH for a bike tube for a spare and light set for John. Then it was to Janet Wells office to drop off Viann’s annual life insurance premium then to the Post Office to mail the other bills then to The Montrose Bike Shop for spokes and a tire for me. This was an ordeal in that the kid selling spokes wouldn’t even quote them without seeing one, or at least the wheel. So I went to the van and plowed through all the stuff, unhappy at having to get at the bike and get the wheel off before even leaving on the trip and under these circumstances.

Well, it could have been pouring.

So I took the wheel in and he looked it over and said no spokes were broken.

Right. I want to buy some so I’ll have some when they break.

At length I ended up with seven for the gear side and three for the other side.

Finally we were at Von’s for the groceries. A can of stew, some cookies, crackers, blue Pepsi. Viann had packed eggs, bacon, cheese, bread and butter for breakfast. This was more than enough; then we bought Girl Scout cookies on the way out the door. Around 11:30 we were finally on the way.

A bike was stopped at the light on the way up Verdugo. I pointed it out and said, “That’s the way you are supposed to stand without stepping down, I don’t think I’ll ever learn it.” The bike looked familiar, it had some sort of wind streamlining in the wheels and was red. It was Scott from work! I waved but he was, wisely, watching traffic and didn’t see me. We turned up the entrance to the 2 Highway and were on the way south.

“Dad, why are we going this way, why don’t we just go to where we’re going?”

“Because we’re going by way of the beach. That might be where we are going. Wilda wants us to camp at the beach.”

We went down to I-10 and out to Santa Monica all the way to the end where it passes through a tunnel and joins PCH, Highway One. Traffic was heavy; gasoline was over $2.25 places.

We fought traffic, studying the roadside, seaside condos and places until we came upon a Taco Bell near Will Roger’s State Beach. It was a stand up place inside a gas station, so we got our regular to go and went back out to the car. Mine was a #5, Nachos Belle Grande, John’s a #10, Beef without lettuce or tomatoes. After eating, we saw the tables outside where we were supposed to have gone. We bought water and even more snacks and proceeded west.

There is no campground at Zuma; we kept going. At 1:30 p.m., Leo Carillo State Beach campground was full. We turned around, went back to the Highway and kept on going west.

”John, where’s your camera? We need to take pictures of the ‘campground full’ signs to prove to Wilda that we tried to camp at the beach.”

Ten minutes later, Sycamore Canyon Campground was full. We pulled in and took a picture.

Half an hour later, we didn’t even check McGrath Beach Campground in the blowing sand. We proceeded, scenic route, getting lost near the harbor, up to Ventura where I pointed out five motorcycle policemen in formation turning a corner in front of us. John gasped and buckled up fast.

We skipped Lake Casitas and stayed on 33 through Ojai, then up into the mountains. I’d never had a kid stay awake through this part before but this time I had John half way interested in the map, trying to figure out how far it was to the place we’d tentatively decided to camp.

Way up, there was a side road east to Lion and Piedra Blanca campgrounds. Both were marked closed and the road blocked. OK.

Further up, there was a campground at Pine Mountain Road. It too was closed, the road blocked. A van was parked there. Hikers were coming out.

At nearly four, we finally wound our way into the Lockwood Valley, passed the Forest Service Fire Station, and turned on Lockwood Valley Road. It had been about 30 miles up from the Piedra Blanca road where I’d thought we might camp. The ride up here would have been too far and too far up for the side excursion I was anticipating. Two miles down, there was a turn into Ozema campground. We turned. It was open; one party was camped there. We went on up the road and found that it led to a private ranch. Turning around, we found another branch of the campground and picked a spot near the pit toilets, but not too near.

It was 68 F. I was only worried that a Park Ranger might come check us and find that I had no Adventure Pass. I hoped they might be equipped to sell me one.

We sat up camp and emptied the van to the point where we could get the bikes out. I took my rear wheel off and started trying to remove the tire, finally resorting to using tools, finally putting a hole in the tube so big that it was beyond self-healing. The new tire and tube went on OK. The old were the beginning of our trash. We installed John’s light and discovered that the headlight needed C batteries, one thing that we didn’t have with us.

We took a short ride out to the road and down to the Reyes Creek low water crossing, riding through the running water and down to the next turn before turning around and returning. Back at the campsite, it was just sunset, 17:54. The odometer read Tm 0:13:19, Mx 27.4, Av 15.4, Dst1 3.40 (two miles) Dst2 3.37 ( we’d put on 30 meters fooling with the tire), ODO 1793.9.

It was all flat. This is bike riding.

GPS gave a reading for Ozema: 34 41.64 N, 119 19.76 W., 23 Mar 03, 0200, 1119 m. This, it said, was 118 degrees true, 115 km to HOME.

We spent 6 – 7 p.m. dealing with supper, getting the stove to light, watching it flare up and nearly reach the dead tree branch broken over the table, finally cooking the stove, getting the camp lantern lit on the first try, setting up its stand.

From about 7 to 9 p.m. we fooled with the fire and managed to get it going pretty well. I got out Otwell and the binoculars and read to John about the astronomical sights for March while he looked around, with and without aid. We found the Big and Little Dippers, Jupiter, Saturn, the place that is straight backwards in our galactic travels, and saw a couple of high flying airplanes. Keeping fires going is troublesome. It took a lot of our attention.

From 9 to 10 p.m. we worked on getting in bed. I visited the pit toilets, they looked like they were nearly never used, but someone had left a nearly full roll of TP on the seat. John visited the bushes nearer the camp.

Taking out my lenses by lamplight and in no wind, I thought I had a foolproof technique for doing all the hygiene, but when I went to close the case one lens was missing! Thinking carefully about it without moving, I decided I must have brushed it off onto a towel, and did in fact find it there.

I wore just about everything I had, seven shirts, two pairs of socks, two pairs of pants, the heavy jacket over my feet, the ice-skating hat on my head under the light jacket hood, pulled up pretty tight, two shipping blankets wrapped around the sleeping bag. Something was the matter with the two pads, there was a bump in the back I wiggled to get it in a tenable position.

This was nearly enough to stay warm, but it reached freezing in the night and I woke up sore and had to try turning on my side. . John was up on the cot, wrapped up good, warm enough. He got up at 4:30 to visit the bushes again. By now the moon was up. I had him describe where it was and what shape it was in order to try to estimate the time, but he just checked my watch to determine the 4:35.

At 10 p.m. some other guys had moved into a nearby camp. John wanted me to get up and see who they were, but there was nothing to be seen without getting out of the bag.

“Everything we can reasonably tell about them we can just hear.” This was good enough, we tried to get to sleep among the clatter of people setting up.

I had four distinctive dreams: camping, Katy Morse Code, Orbit Determination (work) and something else. All was vague of detail by the time I wrote anything down in the morning.

At 5:50 it was plenty light to get up. First time I checked the van it was 35 F, but there was frost on the grass and a thin pad of ice on the fire water.

I got out the saw and cut down some of the dead branch over the table for another fire.
Soon we had it going. It helped some.

Our neighbors turned on their radio which blared some CBS call in show from KMJ Fresno. Some obnoxious guy was taking calls from people all over the country with their opinions about the war. By now there were casualties and POWs and friendly fire losses. I would not have been out here listening to this, but when I heard somebody mention mines in the Persian Gulf, I thought of Wilda.

John, to stay warm, had gone back into the tent, allegedly to nap. Unexpectedly, he started yelling, “They’re all idiots! I’m going to call in and tell them that!” Luckily, we didn’t have the means. After a wait, I said, “I thought you were sleeping….”

Soon he was making play sounds again. Better. Occasionally our neighbors would talk a little about the news; mostly it was other stuff, work, people, camping detail.

We made omelets of our bacon and eggs and cheese. One was very greasy from the bacon cooking, the other quite good. We each split both.

Tree limbs were down everywhere, not just over our table. There had been an ice storm here sometime in the last few years (maybe months) and nobody had done any maintenance since. Plenty of good firewood sitting around.

8 a.m. 44 F.

The sun came out from behind the hill; the temperature kept climbing. We started breaking camp. At 9 a.m., I was down to only four shirts.

At 9:50 our neighbors left, not having been there even twelve hours. It was quiet again. I waved. Surprised, the passenger waved back, generically.

By 10:30 we were all packed up and ready to go on our bicycling adventure. After circling past our bubba-neighbors in the other section of the campground, and noting that there still wasn’t anyone else around, we went out to the road and upwind to the west to Highway 33. Turned right and crossed the bridge over Reyes Creek and went on another couple of miles through pretty cuts and fields of brown dirt, rock, and flower, to where the airstrip noted on the map should be. Didn’t see any air strip but did see a road that might go up to it, with a locked gate, and on the other side, a bar called “Half Way Station.” They said they had Adventure Passes. We went in to buy one.

The proprietor, chain smoking, thought I wanted a pitcher of Bud and asked if I could drink all of that, getting a frosty mug out of the refrigerator. Upon clarification, he sold me an adventure pass and, after trying to hint at some calendar saving ways to use it, just punched out March. It would be good through the end of next March. The ceiling of the room was covered with hats and bumper stickers.

We bought a Dr. Pepper and Root Beer and talked about local life. A party of four was there discussing water on a guy’s property. The leader of the discussion was a woman with maps and technology, a “water witch”. She’d been out on his place finding the best place to drill. The proprietor did this sort of divining too, he told me. She and he had used their brass rings to survey his place and had agreed on the best place to drill within about a foot. Drilling right in the middle, they hit enough water to supply his house and the store and far beyond indefinitely. He described the local geology that trapped pools in clay and made it hard to find and manage.

Smoking was permitted in here. The sign on the outside said that this was legal for proprietor operated establishments and we should enter at our own risk.

The owner/operator and the other water witch were both chain smoking while they discussed the best place to drill for lots of water.

Somebody stopped in looking for a telephone. There was none! No telephone within ten miles of here, and no cell coverage either. He said that the Forest Service wouldn’t let them hang anything else on the existing power poles (would cost $20,000 to bring service out that way) so they were faced with trenching, which would cost $350,000 to put in and $30,000 / year to maintain. No one had done that, but a businessman had put in a four-line microwave link for $80K for his business nearby. Satellite phone was $2.65 / minute after you bought the equipment for $3000. They did have emergency service. Presumably by VHF radio or some such.

The other customer had 320 acres and was wanting to split it in half, but wanted to keep the half with the best water. The homesteaders, in the 1920s, had used springs, but 3 gallons per minute wasn’t enough for modern washing and so forth. A modern house wanted 15 gallons/minute minimum.

Interesting to find people without phone service and drilling water wells near a highway less than 100 miles from Los Angeles! And of course there wasn’t cell coverage, you have to have landlines into the cell site for that.

The cokes were $2 and I left him a $1 tip.

There wasn’t much Sunday morning traffic out on the road, but there was enough to be annoying and make us ride single file more than we wanted, and it was picking up. Soon we started seeing motorcycles. Just as we got back to the campground, we were meeting a group of maybe 40 hog riders. About 30 of them had their girls on the back. As we got back to the campsite, we heard even more out on the highway. They were everywhere.

“You know, John, everybody has something to do on Sunday. Some people get up and ride their motorcycle all day.”

This bike trip had been 13.22 km round trip.

Noon, 73 F, we were ready to drive away. I went across to the campground our friends had recently vacated and photographed the disconnected water pipe. There had been improvements here, like water, at one time, but no more. And there had been no official visits. The Forest Service without rangers was a little spooky.

John wanted to go directly home; in fact he’d been saying this since last night. While we were here and had the opportunity, I wanted to drive back past the back route around Mt. Pinos and then along the reverse route from what we might ride if we bike-camped out here for our Big Trip. “Oh, OK, let’s just go….” A little of his mother there.

So we went out, took the last picture on the throwaway camera of The Halfway Station as we passed by headed north on 33. The road went by faster in the van. The country turned into farmland in the wash, fields of what might have been winter wheat or something thicker. Orchards without fruit right now. Some private property, some houses near the road. One “meditation center” down in the wash. Locked up for privacy.

From Ventura County, John noted that we passed into Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties, then to Kern and along the Kern – Los Angeles border through the mountains on Mt. Portrero Road. Five Counties on this trip. Pretty hard to do that in California where the counties are big.

Now we were in the San Andreas Rift Zone, and the high country here was fenced into fields for grazing. The mountains got rougher as we went along, however, and soon we were in serious, hard passage country, and up in the mountains where there was a little snow on the ground still from a recent storm. We snapped a few pictures of this and orange flowers through the windows. The orange flowers, it occurred to me later, were probably poppies. This was the time of year to come out and look for poppies, and we’d been seeing them all along up here this weekend.

The roads passed through the high country where there were little developments and resort like places. People probably never visited these except by auto, I thought.

Soon we were on the road down to Frazier Park, where we had lunch at Jack in the Box. John didn’t want to stop, he wanted to make up lunch from stuff we had in the car. “What, Milanos and Goldfish,” I asked, pondering the two snack bags that were actually opened. He thought this was really funny. I didn’t want to eat and drive. We stopped.

This was a freeway stop. We looked for non-freeway roads down to Gorman. John had an idea that there should be 18 states in a pie shape, so rather than Four Corners, it would be 18 Points. “Yeah, ground zero,” I said, visualizing.

So we took the old road out of town (Peace something) down to Gorman Post Road and from there to Gorman and across to Quail Lake. Then it was a tough climb back up into the rift zone and down towards Elizabeth Lake. Counting off miles, I would say, “we’d be here about an hour before stopping for the night.” Or two hours. Or five hours!

Elizabeth Lake was very low. The break on the east end was high and dry. People were out sunning on it. Katy and I had canoed over where they now were!

John finally succeeded at sleeping, but I would wake him up to see Boquet Lake or Canyon. We missed a turn and added a few miles, but finally headed down the well developed and campground covered Boquet Cyn road. This led back into the city where we turned on Vasquez Canyone road, the Serra Highway, the Sand Canyon across the 14 Freewayand Placenteria Cyn back into the mountains. This was another stark area that would be a tough bike ride. What I was anticipating might be a long day from a study of the map might well be two long days, with a campground at Boquet Canyon in the middle.

Finally we reached the peak and proceeded down Little Tujunga Wash road (much like Big Tujunga Wash, but smaller) to Foothill Blvd, noting distances and times at each important point.

The tank was below a fourth. We looked for a place to fill up and used a Shell at $2.159. Later, the best we saw was $2.049.

Home just before 5 p.m., we had driven a little over 300 miles, ridden the bikes about ten. It was 65 F; we unloaded and started laundry.

We talked about the survey at home. The original plan would have been one day from home to Frazier Park, where there was a nice hotel we could stay. One day across the Lockwood Valley and down the mountain to Lake Casitas, and one day back home.

The middle day still seemed reasonable, comparatively flat and lots of downhill at the end. The last day seemed unrealistic. All those roads down below were too busy with farm trucks. Maybe we’d get support and just be taken home at that point. The first day would be a minimum of two, perhaps four if we went off-road and took the fire roads instead. Viann thought they might do the camping support for this. Going on ahead and setting up for us as we struggled up and down the mountains. Such a trip would be bigger than the Grand Canyon by at least 50% and the training required, five or ten times more, none of which had really started yet.

Well, that was my best guess, we said, and, as we knew, I’d never underestimated something like this!

2003 May 10

Written up June 28

John pestered me quite a while to go mountain bike riding with Julian, his friend. We made arrangements with Julian’s mother, Dana Kennedy (cell # 323-697-4045) and Viann and John and I met her and Julian at Los Gringos Locos Saturday morning at 11:00 for lunch. We all got acquainted. Everyone seemed OK.

John and I rode down; Viann drove the van. Julian brought his bike in their truck. After lunch we unloaded and went on a little riding adventure.

I was thinking we might go up the Arroyo and coast down the highway back to here, as I do most days from work, but we made arrangements to meet Ms. Kennedy back at the parking lot above the JPL East Lot in about an hour and a half, so the plan was changed to just go up the arroyo and back down.

We went down the street and at St. Bede’s went up the horse trail and to the top of JPL where I used my badge to get us into the west parking lot. Everybody thought this was cool. We rode down to the south gate and down the trail beside the heliport and down into the arroyo, then along the east perimeter to the east gate and across the bridge to the Gabriellino Trail. We rode all the way up to Gould Campground. It was busy on the trail. We saw other bikes, hikers, Boy Scouts, horses. Julian, in buff shape, went far ahead. I could have kept up with him, but stayed back to try to even the distance between he, ahead, and John, lagging and red faced, behind. Julian had been patient at first, but wanted to roar up the road and ride up and down trick places.

At the campground we stopped and climbed around the little dam there in the creek, crossing on tree limbs and generally exploring. Then it was time to head back. The trip down was easier. I saw Morley Male who was out on a big Boy Scout weekend with his son. They had a wire trolley set up not across the stream, but for practice beside it out of everyone’s way. We went past, everyone impressed that I could get through the second crossing without falling off. John and Julian waded. Many were stopped drying off there.

We kept on going down, mostly coasting, cutting off the trail where possible, the boys going through the middle of puddles that I tried to avoid.

Down in the open with only a half-mile or so left to get back to the meeting place, we were going up the last piece of asphalt road. I was coming up behind and pushing John to get him going when his unbuttoned shirt tangled in my handlebars and turned them all the way around. I went down on the road on my right side and skidded to a stop. Julian was impressed, “Wow, he really ate it!”

I had a bunch of road rash on my leg and arm and wondered if it was broken again. Didn’t seem like it at first but I didn’t feel very spry anymore. My backpack was damaged too. We went on up to the meeting place and arrived just the same time Julian’s mother did. She had been off swimming at the Aquatic Center, her exercise for the morning. We had planned to pack up Julian but then ride home ourselves, but due to the wreck, we decided to take the offer to be brought home. It took a while to disassemble the bikes and get them all in the truck.

We went home, unloaded, got everybody on with their day. Viann went off to work as usual.

Mid afternoon, I decided that the elbow probably was broken again. Called Joan to tell her I wouldn’t be able to play tomorrow and probably not for several weeks and started getting ready to go to the emergency room. Viann called Christ Stones from work and had him come carry me up there. I had been threatening to walk.

I was there for about three hours and read up to the first chapter of “When Corporations Rule the World” waiting my turn for triage, then examination, then X-Rays, then consultation. Viannah and Katy were at Youth Act or somewhere. Viann was trying to reach them to come get me.

After the typically painful X-Ray series and the silly jockeying with other sicker patients, I was discharged about 7:30 and walked down to Sav-On for my Vicoden. The girls found me there and, since I was hurt and back in my sling (from the last break), took me to Jack in the Box, on them. Nice touch but I might rather have just gone home. Oh well, they meant well. The drugs helped.

I didn’t play again in church until June 15. Dr. Owens declared the elbow healed at my visit on June 10 but there is still wrist and shoulder pain today. I have started pushups again as of June 23.

John pestered me to ride with Julian again a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn’t do it for some reason, maybe injury related, I don’t remember now. Julian is a wild rider, wants to go up and down the steepest places for thrills. His bike is very similar to ours, came from the same store. His parents are divorced. He lives with his mother but his dad helped him get the bike.

John needs to be in better shape if he’s going to do serious riding with Julian or on our project. Just me, I might just not do the project on bikes, but we’ll see how it comes out. He’s more social, but I have to quit hot dogging around with these kids. I’m too old and fragile for that. I ride thousands of miles a year in pretty stressful and sometimes dangerous conditions, but don’t ever have wrecks except when I’m out with kids….

We were driving up Ocean View one Saturday morning between errands. I looked up at the ridge along to Lukens and wistfully thought out loud, “Wouldn’t it be fun to be up there on our bikes today?” John, matter of fact about it, “Yeah, too bad there’s no way to get them there.”

“John! We ride them there.”

“Dad, that’s uphill!”

2003 May 26, Memorial Day

Written up June 28

This is not about John. Katy wants to do some sort of video project with her friends and wanted to do it up on the Switzer’s Trail and wanted everybody to hike up there. I thought this was a bigger deal than she was thinking but offered to go with her on a day hike to show her. Since PERCs wasn’t doing the parade this year (to Viannah’s disappointment since she wanted to use her radio to help), we went on Memorial Day morning.

Katy drove us up into the mountains at 8:45, a workout in itself. We got out at Switzer’s day area at 9:15, took a picture and started down.

At 11:20 we stopped for lunch at Oakwilde, continuing at 12:00. At 13:00 we rested at the Dam. We were picked up at 14:55 and were home at 15:05, in time to rest some before the final annual block party at the Goold’s.

We had no problems with shoes or blisters on the way down, but I’m used to hour-sized workouts, so when we stood up to continue from lunch my knees and ankles cried out, “What, more of this!?” And yes, there was much more.

We had a big rest time by the dam. Found somebody’s spare tire fallen off their bike along the trail. As we hiked we told the usual stories of the helicopter pick up in 1996 and this time, since Katy is learning Morse Code, I used the opportunity to describe a normal CW QSO and it’s contents.

Down to Gould Campground, we counted Bikes Seen (30) and stream crossings (40). Below Gould it was too busy to count. There are ten crossings (including seven bridges) but so many people, bikes, horses, etc. that one would lose count. There were at least as many more there.

Most of the people we encountered in the mountains were of different nationalities. Korean, German. Maybe this is a holiday for them but without the national significance.

To date, Katy hasn’t done any more about the video shoot. I’ve offered to come along to chaperone and, barring that, declared that she should take the trip with at least four people. (So when something goes wrong, they can split up in pairs to go for help.) Now summer school has started and Katy is interested in her grades. Like many good plans, this may take a back seat for a while.

2003 November 8

I don’t know how long it has been since I actually did anything about this. I know the bike odometer had racked up over 700 km since last time I rode with John. That would have been May 10 with Julian when I broke my arm again. It has been up on my calendar since mid September.

So this morning I started nagging about 9 a.m. John didn’t want to go, he didn’t want to get dressed, he didn’t want to ride uphill.

Finally we said, “Let’s throw the bikes in the van, drive over to Hansen Dam, see what’s there, and just walk or drive around if it’s not suitable.” (This attitude ruled out anything more difficult.)

We went out and aired up John’s tires, he was already more interested.

We found three entrances to the dam area from the 210 freeway exit. One went to soccer fields. This didn’t turn out to be the whole park, but there were guys nearby flying radio control model airplanes. We went on around and found another where the road was blocked, more or less permanently. The third entrance went to substantial parking, day use area, biking trails, a fishing pond, swimming pool, and promise of other adventures down horse trails nearby. All this seemed similar to the Devil’s Gate area but much larger and an official park.

We parked the van, got the bikes out, and rode on the bike trail up on top of the dam. Except for the climb to the dam itself, this was all flat. The round trip on top of the dam was about three miles. There were some walkers, a few other bikers, and even four horses (coming up from below) but this wasn’t too disruptive. What nearly ruined the whole thing was the discovery of thorns in John’s front tire. Rather than pull them out and have a flat immediately, I just pushed the ones we had back in and we continued. Tire pressure held up for the rest of the ride, but the tire was flat when we arrived back home.

At the far end of the dam we could see a new subdivision being built, with a dead end cul-de-sac in it. I rode up to the top of a rise for a better look, but it wasn’t that much better. On the south side of the dam was a golf course and restaurant. On the north, lake side, it was similar to Devil’s Gate except in scale.

John wanted to stop at the car, but I talked him into going on the bike trail over to the aquatic area. Pool admission was $1 for adults, but it wouldn’t be open until April. It was just a wading pool with a couple of slides, really, a mini-Hurricane Harbor. Past this was a fishing pond where people were fishing. We rode much of the way around before encountering signs that said no bikes. When the people working there told us we’d have to walk them, I said I’d seen the signs way out in the middle, but not near the entrances. There wasn’t an entrance sign, “go figure” she said.

There were many trails below, beckoning adventures. We said we’d come back in a couple of weeks. (Next weekend Viann and I will be in Pennsylvania for parent’s weekend with Viannah.)

Going home we drove around the bottom, an interesting industrial area with some nice looking apartments and neighborhoods tucked in here and there. We found Sunland back to Foothill back to OSH by way of the gas station. At OSH we picked up two tubes with green goop in them for John’s bike so we wouldn’t have this flat problem (easily) again. I did have all my tools and stuff with me, but it is a hassle to field fix flats, especially in the field. Two light bulbs for the piano light, two filters for the heater: the heater hadn’t worked this morning. After fooling around in the attic for a while, it turned out to be control switch related downstairs. They didn’t have any 24 X 24 X 1 filters, so I got two pairs of 12 X 24 X 1 and we taped them together. With some jockeying that worked.

I also got a stool for my work area in the garage that we used immediately. I took both wheels off John’s bike and changed the tube in the rear one while he changed the tube in the front one. Despite all our inspections, there was still a thorn in the rear tire when we remounted it. Rolling, green goop, automatically fixed.

After that we went to see “Luther.” Good show.

I learned to ride a bike in Henrietta. The place I went that wasn’t flat was to the train station, and it was down a big hill. Didn’t have to suffer the hill until coming home. At Taylor everywhere I went was flat, like the whole paper route and most of the trips to school. There were those three hills out near the river where we’d sometimes go on Saturday morning.

At Hubbard most everything was flat. Sure there were hills here and there on the Texas highways, but nothing like the challenge of the mountain roads here.

John’s biking experience is much different. We don’t really encourage him to go out much, traffic is much worse here than anyplace I ever lived at his age. And everything is a bad hill, including the last block to the house on all rides out of the neighborhood. And the neighborhood is all hills too.

So I go out wanting to scale a mountain for the weekend. He wants to ride like I did as a kid. While he was enthusiastic I pointed out the other two rides around here I’d like to do, both might involve walking all the way up and coasting down, both are more distance down than up. One is up to Lukens from the Tujunga side. This is the one that everyone does. Viannah and I went from the house and were picked up in Tujunga. Katy and I went the other way. John and I will go the Katy way but it will be much quicker, the descent will only take 60-90 minutes rather than four or five hours. The other is up from La Tuna Canyon, that mountain road down into Montrose. Viannah and I hiked this but Katy didn’t go there.

But for now, maybe we’ll just go to Hansen Dam every couple of weeks and have a different 2-4 hour exploration there. This seems more his speed. He talked about getting poles and fishing, or coming back in the spring and swimming. The rides can be as short or long, as paved or dirt, as we decide, nearly on the spot. And now with green goop in the tires, we won’t worry too much about thorns. Maybe one day when we’re really brave, we can ride from here and be picked up, or really really brave, ride home. But not soon. Not today.

Still no idea what we’ll do for our big event. Maybe we’ll let it develop from here. Maybe we’ll ride a bunch of coastline or something. Maybe we’ll go to San Diego, see Wilda, and come back on the train. That would be about the right scale… Mostly flat. I don’t know how to get across Camp Pendleton. We’d have to drive down and look at some of the detail roadways I suppose.

2003 November 23

Subject:

ride with John 11/23/03

Date:

Mon, 24 Nov 2003 09:08:02 -0800

From:

"Courtney B. Duncan" <courtney.b.duncan@jpl.nasa.gov>

To:

cbduncan@earthlink.net

Stop at van: 16:24

Tm: 0:31:46

Av: 13.6

Mx: 22.4

Dst1: 7.26

Dst2: 7.26

Odo: 2949.8

John is at the computer shooting stick figures or whatever and I come by on Saturday and say, "when Katy's friends are over tomorrow afternoon let's go ride our bikes at Hansen Dam again." "Ohhhh dad, I'm too tired." But he's not too tired to sit there for sixteen hours straight and shoot things with the mouse.

So, after my own brief Sunday afternoon nap, when Katy's barbershop group started showing up, I told John to get his shoes and jacket and started loading bikes in the van. He actually thinks this is fun so it doesn't take infinite prying to get him going. We stopped by Sav-On to get my medicine and a Latte (which was nearly free because the scanner wouldn't read it, the cranky people nearly gave it to me) then we drove on out to the dam and parked at the west-top as he'd wanted to. John slept most of the way.

We got out the bikes and rode to the other end of the dam again, surveying possible return routes that weren't along the top. At the east end, after a stop, I went on over to some other roads and structures while John called from behind, "Dad!" I said, "what?" but didn't hear what he wanted. After going over to an outcropping and looking at a cliff, I came back to have John point out that I'd passed another "no bikes, bikes stay on bike trail" sign.

Ugh.

So we rode back along the top. Along the bottom meant passing that sign going down (horse rider ascendancy no doubt). It might be that there was a reasonable return route along the bottom downstream, through or around the golf course, in the direction that the bike trail led. Maybe we will try that next time.

Back at the van, we loaded up and drove back towards Tujunga. I toyed with the idea of doing the loop through the mountains back to La Canada, but didn't want to take the hour to do it, so we drove through upper Tujunga and La Crescenta, looking for hilly bike routes, for the start of the Lukens trail, and incidentally seeing the neighborhood where their old babysitter, Jessica (Rex's granddaughter) and some houses we had looked at when shopping in 1993 in the process.

Just before we arrived back home, Katy called, the computer was having networking problems. At home, I discovered that it was unplugged from the phone jack in the wall.

After the girls were gone, we all walked to Montrose First Baptist Church for their Thanksgiving dinner and hymn sing for Viann's Family Night. Maria had invited us and we met her fiancée and his sister and her girls. Also many church members and the pastor and wife, and so forth. It could have been a similar sized Baptist church from anywhere in Texas, indeed, there was a guy there from Dallas (here five years but planning to go back). A time warp. The kids didn't want to go and they didn't want to walk, but they were OK when we were there, we bumped each other on the sidewalk going down and back. Back at the house they were back on e-junk immediately as if nothing had happened.

--

courtney.duncan@jpl.nasa.gov

818-354-8336

M/S 301-125L

"Ad astra per aspera."

Hansen Dam 2004 January 19

Written up 2004 February 14

Viannah flew back to school late Saturday night January 17. Monday was the Martin Luther King holiday. The rest of us took the dog and hiked Hansen Dam. Parking at the west end, we went down to the horse trail in the basin and walked along the dam base to the other end. This meant crossing the creek on the floating barrier logs in the middle. Then we climbed up and walked back on the top.

The dog nearly got in a fight.

This “walk” was a little long for this group of people, though it should not be.

2004 February 14

Santa Fe Dam.

Katy had Global Girls at Still’s house in Duarte. This is just a few miles from the Santa Fe Dam Recreational Area in Irwindale. John wanted to go to church to help the Jr. High guys move donated food to the Food Closet at 13:00. The plan was to load up the bikes, take Katy to Duarte at 11:00, ride around Santa Fe Dam for about an hour, pick up Katy at 12:30, drop John off at church at 1:00 and have somebody else bring him home at 2:00.

What happened was that we dropped Katy off at 11:15, she came out when we picked her up at 13:00 so we had John to church at 13:15. We then went to the Post Office to mail mother a letter, went to the gas station and paid $1.90/gallon to fill up (“Low Fuel” had been on all day), came home and found Joann here so went up to Jiffy Lube and had the oil changed in the van and more importantly, the tires aired up. This was cheaper than the gas fill up ($33.31 versus $41.80). We then came home where they were watching ice skating videos.

So, back to the bike ride, after dropping Katy off, we went across the wash on Huntington and found the place where we should have parked, near an equestrian staging area near a bike and horse trail. But, instead, we drove around Irwindale Drive and Arrow Highway for about fifteen minutes looking for the official park, paid $6.00 to get in, parked there and rode the same trail out to that place and back. All the bike tires needed air. My bum knee got better from the ride, not worse.

During the ride, I talked to Jan on the radio. Interesting that low power worked from way out here, but he was on the 220 side, out hiking on a horse trail near his house with Rosalie in the backpack and Kristen walking beside.

A nature center will be opening in the park this March.

We saw a few other bikers, most of them serious, a few runners, and no horses. Stopped at the equestrian staging area where there were also rest rooms and a water fountain and rode the bikes up to where we should have parked in the first place. Then we headed back. I rode a mile or so out on the dam the other way but it appeared that there would be no way back and John was hanging back, not wanting to have extended this far anyway. It was time to go get Katy so we rode back to the van, arriving about 12:20, loaded up and went back into Duarte. Since Katy didn’t come out until 1:00, she wasn’t waiting for us.

This is the same park where Katy and I had brought the kayaks and used the fishing hole some years before. John and I drove around the boat launch and Life Guard station. It looked much the same, but less utilized. When Katy and I had come here we had had to pay per boat in addition to vehicle park entrance fees! Today on bikes we had paid nothing.

All of these streets and trails are recumbent-safe so we could load up all four bikes and bring the whole (remaining) family over here sometime. Also, we noted that the trail was marked every half-mile and that the marks up here that we passed were in the range 31-34 miles. Are there more than 34 miles of these trails? Where do they go? The beach? That would be an exciting day outing, to ride all the way from here to the beach. This isn’t the L.A. River is it? No.

But, I’ll have to check out the possibilities. John seemed interested, in principle.

Still no coherent thoughts on the whole Big Thing.

2004 June 5

We rode our bikes to the theater to see “Day After Tomorrow”, much better science fiction than “Core” but still fiction. “Day After Tomorrow” rates near “Contact.” “Core” rates slightly above “Lost in Space.”

Struggling with locks before and after, we rode over to Carl’s Junior for supper, then home near dusk. Had a good time. Did not think big.

2004 July 10

Up Lukens and back down to Fire station on Highway 2, picked up by Viannah.

10-Jul-04	20:12	0:53:44	13.0	31.0	11.77	20.91	3297.8	13.1	1.010975	no	from Lukens to fire station on 2, pick up by Viannah
10-Jul-04	19:00	3:06:10	2.9	15.8	9.14	9.14	3386.0	2.9	1.015775	no	climb from debris basin to Lukens peak with John

11:22 left the house in the van

11:35 started out of the debris basin. The three odometer hours does not represent lots of not-counted stops. Elapsed time was more like 7-1/2 hours.

At one mile a hiker was behind us. She turned around about there and went back down.

We were met by a bike coming down that we hadn’t seen go up.

Three miles up, about 14:45, we stopped for lunch thinking we were within a mile of the top. A couple of low tech cyclists passed us just as we were stopping and came back by going down just as we were starting back up. We thought they must have gone to the top and it must therefore be quite close.

John started whining a lot and it looked like we would get critical on water. I tried cajoling, pushing, empathizing and various other techniques in rotation. He wouldn’t go far before stopping either in place or even lying down. I claimed not to have the energy to keep doing this, stopping and starting, getting down and getting up.

At about mile 4.5 we met some overachieving bikers on the way down. One of them was totally decked out with everything including two family radios. He seemed nearly on patrol and stopped to talk to us about the “crank lap” that was ahead for us. I spoke confidently like we had enough water, understood the heat, and knew what we were doing and they let us keep going.

I totally hit the wall and couldn’t move for about an hour 500 road meters from the top. We took a half hour napping stop at 8.40 km, then got up thinking I could go on but collapsed again at 8.64 km, about 50 meters elevation below the summit, in site of a couple of antennas. Luckily it was summer and we had lots of daylight. We stayed here for at least an hour; I couldn’t even contemplate getting up. We were on our last water bottles of six plus my backpack bottle plus two frozen juice bags. John napped, offered to carry the backpack, offered to consider going for help or doing something like that, and waited patiently, kind of like a dog might. He didn’t whine anymore. If I’d fainted, he was planning to get the cellphone and call 911, but the phone claimed “No Service” at this location.

I dozed off and dreamed about that big metal five-gallon water can that I used to carry when I worked at Houston Cable, standard issue. Every morning on the way out to the field, each of us drivers would stop at 7/11 and pay a dollar to have it filled with ice and water. Then I’d wake up and have half a bottle of lukewarm water left, and no hope until Palm Crest.

Thinking it might help, I tried eating one of my sugar wafers, but I was so dry that it took about ¼ of our remaining water to get it down. I stopped on just one.

Unaware of the time, but aware of the risks and problems, I finally got up and made a straight, measured walk for the top. Got a call from Viann (at work) near the top and had just told her how sick I was when the call dropped. She called Viannah (at home) and told her to start getting some electrolyte water ready (they had no money for Gatorade) and to stand by to come get us. She tried calling on the phone and on the radio. The phone wouldn’t get through, I was trying too, and I didn’t turn the radio on, sensitive about broadcasting my condition to all my critical “friends.” I would have turned the radio on if the phone had died or had there been no success on it at a critical time.

We wanted to go down the truck road along the ridge, a much better road than the route we had come up. It could lead to Palm Crest, which we had assumed was the dumpout from the mountains for the day, where we would stop and get all the water we wanted, or we could go straight down the road to a fire station at Highway 2. Knowing the difficulty of the “LEON” route to Palm Crest, I decided to go for the straight road past B-Flats to the fire station. Viannah could drive there easily too and there was a public water fountain where we could stop for a while in any case.

I reached the top, no longer trying to stay close to John. It was about 1900 local. He reached the summit five minutes later. We took another fifteen-minute rest and had a couple more swallows of water. My plans for a tour of the top and a panorama with the camera were scrubbed; I had to save every motion. We stopped on the concrete inside an equipment building fence that was left standing open. “RF Fields…” Took pictures just from there, mostly of fencing, a couple of a big tagged birds sitting on the adjacent tower. We talked about the transmitters and things and started down. I had given up on ham radio education at about mile 4.

The bikes were fine; we mounted up and started down, stopping frequently for pictures. This was just the right time of day for this anyway. We had seen Catalina several times and continued to see both it and Palos Verdes sticking out of the smog. We had ridden perhaps a total of 200 meters going up, the rest was walking and pushing. John was hoping the ride down would be worth it. Having hiked here twice, I knew that six miles in an hour was surely better than six miles in eight.

The sun was getting low but the shadows were not in the valley yet. I took panoramas of the valley with our house, the valley with the mountains on the other side, and other views of interest (Hansen Dam, downtown LA), trying to get John and maybe some local plant life in one of each view. We joked all day, “Aw, only 700 pictures left,” and John would say, “Oh heck, I wanted to take at least 800.” “Well, we’ll have to ration,” I would say and we’d have a dry laugh, partly masking our water worries.

The road down was also steep but it was also a better road and most of the steepness was downhill. The two or three times I had to pedal for any length of time, I started to feel nauseated again. The dry foam-cake building in my mouth was getting thick. I had saved a quarter bottle of water for an emergency and wasn’t using it.

We stopped at the road and took a poor picture of the TeePee and Apiary at B-Flats, and then the mailbox. Saw one rider on his way up (after the LEON cutoff) but saw no powered vehicles. Poor guy, we thought, still on the way up, but he was one of the overachievers with all the proper dress and water bags and all.

I finally contacted Viannah and told her where to pick us up and to call mom. She briefed me on what Viann had said and done. (She was working on unit 100 at Della Martin.)

John recognized the end of the route from a brief trip we’d made some time ago (probably in this file). We came down to the turnstile at the top of the fire station, bottom of the fire road, and Viannah was parked right there. Seeing us, she got out with two water bottles, water for John and water with electrolyte (tea, sugar, salt) for me. This tasted good at first. My pallet had considerable mucus on it (as did my orthodontic headgear which I’d worn all day. The back of my legs was sunburned, we’d forgotten to sunscreen them. John was fine but his hands hurt from all the brake squeezing and hanging on tight for an hour. I’d told him not to wipe out, as we had no water to deal with wounds, and now no daylight. Had Viannah not been here we’d have been out on a dangerous piece of Highway 2 with only my hazard light for about a mile in pretty deep dusk.

We checked in with Viann from the car, went home, continued drinking. Bathed, rested some, went to the store for milk, bananas and stuff. Viann said I needed potassium.

We unpacked and found crushed Oreos, John’s dessert that he hadn’t eaten (and I couldn’t eat). I said, “shoot, why don’t we just count today as the big thing, I nearly killed myself, we have crushed Oreos…” Katy pointed out that we had no smashed bananas and John pointed out that the Big Thing had to be three days.

OK.

Viann said when she went, we would leave at 6:30 in the morning. I said next time I’d read my own book to aid in more accurate planning. We did take about 60-70 pictures, mostly scenery, but I’ll put one of John pushing his bike on the website.

2004 August 7, John's 14^th birthday.

James McMillan announced that the Sr. High youth group would ride from Santa Fe Dam to Seal Beach on the bike trail that parallels I-605 on this day.

I volunteered the three of us, Katy, John and I.

Loaded the bikes Friday evening.

We got up at 6 (the kids at 6:30), got to the church at 7:10, left there around 8:00, met at the wrong place, and headed down the trail around 8:50. Got to Seal Beach around 14:00.

Dale Torstenbo was the sag wagon with a borrowed trailer (from the museum of some kind of art). There were 21 riders including the three of us. James was in charge; Donna Sider led.

Helped Wayne fix somebody's flat (his son’s?) pretty early on. This put us behind; we got lost, I ran a girl off the road next to the golf course. Got back to the group -- Donna crossed everybody at the street light at grade not aware that the gate was open on both sides.

Stopped at a park, didn't know which one -- Jillian rode on ahead to figure out where we were. Saw birds including one family of some species and egrets here and there using shopping carts as stands. Katy did as usual, rode close to the front complaining of tiredeness. They are both troopers these days, though, Katy and John. Ben Cornell had three flats on his fancy Raleigh. As we left Liberty Park for the final 8 miles (upwind) he had the third one. James yelled, "Don't let him drive away", as Dale was starting to pull away in the sag truck. I rode across soft grass and stopped him. We swapped Ben and the rest was fine.

There was a welcoming high-five line at the end then we went to "end of the river restaurant" where they turned us away claiming a "private party" at 14:30. We went to main street and spread out. Viann drove up, we loaded our bikes, and Eric's borrowed stingray. Ate New York Pizza by the slice ($5.50 for two slices and a drink), helped load up and came home. Left Eric at the church about 16:00 and came home to pack for family camp.

I should elaborate all this when there's more time. [But this is already more than I remember as of the editing date, 1/9/10. cbd]

2004 October 2

We couldn't find John's speedometer and spent 30-40 minutes looking for it. No one knows why it's not on the bike; it was there when we came back from the church ride to the beach. He had brought it in to show Viann how far we went. Having been nearly two months, it's probably lost pretty deep.

Finally we gave up and rode off around 11:00. Went up to the 76 Station on Foothill and aired up his tires, both from about 30 to about 70, for $.50. Then, given the choice between Edison Easement up to Olive or Memorial Park, he chose Memorial Park. Went down the standard way there to Highway 2, through the two dead-end streets. Then given the choice between PCY and the horsetrail or straight (at Vinette), he picked straight, so we only went a couple of blocks on the horse trail, then used my badge to get into the JPL west lot. Incredibly there was traffic even there, even on Saturday morning. Down at the south gate we went down and east on the horse trail, then up the east perimeter, riding in dry sand up to the east gate and out the east lot into the arroyo where we went past the settling ponds down to the baseball diamond and rode around and through that. From there, we went up to the east end of the dam. I crossed and came back, met him, and we went up past the Pasadena Police Department heliport to Jack in the Box for lunch. He had an Ultimate Cheeseburger, being hungry. I had fish and chips which wasn't very good, as usual.

John wanted to go by the high school, so we did, rode through camps to the 7/8 dropoff, and up past St. Francis football field where the Spartans and Crescenta Valley had played the night before (LCHS field is being worked on). John had gone to the game but hadn't seen anybody there who he was looking for. I would have stayed. Katy went to the Rose Ball, was late, missed her ride, and drove into Pasadena by herself. Got home around midnight.

Then we went up the sidewalk to St. Francis and across the freeway footbridge, then up the side streets to rejoin the left sidewalk of Foothill. Rested in front of the old Jr. High, then continued on home. I took a few pictures, but only at convenient times (Jack in the Box, rest stops) not at good picture times. I tried to get one of John going down La Granada but the camera wouldn't work for me at the moment.

Back home just after 13:00 we loaded up the recumbent into the van and took it down to Pasadena Cyclery for a tune up, due Wednesday. If that's true, I can ride it to the RideShare Faire at work Thursday 7^th. Was going to get pads for my helmet and a new pump with my $25 Cyclist of the Month certificate but they don't have pads, and I forgot my helmet and certificate anyway. I'll do it Wednesday.

We talked some about the big trip. He said, "let's ride to Canada" and "let's ride back from Canada". I didn't discuss 'deadlines.'

2004 October 16

It looked like drizzle but didn't rain all day. Was about 60F the whole time, chilly for shirt sleeves.

We started out sometime between 12:30 and 13:00 and went with Katy to Carl's Jr. She brought the long Kryptonite lock so we could lock up all three bikes on the bent up frame there. Katy went back towards home and we headed west on Florentia past the Nazarine church and up to Montrose, riding mostly on sidewalks. At Pennsylvania, we stayed on Montrose, it becomes a much smaller, bike friendly street. Crossing under the freeway on Honolulu we headed uphill on La Tuna Canyon road past the golf course and up to the Hostetter Mountain Way gate. There was a SBC serviceman working on the locks there to go in and service something up on the mountain. This point was 9.05 km from home at 48:08 riding time. The goal here was to go up the tough climb of Hostetter to the mountain road on the ridge and come down there, but today's goal was just to see what was involved in getting to the offroad starting point. This nine kilometers was the answer.

At this point Katy called, having just arrived home. She had taken a detour, by Block Buster to pick up games.

Taking a graded approach to this gives more opportunities for rides that are less serious in scope. Had we intended to do the big ride, we wouldn't have thought we had the time or daylight to go today but just getting to the launch point and coming back some more benign way was doable in 2-3 hours, I thought.

Most of the beginning had been on dangerous main roads which I'd just as soon avoid when possible so I thought we might come some of the way back on the fire roads that service the power transmission towers in the hills there just south of the freeway. This meant a little more mild climbing on Hostetter. The dirt access road was in fair shape, having been graded recently and having a few sets of bike tracks already on it. It was mild up and down for a while, right by the freeway to an apiary near a culvert, then it turns south into the woods. Several places are quite steep climbs that we walked, but the steepest was when we started down what must have been 20% or greater grades. This didn't even seem safe to walk and we had to go down maybe a half mile of this very carefully on foot. I said I didn't want to stay in the saddle and get injured. John said, "Go ahead and get injured." I said, "But if I break something again, Joan will kill me." "Well, break your hip then."

It appeared that we were headed into Crescent Valley Park and the road did come down into a neighborhood on Cedar Bend Drive where there was a house (with a pool in back) that seemed large enough to be an elementary school. We came down into the park from there, then down the south side of Verdugo Wash, stopping for a while to enjoy the crows. Once past there, we climbed back up to Mills and came home on back streets, mostly Piedmont. At the west end it turns south and goes between Montrose Bike shop and the library down to Honolulu. Before that got bad we climbed back up to the alley between that and Florencia and came home on Waltonia. We saw Maria working at the entrance of the Montrose Baptist Church when we passed by.

Viann had been home less than half an hour when we logged in at 16:36. Still haven't found John's odometer.

Last time we went a route like this, John had started whining about when we got to the freeway the first time. I had been trying to head down to Hansen Dam (to be picked up for the trip home) and this was less than half way. Much of the rest would have been downhill. Today by contrast he had a good time. We talked about putting APRS systems in the cars and on the bike (or in my backpack anyway) and generally joked around. He saved up five slug-bugs for when we got home, not wanting to make anybody fall off their bike. The TV and computer were unavailable today until homework was done. It's hard at this point to get John to even admit that he has homework, though with some prying we can find some things. If there's something he does know is homework, we often don't find out until 9 p.m. Sunday. He was having a hard time with these restrictions this morning before today's ride.

2005 July 9

My mountain bike odometer #2 had 736.71 km on it, that's 457.78 miles. DST2 is supposed to remind me how long it has been since I've been out with John. Now it's reset.

Today's stats:

Time: 3:32:14 wheel time

Elapsed: 9:30 to 14:13

Average: 7.7 km/hr

Max: 42.0 km/hr

Distance #1 27.21 km is 16.91 miles

Distance #2 same

Odometer on my bike 4439.3 km is 2758.5 miles

That's pretty much the distance I've ridden on the bike since I bought it about three years ago. John's odometer says 274.5 miles (and his trip time says 6 hours 48 minutes so he's probably never reset it). Except for that time when it was lost (during the last trip reported here) that's probably what he has ridden.

John now has a girlfriend at school, Loren Knopf. She is nearly a year older and will soon be driving. John will soon be 15. We've talked to him about this. His interest in girls went from zero to this in only a few months sometime over the last school year. He's the type who might well marry his high school sweetheart, but we're getting ahead of ourselves there I suppose. It does make for some interesting trail discussion.

As a high school student and high schooler in the church youth group, he also has a much busier calendar than before. Intending to get back on track sometime this summer, today is the first date that I could get. Last weekend was Anime Expo, the weekend before was moving Vicki Berryman out of her storage place (and Field Day which didn't count for much this year). Next weekend is paintball at church.

I asked last night if he wanted to go on a bike ride or a hike. He said, "both." Viann said that when riding the bike there was always the possibility of … both. He doesn't have hiking boots (that fit) and my Dst2 was run up like that, so we decided on a bike ride. Next one will be a hike.

When I told Lois Bascom the other night that none of my kids liked hiking, John interrupted to say that he did! That's why I asked at all.

We got up "early," I ate a big breakfast, and we loaded all the water bottles we could hold, five or six for each. One of mine had some frozen ice in it. After airing up John's tires, not used in months and needing 40-50 lbs., we left the house around 9:30. By Florencia and Montrose streets, we went west. John started walking on Honolulu when it started uphill. I suggested a lower gear, but he said that meant too much pedaling. Rather than be a drill sergeant, I got off and walked too. This was better for talking anyway. We crossed the street just before going under the freeway bridge and stayed on the left side up to the golf course off of Lowell when we went out on the road towards La Tuna Cyn. Didn't do much riding until it started downhill. Back under the freeway and onto the fire road, we reached the steep beginning of Hofstetter Mountainway at one hour two minutes.

Only in the very rare places where the road was level for ten yards did we not walk. After several "ten more minutes" calls based on foggy recollections and optimism, both of which John is appropriately skeptical about, we got to the highest place in our road at 2:22 wheel time, 80 moving minutes from the bottom.

I had been here on the Schwinn Varsity some Sunday afternoon in 1993, a difficult climb and hair raising descent. That trip was from the rent house. I had been here in 1996 with Viannah on a training hike. As a hike, this was one of the "large" or all day ones. We had gone this same route, eaten lunch "ten minutes" from the top and gone down into Glendale, to be picked up near dusk. Today the estimate was "by lunch" although we had left too late to make that.

So, as we walked we talked about many things. I used to want to go to Alaska, to ride my bike there. Such an adventure was supposed to be a move to Alaska for at least a year. Who knows what I would do for a living, drive a snow plow? Then, we'd go to the next adventure, sailing around the world?

Well, as things go on, you make choices, and sometimes, some of the things you want to do are more along societal expectations meaning that you're going less against the grain to be doing them. So, we were here with more or less standard jobs, me at JPL and Viann teaching nursing, raising kids, paying for a house, doing standard things. Still, I thought of riding my bike to Alaska once in a while, usually when the pressure was on for some reason. I had come to understand it as a pressure relief fantasy. It had all started seriously three weeks after marriage.

Well, I told John, since the girls didn't seem to have picked up on the value of money, the care and making thereof, and other things of that type of norm, I was going to have different rules with him.

"Oh?"

I didn't go into any detail, but just noted that one of these differences might mean that I might not feel that I had to constrain his event to the same time and budget scales that I had with the girls, that is, "about a week and one or two thousand dollars and a dozen or so training outings." We might, for instance, drive to Alaska.

Back home, when I mentioned this to Viann she thought it was the perfect idea. Many features of such a trip started to take shape. We thought we'd get a Milepost immediately and start working on it. I could drive the van it's last few thousand miles, sell or donate it there, and fly home. This left me with several immediate action items and that mixed feeling that one gets when one has to quit fantasizing and actually make something happen.

I told a few volumes of stories about my flying experiences with dad, learning, slow flight, stalls and recoveries, forced landings, flying through a frontal passage while doing patterns one day (changing from 17 right to 35 left and explaining what all that meant) and also related a few stories from dad's flying that were not with me.

I did radios, I said, because it was something I could do at home and not be away and not have people (like my mother) worrying about where I was or if I was ever coming back. Dad had some close calls in airplanes and as an instructor. Only by having a finite lifetime does one avoid dying in some sort of accident.

But dad was a natural in airplanes, really should have been doing that, something mother never understand and was still angry about.

Passing different transmitter sites and using up the four remaining pictures of John's throwaway camera to get three views (La Canada, Glendale, flowers, John and bikes), we reached the highest point and started down.

Although we had seen a few bikers, hikers and dog walkers on the way up, we saw no one on the Verdugo Mountainway as we descended. Though we were going a lot faster, we really couldn't get to 20 kph (12 mph) much due to the rutty road, sand, steep cliffs on both sides (up on the right, down on the left) and tight winds. We stopped every ten minutes or so to rest our braking hands. At one point we felt our rims, too hot to touch!

Much more quickly than ascending, the sites went by and we were descending in a canyon with an occasional spring fed stream across the road. At one of these we stopped for a rim cooling and called home for about the third time. I didn't know yet (couldn't remember from past trips) where we would come out and didn't know if we would want to be picked up. Viann wanted to talk to John. Loren had called and invited him over to the pool. John called her back and arranged it. I wondered why he already had a towel with him when I suggested that maybe he needed one. He had his towel and bathing suite, suspecting that this might happen and, not knowing where or when we were going wanted to be ready to ride right there if the opportunity worked out that way.

Nothing like a girlfriend to make one think ahead for the first time!

So we continued down past a debris basin, which I explained. John was incredulous that such a thing would be needed, that a thunderstorm could dump so much in just one canyon. It is rare, but when it happens, the neighborhood would wash away, thus this facility.

The road came down to a locked gate and then down into the neighborhood. The road we took then (at higher speed, being paved) dead ended into the country club. I told him that our house was straight ahead, through the country club. John didn't know that there was a country club near us and didn't know where we were. We went on down to the right and eventually came out on Verdugo, went through the high traffic zone, and turned onto Menlo, then Sparr as quickly as possible.

John still didn't know where we were until we reached the "tire swing park" which Sparr intersects. It reminded him of when we did "that nut thing about the planets". He knew where he was about where Neptune had been. I had forgotten that it was John with whom I’d done the peppercorn solar system.

The entrance from Sparr avoids the need to be on a busy street and follows a narrow access similar to an alley in front of the park behind businesses. We climbed that, mostly walking still, and stayed in the alley after crossing Verdugo near Honolulu. This led up to a "no outlet" set of apartments, from which we turned left and went up by what used to be Montrose first Baptist church (Maria's church) and then home on Waltonia.

Just before arriving, I told John that it was my tradition to always ride up that last hill so I'd wait for him to walk around the corner before beginning. This being his tradition also, however, we both rode up.

I got a haircut and we had showers. John went to Loren's to swim.

Total elapsed time was 9:30 to 14:15, 4-3/4 hours. I had only underestimated by about 30% this time, an improvement. Total while time about 3-1/2 hours implied 1-1/4 hours of rests, in maybe a dozen pieces.

[Editing note 2010 January 9. A week ago today, 2010 January 2, John and I did this same ride. Viann and Viannah took us to La Tuna in the brand new Toyota Tacoma, it’s first such use, and he and I mostly walked up to the transmitter site at the top, had lunch, took pictures, and rode all the way down to the bumpy slide park in Glendale, where we were picked up by the same people in the same truck. The whole time out was a little over four hours and the bike distance was 16.68 km, a little over ten miles. Ever since Viann and I came down the wrong way, I had wanted to go that route and see what the right way was.

I asked John if we had ever done this route before. He had wanted to do something in the Angeles Forest, maybe come down behind JPL, but that is all closed due to the fires last September so we couldn’t. John remembered that we had. At that point I remembered the call to Lauren, but not what it had been about. That had been the old Gary Fisher Wahoo, this was the newer Trek 4500 with disk brakes, still too hot to touch for both bikes.

I looked over these notes and my ride notes and decided that it wasn’t part of the big adventure, it has been closed out too long, but the narrative, four girlfriends later, is about the same. Airing up tires, walking a lot. We’ve learned a little too. Drive to the start and stop points if you can. My parsimonious psychology, “it’s a bike, don’t use a car for anything” is for younger people, or folks who have no other choice.

It was worth mentioning here because 4-1/2 years later, I just asked a week ago today if we’d ever done this before and very next in the editing read-through was that very case from summer 2005!

My end odometer was 4935.8. Have I really only ridden about 500 km on this bike in the last five years? Possibly so. The last record in the spreadsheet was from spring of 2008, nearly two years ago, and the time before that was in 2007! Once I got the recumbent fixed, I haven’t ridden much else.

John went back to Baylor this morning for the second half of his Baylor sophomore year. -- cbd]

2005 December 30

A guy named Dana Lieberman runs a place called ‘Bent Up Cycles over by Van Nuys Airport. Viann tells me that I should treat this guy for my recumbent like I treat Mike Gibson’s for the cars. I had Dana and his staff overhaul and upgrade my bike last summer and had been meaning to ride down there for a “tune up” since sometime in September. Now the bike needed a new rear wheel. Rather than fool with ordering and installing it all myself, Viann told me to call Dana, which I did. He ordered things, they came, the first time I could get there to put them on “while you wait in the shop” was the Friday 12/30/05 holiday.

Viann took a break from cleaning the garage and took John and I and our bikes in the Van down to ‘Bent Up. Dana opens at 10:30, we arrived at 11:02. There were already three other customers test driving various models. Single-handing and multi-tasking all this, Dana worked me through and John and I were ready to set out for home at 12:36. We rode 1.00 km to Wendy’s for lunch and left there at 13:15.

The day was perfect for this. The monsoon which would wipe out the Rose Parade the following Monday was still a wave of cloud in the northwest. We could see it out the windows from Wendy’s. Leaving there (Balboa and Roscoe), John went up Roscoe rather than across Balboa. This took maybe ten minutes to straighten out.

We rode mostly on sidewalks through the suburban-Dallas-like neighborhoods (as I remember from when I rode such places with Kevin Wilkins when I was about 12 in the late 60s. Pleasant Grove.) Aside from there being too much traffic to ride on the streets, and aside from the street layout being designed explicitly to prevent anyone getting anywhere except on major, busy streets, this ride seemed to me to be what bicycling was all about. For some modest effort you ride alone at 15-25 kph on more or less level roads, occasionally having to steer to miss a bump or a car or a person. It would have been nice to know how to get through without going the major streets, but we didn’t do that research for this ride.

So, we road Balboa to Nordoff and turned right, through the parking lot there. Rear shifting on the new wheel and cassette and nearly new derailleur was as smooth and smart as on any bike I’d ever had. The front was just the opposite. Dana had it adjusted to where it wouldn’t go on “big” at all” and when I let the stop out a little, it became near impossible to shift without losing the chain over the right ring. Worse, this is a new 9 gear chain to go with the 9 gear cassette, and the front has 7 gear spacing so it can just eat the chain. Maybe this can be fixed with different spacers. Maybe it could have been done today had there been no other customers.

Anyway, we crossed at a light and rode several miles on the left (north) side of Nordhoff, crossing under the 405 and coming ultimately to Terra Bella, which I’d chosen in the hopes that it would have less traffic. Right off there was a fire truck parked on the other side of the street at an apartment building. I crossed to the right and rode on sidewalk-less dirt. John stayed on the left. Finally he crossed too.

In scoping this out in August (along a more complicated route) we had noted many couches out on the street waiting for the trash man and had commented on this. We saw more today and joked, “let’s load it up!”

Trying to find a quieter route, we went right, into a neighborhood, but came to busy Roscoe before we could carry on. Continued on this past the airport and up to the Hanson Dam Golf Course. John said that those gangster kids were looking at my bike. “Wonder if we can beat up that old guy and take his bike away?” But I said, “They don’t want to take on that big kid riding that big bike beside him.”

Didn’t try to get into the Golf Course but rejoined Roscoe (from Roscoe Place or whatever) and went up the busy, narrow street to the top of the dam where we would join the bike trails in the park. Resting at the top an “old” man came and discussed back orthopedics on recumbents. John said he was about my age but I thought more like 60s. Not far off, I guess.

We called home. Viann didn’t answer, the home number answered on FAX. KATY!

Viann called back, we said we were half way.

The bike trails didn’t do much for us, maybe a mile’s worth, then we were back out on Foothill and approaching the 210.

Foothill, paralleling the freeway, was as expected, fast cars and (mostly) trucks, but wide and lots of space. John rode some on the dirt above the shoulder. He was getting annoyed with the traffic by the time we came to the bridge over the Big Tujunga Wash.

In the cut up into town, we rode on the rock side of the landslide guard, safer than the car side. We inspected the slack loops in guard construction. Landslide mitigation.

We rode up the left sidewalk of Foothill until it split north at Von’s then started up the hill. It looked like it would be about three blocks. John started walking. I would ride a while and wait a while. I had begun to wonder what would happen if there was a flat, I had no tools with me whatsoever.

Traffic was no lighter on this street. Any street that goes anywhere would have lots of cars on it. Going uphill, they were all showing off their lack of mufflers, and lack of concern about gas prices.

Eventually we turned right with the aim of finding either Apperson or Foothill to continue east and were shortly passed by an older couple on a tandem.

We went the standard Apperson, Day, Santa Carlota, Orange route along the top of Tujunga and La Crescenta. Some of it was downhill and this wasn’t so bad except that it would soon be getting dark. Sunset here had occurred just as we were getting to the top.

I pointed out to John the place where I had taken Viannah on her first hike at age three. We had gotten into the thistles and given up after about ten minutes. More real hikes had come later.

Somewhere on Orange, when I was coasting about a half block ahead, John tried to go up on the sidewalk at a driveway, but hit the threshold at too small of an angle, lost control and smacked down on the sidewalk, right in front of two well-meaning ladies, one walking her dog and the other picking up things in her front yard.

I cruised back to evaluate the situation. John’s elbow was scratched up, might swell. There was a scratch on his knee but his pants weren’t torn. The big problem was that his rear disk brakes, and this was the first bicycle outing I’d ever been on with disk brakes involved, was somehow out of adjustment, it wasn’t clear what if anything was bent or mal adjusted. I messed with it for quite a while as it got darker and darker and while the lady tried to insist that she take John and the bike home in her car. Finally I decided to call Viann and have her meet us on the other side of the footbridge at Mountain Ave. Elementary, thinking it was only three or four blocks away.

It was actually closer to another mile and by now it was dark enough that we were using our flashers (which had once been called “Disco Inferno”) and my headlight. Traffic on Briggs was fairly heavy and I didn’t remember very well what the road to Mt. Avenue looked like, especially from this side, but we finally found it. The pedestrian gate on the bridge wasn’t wide enough for my bike; I had to lift it over.

Viann was there waiting, they packed up and went home, I continued riding, turning on Castle and using the street by Del Taco that was down to one lane for sewer installation.

There was only one more bit of excitement before I got home myself, a U-Haul truck inching out into Crescent, not looking for me. I made it around and got home at 5:18 p.m., 38 km.

2006 February 4

I didn’t ride the recumbent for a month after that; it irritated a sebaceous abscess on the back of my left arm. It got infected and turned red and large and gave me a fever for several days. The doctor said he would operate after it was not infected anymore and remove it. On January 30 and 31 I rode the recumbent to work and some irritation came back, so it’s the mountain bike for now.

[Editing note: Later in the year I did have it surgically removed. It was a smaller lump for a while but has now gone back to its original size but doesn’t get irritated anymore. Maybe it’s genetic. (My sister has them too.) Maybe it’s all that recumbent riding for the last couple of years. 1/11/10, cbd]

A critical item is to get our “training” outings back on track (nonetheless) pending a July actual trip. Today, after other critical chores were done, and after talking Katy out of John coming to some sort of game that she has started doing Saturday afternoons, we started in about noon on a “resumption” task. The job today was to go through bike stuff in the garage and build up a tool kit once again, then maybe go to the store and buy some sort of bag to carry it in.

Two or three weeks ago, Viann had been out helping Joann in Newhall (25 miles from here) and locked her keys in the car. When she called to have me come rescue her, she said, “and could you bring your tools and go pick up some furniture we bought and put it together.” In the process of doing all this, I noticed some bike trails in Saugus down along rivers, creeks and aqueducts, flat places to ride.

Today, looking for some flat place to ride, these came to mind.

After going through all of the bike tools in the garage, throwing away some stuff, and putting the set we wanted in an amazon.com box, oh, and gluing John’s mirror back on his helmet with blue PVC glue, using a 3” C-Clamp (best I could find), we put the bikes on top of the rummage sale (church) stuff in the van and drove to Saugus. Had Jalapeno burgers at Carl’s Junior there (near Joann’s apartment) and talked about my dad and flying (for some reason). Then we looked at the SoCal detail map at where we were going and what we were looking for today. Then we studied the USA map book in terms of where we might go and what we might do for the major drive in July.

There is a coastal highway, 1 and 101 up California, Oregon, and Washington. We’d do that, see stuff, see people (Chris Stones is up in Eureka, for example), camp, bike, and so forth, then come back more or less on the 5 freeway, taking detours to places like Mt. Rainer, Crater Lake, and Mt. St. Helens.

This was the outline. We were supposed to go away and study the route more closely, see if there are things with long lead times (like back country passes for the Grand Canyon had been, for example) and see about doing them soon, in preparation.

We then drove around the Saugus area, waiting at some five minute twelve phase fourteen lane stoplights, watching ambulances and fire trucks go by, looking for the trails I had seen here a few weeks ago. Finally we found one and started looking for a place to park. We found a four-diamond baseball park (all four were busy) and parked there in the dusty gravel lot. (I have new contact lenses which are not yet the right prescription, but which notice the dust nonetheless.) At this point John was having gas or cramps or something and didn’t look like he would be able to ride. I sent him off to look for restrooms, which he found but did not use. The walk seemed to help, however, and we got on the bikes and rode the bike trail a few miles up one wash until it just ended at an intersection.

There was construction under one of the bridges and all sorts of “keep out” signs. Looked like they were paving and developing in the wash itself, though water was running. I thought maybe they were afraid of quick sand.

So we rode back to the parking area, but went on past and over a bridge to where we had a west or east choice. Went west a mile or two, Magic Mountain in view, then turned around and went east, passing the bridge and going further. After passing through several car dealerships (a Saturn and a Honda that had a fleet parked with precision, looking like teeth on a saw) we were headed south-southwest on the bike route I had originally imagined.

This one was on the west of a larger river, maybe the Santa Clarita (the one that flooded with the Francisquito Dam burst in 1928?), the dirt was perhaps 20 feet below the trail. Across a power easement was a subdivision and every mile or so there would be a road across the easement to a gate in the fence that let trail users back into their homes. Sometimes it was a double gate.

We went a couple of miles, me always wanting to see around the next curve, then the next, then the next bridge until a combination of John wanting to go back and running into a gaggle of kids on rollerblades and skateboards looked problematic enough that we turned and went back to the car.

A little over ten miles in all, though John’s odometer was set wrong and registered 10/13 of what it should have. This was repaired at home later.

Back at the van, we went back to Ventura and other streets I vaguely remembered, pulling off just before the freeway to show John Joann’s apartment and car parked there, then went home, 14 – 5 – 210. I had told him about my colleague Scott Evans who lives out here somewhere and rides his bike to JPL sometimes and had thought about driving over the mountain passes he uses, but it was getting dark and I couldn’t see in my new contacts and it was time to go home anyway.

Oh, we stopped in the Montrose Bike Shop on the way out and at the Valley Bike Store in Newhall on the way back, buying a couple of bags ($81 total), a handlebar one for me and most of the tools and an under-seat one with a tire repair kit for John. We put these on at home later.

Had run APRS in the van all day in order to record where we had been. Saved this off at home, as is the tradition for such things. Got home a little after 6:00, just beating Viann who had been at work (ERI) today and shopping on the way home. About 60-70 miles total on the van.

2006 February 25

Geoge’s Gap to La Canada, this time by mountain bike. This is the last day of my “forties.”

This is considered “major” but one of the smaller “major” outings. I told John during the day that we were not really “training”. Training is something you do several times a week to better yourself. This was just “doing”, something a couple of times a month to build a little experience.

Nor was this planned laboriously. I had put this trip down as the “major” event for February and, having hiked it with Katy, basically knew what we would be doing. Since John had other plans for the day and since we didn’t want to get into one of those “dad doesn’t feel well and the sun is setting” situations, we decided to leave early, as early as if we were going to Men’s Chorus which meets at 7:00 a.m. This meant getting the bikes, lunch, and backpacks ready the night before. Viann made peanut butter sandwiches that we had with chips, juice bags, and cookies. We aired up his tires and put both bikes in the van. I rinsed and filled up a gallon canteen and put it in the refrigerator.

John has also had a bad cough for over a month but it doesn’t seem to slow him down.

Saturday morning we got up at 6:30 but did things like eat and make coffee, so didn’t leave the house until 7:45. Viann brought the dog to walk him. We went straight up Highway 2 to George’s Gap arriving about 8:00. After pictures, we were on our way at 8:15. Viann said to John, “Take care of your dad.” He said, “Like the last three or four times?”

We started down the single trail, riding. It showed signs of rain runoff, some mud, some rutting. Most troublesome were branches and bushes grown into or fallen across the trail. The riding down was mostly uneventful. I lowered my seat to have better coasting control. John did too and learned that the quick release on his seat needed adjustment. It wasn’t clamping well enough. I adjusted it.

It was switchbacks down for a mile or so. After a while we would come to places where we could see across the valley to the highway and, later, to the campground. We would stop and take pictures or remark on the sites. I started keeping outline notes on the back of a business card (from my surgeon).

At about nine (2.21 km) we stopped to take off jackets and secure them to our backpacks for the rest of the day. This was near the bottom of the drop and in view of the campground in the valley. We could hear people moving about and talking.

Passing various forks in the road and selecting the right ones, we started climbing back around the northwest side of the mountain. Across the valley we could see places we’d hiked before.

After a while we came upon some snow and spent some time trying to photograph it convincingly. Just patches on the ground from recent rainstorms. John took the camera so I would be in some of the pictures and also took shots of animal prints in the snow and mud we passed.

About ten (4 km) we arrived at the top of the Edison road. When I had been here with Katy, this had been entirely fogged in and we had seen other hikers and bikers several times already. None of that today, yet.

The road wasn’t much of a road. It didn’t look to be maintained even to four wheeler standards now. A single trail was pretty good but two of them (required for larger vehicles) weren’t, and there was much erosion rutting and several slides. Rocks were everywhere. It was a pain going up and a danger going down.

We started careening down and after half an hour or so reached the water tank where I had rested with Katy before. We climbed around and investigated the area, taking a rest ourselves. The road out of here was uphill. There was a route downhill, to Highway 2. People were coming up it. When we left we rode only a short distance before starting to walk. None of this road was really un-ride-able, except that we were in no shape.

John noticed that his front tire was low. I checked, sure enough it was, probably 30 pounds. I had just aired them up last night. I started trying to convince myself that maybe there was a slow leak or valve leak and that we could get home before having to work on it.

The route crosses to the west of the ridge, away from Highway 2 for a time. We could see Lukens, our past “conquest.”

I kept looking for landmarks, such as the place where Katy and I had stopped for lunch but when we were going downhill it was all going by too fast and I was having to pay too much attention to the road to really identify anything subtle. Also, it had been six or more years since I had been here with Katy. What I hadn’t forgotten had changed.

John saw and pointed out cataracts, structures that hold the hillside up off the road. I told him that if you quizzed me on this road I wouldn’t have remembered cataracts, but now seeing them I could convince myself that I’d seen them before. Memory is … elusive.

Now John’s tire was really flat. I stopped and we checked again. It was eleven a.m., 8 km. This could be as much as half way, distance-wise. We discussed this. He was wanting to get back home to get to go to Azusa for a game he plays with Katy’s friends on Saturday afternoons. Normally they would start at 13:30. I was holding out no hope of being any further than home by then, but was going to drive him out if he was too late for all the other arrangements.

This flat was going to cinch that.

I thought I’d see if we could do this all from the flat kit on John’s seat pack. He was carrying the mini-pump too. He handed me the tire tools and the repair kit. I got the tire off and nearly immediately found the thorn, even before finding the pinprick in the tube. It looked like there was only one hole and one thorn. The patches in the kit didn’t even use rubber cement anymore. One fewer thing not to work right. I applied the patch, remounted the tire, and started into the pumping regime. Feeling by hand I got it up, in about 200 strokes of the mini-pump, to what I thought was 40-50 lbs. That would be plenty if there were no more leaking.

John apologized for the trouble but it was no problem; these things happen. Especially on rough trails. I’d thought he had goop in his tires, but I guess it was just my tires. I’d had flats before

Anyway, John will fix the tire while I watch (kibitz) next time. He needs to know how.

We were already climbing and it was going to be climbing from here to the top of the Lukens Mountain road ridge (I don’t know if that’s even its name, but that’s what it is). All I could remember was that we would come out on a climbing straightaway one time and, after something like 500 meters of that, would be at the top for today. The idea of going on up to the peak of Lukens was now out of the question for several reasons.

It seemed like every corner, every new switchback, might be it. John would ask, “Is that it?” and I’d say, “Maybe, certainly possible.” Four or five of these later, it was it.

I told John about being up here with Katy and the man and his significant other on bikes with the dog who would run back and forth between us. We had seen a few guys on bikes back on the stretch of road with the flat, one of them, an older one but in great shape, might have been him, without company today. We had also seen a man walking a couple of big dogs, off leash, and had encountered a mud puddle that totally crossed the road.

We finally did arrive at the top. No fog today, no “Catalina Eddie.” No other people.

12:25 p.m., 11.08 km.

After resting for a while on the yellow fire box there, I started wondering which way to go to meet the Palm Crest road, down (east) or up (west). No one wanted to go west, unless it was the right way. I looked at my cellphone, no service. I looked up and down the road. It all looked familiar but I couldn’t remember which way to go.

My (no service) phone rang. It was Katy wondering what John’s status was. He would be late. I asked if she was sitting at a computer. “Yes.”

“Your book is online, would you go look it up and tell me which way to go at this fork?”

“Go to my website, click on Family, click on Adventures, your book is down there, by chapters, read me some chapter names. Try that one. Read me some subheadings. Try that one … after a while, no this isn’t it, try another.

Finally we found the right story, the trip down from Greg’s Gap. Skip some, skip some, that’s too early in the day. No, that’s too far, go back a page and just start reading. The woman’s name was Heidi, or maybe that was the dog’s name. The woman wasn’t going to the top, she had stopped where we were resting now and was going to wait. The dog wanted to be with everybody.

Yes, that’s it, that’s it, which way did we go?

We got up and went to the road down to Palm Crest.

Arghhh. I was suspecting that I hadn’t remembered that detail when I wrote the book, or had forgotten to write it down. Well, it will be in the next book. (Right here. Go Down!)

Viann called from her office at APU. We did the same updating, then I had her go to findu.com (not findyou.com) and scroll around the map to figure out which way we should go. It wasn’t easy or obvious but after ten or twelve minutes of this, we finally decided that going down (east) was the best guess. It was frustrating not being able to see what she was seeing. Do I need a web-enabled phone? It wouldn’t work well enough up here to do enough browsing. Would ham radio help? Well, if I’d brought APRS, it would cinch where we were. The radio was monitoring the repeater at the house. None of this would help now though. In short, no.

John was back from his hill climb, having seen nothing of interest in the other direction. I had even studied the freeway and the landmarks below. They seemed to suggest going east too, but it was far from certain. We packed up and went down the road around 1 p.m.. If we arrived at the fire station on Highway 2 before we came to the cutoff, we’d just ride the road for the couple of miles into town. It would be dangerous, but would only take ten or twelve minutes and would beat that brutal climb back up the ridge.

It was further than I remembered, about 850 meters of fast sand-and-rock riding down the road until we came to the cutoff. We stopped and rested and observed the TeePee at B-Flats (poles only today) before starting on down.

This was the path past Leon. I had advertised it as being a road in worse shape than any other we would encounter today, but that wasn’t true. It was in slightly better shape than the first Edison road way back up near the beginning, if barely, even at the top here.

I told John about coming up here with Viannah going the other way, discovering that pond down in Tujunga at the other end of the road. I told about hiking the opposite direction with Katy on another time (not the George’s Gap time but the Lukens time). I told him that about 2:00 p.m. that day I realized that Katy and I were meeting where Viannah and I had been going the other direction years before. The ghost of me and Viannah. (The trip where she was kicking rocks down the side of the hill.)

John didn’t quite follow all of this, but said that we should see both sets of ghosts today sometime, right? Not sure.

This road went down past “Leon” the name painted on the billboard like sign that had been used to survey in the Highway 2 construction. The fact that we couldn’t see Highway 2 from the higher junction was another hint. We could see it clearly from here and took pictures.

The road improved as we descended, particularly when we got to Leon and below. (Leon wasn’t there anymore, hadn’t been for years, and we didn’t climb up to look at the pad today, but we still referred to it as Leon in the family.) Parts would be drivable, with a proper vehicle, with care. Parts were still pretty rock-bound. John said he might enjoy the views if he weren’t busy fearing for his life! He had remarked earlier in the day that when I got out of sight ahead, going downhill fast, that he would worry that I’d careen over the edge and he’d miss me. Some of those edges had been pretty precipitous. Some of these were too.

Biking downhill being much faster (and life threatening) than hiking, as I’d always done before (well except for that one time I went up and came down here by myself coming home from work, and had hit the wall near the top…) we were soon getting close to the neighborhoods where people were casually walking dogs or out on short hikes. We started seeing paintballs exploded on the ground. I finally managed to stop John at one to look. He was pretty sure that they were perpetrated by Chris Chafin, a buddy of his who lived near the end of this trail.

We came to the last, big, rutted, eroded, turn, then went down some more and made the choice to go by Chris’s house. (about 2 p.m., 17.84 km) No one was outside. From there it was a little climb, but blessedly up a street, to the corner where the LC schools administration no longer had its offices. Then, we went down into Palm Crest and across the “no wheeled vehicles” playground into the path along the drainage basin and down to the street.

We made one more stop to look in a 20-foot hole where sewers were being put in a block above Taco Bell, then coasted on home, walking only part of the climb up to the house at the bottom.

We were home about 14:45 and dumped our bikes in the street to get into the house and … unload. Then we came back and put them away in the garage. I forgot to read the odometer until today (3/6/6, nine days later!) while writing it up. 20.95 km, over 12 miles. Three and quarter hours wheel rotation time. That implied about two hours of stopped breaks.

We had used about half of the gallon of water (and other bottles) that I/we had brought. We had not eaten lunch. John had a tick in an armpit. He wanted it removed before we went out to Apgard, that thing Katy was doing.

Not really knowing what to do, I bathed the tick in rubbing alcohol for a while then tried to pull it out with tweezers. Failing this I just grabbed it between two fingers and pulled it out. It didn’t look like the head stayed in but I really couldn’t tell.

We got in the car and ate our lunches that Viann had packed early this morning, on the way out to Azusa. Katy was a little upset that he was so late, but I dropped him off at 15:00 and all was then OK.

Back home around 15:45 I went and took an unrestful nap and was wasted for the rest of the day and some of Sunday. Yes, if we’d climbed anything else, like up to the peak, I’d possibly have not made it, same as before. I really have no stamina.

2006 March 25

Santa Fe, San Gabriel River, Long Beach, and MetroLink

I’m going to transcribe my trip notes with commentary. We also took about a hundred pictures and a few movies.

The youth had gone on this trip in August 2004, about 25-30 people. Katy and John and I rode our bikes. I typically helped bring up the rear to fix flats and see that no one was lost. It had taken something like 8:30 to 13:30 that Saturday to ride from in front of Santa Fe Dam to Seal Beach, then have lunch for half an hour and be brought home in vans. Dale Torstenbo drove the sag wagon and met us at rest stops at parks. There had been four or five flats. My floor pump had been lost in the deal.

Thinking that two of us would ride faster than thirty, I figured John and I would do something like this but bigger. The original plan was to park at the Sierra Madre Metrolink parking lot and ride the bikes from there 8-10 miles to the dam, then down the trail, and across Long Beach to the Blue Line from which we’d ride trains back to Sierra Madre and drive home. If there was time and energy, we might switch to the Green Line and go out to the west beach near LAX mid-afternoon too.

It was not much better planned than that. My only real concern was that, by not doing any more planning than that, we wouldn’t get all of the anticipation value out of it that we might. Maybe the memories will make up for this shortage.

We discussed this while on previous outings. This was to be a “big one” an all day event. When we discussed it the prior Sunday, John didn’t remember which one it was, but when he did, cancelled his Ampgard plans for the Saturday, knowing that we’d not likely be home in time to get to Azusa by 13:30.

So, as with all best laid plans, things started to crowd in. There was a plan to buy Gatorade and snacks at the store before going. We should have aired up tires and loaded the van the night before, but John had “guy’s night out” at youth group 7 – 11 p.m. that

Friday. Didn’t even get to bed until after midnight and I wasn’t going to do the preparation parts without John’s participation. I also wasn’t going to attempt something like this on five hours sleep, so the idea of leaving the house at daybreak was gone.

Page 0, The List

Water

Map

Money

Gatorade

Shirts

Towels

Camera

Sun Screen

Note Paper

The map was a Metrolink map of the whole area, large scale and not enough detail for our navigation but enough information to piece together where a train station might be and a schematic representation of our route, without showing the river.

The shirts were just to bring enough layers.

We forgot sunscreen last time.

Notepaper was one sheet folded in eighths.

We were planning to buy more things than on the youth trip – train tickets, lunch.

It was supposed to be the best weekend weather all year. For this perhaps it was, but it wasn’t sunny. It was partly cloudy and about 60 F all day.

Page 1

Friday- guys night 7 – 11

Bed midnight

Saturday

8:30 up

9:30 loading

Aired up tires and put bikes in van. The shrader attachment on the pump is cranky enough that only John’s front tire, the one repaired and field pumped four weeks ago today, was worth doing.

10:01 drive – total mileage on the van would be 45.1 miles

Viann took the car to church, parked there.

10:17 church, drop off car, pick up Viann

We drove the freeway to the Gold Line Rosemead parking structure.

10:25 End of Line

The van measured 9.2 miles from there to Encanto Park, Duarte, where we unloaded. The route was Foothill until it ran out, then wandering around, found Royal Oaks drive which ended up at the river at the mentioned park.

10:46 Park

There were many soccer games going on in the park, and others parked there for cycling and other such sports. We found one empty space because someone was leaving, unloaded, put sunscreen on necks, ears, and noses, kissed goodbye, put on backpacks, fussed with brakes, and rode away.

10:55 Ride 0.00 (My odometer-1)

This is the actual start of the ride.

So we were off 2-1/2 hours later than the youth group had been. This wasn’t impossible, but it wasn’t ideal either. The Green Line extension to the plan was obviously already gone.

There is a footbridge across the river to the trail about a block south of the park off of Encanto Pkwy. We crossed with and against other bikers and hikers.

Saw 35.00 a mileage (to the beach) printed on the path.

Viann drove down to the nearest auto crossing of the river, Huntington Drive and stood there waiting for us to ride by, waving when we did.

Saw momma

She waved; we took pictures. John’s wheel didn’t seem true, but it wasn’t bad enough to use this last possible bail point for.

Lost in the park.

There is a park behind Santa Fe Dam for flood control, but it floods so rarely that it is a well controlled water level fishing and pick-nicking park, that it costs to enter. We had ridden from north in order not to have to pay. The bike path takes a marked, but sudden turn. John, who was in the lead, missed it and we were soon on gravel. After riding down into the park and remembering the kayaking with Katy that had gone on here, I pointed out the situation and we rode back down along the inside of the dam to the exit, climbed the hill, passed the toll station, chose the dam instead of the street outside below, and continued along the dam.

(We had rented those kayaks then had to pay extra to bring them in the park. I still remembered that!)

11:30 31.50 = 7.44 on dam

Finally I managed to stop at one of the trail mileage markers and compare it to my odometer. This would provide some calibration throughout the day. Took pictures of the numbers and the views, and John riding nearby.

It was no more obvious how we would get off of the dam than how we had gotten on it (without knowing). The streambed and locks for it were ahead. As we arrived we saw paths down, took the one opposite (west, then east) that apparently was the official one, being used by other cyclists. At the bottom there was a hairpin U-turn. I got there first, braking, and got out the camera to get John coming down. It takes the camera so long to boot up that I missed this opportunity.

A few hundred more meters and we crossed the street. This is one of the few places on the route where you have to use a stop light.

The route parallels the 605 Freeway nearly all the way to the ocean. It starts out opposite some open gravel mines, still working.

12:10 18.16 stop to rest at birds / Viking

The route is mostly along the tops of levies or the bank and is nearly perfectly flat except when it drops 20 feet ever quarter mile or so, typically at a built in cataract in the river. One such, across from a school whose gymnasium said “Vikings” was at a pump station. (This was perhaps Mountain View High School, but there are so many schools on the route that it is hard to tell.

John noted the standing waves in the cataract structure and asked about them. I took a movie. Cut off at the end was him asking “is there anything like that in ham radio.”

The wind was blowing upstream, the water flowing down, the wave stood on a curb of the pool. Took pictures of birds, sights, John.

Page 2

12:20 continue on down

We passed a golf course, where I had had the wreck, hitting another cyclist head on, on the youth trip, passed a driving range, noting all the golf balls strayed from the range, and the clubhouse.

There was a dam with locks for flood control. We looked, photographed, discussed.

There is a place (somewhere plus or minus a half hour from here) where you cross from the west to the east side of the river by crossing a street bridge. Just as we came to this:

12:55 25.42 grade street crossing. Viann called – called off.

She had been planning to go to work at Huntington about 2:00 p.m. at which time we would have been on our own for the rest of the trip. She had just learned that she had been called off so would stay home grading papers, ironing, listening to “This American Life” (KPCC, pledge edition), waiting instead on our call.

Simultaneously, a cyclist going the other way asked if we knew where we were going.

“Oh yes.”

(But, the real question is, “Where are we, how do we get there?”)

He went on.

We carried on, passing under an endless series of similar bridges, some freeways, some streets, some railroads, some other things. I wasn’t feeling bad yet, but I knew that I would be soon if I didn’t eat anything. We hadn’t bought Gatorade yet and didn’t have anything with us except water that, in today’s less than mild weather, we weren’t using very fast.

I had on three T-shirts, the outer one long sleeved, had left my outer jacket at the van not wanting to carry it all day. I was a little warm some and a little cool some, but never changed layering during the entire trip.

We stopped and photographed birds and made movies of them.

We saw many crossings where we remembered having been here before. Other traffic was light all day. We would occasionally see a person or four, mostly riding street bikes in full gear but many times we would go tens of minutes without seeing anyone else, ahead or behind.

Of course we were never out of earshot of the 605. Kind of like home….

We passed a homeless guy with an impressive improvised tent. He was sitting out front playing a Gameboy.

After passing under a bridge, we stopped to discuss lunch. I thought I saw a Chevron station a couple of blocks to our west (across the river). Do we try here or at the next bridge up there?

John thought here.

We climbed up to the street level. It was a 605 interchange just to our east. Should we go into what looked like a residential neighborhood toward the Chevron station or should we go under the freeway on the chance that there would be something there. We couldn’t see much either way. The street did not have a name posted here. Our map would not have been much help.

John thought east under the freeway, so we did.

First thing after the off ramp was a Del Taco, next was a gas station, next was a Jack in the Box. We stopped there; it was Telegraph Road at the “Orr and Day Rd.” intersection. Busses were going by. They were mentioned on the Metrolink map. John mentioned getting on one of them and going home. We were both saddle sore.

13:55 34.25 605 & Telegraph Rd. Jack N Box $14.88

I had probably a 2000 calorie meal. This was no time for going easy on calories.

$2.00 panhandled, “batteries”

A guy walked into the store, not wanting anything but to panhandle the first person he saw. It was John. John looked him in the eye and says, “Talk to him,” referring to me. I laughed and took $2 out of my wallet. The guy wanted batteries, he said. This was believable. John said he had a radio. I thought he probably had a Gameboy like that other homeless guy.

It was nice to be off the saddle.

John locked us both up.

I had my Kryptonite with me, but John had his wire rope with lock that would pass through both bikes and so he did this before I even thought about locking. I brought in the map to consult.

Called house.

We called home. All was well here and there. Other restaurant patrons looked around.

Guy spoke to us about biking.

An older man sat down and asked where we were going and how it was going. He had done something like this before and it had been hard, his legs were shaking by the end, it was a long way. We knew about this. He got up and left.

We talked about shortcutting out, getting on the Green Line at its origin in Norwalk, near here, and going across to the Blue Line and home from there. I was willing to take shortcuts at this point, but not that big of one.

15:00 go on

We had been here over an hour! It was now mid-late afternoon!

15:07 34.41 Chevron, Gatorade $6.71

Another Chevron. John picked out Gatorade. We bought and had some. Took pictures.

Good thing we didn’t try that next bridge. It was a railroad bridge. Shortly after we passed under it we heard a train coming. John counted 134 cars. I just noticed that there was a bump in the track that each of the 134 axles went over.

Page 3

15:35 38.77 Rest at a post.

Lots of posts. Some of the levy is fenced; some is not. Much of the trip is dangerously close to riding off into the riverbed thirty feet below, not a pleasant fall either on rock or concrete, at the angle of “repose,” maybe 45 degrees.

Took pictures of many of the interesting things, but not all. Missed the cows (looked like Jerseys). Didn’t intrude on the trailer park. Saw where someone had put a lighthouse model on their subdivision wall across the river but didn’t want to get out the camera one more time for that. Photographed a line of red chickens on a fence, and goats in the same yard. Lots of horse properties. Saw people riding horses. Some arenas even. Even saw a bull fight arena with penned bulls.

16:19 46.34 Park Rest on grass

The nearby street being Studebaker, this must be Liberty Park. We called home to check in, used the park facilities. There were many birthday parties going on.

Shortly after this we were passing the long, thin Lakewood Equestrian Center adjoining the river to our east. This could have been Flintridge Riding Club. I speculated that the people in the horse community probably knew each other. One horse, alone, was rolling around on his back (like we “roll the cat”) “Roll the horse.”

17:00 50.72 = 5.50

This was another synchronization point with the markings on the trail. There were many markings, some put up by people ad hoc. These “official” ones here were getting hard to read.

Saddle soreness was intense. We wish I’d brought the recumbent; then we could trade seats.

17:12 53.04 at the confluence

The confluence of the San Gabriel River and the wider Coyote Creek. Both had bike paths. Being on the east, the side the creek arrived from, we were in the middle. Rested, took pictures, inspected the foot truss bridge we were about to cross. Considered going down in the river, but that would mean more saddle (sore) time.

For a sunny day, it had been half cloudy the whole time. I took a picture of actual weather.

17:52 58.52 Westminster?

There was no way to tell what street it was. In later investigation, it turned out to be Westminster and it would have been fine to get off here and head west, but, seeing another bridge up ahead, we stayed on the river.

We passed a power plant, birds on suspension wires (“church,” Viann would say) and lots of salt foam in the water that looked to John like pollution. Photographed and even “movied” some of this. Talked about steam plants and discharge water, corrosive salt, foam, and so forth.

Took pictures of oil well “horse heads.”

18:00 59.72

“Submarine Veterans of World War II Memorial Highway” or some such. No indication of what official highway or street it was, however. There was yet another bridge ahead of us but I decided to go ahead and get off the trial here. Soon we knew we were on PCH and consulted the coarse Metro map to determine that at the next big intersection we should turn left. (This is where Westminster turns into 2^nd). John had trouble believing that this wasn’t going back to the beach.

18:03 59.72 Marina St. on 2^nd, left sidewalk, dark due to clouds (boat in marina)

A homeless man at Highway 1 and 2^nd didn’t panhandle us; he asked if we were lost. “I’m always lost,” I replied, consulting the map.

We went up the left side of 2^nd to Marina and waited at another light before crossing the bridge.

If we had gone on to that next bridge on the original trail, it would have been Marina Dr. and we would have had to come back up (along the marina) to this same point.

I also pointed out that this was the intersection, Marina and 2^nd, that backed up to the “boat in” mall where we had gone with Katy on kayaks a couple of years earlier (in her training). He recognized the guard gate to the gated community, and the mall docks behind it.

18:07 60.21 John walked the bridge (left)

It was scary going over the bridge. John got off and walked. I thought about turning left immediately into town, but this would have been a mistake. Rather, we went a few blocks up 2^nd before I got off the main street and wandered around in the circular streets and alleys of Naples for a while. It was getting darker, nearly misting.

Ultimately we came back to 2^nd and crossed another bridge into the Belmont Shore section of Long Beach. This too was familiar. We proceeded on the sidewalks of Bay Shore, the street that had been closed for the summer back when we were here with Katy.

The street backed up the beach where we had rented the kayaks. Being early spring, the area was much less busy. Being later in the day actual residents were in their homes and yards. We looked into townhouses to see computers, laundry, kitchens, purple lighting.

Page 4.

18:27 62.41 Beach where we rented kayaks

(…years ago, see Katy’s book)

We carried our bikes across the boulevard (E. Ocean) and found our way to the bike path along the ocean beach. It was now too dark to be out on the streets without headlights that we did not have (I didn’t think we would possibly be out after dark and so wore my other helmet.) We turned on our “disco inferno” flashing red rear lights.

Yes, saddle sore. I was standing. John was learning to use lower gears so as not to cramp up his legs. I was learning to use higher ones, when … standing.

I projected four to five miles of this before we would reach downtown Long Beach from which the trains would run. This was the first known over-estimate of my life, but not by much.

Long ago when John’s prior (Green Gary Fisher) bike was new, we had ridden around here, around Naples and in the Marina area. John had had his first flat there, which I was, fortunately, prepared to fix. We had driven. The account could be several dozen pages up in this file.

We passed the aquatic center where some swimming event was going on. We passed high-rise condos, most of them dark, a few with parties, one at ground level where we could have just ridden up to.

There was fog out to sea. Most other people on the trail were walking, wrapped up pretty well. Not many (or, according to John, any) other bikes. There was fog ahead; it was getting really dark. We made out the Spruce Goose hangar and the Queen Mary outline up ahead. Tried several pictures of this, none of them any good.

We continued along the faintly familiar trail.

18:49 67.53 Ocean Village

Actually, I don’t know exactly where we were. The Metro map was fairly inadequate at this point. We were somewhere in the vicinity of the Downtown Long Beach Marina, across a major street from what turned out to be the Long Beach Arena. There was much road construction. We looked for a streetlight to stand under and consult the map.

Two ladies were looking for restrooms. One of them said, “Father and son? That’s awesome.” I turned the map over. Not much help. No sign of a Metrolink anywhere. It looked like the trains didn’t come all the way down here. I looked for a way into town.

We found our way up to Shoreline and crossed. Didn’t want to go to the Arena, so turned into the construction zone on the left side of the street. There was a person there who we might have asked for help but she was talking in another language on a cellphone and didn’t look like she knew where she was either.

Turned left on Ocean and proceeded for a while, seeing no public transportation. I consulted the map again. We had passed Atlantic. On close inspection it looked like the trains came only up to 1^st Street. We turned and went up Linden or Frontline up to 1^st, then consulted the map again, then went west looking for something like train tracks, or a terminal for a subway.

19:15 1^st St. Station, Passes – missed 1^st train 69.27

Finally, to my relief, we found the 1^st Street Station. Waited for the light and walked our bikes up on the platform. I started figuring out how to use the ticket machine. A train came, going south. That seemed like the wrong way. John had his ticket in his hand but I was still fooling with the machine for mine. The train left.

$3.00 a piece for all day passes on the Metro. As a student, John could ride any bus free, but not the trains.

I studied the map on the platform and decided that all trains in this station would be going south. We decided to get on the next one that came, no matter what it was doing.

19:22 on Blue Train 69.28

The train was relatively unoccupied. Leaving the station south, it waited for the light just like all the other vehicles, then turned right from Long Beach Blvd. onto 1^st Street.

19:28 Ticket Check, Transit Center

The train pulled into the station, the doors opened, two officers got on and came straight to me looking for tickets. This is the first time (I have to admit I don’t ride Metro that much) that I had been checked. John and I fumbled for our tickets; we were OK. Nothing was said about the bikes. The train waited a while then left the station, turned right again and was on its way to downtown Los Angeles.

19:58 off at Delamo “Last Stop”

Or so we thought. With all the other irritated passengers, we got off on a platform in the middle of Watts or South Central or somewhere. The driver said this was the last stop and parked the train. It sat there. We stood there looking around at black, left, right, ahead, behind, up. We weren’t even up to the Green Line connection yet.

It later turned out that there had been a vehicle accident near here that week which had torn up several blocks of the overhead electric lines. Only one of the two Blue Line tracks was usable. We had to wait for a next train.

One guy got back on the train and used the emergency phone to tell the driver that he needed a train out of here. The driver, very annoyed, chewed him out about this over the P.A. system. “This is not an emergency!”

At length a train arrived. Southbound. Did we want to go back to Long Beach? No. But, the emergency guy did. The rest of us stood there on the well-lit platform in the middle of the black city.

20:15 on a crowded train

The train that pulled up northbound didn’t have much room on it. Everyone on the platform got on. We crowded the bikes into an inter-car space. There wasn’t much room. People passed through with difficulty.

Some one across from us offered space, I waved them off. They were in an animated discussion about fashion, people’s places. One of them was left out, offended. They got off.

A man and his son got on. The son wanted to go to the back car, through the bikes. His dad wouldn’t let him, “there’s no room there.” He was disgusted with us, made mild gestures. We stood still, stared. They settled into seats ahead, wiggling, unhappy. A young woman got on, sat across from us, kept her nose in a book.

We saw the station where we might have transferred to the Green Line. Kept going.

A man challenged the shutting door, got caught in it. They quavered and re-opened. He acted incensed, got on.

20:38 guy got on 2 before, wanted money, started fight, drug off before Washington

Another man got on and shouted for money for food. I was thinking that now would be a good time for a ticket check. No officers were in sight. He panhandled the irritated guy’s son. They started pushing each other, stood in the aisle. The nose came out of the book, the young woman was thinking of moving back, bikes and all.

The train stopped, the doors opened. I thought, “This would be a good time for you guys to take it outside.” Nobody moved. The doors shut, the train started. <sigh> The fight heated up. There was more posturing. The train stopped again. A punch was thrown. A third man appeared from nowhere, drug the panhandler off onto the platform. The doors shut, the train moved. The operator came on the intercom and thanked whoever for getting the disruptive man off the train. The man with his son got back in his seat, no longer concerned about us.

We counted stops, figured out which stations we were passing. At Washington the train turns left (at a light) and heads into downtown. It was announced that the Seventh Street Metro Center was the final stop, everyone would exit. The sign switched to “Out of Service.” The train coasted into the station. All got off.

We looked around. Someone was carrying their bike up the escalator to the street. I knew this was prohibited. We carried our bikes up the stairs, looking around for the Red Line. I took pictures. I didn’t see any Red Lilne.

Page 5

Asked Directions

There was a janitor. I asked her how to get to the Red Line. It was down stairs, a flight below rather than a flight above the Blue Line.

We went back down. “Out of Service” was moving out. John had been here before, knew how to get to the Red Line. We went down some more stairs.

Down into the homeless pit

Two flights went down another level. People were sleeping on one of the levels. We went out of our way to go to the other one. Other people weren’t down here waiting on the train. Most were. We found a place to wait. It looked like it wasn’t used except at rush hour. We moved back into the crowd.

A puff of wind came out of the tunnel. “John, it’s the train.” Sure enough, a light came out of the hole in the ground followed by a long train. It stopped, taking up all the space, used and unused, on the platform.

20:59 on the Red Line 69.55

The train was nearly empty, compared to its capacity. This was entirely subway. We were flying through the ground.

21:04 off

Three stops, five minutes, we were in Union Station.

Now we had to figure out where to go again. John had been here before, knew how to change trains here. It was up three flights of stairs. We went up, took pictures of the people mural in the grand room, went down “to trains.” Way down was the Gold Line platform. A train was waiting, bright, doors open, “welcome aboard.” We wheeled in.

21:10 on Gold Line 64.81

Well dressed people were aboard going home from the opera or equivalent. They were discussing high-class topics, perhaps Fuller professors, Caltech, or equivalent.

A woman near the front of the train had a green bicycle. We got into an inter-car area again. No problems this time. Some other people looked like they were returning from airline flights. This driver was rough and jerky, though jovial. I’ve never been sick standing up before. Several times we were nearly thrown down.

As they reached their destinations, all these people got off. With two stops left, we had a place to sit down. The train comes into the Lake Station like a submarine coming up in the middle of the freeway. It stopped; we got off.

21:40 off

We went up the platform, over to the west elevator. Someone had used it for a bathroom. We realized this on the way up.

Walked our bikes up Lake to The Hat then turned to the back gate to the church parking lot. No riding. Saddle sore.

I was sure the gate would be open to pedestrians. It was, there isn’t even a lock in it.

21:55 at car [van] 70.42 66.1 = 83252

John lay in the street, I took a picture, worked on getting the bikes loaded, stuff secured for the ten-minute drive home.

We drove; John called to say we were on the way.

22:07 home 57F 83260 74.9

End Odometer (dad’s bike)

Tm: 5:12:27

Av: 13.5

Mx: 40.5

Dst1: 70.45

Dst2: 70.45

Odo: 4699.0

This is all in kilometers. Still, nearing 3000 miles on this bike, 44 of them today.

So the total mileage on the van for this was 45.1. On the car, unmeasured, but about 18 miles (a round trip to church). On my bike 70.45 km, most of it in the saddle. That’s 43.8 miles.

We went in the house and had chicken soup, John’s choice. Hooked up the camera to the TV and looked at the pictures/movies taken. Over 100, fun. One of them was an unexpected activation of the movie while I was riding, unsuspecting. A keeper. That’s what the camera sees most of the time.

“Monopoly” Diplomacy

We were away from the house for twelve hours, maybe two or three more than expected. John said, “About the same length as an average game of Monopoly. … or Diplomacy.

2006 June 17, Saturday

(transcribed 2006 July 6)

[The APRS plots and pictures mentioned are misplaced as of editing date, 1/11/10. – cbd]

8~ Up, Bible, eat

This is in the notes just to show that there are reasons why we don’t leave at 5 a.m.

9~ Start loading – APRS, yes

And this. Took APRS. There is a track and a few aerial pictures of the lake in the folder. The pictures show the lake level somewhat below, perhaps 10-15 feet below, what we saw on this particular day. There is an east island in the pictures that wasn’t there this day.

After getting home, used APRS route maps to show the day’s route, and certain interesting parts of that. Also used it to find some interesting aerial photography of the area.

10:10 mail came, -> towels, kld pay

Remembered to take towels for once. This is early for the mail, perhaps five hours. Katy’s first paycheck.

10:12 85865 303.0 79 F

The mileage and temperature when we left the house.

10:21 Unocal 80F 85866 303.9 = 0.0 $62.20 19.202

The mileage, temperature and gas costs at the gas station. Reset the trip counter to 0.

12:21 86.3 86F Lake $7.00

Went out (as shown in the APRS trace) 2 to 134 to 101 and through Ventura. John slept through much of the city traffic. It was a two-hour drive to the lake. Vehicle entrance was $7. There was a big crowd, maybe two or three thousand. The water park was open; most campsites were full.

Casitas is a water supply lake. You are not supposed to touch it bodily, so there is no swimming (birds and fish are OK). We think this is a municipal operation with concessionaires. There are floating porta-potties around the lake

Movie Night: Chicken Little

As an attraction to campers, this was movie night. Chicken Little was showing. We didn’t think we had seen it. John commented that we could get the whole family into movies like this for only $7. Might be more if camping.

Rented Boat 12:45 – 17:45 $65 6 HP 4 person

The price for one hour is $40, for five hours is $65, for “all day” a little more. Signs at the ramps and docks said that everybody had to be out of the water by 1945, half an hour before sundown. It takes an hour to learn to drive but I didn’t think we could stand more than five.

I determined in initial driving that the motor under full throttle could possibly turn the boat over. We figured out later that this had to do with the way I was sitting. It would one way but not the other. The tightest circle was probably 50 feet.

I drove enough to figure everything out then let John drive for the rest of the day. He is more naturally skillful at it than I am. With verbal instructions, he docked perfectly several times, including at the concession docks that were packed with rental boats.

went around CCW each drove twice

First time around the lake was counter clockwise.

docked 3 S.S. Relief

We did docking practice and used the porta-potties.

went up inlets

As had been done with Katy, we went up the inlets to see what was there and to use the anchor and rope to measure the depth. With Katy we had gotten soundings, but this anchor rope was so short (or the lake so high) that we had very few this trip. In one case, it was four feet. I didn’t know how much to worry about the prop getting fouled in things.

John wanted to touch the (do not touch) island. I told him we had done this in the past with canoes where you could just row right up, but he remembered getting that close in a motor boat in the past. We did get into some reeds and touched them.

14:50 came in for lunch $17.91

In fact we split it into two pieces and came in for an expensive semi-fast-food lunch at nearly three for a break.

Dessert $5

Tip $3

Plus dessert and tip.

Back to Dam

John drove us down to the guard buoy line at the dam, as far as we could go.

Hi Punch

… stopped the engine and broke out some Hi C punch in celebration. While we drifted into the boundary.

Picked up a fifteen-foot long reedy shaft of a plant out of the water. Brought it home. Now it’s brown instead of emerald green.

Pix

Forgot the camera so took pictures with the “accident camera” from the van.

John targets

- ducks

As he got comfortable with the boat and was threatened for trying to dump me out of the front, John started looking for other challenges. There were many birds out on the water. Some duck-like ones with red eyes who would dive straight down when you got close to them. When we got close enough to see the red eyes John asked if they were blind. Some dove more easily than others. Whenever we would swerve, I could just look ahead to see the “duck.”

- Wakes

Wakes from other boats would bounce ours around more. We’d see another boat coming, and John would line up perpendicular to them then, as they passed, gun it and plow across their wake. Sometimes this made a big rocking, sometimes we were “lucky” and it didn’t.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

This reminded me of the Captain Nemo movie, where he would line the Nautilus up with some unsuspecting passenger ship and ram them. We were, of course, heading behind the victims, but there was a moment in every run up when I would wonder, and perhaps the captain of the target boat would wonder.

Fast boats made bigger wakes but they were hard to get close to.

- our wake

If you go in a tight enough circle you can run over your own wake. Probably you could swamp the boat if you really tried.

- people going backwards

Not really a target, but as we came into the “slow no wake” docking area for the last time of the day, there were people backing boats out onto the lake. Boats just like ours with four or five people in them were backing up. One of the attendants was out in the rescue boat coming up to them, showing them how to switch the mechanism into “forward.”

17:20 Bikes

Turned in the boat (retrieved my driver’s license) and came back to the van to ride the bikes.

Rode down east side, 1.70 mile 0 of trail

Went first around the east levy where there is a hiking trail. It was about one mile up to mile zero of that trail.

Hikers, patrollers

There were a couple of people out hiking and a couple of joggers. One guy by himself thought I was “Jack,” but on closer inspection saw that I wasn’t. Towards the end we saw a golf cart being driven, patrol like, around the edge.

18:11 turn around

two coves

Turned around about four km in. I kept wanting to go “around the next cove to see what’s up there.” After doing this twice we decided to go back. With a longer day and being in better shape and better prepared, one could go all the way to the dam this way. It followed the shoreline (but without official access) and at one point would loop pretty far away, to get around some marshes.

Wish we could have gone to the dam

Going all the way to the dam would be fun.

stay on trail

John wanted his picture by the “stay on the trail” sign.

levy

construction

There was a slab for some kind of construction just below the levy that the trail topped. On the other side were vineyards on hillsides. Vineyards are common in these parts.

housing development

Hardly a stone’s throw from the levy was a major housing development. The road we approached on goes right between the levy and this development but I’d never noticed it before. One has to pay too much attention to the road (and the impending park entrance) at that point.

18:20 West

Bikes 12.55 switch

Got back to the van, passing many car and RV campers of various sorts, and people walking their dogs up in the paved campground. The bikes showed about 8 miles. I don’t recall what “switch” means.

Ramp

We rode all the way over to the west boat ramp. This is where we had swapped in and out of the canoe on a previous family outing. Pretty hilly. Lots of traffic on the hilly roads near sunset on this busy day. Tired.

Cadillac Moon (car boat)

We saw the little car boat that one often sees driving/boating around this lake. It reminded me of the movie Cadillac Moon about guys out on an adventure similar to ours the week NASA was landing astronauts on the moon. In the end they escape by using that car. Also reminds us of Huell Howser.

no cats in the boat

We rode our bikes out on one of the docks. There was a sign there “no dogs in the boat.” John speculated that you don’t need a sign that says, “no cats in the boat.” No one could live very long trying to get a cat into a boat on a lake full of water.

Probably no dogs in the boat because they would be prone to jumping out and swimming, and thus touching the water with their dirty selves!

John rear flat

John started to have a flat. Made it back to the van anyway. By morning there were two flats. Still unfixed (7/6/6).

19:05 16.70 10 miles

Back at the van just after seven, total of ten miles.

Boatmen

Fishing contest

Somebody.com

Some kind of fishing and boating contest going on. When we turned in the boat we walked right through the middle of the lecture about the contest.

As we were getting on the bikes, teams were lining up to put their boats in. Typically one guy would drive the truck, another would sit in the boat, as they waited their turn. When we came back in the middle, all the trucks and trailers were sitting there dripping.

Most of the motors had big numbers on them ranging from 75 to 200. Probably HP. The speed limit on the lake was, I think, 40 mph. We were probably doing 10 on our little 6 horse.

People compete in strange ways. “Competitive Fishing” seems strange to me. I suppose competitive radio operation is strange too.

We made other cute jokes and puns. I’ve forgotten them now. One truck/trailer had somebody’s name .com on it. I meant to write it down and check it out but didn’t.

19:15 86.3 83 F

drove around riding routes

3-4 wheel bikes

Now, loaded up in the van, we drove around all the paved places we had ridden. We had joked about “no three or four wheel bicycles beyond this point.” A guy back in the main area was renting such vehicles. I said, “Well, you’d just have to get out your tools and remove one or two wheels before proceeding.”

“Yeah,” said John, ”or add some to make five or more.”

Dad drives around a lot.

19:46 93.3 leave

Drove away from the park.

Last thing I stopped and looked for a map of the lake that we could mark up with our route, as we had with Katy. None. Took a brochure.

Went up 150 to Carpenteria and back through La Conchita

Never to go the most direct way or the way that we came, went up 150 to the west to see what was there. This goes around the west end of the lake then through the mountains back to Highway 1 eventually.

Fire or fog?

Ash on stuff – at lake and at home this a.m.

As we drove through the mountains it was hazy, very hazy in some places. Was this smoke from a fire or fog? When we got down on the beach highway it was heavily fogged in, but we had both noted ash on the van at the park, and at home this morning. Different fires no doubt.

As we drove along the coast we passed a limo. John had been invited to a birthday party today that he had missed due to this outing but thought that this limo might be related to it. He asked me if we were close to Huntington Beach. “About fifty miles from here, different county.” He called Loren on my phone and confirmed that she was there and that this limo was not them.

La Conchita was the place where the big mudslide had buried people and properties a year or so back. People out of state had confused this with La Canada and called to ask if we were OK. We looked at the damage as we sped by and talked about property values and government liabilities and things.

21:00 158.3 Moorpark Carl’s Jr.

Stopped about half way home, in Moorpark, for supper. Late. Pretty tired. Would have gone on home, but were also pretty hungry. Looked like a gang hangout this place this Saturday night late. Not everybody, but many.

21:29

Didn’t stay long.

22:16 home 201.7 70F 86067

Logged in at home. It’s about 100 miles out there and 100 miles back. Shortest possible odometer would probably be around 180-185.

2006 July 8, Saturday noon – 14:30

Both John’s bike tires had been flat since Casitas. He said he knew how to fix them and I wanted to see this so I had tried next day to get him to work on them, but WarQuest or whatever was the current game was more important. This languished for a while.

After Chris, KF6RSF, spent the night I told John not to turn on anything until he had fixed these flats. At length he went down and started trying to take the wheels off.

With some help on technique, he got the wheels off then had no trouble taking off the tires and tubes. We couldn’t find the hole in the first tube, so I got a big bowl of water. We also ran our fingers through the insides of the tires and inspected the outsides and removed a couple of thorns.

The hole was located and patched. All the water was spilt. We cleaned up and pumped up.

After the other tire was done, pumped up, and holding air, John went back to WarQuest or whatever and was hard to extract in order to put the bicycle back together. Finally, at threat level three, he stopped, we put the bike back together, and went on a ride.

The van was still full of Joanne’s stuff so we couldn’t start by driving anywhere. The calendar for today had said “easy Lukens from the fire station.” He was going to “Pirates of the Caribbean II” with Katy and her friends at 15:00, so there wasn’t time for the shorter ride up to Neil’s house, down behind JPL and back. We needed to go to OSH anyway, so we got our stuff together and rode to the Montrose Post Office. There, we sent Viannah her mail then continued up Montrose, which was under serious construction.

I remarked that we were unlikely to see anything this bad on a trial around Mt. Rainier.

John asked why I hadn’t mentioned the difference between girls and boys boating in my Casitas write up that he had proofread yesterday. I wrote “Boys Girls Boats” on the back of my hand. So noted.

The difference I’d noticed was this. Katy had focused mostly on driving erratically so as to throw dad out of the boat. John (once threatened about throwing dad out of the boat) had targeted things: birds, other boat wakes, our own wake. He didn’t really want to fall out of the boat either, but wanted to see how close we could get.

The idea here was to write the minimum characters on my hand that would eventually remind me of enough to do something. I told him about the time I’d written “K9” on my hand, (probably 1996 or earlier), then could never remember what it was. Dogs? Hams in Illinois? $9,000? I told him about the guy in Vietnam who had named his boy “6500” for the 6500 dong fine he had paid for having more than two children. This could have happened to John had the U.S. had such draconian rules. It made the paper after society (the boy was Jr. High age) prevailed on the father to rename his son “Golden Dragon,” no doubt more “normal.” John said, “He should have left it 6500.”

Guessing which street to go up, we went up and across the freeway, then over to La Crescenta High, noting that it joined an elementary school on it’s back (east) side, then up to La Crescenta storage into which we had been moving Joanne’s stuff all week. I keyed in the code at the gate and we rode around.

[Note about Joanne. Joanne Butler had a stroke on June 4 while John and I were at set strike for the La Canada High School production of West Side Story. She remained in hospitals and hospice until late October. On July 1 we had gone and moved everything out of her apartment because it was clear that if she did go back to living by herself, it would not be there and it would not be soon. We also took in the two cats, Sassy and Alex. 1/11/10 – cbd]

Then to OSH where we locked up the bikes and went in to look at the bike stuff.

They don’t have goop tires anymore, but you can buy goop to put in tires, and you can get the standard, thick, thorn resistant tubes. They only had one tube in our tire size, so we bought it and a bottle of goop.

We also looked at refrigerator dollies and other items that we couldn’t carry home on a bike. “Hey, it has wheels, I could just drag it behind me,” John said, in normal form.

Leaving OSH we went on Foothill, crossing over to the North side, then on the sidewalk up to Ralph’s where we went into the parking lot, noted that the nearest Baskin Robbins to us was right there near Game Stop, then along that street above Foothill that Y’s out at the Lutheran church. I thought we had looked at a house here once in 1993 and tried to point it out. There were several that I thought might be it. One finally I thought 60% might be it. Maybe it was on another street similar to this one.

Then down the left sidewalk in front of the Crescenta Valley Sheriff’s station. “Dad! It’s illegal to ride on a sidewalk anywhere, but in front of the police station?!”

Then we stopped at KFC near the house we used to rent and ate lunch. Leaving, we got Katy lunch (she had asked for “chicken” to be brought back). I hung the to-go bag on my handlebars and we continued.

John asked if we wanted to go down La Granada, “It’s the engineer thing to do, go back a longer way than necessary. I wanted to go up and look at the damage where rain had caused a part of the wall to collapse a couple of years ago.

“Dad, we can’t go this way, the wall collapsed.” But we could. There was room between the barriers and the fence for bicycles. This was the safest portion of the whole ride.

His front tire was getting noticeably flatter. The back was fine. My two were fine.

After crossing at Hilland, we went down La Granada. Just at the fastest, most delicate, most dangerous part of the descent, a “Student Driver” passed us. …Mimi. (We get special attention from our cat who confounds all traffic everywhere. Other people blame the devil for things like this. We feed Mimi in our home.)

So we arrived home and gave Katy her chicken, covered in gravy. The front wheel is now back in the house, totally flat, waiting for attention. 7/8/6 21:30.