I’ve spent a fair amount of time looking for a great drive on twisty roads with very little traffic anywhere on the North-East side of L.A., and I think I’ve found it…
This route is 126 miles thru Los Padres National Forest. About 15 of the miles are straight or thru small towns. The other 116 miles are pure driving pleasure.
My roommate Brian and I have been mountain biking around Simi Valley. People in San Fernando Valley and L.A. often ask “why did you move all the way out there?” Well, it’s less crowded, cheaper, we have a killer view from out balcony, and there’s about a million miles of off-road mountain biking trails out here.
Wanting a GPS logger, I installed an app called MyTracks on my Android phone… It works a lot like those handheld GPS units made for hiking. You turn on the GPS, start recording and forget about it until you’re done. Then you can export directly from your phone to google maps.
You also get stats, and a graphs of speed and elevation versus time. The speed graph is on the phone only, but the elevation graph appears on the map if you click the pin for the end of the trail.
The stats look like this…
Total Distance: 16.99 km (10.6 mi)
Total Time: 3:02:47
Moving Time: 2:04:52
Average Speed: 5.61 km/h (3.5 mi/h)
Average Moving Speed: 8.16 km/h (5.1 mi/h)
Max Speed: 32.22 km/h (20.0 mi/h)
Min Elevation: 274 m (899 ft)
Max Elevation: 636 m (2087 ft)
Elevation Gain: 444 m (1457 ft)
Max Grade: 23 %
Min Grade: -15 %
Recorded: Tue Jul 20 17:19:00 PDT 2010
Activity type: mountain biking
We were slow because the trail was very sandy on the North part of the loop, so we basically walked our bikes up the hill and rode them back down. It’s probably better to just go up the South loop an turn around for the downhill fun. We’re also investigating starting the south loop, but taking the trail (middle range fire road) further… it runs into the Big Sky Movie Ranch – where they’ve filmed everything from ‘Little House on the Prairie’, ‘Bonanza’, and ‘Gunsmoke’ to ‘Coming to America’ and ‘Transformers’.
We’ve ridden to the ranch before and discussed signing liability waivers with the owner so we can bike on his land. He’s already shown us where a mountain lion den is, and warned us about the horns on his cattle… Mostly, he’s worried about teenagers going up there to get stoned, tag the movie sets, and possibly start brushfires.
SURF CITY
I’ve progressed in my Kite Surfing lessons to the point where I get to take a kite out into the ocean. In the following video, I don’t have a board on, but I did learn to use the kite to pull myself over crashing waves (most of the time), as well as drag me out to sea, and more importantly – back to shore!
I did get on a board my last time out, but the wind conditions were too light for me to stand up on it. My next step is to buy some gear of my own (board, kite, harness, control bar, helmet, impact/floatation vest, etc), and start practicing with it!
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HOLLYWEIRD
Yesterday, I went with Asa to the weekly Open Mic Night at the Cat Club on Sunset. It’s usually a bunch of not-yet-successful comics and musicians – with the occasional appearance of actual talent (generally when Brian and Bekah show up). Sometime in the next few weeks, I’ll get on stage and do some of my songs and see how I do.
So, I ended up sitting next to “Polo the Clown”. His performance was keyed toward educating the audience about an ancient reptilian race hiding among us in an effort to maintain justice on Earth – and apparently he is one of them. After his performance, I had the pleasure of listening to him expound on his performance by detailing the failures of commercialized (and diluted for the masses) Kabbalah and the power he wields against them through the “Evil Eye”.
Quite bizarre, but he was actually better than most of the comics who took the stage last night (most of whom embrace shock comedy in lieu of actually being funny). I told Polo to check out late night AM radio if he’s looking for a nationwide audience already into conspiracy theories and ancient occult rituals.
Welcome to the underbelly of entertainment!
After my cousin Asa & Bekah’s wedding in Richmond, I flew to my Sister’s place to visit the Nieces and Nephew, then went back for what I planned to be a week in Cincy before driving my SUV back to Cali. That’s about when life started to really suck…
I won’t get into it all, but the frustrations all revolve around coming back to find the grass in my back yard was was 2 feet tall – after I prepaid my neighbor to maintain it (which he had previously done a fairly good job of for 6 years). Then problems with the buyer’s loan and the loan officer quitting (or being fired – not sure which). Finally, the repairs to my old truck I had planned to put about $1000 into ended up costing me significantly more, and the first time I tried to drive home, the alternator fried in Illinois – about 40 miles from St. Louis. After a few more trials with the car ands the house, I finally made it back to Cali on June 1st.
I was very ready to go camping, and after my 1st drive thru visit to Joshua Tree National Park, I knew I had to go back… this time to relax and undo some stress with my buds Sreekanth and Tushar who managed to pry some time away from their cubicles and fly down from San Francisco.
Note my straw cowboy hat that my uncle Marty gave me as a gift for carting Asa’s keyboard out to Los Angeles – it did a decent job keeping me from getting sunburn. Also note the Surf Ohio tire cover on the truck! If you see an old red Rodeo with this tire cover in Southern California, odds are it’s me!
I picked the guys up at John Wayne airport late friday night and we arrived and setup camp around 1 AM early Saturday. My dad gave me a tent that fit over the tailgate of the truck, and the guys were trying out a new 2 person tent from REI. At 7 AM we got up for breakfast and ventured out to see the sights and do some hiking.
Skull Rock
We hiked a lot – even though is was near 100 degrees.
And we saw a lot of lizards, a few chipmunks, and a snake.
A rock that looked like a chocolate chip cookie:
Don’t forget the Joshua Trees!!
And the Cholla plants:
Sreekanth took over the Infra-Red Canon 10D for a day and got some really cool shots.
Joshua Tree N.P. has some of the darkest night skies in California. On Saturday night, we saw a ranger presentation on the night skies, visited a neighbor camper with a 9″ telescope looking at Saturn, then we were able to get some sweet shots of the Milky Way using the IR camera:
… it’s hard as hell to focus that thing.
Happily, the house closed on Friday the 11th, so now I can start looking ahead to new and exciting things!
I went to Richmond for Asa & Bekah’s wedding. Since I got there early, I took a side trip to see my cousin Nat in Annapolis, as well as play tourist in Baltimore and DC. Nat plays french horn in the Naval Academy Band, and had a full dress parade with the academy in the afternoon, so I went to Baltimore for the day to see the Aquarium and the Harbor area.
The Baltimore Harbor district:
Then I drove back to Annaoplis just in time for the parade.
Naval Academy Band (Nat is on the right)
Guests of honor: Jim Lowell (Commander Apollo 11), Admiral James M Loy (former Deputy Secretary, then Secretary of Homeland Security), Neil Armstrong (1st man on the moon), and Gene Cernan (last man on the moon).
Cousin Nat
That night we went out for dinner and drinks, then went home to bed. Nat had an earl day, and I was going to DC to see the sights.
The US Capitol Building
Smithsonian Air & Space Museum
The Washington Monument
The WWII Memorial
The Lincoln Memorial
The view from the Lincoln Memorial
The Vietnam Memorial. They had just dedicated a new statue of soldiers and had flags made of flowers. No one could identify one of the flags… it was South Vietnam’s old flag.
The Whitehouse
After all that walking, I was beat. I got back to Nat’s, had dinner, played with his dog, Winston, and crashed. The next day I headed back to Richmond for the pre-wedding festivities and the wedding. I was the quasi-official wedding photographer, so I have to let the bride and groom see all the photos before posting anything, so you’ll have go trust me that Asa looked dapper and Bekah was beautiful…
