Mitt liv som Tobin

0. Bicycled to the Pasadena Farmers' Market (3.5 miles), our first time there. Bought a rosemary plant for $1.25 and listened to a guy play a home-made banjo. Ran into my friend Brian (brilem) whom I last saw at a summer party at Lisa's house in Highland Park, and before that on a camping trip to the Kern River. tableauvivante had posted photos of the farmers' market even before we left the house. The banjo player urged us to vote for Ron Paul.

1. Bicycling back home, resolved to host a brunch potluck in the future.

2. Drove out to North Hollywood (16 miles) to check out the "Eco-Fare," hosted, of all places, at Universal Studies. I had a hankering for BBQ, but did not expect to find any. Thus I was surprised and delighted to stumble upon Kansas City BBQ for a delicious "burnt end" sandwich.

3. The Eco-Fare at Universal Studios was kind of lame. Universal glued green moss to their huge "globe" sculpture for the event. I did find out about several interesting local organizations, such as a BioDiesel cooperative, and get to meet the Dervaes family, of Dervaes Gardens/Path To Freedom, a Pasadena farm located on a one-acre residential lot. The biodiesel co-op was pretty interesting, too. I was amused to learn that their biodiesel was at one time composed of 50% soy oil, 25% walnut oil, and 25% chicken fat. ("Powered by Chickens!"?)

4. Ambling home aimlessly over Los Angeles surface streets, we soon found ourselves in the viscinity of Griffith Park. We drove up to gawk at the sunset and the Foucault's Pendulum, along with thousands of other people. We strolled through the Observatory museum briefly, but were expelled by a fire alarm. Their new exhibits seem quite popular.

5. Ambling, again, down from the mountain, we found ourselves in Los Feliz Village, a wonderful neighborhood of which I was only dimly aware. (In fact, I had heard good things about Los Feliz, but thought it synonymous with Silverlake.) This one block in particular is wonderful, with a couple cool diners, a berkeleyesque bookstore called Skylight Books, a beautiful french-style cafe called Figaro, a movie theatre, and a cafe open to 2am. Will definitely be returning. With hipster bingo sheets, of course.

I spent the morning* bashing olive trees with a rake, as part of the Caltech olive festival.

In the evening, Stefan took me along on a night-flight while he received a lesson in flying by instrument (IFR) in the Caltech Aero Club's Cessna 172P with tail number N98326. The idea with instrument flying is that the pilot relies on instruments in the cockpit rather than on looking out the window to get where they are going. To practice, the student is "hooded" with a visor that blocks their view out the windows, allowing them to see only the instrument panel. Which means that the instructor and I got a great view of Los Angeles from the air while Stefan saw only needles and dials.

* starting at 7 AM !

The first storm in months* hit Los Angeles on Friday, so the next morning Bree and I decided to go on some erosion tourism. We had hoped to find our city's river channels coursing with muddy water, carrying trees and boulders alike toward the ocean, but instead we found them pretty much dry. I guess the first day of rain just soaks the soil. We need a little more to start the debris flows.

Naturally, we headed up into the mountains, up CA-39 following the San Gabriel River. (Somewhere back in my mind I contemplated the various scenarios involving the road washing out behind us; the San Gabriels are littered with abandoned highways.) It's amazing how a little weather can make a place so much more dramatic. The wisps of cloud rising from the mountain tips would have me believe I was in the Peruvian Andes.

The above photo is of Glendora Ridge Road, a little-traveled road, just one lane for both traffic directions, that traverses the mountain ridge from CA-39 to Mount Baldy Road. We saw just two other cars.

We took refuge at the Mt Baldy Lodge. Outside the weather was crisp and the air smelled like Christmas, something about the fresh rain and the conifers. The lodge was the perfect place, snug and warm, and with delicious foods. We weren't the only ones who thought so; it was packed, for the first time all summer. Strangely, the storm brought people into the mountains. We dined on hot apple cider, prime rib with baked potato and salad, heffeweizen, chocolate cake, and irish coffee. Somebody said it was snowing near the summit, but we didn't believe him; today we look up at a snowy mountaintop.

It's amazing such a place is less than ten miles from the metropolis.

* LA receives on average about 14 inches of rain in a year. So far this year we've received only two.

Hiked up Mt. Baden-Powell in the San Gabriels today, with a small contingent from the Alpine Club. We covered eight miles (each way) on the Pacific Crest Trail... that's 0.3% of it! The Baden Powell junction is the highest point of the PCT in the San Gabriels.

In fact, the hike was mainly "inspired" by the Alpine club--since I missed their departure from Caltech! I was entering the Caltech parking lot just as they were leaving. Nonetheless, I proceeded to the trailhead (up on Highway 2) on my own. Once at the trail head, however, I was faced with the two directions of the PCT. A boy scout troup arrived and, taking a gander at their maps, I figured which way to go. I met the (surprised) Alpine Club folks at the summit.

Much of the trail really is at the spine of the San Gabriels. Look to the right and there's Los Angeles; look to the left and there's the Mojave desert. Awesome.



After the hike, I stopped at Newcomb Ranch Bar & Restaurant on Highway 2 (between Islip Saddle and the Mt Wilson turnoff). I was very pleased to discover it--driving up in the Angeles Crest, I have a few times wished for a roadhouse like this, serving delicious burgers and beers, such as I consumed on this visit. While I was eating, the bartender answered the telephone. "No, sir, we don't actually have an address. ... Oh [chuckles], no I don't know our GPS coordinates either!"

California's Highway 2 is a great highway. It runs from the beach, through downtown Los Angeles, through Echo Park, and then up into the foothills, turning into the Angeles Crest Highway as it ascends into the San Gabriels and ultimately descends into the desert. The portion that descends into the desert is currently closed, and the bartender at the roadhouse informs me that it's been closed for two and a half years and might be closed years more--it was washed out in a storm. The San Gabriels are littered with abandoned highways. Just at the trailhead there was a route descending into the San Gabriel Valley, blocked off and with plants pushing up through the pavement, labelled on the map as "CLOSED INDEFINITELY." And, of course, there is also the Bridge To Nowhere and its associated abandoned highway.

But the closure of the (otherwise immaculately paved) CA-2 descent has given me the idea of biking it! It would be awesome, and there would be no cars to contend with.

After my delicious burger (generously slathered in Tabasco sauce) and beer (some hefeweizen brewed in Pasadena), I set out to find the Field Day encampment of the Caltech Amateur Radio Club (CIT-ARC), which I understood to be on Mt. Wilson, near the observatory. I drove out there, but failed to locate the CIT-ARC folks.

Tired.

Bees on a bottlebrush tree on my walk to school.

By the way, have you heard about the bees? They are dying. I have only one datapoint: my own backyard beehive in Orange County was discovered dead and eaten by wax moths a couple months ago.

Our new house is very small--pretty much the perfect size, actually. The living room has hardwood floor, a fireplace, a solid wood table with chairs, and a really cozy blue L-shaped couch with many blankets (all due to our housemate Jeff). On the right side of the house are the two bedrooms, and between them, connected to both, is the bathroom. Jeff's room is connected to the living room, and ours, the kitchen, which is at the back left of the house, connected to the living room. So there, you have the topology of the house: genus one.

There is a little backyard and a front yard too, and in these yards there are many fruit trees, mainly citrus. Yesterday morning we sat in the sun in front yard eating our breakfasts and greeting the passers-by, all of whom were speaking Spanish. Two blocks down the street there's a little Argentine market (there is a whole steak aisle). Our landlord, George, lives just across the street, above George's Market, a meat market where he is the butcher. From the front yard, the San Gabriel mountains loom high with palm trees in the foreground. In the background there is the snowy peak of Mt. Baldy.

The folks at MentorHouse gave us a mattress and we carried it on top of my little Volkswagen through the late-night abandoned streets of Pasadena, arms out the windows to hold it down. We've only just now begun emptying the car. We have maybe 200 lbs of books driven all the way from Rochester, and a half dozen winter jackets that may turn out to be more useful in southern california than expected (last night was forecast a "hard freeze" in the 20's and 30's). It is nice to finally have a home again.

The first time I found out about the MentorHouse, a kind of co-op house a block or two from Caltech, I read on their wiki that the house might have been demolished. You see, the owner wanted to build condos in its place. Tragedy!

After getting in touch with the MentorHouse folks, I learned that there was a stay of execution, as it were: the house, more than fifty years old, qualified as an historic structure! Saved! Moreoever, someone was just moving out and, yes, would we like to move in today or tomorrow? But then that person decided not to move out after all. Psyche!

Then we showed up here to visit and learned the bizarre epilogue: The landlord sold the house to a new owner, who promptly served the MentorFolks a 30-day notice of Lease Termination. He wants to live here himself, and in California that's legal grounds to dump your tenants.

But they are festive as ever here in this decadence, lounging eveningly in front of a fire (burning the bits of a palm tree that was just chopped down by the new owner's gardening crew), and sampling from what seems to be an abundance of chocolate. Indeed, we walked in to a massage chain and shortly later a MentorResident burst in the door, returned from a trip to Baja, and handed out what he described as "the cheapest beer in Mexico!" It turned out to be made in Belgium.

We're comfortably set up in a spare bedroom for the denouemont. The electricity's to be cut off on Tuesday, and the eviction is January 8th!