February 2008 Archives

Here is the interactive route map for Southern California. Below is the route for entire 8-day, 650-mile route. I'm thinking about turning up on a Pasadena street block to see what a real cycler looks like, riding at speeds on flat ground that I can only aspire to coming down a mountain.

Tonight's lunar eclipse will already be underway by the time the moon rises in Southern California, but will only be in it's early stages. The peak viewing is from 7:00 to 7:51. The picture above , which illustrates what to expect during the course of the evening, is from the Griffith Park Observatory, which will be hosting an eclipse event tonight

The moon should be in the eastern sky, at the 77 degree compass reading (slightly north east).

To my thinking, that might eliminate the hills above Pasadena and other foothill cities as being the best vantage points, since the moon will likely be blocked when it first rises. By 7:00, it is supposed to be high enough in the sky to be seen from everywhere.

The other issue, of course, is the bad weather. Tonight's forecast in the San Gabriel Valley calls for partly cloudy weather. Since the night lasts from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., it's a crap shoot whether the skies will be clear during the peak viewing time.

I scoped out some weather reports in nearby areas for committed eclipse viewers, and the beach areas around Malibu have a slightly better forecast of "mostly clear," so a beach viewing might work. The Antelope Valley has the same forecast as the San Gabriel Valley. Out in the Mojave, Barstow has a clear forecast, but there is partly cloudy weather forecast in Victorville, so getting out under the desert stars could make for a long drive. Palm Springs has rain forecast for tonight. I think the best bet to guarantee viewing is to drive up the 15 Freeway until the sky clears. After all, it is the last eclipse until 2010, so the effort might be worth it.

The Griffith Park Observatory is free and open to traffic and has telescopes for public viewing, as well as loudspeaker presentations on what is going on during the eclipse. If the weather is clear, it should be the place to be.

I was surprised to read in the Los Angeles Times today that the Mt. Waterman ski area reopened for the first time in 5 years this weekend. I thought the snow up in the San Gabriels was mostly gone, as it looks in the above picture from today's webcam.

Apparently, as mentioned in the article, being a north-facing ski area in Southern California is a huge benefit. The red circle above is, I believe, the Twin Peaks. On the other side of them is Mt. Waterman. Looking at the photos in the L.A Times piece, you can see just how much more snow is on the north-facing slopes.

I can't say much for the long-term prospects of the ski area though.... if the warming trend continues, ski resorts in places where there is no possibility of 80 degree February days will be in trouble, so what chance is there for Mt. Waterman. Let's all enjoy it while we can.

This is an old article I stumbled across the other day from the LA Times- a parent pleading with her peers to let their kids bike to school and play in the neighborhood without panicking about sex offenders.

The most memorable paragraph:

Now, my son's bike stands alone, always the sole occupant of the school's tucked-in-a-faraway-corner bike rack. When we arrive, other kids look at us in amazement and ask questions like "Why do you ride a bike?" and "Don't you have a car?"

I'd like to give on anecdote about how back in my day we biked to school, but truthfully I was one of two kids in town who was expected to regularly walk or bike to school. Fortunately, for many years I lived next door to the other one.

I recall we once led most of our class on a walking excursion to a birthday party being held at the home of a girl who lived up the street. Several class members complained the whole way, red-faced and breathing hard for much of the mile-long walk.

I also remember that by high school, several of my friends were not allowed to bike into a neighboring town that was more commercial, busy, and lower-income than the small, residential suburb I lived in. I had been allowed to bike there by the time I was 8 or 9 years old to go to rent videos or buy baseball cards.

My parent's generation was far more independent as kids, but that didn't seem to stop a lot of them from obsessing over their children's safety. So if my generation was raised in that obsessive environment, and the kids being raised today are in the same boat, when does someone turn it around and let kids go play outdoors and run wild?

Streetblog, a New York-based bike blog, takes aim at Los Angeles in a post about biker's rights. The comparison is between Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley, an avid biker, has recently pushed through an ordinance forbidding cars to make a left turn in front of a bike.

In Los Angeles, however, where bike advocacy groups have been pushing a biker's bill of rights, riders complain of being harassed by the LAPD. As a matter of fact, after a city meeting where the bill of rights was pushed, several bike activists reported being pulled over by the LAPD:

The cyclists were riding on Virgil and approaching Melrose when four cyclists executed a "vehicular left turn" on the approach to a red light. The car to the rear and left continued to accelerate toward the red light and only yielded to the cyclists in control of the lane at the last moment, causing him to stop suddenly. The cyclists were riding in pairs throughout the left turn maneuver. Behind the cyclists was an LAPD Sgt. who looked at the incident and decided that the cyclists were impeding traffic, all on the approach to a red light.

He pulled over the cyclists, let the motorist go, called for backup and tied up an additional three squad cars and a helicopter while he lectured the cyclists on everything from "impeding" to pedal reflectors to the difference in weight between a bicycle and an automobile.

Having had cars shoot by to my left by about three inches, waited endlessly at pedestrian crosswalks to walk my bike across the street, and had pedestrians look at me like I'm crazy when using a left turn lane, I can attest that people don't quite know how they are supposed to treat bikers.

But I can't say I've been pulled over for not having a car yield to me. Not yet anyway.

I haven't biked in Chicago (or really much of anywhere besides Pasadena-area and suburban New Jersey) but based on other's accounts and some common sense, Los Angeles County ain't a biker's paradise. Evidence:

- Look at this map of bike paths. Note the big blank area in the middle. That is Los Angeles.

- A lot of those bike paths are hard to find, run through concrete riverbeds, and are very short (I'm looking at you Arroyo Seco.)

-Bike racers at the Rose Bowl are fighting off an attempt by the police to ban them from riding.

-Bikes are not allowed on most county trails, even ones that get low usage.

-Our readers sometimes complain that they get screamed at by police when bringing their bikes on public transportation.

This picture blew me away... it was emailed to me by a friend. It rarely snows on Maui, and then only very high on Haleakala, but this looks to me to be surprisingly low on the mountain.