There And Back Again

It's been a month since my last post here, and even longer since my last Rivendell update. Well, I've not only returned to Bag End, I've gone to the Grey Havens to see Gandalf, Bilbo, and Frodo off with the elves and gone back to Bag End with Sam! And am now on my way to the Lonely Mountain with Bilbo, Gandalf, and the dwarves. And have gone over 7,000 miles!! Total miles so far: 7042.573. A combination of walking, riding both stationary and outdoor bicycles, and ellipticals. A YMCA membership that I used in 3 different Y facilities (my home Y was Lakewood, but I also used Van Nuys and Fullerton), a hotel fitness room, a cruise-ship fitness room, and my home 24-hour Fitness. Plus a couple of home treadmills and some charity events both walking and riding.

Quite the Difference

The Y is a quiet place, with no music being broadcast into all the rooms, whereas 24-Hour Fitness blasts the staff and customers with an obnoxiously loud sound system.

There are also 3 different kinds of ellipticals there, one of which is lower-body only, while one of the combined upper and lower machines could best be described as the bastard offspring of an elliptical and a stair-stepper. On the more traditional machine, the rise is higher and the stroke shorter than the LifeFitness machines at the Y, so these are going to take some adjustment. I'm also seriously missing the fans that help keep the cardio rooms cooled down at the Y.

Ever since I got the bike(s), I don't spend much time on stationary bikes, but they do have both the upright and recumbant styles

Four TVs in the section of the cardio area where the ellipticals and bikes are located, one on some morning talk show, one on ESPN, one on Faux News, and one on some game show; I didn't pay any attention to what the TVs in the other section (treadmills and traditional stair-steppers) were showing. The TVs gave me something to look at besides the panel on the machines while I was listening to my music.

I did it.

I discontinued my membership at the Y and joined 24-Hour Fitness. I needed a gym with more hours available, and the Y couldn't provide that. I have an appointment with a trainer on the 24th to learn how to set up their strength-training machines.

Whittier Greenway Ride

Last Sunday, instead of putting my Caps-hockeyfied bike helmet on and riding over to Anaheim Ice to watch the Ducks open training camp, I rode up to Whittier to their nearly new (opened last year) Whittier Greenway multi-use trail. This is an out-of-service rail right-of-way (IIRC, it was purchased from the Union Pacific) which has been paved and planted for use as a pedestrian-cycling-equestrian trail, and runs from just shy of the San Gabriel River Trail on the northwest end to just shy of La Mirada Blvd on the southeast end. There are hopes and plans to try to complete the connection to SGRT (that stretch of land is currently privately owned) and south-eastward into Orange County (that would just rock!).

Here's Orion at the beginning of the trail, on Pioneer Blvd just a little south of Beverly Blvd.

Commemorating the Salt Lake Route, near the old citrus warehouses.
Orion at the far end, at Mills just off of Lambert.

More Ride Pictures

Posted in a Picasa album.

Fun Day Today

Well, kinda. And kinda not fun at all. Parked the van at Maxwell Park in Anaheim and rode Orion down Magnolia to Warner, then Warner to PCH, and then up PCH into Seal Beach. Stopped to refuel a bit (I'd ridden that bowl of cereal away completely), then went out Marina Av over to Alamitos Bay to the farmers' market there. Very pleasant so far, and even saved a wallet from who knows what when I picked it up off a bus bench and turned it over to the first LEOs I saw (actually the second ones; the first two were on the other side of the road, headed in the opposite direction from me). Stocked up on some stuff at the farmers' market, then headed over to the San Gabriel River Trail.

And hit my heel on the grocery pannier so hard that I knocked one of the pannier's hooks off the rear rack, and it crashed into the wheel, breaking a spoke in the process.

So I limped it back to Maxwell Park, and headed over to a bike shop in Fullerton. Where it'll be ready by Wednesday close-of-business, but I won't be able to get back over there until Sunday. So Radagast the Beige-and-Black will be getting some attention this week.

And I'm now about 20 miles from Bag End.

Puzzling

After I posted the update on my Walk to Rivendell mileage I went over to the Eowyn Challenge page to update my shields and to get the distances for The Hobbit. I decided to go ahead and do the Grey Havens leg of LOTR after I get back to Bag End. But when I went to the section for The Hobbit, I learned that they have the Bag End to Rivendell and the Rivendell to the Lonely Mountain distances posted, but nothing for the return to Bag End! Somehow I don't think Bilbo retraced his exact steps. Wonder what my chances are of hunting down a copy of the Fonstad book.

Rivendell!

Wow! Some time during the month of July I made it back to Rivendell! Next stop: home at Bag End, just 198.307 miles away. Last week I also registered for the Surf City 5K, which will be February 7, 2010.

San Diego Rides

I have an album showing most of the few pictures I took while visiting San Diego last weekend.

Last Week's Rides

Just the usual jaunt down the SGRT from Rynerson Park in Lakewood to Seal Beach. The Falls of the San Gabriel River, this time at or very near high tide. The concrete river bed is about 10 miles long, and this point is about 3 miles or so from the beach.
A white pelican near the Falls.
A sign in Seal Beach at Marina and Pacific Coast Hwy:
Later on, probably tomorrow, I'll post some pictures from last weekend's trip to San Diego.

Alameda

By the time I got to Alameda, there wasn't much time left for a ride before the stitching get-together, but I did get to see a few things of interest. Like this tattered but interesting looking house about a block away from where the GTG (Get ToGether) was held:
Then I started to ride past it and saw the doors:
They don't seem to be using it for anything right now, but like Anaheim (which is at least using theirs for a museum), Alameda has a Carnegie Library building:
And a dyslexic lane marker:
And apparently just one park:
But a charming little cottage complex with an irrestible-to-me name:
The view through the gates:
And a 13th Commandment at the Episcopal Church:
Finally, here's Orion at the beach in Alameda:
I want to go back. I want to see more. And not just of Alameda, but of Santa Clara and San Jose, too. It's so very, very bike-friendly up there!! What's the weather like in December? The Caps have a West Coast road trip which has them at the Shark Tank on December 30.

More Pictures!

They have directional signs up telling you how to get to the Columbia Memorial Space Center, but the facility still wasn't open a week ago when I last rode by there. I'm beginning to think they're never going to open it.
Many many years ago I worked for what was then known as Union Oil Company of California. I saw this plane over near the West Imperial terminal on my ride last weekend:
Next rest stop: Tokyo. The end of Imperial Highway:
And this bridge crosses Torrance Blvd not far from where I work:

A few pictures from recent rides...

A coyote in Coyote Creek, along the eponymous trail.
One of the Navy's blimp hangars in Tustin, seen from the north side:
A heron hunting for breakfast near the San Gabriel River Trail:
The Falls of the San Gabriel River:
Orion in Old Town Tustin, in front of a redwood:
A jacaranda in bloom in El Dorado Regional Park in Long Beach:
A tree trunk I thought looked interesting, Hyde Park, Orange:
A begging squirrel in Rynerson Park, Lakewood:
And if you're going to immortalized a guy in concrete somewhere in Tustin, at least spell his name correctly!

Less Than 12 Miles!!

The BFFs and I went to the Joint Forces Training Base (formally NAS Los Alamitos [the Navy still holds the lease] but currently being run [down] by the Army, hence the name "change") for their annual Independence Day celebration. We had a good time, but on one of my bicycle tours of the base, I got a flat tire. So today I'm off to the bike shop. This is the same tube I had replaced on Thursday. This just sucks out loud!

One of my coworkers is on vacation this week, so I'll be starting work about 11:30 each morning. That gives me about an hour and a half for a ride each morning, unless I opt to go to the gym.

And how is it that gardening seems to use muscles you don't use during strength training?

Rivendell

I know it's been a long time since my last mileage update, so here it is: as of May 31, I was 5328.288 miles from Bag End and had left Isengard for the return trip to Bag End.

LA River Ride 2009

Crashed and burned. I don't know what I did wrong, but I only made it to the second pit stop, the one right after we get off the streets of Vernon and back onto LART. Just a hair under 18 miles, when I should have been able to easily do the half century, and probably a metric century! I was also disappointed to see that they didn't have the bike-wheel arch out this year. No pics of the starting/ending point at the Autry Museum in Griffith Park (near the LA Zoo), but here are a few pics of things I saw along the way, including an Xtracycle at the Maywood Pit Stop.

Checking In

I know it's been a long time between posts. Just not a lot to talk about here lately. Periods of conscientious exercising mixed with (too many and too often!!) periods of laziness.

Yesterday's bike ride was really shorter than usual because the BFFs got up much earlier than they normally do, so I was only about 15 minutes into my ride when the phone rang and it was them, telling me they were ready for our breakfast date. Anyway, after breakfast I headed over to the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana to see the new Science of Hockey exhibit. Well, I was in the wrong lane on the freeway, couldn't get over, and found myself trying to find the back way into the facility. Ended up in Santa Ana's "Floral Park" neighborhood, which I'd heard of but had never seen. Omigawd, it's gorgeous! Can you say "house envy"?

So today when I headed out for my Sunday Long Ride, I parked over by the stadium, as usual, and headed over into that area. And spent nearly an hour roaming the streets of Floral Park, and still haven't seen anywhere near all of it. I did see enough to know that if the lottery gawds ever smiled upon me, that's where I'd buy a house in Orange County!! Then I wandered back over toward the DSC, because I'd seen a bike trail yesterday and wanted to know where it goes.

It—Santiago Creek Trail—goes to just a teensy bit past Tustin Av, just north of the 22 freeway. So I wandered down Tustin Av to 4th St, headed east on 4th until it turns into Irvine Blvd and stayed on Irvine Blvd until I reached Tustin Market Place (I know this is meaningless to some of my readers, but the local ones will have an idea where I was), then onto Peterson Canyon Trail (after stopping at Performance Bike Shop's store at TMP to have the tire inflation checked, then going over to the formerly Chick's now Dick's Sporting Goods [yes, Melissa, the one where we picked up the packets for Make Room for Santa] to stock up on Body Glide, which Performance didn't have in stock), and on down to Jamboree Rd/Dyer Rd. From there, I wandered over toward the Tustin Legacy shopping center, near the old Tustin Air Base (two separate links there), and gradually wandered back over to SART and to where I'd parked. 42.9 miles of wandering, many of them places I'd never seen. And I still didn't find the trails that part of the Make Room for Santa 5K was on!

A note on the SCT link above: the trail's western terminus is at I-5 and Broadway on the Bikely.com map I linked to.

Has it really been so long since my last post?

I keep telling myself I'll write a catch-up post, but then never seem to get it done. Nice bike ride, today, though! And I actually made it to the gym on Friday after work. But I have just been incredibly lazy lately, smacking the snooze alarm instead of getting out of bed. What is it about late winter/early spring that seems to bring on the lazies? I still haven't figured out how far I walked on the ship during the cruise, even though I wore a pedometer and kept track of my distance. Even managed to get up to the gym on the ship one morning for some time on the elliptical. I haven't a clue where I am on the Walk to Rivendell right now. I registered for the Coaster Run this year, and even though I picked up my goodie bag, I chose not to do the walk. Did go for a nice ride that day, though; does that count? I also managed to do the 15-mile version of the Tour de Sewer this year. Did the short one because I somehow managed to have two events that day--the TdS and a stitch class at my LNS. It turned out to be a good thing that I only did the 15-mile ride, since I ended up with rear-wheel problems when the new spokes on the new wheel that I had to have put on Orion loosened up and made the bike unsafe to ride. I'm still considering registering for the City of Angels ride later this month, and have already registered for this year's LA River Ride. Pics from today's ride are still in the camera, but there are pics from past rides over there <--- in the Slideshow.

Surf City 5K

And yes, I was wearing my Columbia Memorial pin (which looks just like the second patch down on the left in the link). If I'd had more time, I might have basted the patch to my pants leg. 2454 out of 2508 in the 5K; 1584 out of 1621 women in the 5K; 1:04:01 chip time.

This event was actually worse than last year's, even taking into account last year's sideways rain. Our gorgeous Santa Ana conditions turned into morning low clouds and fog, which brought the temps down quite a bit until the marine layer started burning off. Short-sleeved shirt, shorts, my cycling tights, my cycling windbreaker (which quickly became too much). Horrendous traffic, which led to me being so late that my gun time was nearly 1.5 hours! I really do wish I'd ridden my bike from the parking to the starting line area; all told, I walked nearly 5 miles today, with 3.1 of that being the event itself. So I walked the whole thing, rather than trying any of that faster-than-a-walk-slower-than-a-jog motion that Melissa (I missed you, gf!!) calls a wog. And have you ever tried walking on a center divider? Those concrete imitation bricks are dangerous! But I had to try to stay out of the way of the half-marathoners, who started about 10 minutes after I crossed the start line for the 5K. As far as I can tell, the shuttle stops depicted on the website were purely fictional.

I had one other friend participating in this event, Cindi from our Local Needlework Shop.

2009, Weeks 1 through 4

2009, Week 1 (29 Dec to 04 Jan)
Monday, December 29: 2.51 miles on the elliptical; 6.30 miles bike ride; full strength-training circuit.
Tuesday, December 30: 1.426 miles on the treadmill; 3.97 miles on the elliptical; 2.37 miles bike ride.
Wednesday, December 31: 18.13 miles bike ride.
Thursday, January 1: nothing; had to work today; gym closed.
Friday, January 2: nothing.
Saturday, January 3: 13.30 miles bike ride.
Sunday, January 4: 39.30 miles bike ride.

Total mileage this week: 87.306
Miles from Bag End: 4408.787
Miles to Mount Doom: 228.213

2009, Week 2 (05 Jan to 11 Jan)
Monday, January 5: 1.664 miles on the treadmill.
Tuesday, January 6: 1.375 miles on the treadmill.
Wednesday, January 7: 1.600 miles on the treadmill; 21.25 miles bike ride.
Thursday, January 8: 22.10 miles bike ride.
Friday, January 9: nothing.
Saturday, January 10: nothing.
Sunday, January 11: 39.13 miles bike ride.

Total mileage this week: 87.119
Miles from Bag End: 4495.906
Miles to Mount Doom: 141.094

2009, Week 3 (12 Jan to 18 Jan)
Monday, January 12: nothing; temporary schedule change at work for the week.
Tuesday, January 13: nothing
Wednesday, January 14: 15.14 miles bike ride.
Thursday, January 15: nothing
Friday, January 16: nothing
Saturday, January 17: 2.767 miles on the treadmill; 32.50 miles bike ride
Sunday, January 18: 2.543 miles on the treadmill; 36.70 miles bike ride

Total mileage this week: 89.65
Miles from Bag End: 4585.556
Miles to Mount Doom: 51.444

2009, Week 4 (19 Jan to 25 Jan)
Monday, January 19: nothing; temporary schedule change ended today
Tuesday, January 20: 2.414 miles on the treadmill
Wednesday, January 21: 1.8 miles on the treadmill; 21.80 miles bike ride.
Thursday, January 22: 7.969 miles walking around Disneyland.
Friday, January 23: nothing.
Saturday, January 24: 2.521 miles on the treadmill.
Sunday, January 25: 32.10 miles bike ride.

Total mileage this week: 68.604
Miles from Bag End: 4654.16
Arrived at Mount Doom at mile 4637. Frodo and Sam fly via Deus Ex Machina Airlines to Morannon.
Distance from Morannon to Minas Tirith: 102.84