Racking Up Needless Spending

I’m probably going to ruffle some home town feathers with my comments this week, because the subject of this column took considerable effort by some of my fellow Crescenta Valley residents to make happen.

As an avid cyclist, I’m thrilled that my home town now has bike lanes on our main drag, the appropriately named Foothill Blvd. I thank the CV Town Council from the bottom of my goofy and dangerously tight bike shorts for their hard work in making it happen. It probably won’t solve the motorist vs. cyclist wars that have gone on since Mr. Ford invented the Model A. But it does give us pedal-pushers at least a narrow ribbon of pavement that we can rightfully claim as our own. Again, beaucoup kudos on behalf of current and future cyclists in our community.

I just have one question. What’s with those new bike racks? It seems to me the majority of the new racks are as close as it comes to being useless due to their odd locations. Who’s actually going to use the things? I mean – a large, metal, bike-shaped rack cemented into the sidewalk outside a dry cleaners next door to a florist? Really? I guess that’s good news for all those cyclists who take their tailored suits and designer dresses to the cleaners on their Huffys. But I can hear the romantic conversation now. “Honey, I bought you this beautiful dozen red roses. I know they’re mostly stems and thorns after bringing them home stuffed into my bike jersey. But it’s the thought that counts, right?”

Another odd placement is the shiny new peg and hitch installation imbedded in the sidewalk in front of an old rock church at Rosemont Avenue – a sidewalk far away and way below grade of the church entrance. In other words, completely out-of-site from anyone on the church grounds, but ideally situated for someone to drive up next to it in a pickup, cut any cable lock with bolt cutters and toss a bike into the bed of the truck and drive away without anyone ever seeing the heist.

Seriously. If you rode your bike to St. Lukes, would you park it on the street, completely out of sight from the church? I know God is always watching over us, but I’m not so sure He cares all that much about our bikes.

When I first saw the new racks being installed I thought, okay, they’ll probably get around to putting the things outside the library, or in front of Vons or Ralphs, Walgreen’s, Office Depot – the sort of destination where you can reasonably expect at least some bikers to go, especially local students. That might be a worthy expenditure of municipal funds. Maybe.

But drive along Foothill and look where the new racks are. The locations look either ridiculously random or as if it’s been done to strict ‘governmental guidelines.’ As in: “a galvanized device for securing manually powered modes of transportation shall be installed at intervals of precisely 150 yards between the business establishments present for public egress and ingress and blah-di-blah, blah, blah.”

Actually, according to the recent article in the newspaper that prints my column each week ("Bicyclists No Longer "Rack" Their Brains for Place to Park" , CVWeekly.com, July 14, 2011), business owners we’re asked if they wanted a bike rack installed in front of their establishment. Merchants who were “hesitant” were bypassed.

I can only think there must be quite a few Foothill business owners who think cyclists are a sketchy bunch of hooligans who shouldn’t be encouraged to visit their establishments. That’s too bad.

It’s been several months since the new racks have been installed along Foothill. I drive this route several times every day and have yet to see a single bike parked at any of the new magic metal municipal money erasers.

So, here’s an idea. If there are any racks still laying around in a warehouse somewhere, maybe we can install a few of them at the wonderful new dog park that will soon be built at nearby Crescenta Valley park for use by all those dog owners sure to be arriving on their Schwinns. Makes as much sense as putting one outside a florist or dry cleaners, doesn’t it?

And now that the entire CV Town Council will be driving around looking to run me over on my bike, I’ll see you ‘round town.

This is an edited version of my column first-published yesterday, 8.25.11 in the CV Weekly Newspaper (www.cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

On the Trail to New Discoveries

As I mentioned in my post last week "Boots, Bug Juice & the Beauty Before Us" , one of the blessings of living in the Crescenta Valley (in Southern California's unincorporated Los Angeles County) is our close proximity and easy access to a seemingly endless network of hiking and biking trails.

Since the beginning of this year, my wife and I have enjoyed a new-found focus on better health and wellness. (I hesitate to use the word, “fitness” because it conjures up images of either hyperactive old men in one-piece jumpsuits and bad hair pieces doing calisthenics on a black & white TV show, or frighteningly ripped and oiled women on Sunday morning infomercials who could break me in half over a spray-tanned knee and never miss a beat of their adrenaline-fueled sales pitch.)

Where was I? Oh, right. One result of my wife’s and my passionate pursuit of physical perfection (just go with me on this, okay?) has been our diligence in seeking out new hiking trails. Although our big goal hike next month is the 14,505-foot summit of Mt. Whitney, for the past several months we’ve primarily done hikes much closer to home.

Some of our recent favorites, in fact, are only minutes from our driveway. I’m embarrassed to admit that, even having lived in this area almost all of our lives, we’ve recently discovered many trails that we had no idea existed, let alone that we have ever hiked before.

For example, the trailhead to one of our favorite after-work escapes these days is as close as the San Rafael hills above a popular local tourist destination, the Descanso Gardens. Granted, the trails collectively called “Cherry Canyon” are relatively short. But what they lack in distance, they more than make up for in intensity. One route in particular, the Owl Trail, climbs straight up the mountain – sans switchbacks – until you reach the top and are rewarded with spectacular views (between bouts of the dry heaves, of course) of  downtown L.A, Glendale and Griffith Park looking South, Pasadena to the East and the entire sweep of the Crescenta Valley foothills looking to the North.

Whenever my wife and I hike these trails, whatever the weather, we always are entertained by the variety of wildlife we see as the ecology around us changes from shaded canopies of oak trees, to bone dry chaparral, to crumbled granite rock fall and dusty, rutted fire roads. We’ve been quite literally stopped in our tracks watching the silent drama of a hawk searching the ground below for field mice. We can’t hike more than a hundred yards without hearing the rustle of a wild rabbit in the undergrowth alongside the trail. If we pause long enough, the bunny is sure to show its furry self – along with some of the most unusual and colorful creepy crawly bugs and bird life I’ve ever seen. All in all, it makes for quite an entertaining way to exercise both your muscles and appreciation of the Crescenta Valley. 

Although we don’t hike them nearly as often, we also enjoy the trails through the Deukmejian Wilderness Park above Markridge Rd. Former turn-of-the-century owner, George LeMesnager would no doubt be amazed at what has been done to the land surrounding his old stone barn. We have trekked along these trails both before and after the terrain-changing Station Fire and are always amazed at the views they afford of our hometown.

Another particularly challenging favorite is the trail that begins at the top of Lake Avenue in Pasadena and switchbacks relentlessly up to the top of Echo Mountain. Once on top, we like to wander through the eerie (to me, at least) ruins of Professor Thaddeus S.C. Lowe’s “White City” and the long-abandoned Mount Lowe Railway. At 3207 feet elevation, the trail climbs dramatically high above Altadena and rewards sweaty visitors with views to the ocean and beyond, air quality permitting, of course. One of the unique features of this particular hike is the shear nature of the trail up the spine of the mountain. With no other hills or trees to obstruct your view from the top, hikers can see all the way down to where the trail begins on the floor of the San Gabriel Valley below. It’s a tiring but welcome visual reminder of just how far you’ve climbed. And justification for the aching in your thigh muscles and the sweat-soaked shirt on your back. 

I’ll wrap up for this week due to a sudden urge to lace up my Vasques, top off the CamelBak and head for the hills. If I don’t see you on the trail, I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an edited version of my column first published yesterday, 8.18.11, in the the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper .

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Boots, Bug Juice and the Beauty Before Us

Last Friday, my wife and our home-from-Montana-for-the-summer son made an early evening escape 300 miles up California's Hwy 395 to Mammoth Lakes, a small resort town in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. During the winter, Mammoth Mountain is a mecca for mogul-seekers and downhill danger junkies. In the summer, mountain bikers, fishermen, backpackers and outdoor lovers of all sorts find themselves drawn to this high altitude wonderland of recreational adventure. 

Due to the reality of too much work and not enough vacation time, our stay this past weekend was limited to, well, the weekend. Still, we managed to come back to our Southern California home on Sunday night filthy, sunburned, sore, bug-bit and thoroughly exhausted.

If a getaway to the mountains ever really needs an excuse, this past weekend ours was to get in a fast, high-altitude hike to help us prepare for our upcoming hike to the top of Mt. Whitney next month. If you don't have your north American mountain peak statistics at hand, Mt. Whitney is the highest peak in the contiguous United States. And yes, my wife and I are certifiably nuts.

We have our permit for the mid-September attempt to reach the 14,505-foot summit and have been trying to take as many hikes (as  high up as geography allows without driving to Katmandu) as we can before the big day. I’ll write more about that crazy goal next month.

Our training hike this past weekend was to a stunningly beautiful, above-timberline glacial pond in the John Muir Wilderness with the less-than-dignified name of Barney Lake. The actual hike was only seven miles, but the training value was in the elevation of the destination – some 10,000-plus feet above sea level. It was a breathtaking hike, not only because of the scarcity of oxygen.

On the way to Barney (I can’t write that without thinking of Fred and Wilma) Lake, the trail winds its way past other dazzlingly blue, Jeffery pine-rimmed lakes, through verdant mossy meadows, below shear granite cliffs and over crystal clear streams flowing from under snowfields still impressively large after a record winter. I’m sure we added hours to our sunrise hike with all of the times that the three of us rounded a corner or crested a hill to see revealed a panorama of such exquisite beauty that we were simultaneously stopped, speechless, in our tracks.

I have no idea how many times I said to my wife something along the lines of, “Tomorrow, when we’re both sitting in front our computers with a week’s worth of office work ahead, remember this view and where we were only 24 hours before.” Of course, it sounded more like, “Tomorrow (pant! pant!), when we’re (wheeze! pant!) both sitting in front of (pant! gasp!) our computers with (cough!) a week’s worth of office (pant! gasp!) work ahead, remem-(gasp!)-ber this view and (gulp! gasp!) where we were (pant!) only 24 (gasp! cough!) hours before.” I’m pretty sure our shadows shifted slightly underfoot in the time it took me to utter that simple sentence. But it was worth it.

Fast forward to the next day when, in fact, my wife and I were both in our respective offices basking in the glow of our respective computer screens. I opened up an email from the too-tired Mrs. expecting to read that she desperately wished we were back on the trail dodging fresh road apples, swatting suicidal mosquitoes and sucking scarce oxygen into our lungs instead of the slogging through the mundane meanderings of our day-to-day jobs. I know that’s what I was thinking, at least.

So, imagine my surprise when I read in my wife’s email a heartfelt reminder from her that we are richly blessed to be able to enjoy the outdoors at anytime, anywhere. Even right here in our hometown Crescenta Valley. She was referring, I knew, to our recent discovery and frequent use of hiking trails not 300 miles from here, not a three, four or five hour drive from here – but more like five minutes from our driveway.

She’s right, of course. Over the past few months, many of our training hikes have been done (and thoroughly enjoyed) as close to home as the Cherry Canyon trails above Descanso Gardens, or the extreme vertical climb from Altadena up to Echo Mountain and the ruins of the old Mount Lowe Railway.

I’ll write more about our adventures in local hiking next week. Maybe I can catch my breath by then.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a slightly revised version of my column titled “Happy Trails” first published yesterday, 8.11.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper. 

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

The Wages Of A Summer Job

Last week I revisited some of the summer jobs of my long-ago youth. (The Summer Job of Personal Growth) I was reminded of this topic when my wife and I visited our youngest son recently at his summer job at Hume Lake Christian Camps high in the cool, clean air of the Sequoia National Forest. Tough gig, right?

In that column, I reminisced about one particularly sweaty summer spent out in our family’s garage sorting through thousands of nuts and bolts and other zinc-plated hardware without the benefit of even a transistor radio to help me pass the time. As coincidence would have it, the rules for counselors at Hume Lake don’t allow them to have their iPods on duty either. Even more unique in this day and age is that there is absolutely zero cell phone reception up there. And no internet. Or TV.

Oh, the horror of it all.

So what does everybody do all summer? They live life. They explore. They sing songs. They talk to each other. I mean, deep, meaningful conversations. They study the Bible. They pray. They play. They play some more. They experience the beauty, wonder and joy of God’s creation without the almost overwhelming digital distractions so present in our lives today. Sounds like heaven to me.

On any given weekend, my son doesn’t know what job he’ll have the following week until a staff meeting on Sunday afternoon. Although he has worked some weeks as a cook in one of the camp’s kitchens (they feed as many as 1,200 hungry campers at each meal!), most weeks he works as a counselor to a group of boys of either elementary, middle school or high school age.

That means he spends the next six days being the boys’ confidant, mentor, security guard, pastor, nanny, activities director, trail guide and surrogate parent. He eats all three meals with his guys and sleeps in their cabins (or covered wagon in the case of the younger boys). So far this summer, he has experienced the joys, stresses and frustrations of caring for homesick kids, frightened kids, bored kids, angry kids, troubled kids, barfing kids, lonely kids, clingy kids, kids who won’t eat, kids who won’t stop eating, gassy kids, kids with acute arachnophobia and everything in between. 

As camp staff, he’s gets a weekly salary (which works out to be around $4 an hour) plus meals and a place to sleep at night. When he isn’t counseling, his living quarters are unfortunately only slightly better than sleeping in an abandoned rail car in suburban Fresno.

As I write this, he has two more weeks at camp until he comes home for several days and then leaves again for his sophomore year in college. He is exhausted beyond his ability to express it. He has caught several of the nasty colds and flu bugs that have raced through the camp this summer. He deeply misses his friends and family. He misses the internet and his music.

And he couldn’t be happier.

During our visit, my wife and I saw that our son has already earned something that won’t show up on any pay stub: namely, patience, fortitude, resilience, commitment and most importantly, what it means to be there for a kid who needs comforting, advice, strength, guidance, friendship and reassurance at any hour of the day or night.

In fact, my son said something during our visit that confirmed our suspicions. During a quiet moment, and with a heavy sigh, he said, “Dad, I think I’m starting to understand what it’s like to be a parent.” Let me tell you, it was all I could do not to dance around the room like the quarterback on a winning Super Bowl team.

But I didn’t. My face muscles almost cramped from trying to keep a straight face and not grin from ear to ear. I simply said, “Well, mom and I are very proud of your dedication and commitment to these kids, son. You’re certainly learning a lot this summer.”

At least I think that’s what I said. I couldn’t actually hear my own voice over the Mormon Tabernacle Choir belting out the Hallelujah Chorus in my head.

Please don’t tell the folks who operate Hume Lake, but I would have paid THEM to hire my son this summer. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is an edited version of my column first published yesterday, 8.4.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.