When She Flew, We Soared

I refer to last week as “geek week,” not only because that’s when Apple began selling their new, highly coveted iPhone 5, but also due to the spectacle of a low-altitude flyover of much of Southern California by the Space Shuttle Endeavour. Not to be outdone, my lovely and talented wife deemed last Friday – the day both events actually happened – as “nerd-vana.” (Kindly address your letters to her, not me.)

While I’m sure the world will see many more versions of the iPhone in years to come, Friday’s flyover was billed as the last ever “flight” of a space shuttle orbiter. Pretty heady stuff.

Mounted on top of a modified Boeing 747, the Endeavour’s flight plan over the Golden State included the skies above Sacramento, Santa Monica, El Segundo, the Getty Center and Griffith Park Observatory, a “money shot” flying low over the iconic Hollywood sign, a quick pass over JPL and the east end of the Crescenta Valley, then south to Disneyland and finally, back to LAX where it would land one last time, never to fly again.

As the son of an engineer/private pilot/aerospace junkie, during the heyday of the shuttle program I heard regular commentary describing the orbiters as the most complicated, over-engineered machines ever built by mankind. Dad would watch the broadcast of a shuttle launch or landing, shake his head and say that there were so many thousands of moving parts, interconnected electronic circuitry, first-of-its-kind software and critical systems in those kludges that even a hiccup in the works could cause the things to fall out of the sky.

I’ll never forget watching one orbiter do exactly that one awful January morning in 1986 when – 73 seconds after liftoff from the launch pad at Cape Canaveral – the Shuttle Challenger exploded high above the Atlantic Ocean. My soon-to-be-wife and I were among the many millions watching the tragedy as it played out on live TV.

In a coincidental quirk of fate, the shuttle that flew over the Crescenta Valley last week was the one built to replace the ill-fated Challenger orbiter. I hope that in the years to come, the sight of the Endeavour flying over JPL, then banking left and low over the San Rafael Hills will be the image I remember more often than that awful smoke plume of the Challenger’s twin solid rocket boosters corkscrewing out of control as the orbiter with seven crew members on board disintegrated in mid-air. Sometimes our reach exceeds our grasp with truly painful results.

On a much lighter note, waiting and wilting in the near-one-hundred-degree heat with the thousands of other people near JPL last Friday, I quickly realized that the real show was already happening on the ground all around me. I’ve never seen so many near-collisions between cars and trucks and motorcycles and motorhomes and cyclists and pedestrians and even strollers. As the hours passed and the temperature soared, shuttle spectators became increasingly distracted and impatient – those arriving too late to park legally simply double- and triple-parking wherever they felt like it – even on the 210 freeway. Just amazing.

Everywhere, car stereos blared the voices of KFI radio reporters calling out the current location of the shuttle over Southern California. The reporters’ breathless over-the-air updates echoed off the parched hillside above Linda Vista. And then, suddenly, there it was, gliding above the Arroyo Seco towards the waiting multitude. A scorched white, winged testament to a nation of innovators, risk takers and bold imagineers. When the space shuttles flew, our nation soared.

I hope those daring days of wonder and exploration are not behind us, and I look forward to when we once again have the visionary fortitude and economic firepower to reach for the stars. In the meantime, however, I think we already have more than enough evidence – judging by the crowd around me last Friday, at least – that space cadets and other-worldly beings are already among us.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Weather Weenies

With the unexpectedly heavy rains of last week, we’ve had our first official taste of,  well, something other than summer. Granted, our true winter season, for what it’s worth, is likely to still be at least two or three months off and may not bring with it another rainstorm even as impressive as the one last week. And true to So Cal form, we went from a chilly but welcome mid-60s couple of days to a triple digit heat wave in the span of less than a week. Don’t get me started.

Be that as it may, you didn’t need to be out in our recent, short-lived inclement weather incident to know that a storm was predicted, was on its way, was almost here, had “drenched” the San Francisco Bay area, was now “hammering” Santa Barbara County, then was “raging” through Ventura County and soon to “burst upon the scene” in Northern Los Angeles County. You couldn’t possibly missed have missed it. Our local TV stations cover a rain storm like nowhere else on the planet. Seriously. To watch the televised “StormWatch!!” or “StormTracker!!” or “Wild Weather!!” coverage of any given rain incident, you’d think Southern California was regularly in the path of record-breaking monsoons.

Let’s face it. Southern Californians are certifiable weather weenies.

Just last week, TV news crews were deployed to locations across the city to set up their live shots of raindrops hitting a sidewalk, pedestrians stampeding for cover to escape the moisture, or a car tire splashing dramatically through a pothole filled with …. gasp … water!!! Breathless reporters decked out head-to-toe in network-issued arctic survival gear did man-on-the-street interviews to get spontaneous reactions to the horrific onslaught of wild winter weather.

Out-of-town visitors to Southern California are often highly amused by our hyperactive media coverage of even the slightest cold snap or rainfall. In other parts of the country, rain is rain. Clouds are clouds. They gather, drop some rain on the ground, it runs off or soaks into the dirt and the sun comes back out. Things dry out. Flowers grow. Life goes on. Not here, where even the slightest amount of rain (even if it’s only predicted!) qualifies as a big news story.

However, as expected as the saturated (pun intended) news coverage of a Southern California rainstorm might be, there’s another, more dangerous certainty that arrives with each and every storm. It’s the certainty of rain-caused traffic accidents on our local highways and byways (whatever a ‘byway’ is). That’s because as rainy day drivers, we’re a slippery bunch.

Last Wednesday, I drove to a mid-morning client meeting in Pasadena just as the storm was hitting its stride. On the short drive from La Crescenta to Old Town, I counted a solo car spinout on La Crescenta Avenue, another solo accident into the freeway divider at the always-flooded section of the 210 freeway near the Ocean View overpass, another one-car wreck near the Gould Avenue off ramp, a multiple car smash up on the westbound side of the freeway just before the Arroyo Seco bridge, another solo car wipe out near Lincoln Ave. and then, the mother of all freeway follies, a jackknifed big rig blocking all lanes of the heavily traveled westbound 134/210 transition.

In other words, just another rainy day demolition derby on Southern California streets. It made me wonder once again why local drivers can’t handle even a little rain? Maybe it’s those mysterious, back-and-forth wiper thingies that mesmerize drivers when they suddenly come to life before their eyes. Or it could be that the cloudy skies make it too dark to read and send text messages while we’re driving.

Whatever it is, the Auto Club even has a dedicated web page to try and educate So Cal drivers about how to drive in the rain. Good luck. The site recommends taking specific precautions, including; 1. slow down; 2. leave more distance between cars; 3. drive in the center lane, and; 4. avoid distractions (like big rigs and concrete bridge pillars!)

I have a better idea; just stay home and watch the Eyewitless Doppler 10,000 team coverage of the storm. I promise it will be more entertaining and – except for the occasional tragic umbrella malfunction – hardly anyone ever gets hurt.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a revised version of my column first published yesterday, 10.13.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.

Riders On The Storm

Looking back two Sunday mornings ago, I’m not sure I rode my bike the entire 26-plus mile length of the 2011 Pasadena Marathon Bike Tour. I seem to remember doing more swimming than riding.

When I registered to ride the annual event it was an unseasonably warm, early March day. When my wife and I went to the Pasadena Civic Center the Friday afternoon before the event to pick up our swag bags and numbered participant bibs – the sun was out and the temperatures were typically pre-Southern-California-summer-like. However, when my wife, youngest son and I loaded up our bikes and drove east on the 210 Freeway in the pre-dawn darkness May 15, it was not only cold, it was also wet. As in cloudy and drizzling. Sigh.

I should have known. Although this was my first time riding the Pasadena Marathon, a good friend and cycling mentor of mine has ridden it several times now. It has rained every time. Maybe it’s some sort of reverse karma for NOT raining on so many New Year’s Day Rose Parades.  

No matter. To my way of thinking – and to hijack a familiar cliché – even a bad day cycling is better than a good day at work. Or something like that. My wife and I had both had fallen in love with cycling sometime in 2005 and had made one of the best investments ever in our 25 years of marriage by purchasing serious, high-end road bikes (who knew a bicycle could cost more than my first car?!?) At one point, we’d ride well over a hundred miles in any given week and often entered cycling events of 50 miles or more. Over the years, however, having let other time commitments, weight gain (mine, not my wife’s!) and family commitments get in the way, we eventually let our three-to-four-per-week rides dwindle down to none at all.

Thankfully, we both had recommitted to healthier, lighter living at the beginning of this year. Along with that came concentrated efforts to exercise as many days out of the week as we could. We already had the bikes and the funny looking bike clothes and strange plastic shoes – all we needed was the motivation to get back on our saddles (or seats, in this case) and start putting in the miles to strengthen our cycling muscles and build our endurance back up. The Pasadena Marathon Bike Tour was just what we needed.

As we’ve trained the past few months, we’ve ridden hundreds of miles over the streets of Pasadena, including many of the very same roads covered by the 2011 Marathon route. But riding on a weekday afternoon and dodging rush hour traffic is a far cry from the experience of an unobstructed, pre-dawn ride down the middle of Colorado Boulevard past Pottery Barn and the Apple store, blowing through red lights without a care while Pasadena Police and CHP officers keep all motorized traffic out of your way. To say the least, it was a uniquely exciting ride. Helicopters hovering low overhead in the wet, gray skies only added to the strangeness of the experience. In my cold, sleep-deprived thoughts, I could almost imagine what Armstrong, LeMond or Merckx must have felt like riding the Tour. Almost.  

We missed the main 5:45 a.m. start of cyclists by almost 20 minutes, having had to make a frantic round trip dash back home to snag our son’s forgotten helmet (are you kidding me?!) and found ourselves riding the first several miles of wet streets almost entirely alone. Then we began to catch up with and pass the more “interesting” of riders that one always finds bringing up the rear at these types of events – the weekend warriors riding rusty bikes with equally rusty muscles and endurance levels, the riders in fleece animal costumes (don’t ask), those cyclists seemingly more interested in leisurely riding three or four abreast and chatting with each other than in actually completing the course in a respectable amount of time. We even passed several stragglers obliviously texting away while riding. Seriously?

Somewhere between the two and three mile markers, we blew past a rider we affectionately came to call “Butt-Crack Guy.” This rather rotund fellow was not so much riding his bicycle as he was torturing it. He was barely dressed in a way-too-tight tank top, a windbreaker flapping in the breeze and a pair of saggy, soggy gym shorts being dragged off the back of his tookus by the combined forces of rain and gravity. The poor bike squeaked and creaked with every pedal stroke as he strained up a slight incline past some beautifully restored Craftsman-era homes in South Pasadena. Try as I might, it was several more miles before I could get that image out of my mind.

Thankfully, I will never forget the wonderful experience of riding all those miles through a cold, wet Pasadena this month with my wife and son.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a slightly modified version of my column first published yesterday, 5.26.11 in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

© 2011 WordChaser, Inc.