[sic]

Barring significant and steady rainfall tomorrow and looking for one last looooong pre-marathon conditioning walk, I’m seriously considering setting out super early and making Wednesday’s morning commute from Silver lake to El Segundo entirely on foot.

Should it not be raining and I somehow keep common sense at bay I expect I’ll be following alongside the tire treads of my established bike route, the distance of which totals 15.6 miles. Hoping for a pace maintained in the 3.5 mph range, I should be on the road about five hours… which means I’ll need to have feet on the pavement by 4 a.m. if I’m going to get to work on time.

And I thought the 110 was slow?

UPDATE (7:26p.m.): I got home a few minutes ago and reports of my motivation for this endeavor have been greatly exaggerated. I’m bushed at the present and the thought of getting up at 3 a.m. to walk five hours and then work eight hours and then mass-transit it home… in  a word (or two): ain’t happening.

The day after Christmas I posted that one of my 2007 To-Dos was to finally end my lifetime delay of traversing on foot the length of Sunset Boulevard from Union Station downtown all the way to its end at Pacific Coast Highway.

Well she’s definitely happening, although the date has changed. Originally I’d slated it for February 4, but that was before I knew the march to the sea would be conflicting with an event known as The Super Bowl and as such I’ve bumped it back to the following Saturday, February 10 with breakfast at nearby Philippe’s at 6 a.m. and the departure scheduled for 7 a.m.

This will be an unpaced journey. By that I mean I’m not attempting to do it either in a specific timeframe or at the 4-mph pace I plan/hope to attempt/maintain during the L.A. Marathon in March. At the same time this isn’t going to be a tangent-rich trek. In other words, beyond three or four scheduled breaks (for lunch/snacks) my goal is to reach the beach, not to deviate into any excessive explorations along the way. As such, given the 8.5 hours it took Franklin Avenue’s Mike and Maria and crew to go the 16 mile distance from one end of Wilshire Boulevard to the other last November I’m estimating this could very well take upwards of 12 hours or even more to cross the finish line and get celebaratory drinks at Gladstones.

Bottom line, this will be as much an ordeal as it will be a unique opportunity to get up close and personal with one of this city’s greatest thoroughfares.

A charting of the course can be viewed here, and I’ve put a call out on Blogging.la to anyone who’d be crazy enough to care to join me. In the meantime under the assumption that I’ll be joined by someone/anyone (for all or even just part of the trek) I’m going to be logisticating in terms of potential coffee/lunch/rest breaks. Transportation back to civilization will be either at each individual’s chosing or you can make the return trip to civilization with me via the No. 2 MTA bus which runs the length of Sunset Boulevard.

So if having said all that you are still interested in joining me (and my wife who’s thinking about walking the first three miles back to Silver Lake), post a comment with your email address or just email me directly at wildbell@gmail.com.

On the not-to-distant heels of Franklin Avenue’s walk from one end of Wilshire Boulevard to the other (dowtown to Santa Monica), I’ve decided I’m going to set aside a Saturday or Sunday some time in this coming year to do the same thing with Sunset Boulevard, and finally document this diverse pipeline that courses from Union Station all the way to the sea.

This is something I’ve wanted to do since high school. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about it before, so in consideration for any who might remember such ramblings I’ll attempt to keep the coming bytes synop-sized:

Back in my junior year at Beverly High I found a poster announcing that submissions were being accepted for the school’s annual film festival. One thing led to another and I’m not sure how but I hooked up with a guy I had French class with named Hovik — who conveniently had a Super 8 movie camera — and sold him on my documentary idea, which was to film Sunset from its east end, beginning with the sunrise around Union Station, and traveling west to its terminus at Pacific Coast Highway at sunset.

So one pre-dawn Saturday I showed up at his house where I remember his barely English-speaking Armenian dad had televangelist Earnest Angely preaching from the TV. Shortly thereafter we piled into some old beige vehicle and with Hovik’s father behind the wheel we headed east. Arriving at Union Station we found it was overcast and there was no chance of capturing anything resembling the sun’s actual rise.

Milling about for a few minutes we realized that this wasn’t going to be as easy as we’d hoped, and we certainly didn’t have enough film to capture the length and breadth of the boulevard and its diverse socio/economic regions.

So we cancelled the project and went and got breakfast.

Ever since it’s always been a project on one of any of several of the backburners of my mind. No longer.

And how’s this for coincidence: the 24-mile stretch that’s involved hoofing it from Alameda Avenue downtown to the ocean’s edge at PCH would be a nice (and by “nice” I mean ”rigorous” and by that I mean “blister-inducing”) training warm-up for the 2007 L.A. marathon I’ll be doing in March.

So weather permitting and allowing an adequate time to heal I’m going to schedule my “Sunset To Sunset” trek for February 4, 2007.

According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac the sunrise for L.A. that day is scheduled for 6:47 a.m. so let’s set the start time at 7 a.m. And since the sunset is 5:27 p.m. that should give me a couple hours waiting for it over margaritas at Gladstones.

Anyone care to join me… either for the walk and/or maggies at Gladstones?

Having given up yesterday afternoon, I’m now back at the transcribing desk, or rather a satellite version of it. Inside a few minutes earlier I mandated a change of place — namely an outdoor one. So having duly relocated the lapper and its webcam…

…to the patio table and cracked open a fresh Diet Pepsi Lime I am read to rebegin.

Additionally after aaaaaall these years of owning a pair of Bose noise-cancelling headphones and transcribing, it finally dawned on me that I could plug them into the tape recorder the better to hear what was recorded and thus potentially speed up the glacial and lifespan-reducing process of deciphering my interview subject’s voice.

Wish me luck.

I am predisposed to not act my age when the mood strikes me, which is probably too often but what the hell. Thus, today after lunch at the Santa Monica Pier to beat the heat for a bit we went walking on the sand and found a deserted swing set that I immediately  set to enjoying. Susan did to for a spell, but certainly didn’t see the need to swing as high as I. She did get vid/pix of my 42-year-old immaturity though (you’ll have to click on the images for biggification):

Pix from our Memorial Day weekend in Death Valley are finally up in a Flickr set here, ending with this one taken by Susan at the end of my 17-mile downhill birthday ride May 29:

Some of Rachel’s are viewable here.

I’m trying to sort through the shots from the Death Valley trip Susan and I and our friend Rachel took over Memorial Weekend. In the meantime here’s a couple of Rachel’s that she sent; the first taken in the entryway of one of the park’s 120-something-year-old kilns and the second one of me rolling down into the Panamint Valley on the morning of my b-day. Of course, the latter I’ve given my infamous fauxtography treatment and hoisted upon my Flickr lanyard (click to go there and see its larger cousin):

Since I’m still not up to speed in terms of collecting my thoughts or getting a mass of photos from our weekend trip to Death Valley up and online, another brief post with a single snap (by Susan) will be all you get from me.

There I am with my trusty Ibex Monday afternoon at 1,386 feet above sea level on the floor of the Panamint Valley at the end of my 17-mile downhill on Wildrose Road, which began at Mahogany Flats Campground at 8,133 feet. The Panamint Mountains are in the background and I’m pointing to the 11,049-foot Telescope Peak, which is where I had been about 23 hours previously on Sunday.

I still can’t believe it.

In other news: Did ya see the sweet photo of the magnolia blossom I posted on Blogging.la? I snapped that this morning. Or howsabout the photo I posted on Flickr of the mommy longlegs and her 50-plus children chilling in the garage that I found this afternoon while emptying the truck of all our camping stuff.

We’re back from a marvelous weekend in Death Valley where yesterday Susan and I and our friend Rachel hiked from the 8,133-foot Mahogany Flats campgound to the top of the 11,049-foot summit of Telescope Peak and back. About five miles in Susan and Rachel decided the 10,000-foot mark was a good place to stop and wait and rest while I went onward to the summit. And I got there, as shown, after making my way up and around 13 switchbacks, past countless glorious and ancient bristlecone pines and over one last steep and slushy snowbank to arrive about 2:30 p.m. I lingered about a half hour before making my way back down to my love and my friend and together we trudged the remaining five miles back down the range to the campground.

Today, I welcomed my 42nd consecutive year of existence with an achingly gorgeous and beautiful weathered morning at the campground. But this time instead of going up, I boarded my mountain bike after we packed up our campsite, and with Susan and Rachel tailing me soared some 17 miles downhill from 8,133 feet at the campground to 1,386 feet on the floor of the Panamint Valley, where it was a lot hotter than from where we’d come.

Without reservation it was my most unique and memorable birthday ever. And of course, I have tons of pix and much more I could say about the hike and the ride and the weekend, but at this point in time I am home and entirely spent and this will have to suffice.

Two Mays ago Susan and I pitched in and picked up trash along the L.A. River:

May 1, 2004 — As planned, but a little later than expected, Susan and I made it over to the Friends of the Los Angeles River’s annual clean-up at the Los Feliz station (one of 10 stretching from the Tujunga Wash in Sun Valley down to Long Beach.

We kicked ass and not only scored free t-shirts, but also two tickets (a $38 value) to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, a place I’ve not yet been. Coolio. Plus it was a gorgeous morning and a beautiful day.

Parking at equestrian center where the LAPD’s gorgeous Mounted Division’s horses are stabled, Susan and I walked back down to the sign-up table just north of Los Feliz Boulevard and were set up with trash bags and work gloves.

Deciding to head south of the boulevard picking up crap along the west bank, then cross the river at the Sunnynook Drive footbridge and head back up the eastbank to the boulevard.

As we’d gotten there about 10 a.m., the first several hundred feet of riverside were picked up pretty well. So I finally found a way to hop some rocks onto one of the river’s islands and found a motherlode of papers and plastic wrappers and such (Susan was sure I would be taking an unplanned dip in the brackish waters at some pointl; I didn’t disagree).

•
Upon Arrival & After Pick-up

The majority of crap looked like the content’s of a students notebook (it chilled across my mind fleetingly to hope that the student’s body wasn’t nearby), and most noteable of the stash I picked up was an L.A. Times Calendar section from June 15, 1990, an unused hair curling iron (still in its plastic bag) and an item (also still in its original packaging called “Bear Paws,” an item that looked like giant brass knuckles (but made of plastic) with a series of sharp-ass claws used to skewer and transport large hunks of meat from pan to the table.

They look like something X-Man Wolverine might envy.

Of course, I Googled the brand name and found a link on barbecue-store.com to the horrible things. And I quote, verbatim:

“Famous in the north and east, these sharp prongs can quickly turn barbecued pork shoulders & butts into PULLED PORK!”

Well shit-howdy, I’ll take two!

Anyway, by the time I hopped back onto dry land from the island, my haul was about 20 pounds. I was just getting started.

A couple more hundred feet down and we found another volunteer hauling a shopping cart out of the water. I helped haul it up the inclined bank to the bike path rail, hoping I’d be able to pull a cart of my own out of the muck.

Ask and the river shall provide, baby. Down at one of the Sunnynook footbridge’s supports, I found my prey wrapped around it. Another volunteer a few feet downstream suggested somewhat skeptically that if I wanted to test my strength I should give it a yank.

In no time, off came my backpack and onto the slippery rocks out over the water I went.

Bad knee and all, it took some serious concerted effort, soaked shoess and several dozen pulls, but damn if I didn’t feel as if I could move a mountain and soon up out of its watery grave it came — in several pieces.

Last but not left behind was a long piece of rebar that wouldn’t give up without a fight, but I twisted and turned and eventually took it out as well. Behold the proud hunter with his quarry:

After hauling everything up the bank to the edge of the bike path, we crossed the footbridge…

The Sunnynook Footbridge

…and Susan got a picture looking north at the stretch of river from which our salvage operations were running.

Bag on the river if you must, but it was gorgeous and serene and we saw a variety of waterfowl and swifts and swallows and silky smooth water this morning — made all the more beautiful by the hearts and souls and efforts of all who came out to pretty it up by getting rid of just a small portion of the shit with which we make things filthy.

Heading back north, we found, beer cans, bottles, butts, and even women’s hosiery, but once again, the place had been picked-up pretty well by those who had come before us. And without any islands in the stream upon which to hop, we resigned ourselves to wrapping it up.

Well, almost. Turns out I still had one last haul in me.

Up near Los Feliz Boulevard there was a green area at the bank and after traipsing down the concrete bank, at the edge I found a large rusted metal pole whose end had been planted into a large bucket of concrete… something that may have once been a tetherball set-up.

It had to go, and so it went.

It was one thing to wrestle it out of the reeds and rocks, but then I had to cope with dragging the ungainly thing up the craggy rise of the bank — and it easily weighed at least 200 pounds. Every six feet up I had to set the thing down and catch my breath.

Halfway up, another volunteer thankfully came to my rescue and shaved four minutes off the five more minutes it would’ve taken me to get it all the way up on my own.

With that mission accomplished, Susan and I meandered along the bank and picked up assorted bits of refuse until we arrived at the water station set up just south of the boulevard where we relinquished our work gloves and happily received our 15th Annual L.A. River Clean-Up t-shirts.

Back at the sign-in station north of the boulevard, we were awarded our choice of two tickets to the L.A. Zoo or the Long Beach aquarium. “I work at the Zoo,” I told the lady with a laugh. She handed me the aquarium tix.

With our work well done and finished, I was already looking forward to next year’s clean-up and thinking how handy a kayak would be in getting out to the untouched islands in the middle of the river.

I’m sorry it took me 15 years to get involved, but I’m certain that my efforts today made up more than a little for lost time.