Loving the Bicycle while Hating the Cars

Yesterday, Tuesday we rode to the airport our destination the black hole in Los Angeles named LAX. The We consists of myself and Dylan my son. Dylan moves around and is presently living in Plastic Land somewhere in Orange County. My butt stays in San Pedro which is the real south tip of Los Angeles and I suffer from a mild case of agoraphobia.

Actual distance traveled isn't much but it takes a long time due to our slow rate of speed. Our first hour traveled after stopping for a fossil fuel refuel allowed us to travel 8 miles. During that hour Dylan only said "Fucking Traffic" three hundred and forty times in between bitching about his rear tire hitting the fender.

We have done this routine several times before as Dylan travels all over the world to ride his bicycle. He recently returned from China where he performed on his bike and I had to pick him up at LAX on a Friday evening at the peak of travel time. The current flight has him traveling first to Houston then onto Costa Rica. He has been to Houston once before riding at a Red Bull Event.

Poster for Friday Show in Parrita, Costa Rica

In grousing about the traffic around the airport I can recall my first visit there. It was around 1954 and I was trying out my first skinny tired bike that had a rear stay mounted shifter that controlled the chain switching. I worked at a bicycle shop in Santa Monica (Cycle and Sports) afternoons and on Saturday. So I rode south on Lincoln Blvd crossing over on Manchester to Sepulveda where I reached the terminal. There wasn't any MapMyRide then so to create proof for those unbelievers I purchased a souvenir.

LAX was moved after my earlier visit and the new runway was extended. We went there in 1961 to pickup a traveler returning and we parked in front of the new terminal. I think the parking was free and there wasn't any traffic.

Current Tower

My car actually has spider webs on the tires and one of my neighbors is always making fun of that so I have to remove the webs. The spiders must be living somewhere in the Nissan as they reappear if I move the car in recharging the battery. Very few people use bicycles for transportation but I do. Since I rely on my bicycles and riding the streets of Los Angeles can be dangerous I have learned to hate our automobile-centric culture more and more.

Nissan Spider Haven

Myself, as the majority of American males, are fond of automobiles. My mentor at the bicycle shop, beside be an active bike racer was a hot rodder. Carl Siefert had a 32 three-widow with a flathead in it. So my introduction in to wrenching started in his dirt floor garage. In junior high I rode to school on my bicycle. The bike racks were full and no one rode to school in a car driven by parents. Parents didn't do that. By high school riding bikes became uncool and nobody pedaled to school. Walk, drive or ride the bus. Like so many other I became a worshipper of the devil. As I approached the age of 16 my car collection grew and far out numbered my one road bike (Arbos) and one track bike (Paramount) having discarded balloon tires.

On out Tuesday morning slow creep to the airport we used surface streets as Dylan had earlier driven from OC to Pedro using the 405 parking lot. In approaching a high school the traffic ground to a halt averaging three signals changes to clear an intersection. It is not surprising that road rage develops among daily commuters along with bad arteries and 40% body fat after sitting in a fucking four wheel cage several hours a day.

Internal gridlock at LAX

During weak moral  times in my live I have been frequently been seduced by a cousin of the automobile devil: The forked tailed jackal that invented motorcycles. Somewhere in the future I will blog about my forty or more motorbikes that kept my pockets empty. Motorcycles are similar to boats where you pour your money into a deep hole in the water but without the water. Motorcycle riders who travel on the streets often refer to the automobile as a cage and the grocery-getter behind the steering wheel as a "Cager".

Both motorcyclists and cyclists have to in ride in traffic (unless there is a bike lane) and cagers hate to share. Cagers also hate to be passed by anything on two wheels with or without fossil power. Cagers hate to see riders having fun and riding two wheel can be great fun. Pickup truck drivers have been known to throw empty beer bottles at me but I have never encountered a shot gun.

Last week when Dylan was scheduling  his visit to my sailboat I mentioned that I had worn out the grips on my Specialized Cross Country MTB and asked him for a pair in either red or blue to match the color of my bouncing toy.

Pretty sure the boy is not color blind so I had to switch the red grips on my Fixie off and put the yellow one on creating a future project for the S-Works bike.

When I started Blogging (see past remarks) my pictures were captured with my Digital Nikon. The data was then downloaded to my laptop, edited, then entered in using Blogger Editor. I love my Nikon and those neat lenses but it doesn't fit in my back pocket. Recently I added a handlebar bag to carry it but the Galaxy Android can take videos and all that other teckie shit the camera doesn't have plus the handlebar bag makes me look like a fucking Fred minus the rear view mirror. Lately I have been thinking some Fred traits are not that creepy. My facial hair gets pretty scruffy at times and in the past beards were verboten on those on men who shaved their legs to ride. Wiggins must have  have followed American Baseball as every October half the pitchers have beards. Early in this year Dylan was at Oakley in Lake Forest riding the dirt track that is on the property. Wiggins showed up with his team as the Tour of California was about to start. My son texted me that he hanging with the biggest of Roadies but Wiggins needed a proper lesson in riding in the dirt.

As one ages and falls into dementia one often forget where one was going which is the the primary purpose of "What was I saying?"

My phone is cute, small but much more complicated than the Nikon. The Galaxy takes great pictures and you can see the results in "Gallery". Gallery is a screen icon but there isn't any folders named that. Those files are located elsewhere. So if a picture is taken the final file can wind up in four or more separate folders. To transfer the .jpg to the blogger I need to know where they are located so I started editing the files on the phone and renaming them matching the contents of the actually picture.

Making a List of Movie Memories

Several days ago I started to make a list of movies actually seen on a big screen not on a television station, or with VCR or DVD and where the films were viewed. First I started with a simple list on a sheet of paper but that was not working. So I went to the Dollar Tree store and spent a buck on a college ruled note book.

Then I figured there must be some free spread sheets floating around and after discussing it with a neighbor he recommended a Google Spread Sheet (Google Sheets). So I started keying data in. It has been a while since I have used a spreadsheet but I am not unfamiliar with them having first used Visicalc 37 years ago. After that we moved on to Lotus which became a standard for PC user. Lotus was not cheap and you had to read the manual. Today I not sure if anybody reads book style manuals many just turn to search on YouTube for a DIY video (which is often wrong).

After inputting several movie titles I wanted to copy the form to paste on a blog but couldn't get it to copy. Then I read some more and found out I had to have another app to see the stored data. So along came "Drive" and the using Google for off line storage.

The first memory device I actually programmed had only 256 locations and you could load it with set of manual toggle switches or if you took your code sheets to a off-site data center you get a punched paper tape made. Lots of progress exists in that gap of 53 years when I started coding a Stored Program Simulator.

The following list sometimes has the actually movie house and sometimes my current internal memory (built 75 years ago using protein circuits) only remembers the general location where I lived at that time I saw the movie.

The year shown for the movie is from a database that shows when the movie was released.

1945	The Picture of Dorian Grey	Vermont
1946	Duel in the Sun	Santa Monica
1947	The Secert Life of Walter Middy	Pacific Palisades
1947	Golden Earrings	Santa Monica
1947	Captain from Castile	Santa Monica
1948	The Boy with the Green Hair	Santa Monica
1948	Robin Hood (1938)	Santa Monica
1948	One Million B.C. (1940)	Santa Monica
1949	She Wore A Yellow Ribbon	Criterion
1949	Pinky	Santa Monica
1949	Mighty Joe Young	Santa Monica
1949	It Happens Every Spring	Santa Monica
1950	Treasure Island	San Berdu
1950	Cinderella	Santa Monica
1950	Destination Moon	Santa Monica
1951	The Thing from another World	Criterion
1951	Worlds Collide	Santa Monica
1952	High Noon	Wilshire
1952	Sailor Beware	Criterion
1952	The Pride of St. Louis	Santa Monica
1952	The Snows of Kilimamjaro	Santa Monica
1952	Come Back, Little Sheba	Santa Monica
1952	Scaramouche	El Miro
1953	Shane	Wilshire
1953	Julius Caesar	Wilshire
1953	War of the Worlds	Bundy
1953	Calamity Jane	Majestic Theater
1953	The Robe	Hollywood
1953	Stalag 17	Santa Monica
1953	Peter Pan	Santa Monica
1954	River of No Return	Dome Ocean Park
1954	Young at Heart	Santa Monica
1954	On the Waterfront	Santa Monica
1954	Elephant Walk	Santa Monica
1955	Rebel Without a Cause	Picwood
1955	Mr. Roberts	Studio Drive In
1955	Blackboard Jungle	El Miro
1955	Oklahoma!	Santa Monica
1955	The Man with the Golden Arm	Santa Monica
1955	The Tender Trap	Santa Monica
1955	The Rose Tatto	Santa Monica
1955	Lady and the Tramp	Santa Monica
1956	Giant	El Miro
1956	The Girl Can't Help It	Criterion
1956	Love Me Tender	Criterion
1956	Anastasia	Santa Monica
1956	The Ten Commandents	Hollywood
1956	Around the World in 80 Days	Santa Monica
1956	The Rain Maker	Santa Monica
1956	Run Silent, Run Deep	Santa Monica
1957	A Face in the Crowd	Westwood Bruin
1957	Kiss Them For Me	Hollywood
1957	Sayonara	Hollywood
1957	The Bridge on the River Kwai	Studio Drive In
1957	April Love	Criterion
1957	Jail House Rock	Drive-in
1957	Loving You	Criterion
1957	Tammy and the Bachelor	Anaheim
1957	Pal Joey	Santa Monica
1957	The Pride and the Passion	Santa Monica
1957	Gun Fight at the O.K. Corral	Santa Monica
1957	The Pajama Game	Santa Monica
1957	The Three Faces of Eve	Santa Monica
1958	The Blob	Olympic Drive In
1958	Imination General	Santa Monica
1958	Vertigo	Santa Monica
1958	The Defiant Ones	Santa Monica
1958	The Oldman and the Sea	Santa Monica
1958	The Big Country	Santa Monica
1958	The Young Lions	Santa Monica
1958	Cat on a Tin Roof	Santa Monica
1958	God's Little Acre	Santa Monica
1959	On the Beach	Santa Monica
1959	Ben-Hur	Hollywood
1959	Gidget	Santa Monica
1959	North by Northwest	Picwood
1959	A Hole in the Head	Santa Monica
1959	SleepingBeauty	Santa Monica
1960	Psycho	Picwood
1960	The Alamo	Majestic Theater
1960	The World of Suzie Wong	Hollywood
1960	The Rat Race	Santa Monica
1960	Exodus	Santa Monica
1960	The Apartment	Santa Monica
1960	Can-Can	Hollywood
1960	Elmer Gantry	Santa Monica
1961	The Absent Minded Professor	Anaheim
1961	The Guns of Navarone	Anaheim
1962	Experiment in Terror	Anaheim
1962	Mondo Cane	Anaheim
1962	Birdman of Alcatraz	Anbaheim
1963	Hud	Anaheim
1963	The Great Escape	Anaheim
1963	The Birds	Anaheim
1963	Cleopatra	Hollywood
1963	Lilies of the Field	Anaheim
1963	Irma La Douce	Anaheim
1964	Mary Poppins	Huntington Beach
1964	Dr. Strangelove	Anaheim
1964	My Fair Lady	Anaheim
1965	What's New Pussycat	Huntington Beach
1965	Dr. Zhivago	Hollywood
1965	Battle of the Bulge	Cinerama Hollywood
1965	A Patch of Blue	Anaheim
1966	Sand Pebbles	Newport
1966	Born Free	Huntington Beach
1966	Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf	Huntington Beach
1966	Hawaii	Huntington Beach
1967	I am Curious Yellow	Hollywood
1967	The Graduate	San Jose
1967	Cool Hand Luke	Orange County
1968	2001: A Space Odyssey	Vancouver BC
1968	The Thomas Crown Affair	Huntington Beach
1968	Please Don't Eat the Daisies	Huntington Beach
1969	Bob, Ted, Carol and Alice	New Jersey
1969	Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid	Airline Flight
1969	Easy Rider	Anaheim
1969	Midnight Cowboy	Iowa City
1970	Joe	New York
1970	Mash	Huntington Beach
1971	On Any Sunday	Coata Mesa
1972	Last Tango in Paris	Anaheim
1972	The God Father	El Toro
1973	The Sting	El Toro
1977	Star wars	Fashion Island
1978	Rocky Horro Picture Show	Sunset Blvd
1978	Superman	South Coast Plaza
1979	The China Syndrome	Mission Viejo
1979	Apocalyse Now	El Toro
1981	On Any Sunday ll	Hollywood
1981	Napoleon 1927	Shrine
1981	On Golden Pond	El Toro
1986	Children of a Lesser God	El Toro
1986	The Clan of the Cave Bear	El Toro
1988	Camille Claudel	Corona del Mar
1989	Field of Dreams	El Toro
1990	Dick Tracy	El Toro
1991	Hamlet	South Coast Plaza
1991	Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man	El Toro
1995	Water World	El Toro
1995	Toy Story	Irvine
1995	Cutthroat Island	Irvine
1998	Godizilla	Orange
1998	Pokemon: The First Movie	Lake Forest
2000	Gladiator	Lake Forest
2003	Master and Commander	Irvine

As you can see from the dates I have not been inside a movie house in quite awhile.

Remembered this one from 1949 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Currently reading Isaac Asimov and he was covering solar eclipses.

(another update) This is from 1975 Shampoo. I had a Triumph just like the one he rides around Hollywood with his hair dryer.

(more memories) I was reading about Disney and the strike at his studio. At that time (1941) Dumbo was in production. I didn't see it until I was probably 5 or 6.

Was watching Cary Grant on YouTube and remembered this one. I was a male war bride (1949). Saw that at the Wilshire in Santa Monica.

Grew up watching Ma and Pa Kettle. Here is the first film the Kettles were in The Egg and I (1947)

Saw Joan of Arc in (1948) at the time is was a puzzle to me

This came to me one night The Boy With the Green Hair (1948)

Ma and Pa Kettle back on the farm (1949) I will only list this one but I watched a lot of them.

Frances (1950) The talking mule

Remember this early Disney nature Beaver Valley  (1950) at the Wilshire in Santa Monica

Jim Thorpe (1951)

Viva Zapata! (1952)

Will Rogers Story (1952) I was reading a book about Beryl Markham and her living in California. This started me thinking about if she ever played polo here in California. I used to watch the polo players at the Rogers ranch off Sunset Blvd.

There must have been several films that were about Rome and young American girls visiting there. I remember the song more than the movie.

  Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)

Francis Joins the WACs (1954) I thought it was Francis joins the Army

Them (1954)

No Time For Sergrants (1958)  Saw that in Texas when I was staioned at Lackland AFB

(1962) Days of Wines and Roses (music) I probably started liking Henry Mancini before I ever knew his name. More film info here.

(1955) Bob Hope in The Seven Little Foys. Billy Gray was in the movie but I didn't meet him until later when I worked at the bicycle shop Cycle and Sport in Santa Monica and he used to come in. Billy raced speedway motorcycles later and met him again at the races at City of Industry track where I was also racing. There was another cast member in the movie that was in my grade school but I can match the names listed with IMDB to my memory.

The interesting thing about this memory exercise is these old movie titles keep popping up in my vacant head.

(1942) Bambi Saw this one pretty early in my life probably under age 5. Didn't understand it.

(1942) Reap the Wild Wind not sure want year I saw this but still remember the giant octopus

(1946) Black Beauty

(1948) Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid

(1948) The Paleface

(1955) Marty really didn't understand it

(1958) I Want To Live seen in Santa Monica

(1961) The Misfits

(1964) Goldfinger at Orange Drive-In

(1966) Stop the World I want to Get Off  seen in Costa Mesa

(1970) Five Easy Pieces

(1970} Love Story read the book but don't remember where I saw the movie

(1973) The Last Detail

(1973) Cinderella Liberty

(1975) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

(1977) Close Encounters of the Third Kind

(1979) The Black Stallion

(1979) The Electric Horseman

(1982) Cannery Row

(1982) E.T. saw in in Hawaii

(1985) Cocoon

(1994) The Little Rascals

(1995) Pocahontas saw it in Costa Mesa

(1997) Flubber

(2002) Ultimate X: The Movie Saw it at Irvine Spectrum

(2005) War of the worlds remake "thought it stunk) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Worlds_(2005_film)

Remembering Movie Titles (part one)

The other day I was having a texting session with Frances (AKA Beanie) and I mentioned riding bicycles with my father to go watch movies in Ocean Park when we lived in Santa Monica. There were several movie houses in town but the boardwalk between the Santa Monica Pier and Ocean Park Pier was popular just as it is today for riding a bicycle.

Going to the movies predated my bicycle riding days. Towards the end of WW2 I would spend Saturdays at my cousin's house. The house was on Pico Blvd and someday I will go riding over there to see if anything looks familiar. My cousin Ronald's father was still in the Army and had  not came back from Europe yet. Ronald and I would walk to the movies and watch the kid's shows which consisted of serials and one movie.

One morning we had an adventure and traveled by the Red Cars through Culver City rode by Venice finally to reach Santa Monica. We saw Gulliver's Travels at the Criterion on Third Street. On the street car journey I can remember the newspaper vendors at various intersection shouting out the headlines about a bomb and Japs.

Several years later when I was in Junior High I had a morning paper route with The Los Angeles Examiner. It was always creepy in the dark early hours before the sun came up. Especially the Criterion Apartments where I had to drop off a couple of papers inside.

Thanks to Google and IMDb I can set dates that match some of my memories. My Grandfather, Grandmother and Uncle lived on Vermont at 78th Street. There was a theater on the East side of Vermont a few blocks away. We saw "The Picture of Dorian Grey" there. That would set the date around 1945 when the movie was released. The film scared me when the character's picture kept changing. So as a four year old it made quite an impression. Scary movies usually drove me to the lobby to sit until the movie sound track softened and it was safe to return to my seat.

Another movie that frighten me even though it was billed as a comedy was "The Secret Life of Water Middy" which I saw at a theater in the Pacific Palisades when I was six. Travel around Southern California was not complicated by freeways then and if you did not have a car handy there was always the bus or the street cars. Some cities didn't allow street cars and one time we got stranded in Beverly Hills trying to get back from watching radio shows in Hollywood.

Often my father would take me to the theaters on Broadway by riding the street cars along Vermont. Once we went to a matinee at the Orpheum to see a double header of Vaudeville and a movie. The star billed was Eddy Peabody the "King of the Banjo". My father beside being a movie buff was also a banjo player. My father played the piano, violin, cornet, reeds, trumpet and banjo. He played by ear. I could never do that and had to read sheet music. Even while playing in the high school band and performing the same damn song over and over I rarely could play a complete piece from memory.

Since I lived on Tenth Street the walk to any of the four movie house in down town Santa Monica was not very far to walk. One of our favorite haunts was the El Miro on Third Street where I saw "Blackboard Jungle". The music from that apparently started Rock and Roll. A side note about Blackboard Jungle was the star was Glenn Ford who attended Santa Monica High School. If you left the ticket office of the El Miro walked down the side walk entered the arcade that went through to Fourth Street you came out next to the Hitching Post Theater. The Hitching Post played only cowboy stuff. The tickets were twenty cents so all you had to do was search the alleys for returnable bottles and go to the market or liquor store and cash in. The lobby of the theater had racks behind the candy counter to hang your cap guns and holsters as guns were not allowed in the theater.
 My favorite cowboy then was Lash La Rue. He didn't sing like Roy Rodgers or Autry se was just cool.

Loose Bike Nut on a Sailboat

My basic transportation is by bicycle. There is a Nissan in the marina parking lot that is collecting dirt although I clean the windows every morning.

Road bike converted to Fixie

Last week I had to take my son Dylan to LAX but he drove his VW GTI and I drove it back where it sat awaiting a return trip with me doing the driving to LAX and he hauling us back.

Waiting on side street while son clears customs

The trip back was slow using PCH in search of Mexican food for Dylan taste.

He had been invited to ride in China at a festival on his BMX bike. It is really not a BMX bike that one would race on a track but a twenty inch (wheel size) that is used for stunts and tricks.

He has performed in contests and shows all over the world with the exception of Australia where somehow the trip was cancelled.

Track bike on the beach

my Bob Jackson next to dock box

flat tire with tublar tire

bike strips down for bathhouse

My bike collection includes several different styles of rides. One is stored outside of my sailboat attached to the dock steps with several locks. It is a Schwinn High Sierra that has had a colorful past having been stolen twice here at the marina before it was given to me.

It is possible to store several bikes inside my sailboat cabin One is just fine, two will work and three is too much.

For protection against
rust and to making living possible on the boat several complete bikes plus extra wheels set are store in a gated locker storage close to my boat.

My Instagram @Captain Dewayne and I have a following of 118. My son Dylan Stark @whoisdylan has a mere 39.8K followers a mere drop in the bucket compared to my loyal fans.

He is also on YouTube where he has his own site

Personally I went from riches to rags purchasing video cameras for Dylan at an early age. Fortune is a little better now as he gets camera for free. He uses his IPhone and a Sioeye Camera for filming and an Apple for editing.

Here is the first of his recent China trip.

The second in the series as he cruises China

Finally the last part Chapter 3 at Fire Festival

As a reader of books I until recently didn't read many about bicycles but with free downloads from my public library to one of any of my three Kindle devices. Yesterday I finished On Bicycles: 50 ways ....and found out that I am in that small percentage who use a bicycle as a form of transportation. Of course my riding also includes for fun and station in shape. The label on my Wranglers shows a 31 inch waist. The book shown talks about the great riding places and cities where bicycles are in larger numbers. San Pedro is built on hills unlike other cities built on Rock and Roll. Surrounded by the Pacific Ocean to the South and the Los Angeles Harbor to the East riding West is all hills and North is introduction to the ghetto.