My Bob Jackson

I have several bicycles. Maybe too many.

This Road bike was purchased in 1978. I was working in Santa Monica at a customer site and on the drive back to Orange County I stopped by a bicycle shop on Wilshire Blvd.

I don't remember why I was at a customer site as I have several customer service people who did most of the field work.

I was such a sucker as I walked into SuperGo not really needing another bike. I had a MotoB a French bike with sewups that always would flat. Then I was mostly running a lot maybe eighty or ninety miles a week.

I was living in Mission Viejo on the golf course and still had my house in Lake Forest that was either rented out or my daughter lived there, not sure.

So I wandered around the bike shop and spotted two frames on a rack that were too sweet. Don't remember the other (curse of old age) but the Jackson had leather handlebars tapes and had been just put back on the rack after appearing in the LA Bike show.

Not sure how I paid for the Jackson as then I had an American Express Card and did not use other credit cards. Anyway I bought the Jackson and took off the wheels and put it in the back of my Corvette. I was driving a 1977 350 with a T-Top. 

The frame was not white as shown and had a set of alloy sewup wheels. Those wheels were good for several years until the spokes kept going loose. Plus I would ride around El Toro Air Station and get flats and walk back or hitch a ride in a truck. Once I flatted down my Laguna Beach and walked several miles barefoot, you can not walk in old style cleats.

Actually you can not walk far in new cleats unless it is a MTB pedal. My office mate used to drive out at times and haul my ass back to the office so I decided to buy a set of clinchers for the Jackson. 

I moved to another house in Lake Forest and still kept the bike. By now the top tube was chipped so I covered the bad spots with decals. I has always been a roller rider since maybe I was 14 and got the rollers from the bicycle shop I worked at in Santa Monica. Riding the rollers with the Jackson cause my sweat to drop on the top tube and it started to get rusty so I put my son's bike decals on it. My mentor Carl Siefert  taught me to ride the rollers. I lived on Olympic Blvd then and would listen to AM radio playing Dixie Land Jazz while riding.

One day when I was out riding the Jackson while I still lived in Lake Forest a young female rider came along next to me an told me "Steel is Real", that made my day. I had a good friend named Clark that ran a front end alinement business and he showed me his bike that he had bought from an Olympic Gold Medal winner. Clark wasn't riding any more and I really like his bike with the carbon frame and other stuff. 

So the Jackson retired for several years. But it was not forgotten.

The carbon frame was ridden a lot but when I moved to South Pasadena the Los Angeles streets started to crack the frame. I still have the frame in my locker is San Pedro but got another road frame to replace it.

While I was living in South Pasadena I decided to paint my 1938 Schwinn Paramount and after that I painted the Jackson. I masted the head badge and decal and the chrome tips were covered. My paint choice was a poor one as the paint never set very hard. 

The Campy wheels were off another bike I was given after my boat was hit by a neighbor. Another story. The wheels came without cogs and all my stuff was Shimano. After an ordeal on EBay I finally got a working wheel set.

The OEM pedals were replaced at one time with 9/16 newer pedals using an adapter but have now been restored to the real ones. Getting cleats for newer shoes and older pedals was also a problem but I have plastic cleats that use modern shoe patterns but still use the old pedal.

Yes after forty years the brakes really work. Probably better than the rider.

More Walking in Homeless Country

Homeless at beach with loose dog

I was born in Los Angeles and as usual I can't remember. My Father's parents lived at 78th and Vermont which is probably  where I lived. My father was building an apartment in Santa Monica at 1710 Tenth Street and that is the first place I remember living at.

Some Homeless can carry large loads

There was a war going on when I was a wee one so I spent lots of time with my Grandmother and Grandfather. My Grandmother had a little cart for groceries and she would take me with her when we walked a few blocks South on Vermont to the Ralph's.

Drunk before Eight AM

The Street Cars ran up and down Vermont and we would ride them into the City. Sometimes we went the other way South to the end of the line where the Conductor would flip the seats that were on a hinge so the passengers faced in the forward position.

Homeless apartment

At that time my Grandfather no longer drove an automobile but we have tons of him with pictures taken earlier when he was a proud owner of a car. My Father also has many black and white prints of him standing by his car with one foot resting on the running board. 

A common site

My earliest recollections of cars would be probably be a Nash, then a 1946 Hudson that my father drove across country to New York City with stops along the way in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Ohio. He later did the trip again in a Giant Hudson four door maybe a 1951.

Using the bathers shower

My Father also had a Ford Model A Coupe but the rumble seat had been removed and a stubby pickup bed was installed. The stock rear bumper was still there with the round rubber steps that had been used for getting into the rumble seat.

Extra points tent, bicycle and wheel chair

All my friends on Tenth Street loved to hang out with my Father. He then owned three apartments building in Santa Monica and only worked as a contractor once in a while. He would lets us ride in the Model A mini bed and we would drag our feet on the streets when ever we turned a corner. 

Need bike parts?

I can't say I worshipped my Father as we seldom went to church when I was a kid but I greatly respected his abilities. He had a drafting table with the triangles and T-Square where we drew building drawings. He went somewhere,I have no idea where, and brought back his Blue Prints. 

When he built our house at 988 Olympic he rented a Caterpillar and graded the lot by himself. He built the two story house by himself and only hired others that were required to sign off for the building inspector. He did the plumbing,framing and all the brick work, designed  his own Bay Windows with sliding glass for ventilation, The front room Bay windows would sound like a B-29 every time there was an earthquake.

Post Office San Pedro

So having lost where I was headed with this blog I will continue to ramble just line a Nash. My Father had his car and my Mother had hers. It wasn't that always that way when we only had one family car. But my Mother must have started winning at the horse tracks and she went to Santa Monica Ford on Santa Monica Blvd, and bought a brand new 1951 Ford with a fancy Continental Kit. Flat Heads were still being used and my Mother's cars was quite sporty. 

more post office

She later got another blue Ford from the same dealer and once the two of us drove it to Arkansas to visit my Aunt in Mountain Home. I was only fourteen but my Mother let me drive the car and I wanted to go see the Grand Canyon and she let me turn off the main highway and I drove to the Rim.

ugly lime green bike

Later my Mother and I drove to Arkansas in our Dodge 500 which was a 1956 model with a Hemi and lots of power but a two speed auto tranny. 

Most of the earlier Muscle Cars didn't have a matching transmission. The Fuel Injected 1957 Chevy could go a hundred in the quarter and it had only a three speed.

couple are extra points

These pictures are of the homeless and what I see when I walk my two dogs every morning. I have several cameras and enjoy taking pictures. I do not point my lens at a homeless directly and always tried to take candid shots. Some homeless don't give a fuck and some get rather upset if they see me with a camera strap around my neck. 

Fucking drunks at 8 AM

I have been reading Rachel Carson lately and there was an extreme low tide this morning. Since I live on a sailboat I don't have to use a tide chart to see what is happening I just look. The two furry ones and myself went towards the tide pools at Cabrillo Beach but at low tide the rocks were mostly denuded  and the pools were not full of color. On the way back from the tide pools (there is a walk way) we encountered three fucking drunks that were having a party (8 AM) at a bench on the sand. It is not uncommon to see homeless or drunks on the beach in the morning here. I still had my Nikon around my neck and we started climbing the uphill trail away from the beach when we were hasseled by the drunks. They started chasing us and yelling at us.  My German Shepherd weights around a hundred pounds and could probably rip someone apart but he was not trained to do that to humans, only squirrels and raccoons. He never catches his prey but he loves to bark at them. My other dog DeDe who is hiding out some where in the blue sky actually caught squirrels and rabbits. Any way the trip to the tide pools turned out to be a bummer when you can walk to the beach here. There is all this graffiti on the signs and walls, one wonders while there isn't someone who can fix that. Earlier I had seen two LA Port Police cars in the parking lot and on the way back from the beach I told the officers about the shitheads (not my two loving dogs) and the Port Police went over there and later there was a backup of a car and a M/C. 

Homeless can be violent  

Most of the writing here has nothing to do with the homeless problem here but serves as an autobiographic look at my past which at times is forgotten.

The pictures shown here are by the author and were taken with a Nikon camera.

Forgot Again About The Rail Road Tracks

Actually I remembered these tracks rather well after destroying my self crossing them a few years back. Thursday i slowed down to cross the dam things on my road bike and even with the slower speed my from wheel got sucked up and I found myself cussing as I lay in the street. For some unknown

reason I was wearing a helmet and gloves. Here in San Pedro around the harbor there are lots of old no longer used rail road tracks. One would think at an advanced age one could remember these things at various locations especially when there is dirt or sand there also. Some of us never learn but road rash is a true badge of a warrior.

Currently I have two road bikes, one frame is only a few years old and I bought it on E-Bay after cracking my Carbon Frame. Just took the components off the cracked frame and put them on the newer one. My other road bike is a Bob Jackson I purchased in Santa Monica at the first Super Go. That was the first year of Dura-Ace and I still have all the OEM hardware in mint condition.

Riding along the coast here is really nice is the sun is warm and the wind is not blowing. The wind here does like to blow and even riding to the store going uphill into the wind can be a chore. 

My mentioning of these Lime Green earlier in another blog suggests that these could be good or evil. In the picture above you see where someone has thrown a bike over a fence. Two days later it was gone which would indicate that they track these things. This morning while walking the two dogs I saw a homeless person riding one of the Lime bikes with his plastic bags of cans and bottles going through the dumpster in search of more money for cigarettes 

Whites Point

Tried riding hills on my road bike and often the rear cog isn't big enough. Either I have gotten older and slower (which I doubt) or the hills have grown steeper due to something from global warming.

Yesterday my neighbor came and told me there was this unusual bird on our dock. He had never seen one like this before. The bird shown above is a Black-Crowned Night Heron (Nycticorax nycticorax). I see them in the trees around Ports of Call and also around the Plaza south

Gotta to love these terns

of here.
Riding a bike has its advantages over walking the dogs though at one time I tried riding my tricycle with the German Shepherd pulling and Lucky the Yorkie sitting in the back carrier.

Punk Rockers

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)