Today's walk report: 011414

Really not a walk, walk...


I went a few blocks east of home to the wonderful Loehmanns Plaza Shopping Center in the beautiful town of Reseda, CA today because I had to do a bank run and then hit the Vons supermarket (a place I loathe) because I have no cat food, am running precariously low on cat treats, aka, "kitty crack" and also needed a loaf of bread (not for the cat.) Plus I'm on a program here not to do any major supermarket shopping until I use up stuff in the house and that stuff is mostly soup. The added incentive there is to start knocking off some holiday weight gain.

Vons, CVS/pharmacy, Big 5 Sporting Goods, Starbucks, Party City, Fab's Hot Dogs, Dollar Tree (the meth-head's store), Kaye's Music Scene, Subway, a couple of places selling cell phones, a pastry shop, some other sort of ratty woman's clothing stores, Pizza Hut, Chase bank, a Carl's Jr... some other stuff. This corner mini-mall has a long history with me. The Vons was a Shopping Bag and when you were a kid going to Shopping Bag with your mom you'd run in and slide on the linoleum floor setting yourself down in front of magazine and comic book heaven while mom went shopping. I'd look though everything BUT Mad Magazine because Mad was going into the aisles with me to find mom and ask pretty-please to buy it for me.

There was also Radio Shack when Radio Shack was a real electronics store with old guys who knew their stuff. You could buy all sorts of components and kits and actually build yourself a radio or some other gizmo.  Or you could just pick up some random capacitors, wire them up and blow the crap out of them.

Tandy leather, arts and crafts, plastic resins, beads, headbands and bangles. All sorts of fun stuff that helped a pre-teen in the 60s feel part of the groovy scene our parents were afraid of even though we only saw it through record jackets and the Monkees on TV.

Most of the stores here today, I've never been in them. Even Loehmanns which probably went in during the early 70's, never been inside. But Woolworth's in the 60's, it was a regular hangout. Holiday Hardware... all the time. I got my haircut for $1.50 at the barber next to Shopping Bag while the mom was in the store and snuck my 1st peeks inside Playboy magazine. Hey! It was for the articles.

Anyway, I try to extend the distance a little on excursions like this but from my front door to the bank ATM, is only 1.22 km. Even after up and down aisles in the supermarket it's maybe 2.64 km total, hardly a walk. I'm also still recovering from the bronchial aftermath of the cold I've been dealing with for 8 days. Right now, to make up for the minimal walk effort, I am going on the indoor bike for a little cardio before dinner and a movie.

Today's walk report: 101313

Out behind the barn, I was chewing on a piece of hay...

Not too exciting, it was a really nice walk though. Right now I just had a pizza delivered since I realized there's virtually no food in the house and I'm going to sack down on the couch and catch up on Dodgers' baseball.

This here is a 1947 Gibson, Model D. They don't make 'em like this anymore.

and this is a 1962 Oliver, 440. Pierce Jr. College in Woodland Hills, CA is the campus I walk on weekends. It started out as an agricultural college founded in 1947. Now, from what I understand, the academic east side of the school doesn't really want to have much to do with the agricultural/animal husbandry west side of the property.

This is something I've been expecting to see. The campus never had so much as a squirrel when I was a kid. Field mice and gophers sure but not more than that. Now the property is loaded with tree squirrels, ground squirrels and jack rabbits so natural predators like coyotes and snakes have naturally followed, all having been pushed out of outlying areas by homes expanding out of the valley and into the foothills and canyons.

That "snake area" is the local cross country course for most of the nearby High Schools. I ran it in H.S. We worried about tripping on gopher holes back then, not rattlesnakes.

Onto the snake area... This was called hernia hill back in the day. Funny it seemed a lot more daunting back then, of course we had already raced about a mile before getting here so that certainly made it rougher.

Not yet sunset. I decided I didn't want to wait this one out and I headed home.

Today's walk report: 072413

Peace.

I suppose if you do this for your Christmas lights one year and take them down, after the 2nd installation you would probably have to think... "why don't we just leave that up there all year?" The lights are regular Christmas lights braided to make the peace sign.

This is sort of the bastard street on the traditional "holiday season" decoration hood just south of me. The infamous name for two of the streets is Candy Cane Lane which cover 6 blocks. Online, if you Google it, the reviews somehow come up with 8 blocks but trust me I walk these streets up and down most Mondays-Thursdays and it's 6 blocks. However, there is the street before the main drag which was dubbed Avenue of the Bells for the holidays way back when but adds 3 blocks to program and then there's this one at the other side of the main drag. This particular street runs two blocks and dead ends. It doesn't get the traffic (lucky them) that the other streets get for the holidays.

I took a bunch of photos of the house decorations last year during the day. Some of the best ones are the really tacky displays. I'll try to do this again in 2013. I might even venture out on foot at night with a triposd and get some timed exposures. It's a little scary to walk (I got into it on a bicycle at night last year!) because people drive with their headlights off and they pay little attention to the road.

Happy holidays!