This was a ride I did on the eve of new year's of 2003. No, it was not a ride in the night of New Year's Eve, but the day before 1/1/2003. I also did a short ride over the Rose Parade route on the morning of 1/1/2003 just ahead of the actual parade.
I have done the ride up the Mount Wilson Toll Road on a near regular basis since new year of 1997. Each year, I would start riding at about the time that the Rose Parade finished, not that I ever watched. Each time I went, I would usually meet friends that I've ridden with before, also doing their New Year ride. I have never actually made it up to the top during any of these New Year rides before as I have during other rides; I usually turn around at the first popular gathering area called the Henninger Flats camp ground. This is mostly because of too little activity during the holidays making me lazy. That, and the fact that the ride is kind of an effort with a high misery factor. I tend to sweat a lot, so I would have to bring changes of clothing for when I get to the top. During winter months, I would have to change in the snow, very quickly.
The ride up was just a long grind; it took me a little over two hours to get from the bottom to the top. The fire road climbs 4500 feet in about 9 miles with only a couple of places where it flattens out a little. So the average grade is an unrelenting 9.4%, and the last couple of miles are littered with fallen rocks. Today, there was snow starting at around the 4000 foot level.
For the last year or so, I've been trying to find the one trail that I've never ridden which starts at the top of Mount Wilson inside a park where all the telescopes and observatories were located. I've never been there with all the right conditions; the park has either been closed and locked up when I got there or I brought the wrong bike for the ride conditions or it had gotten too dark to try out a new trail. But today, I was there early enough to have plenty of sun light and the park was still open, and I was on the bike that was more suited for heavy duty down-hill riding.
So I rode in looking for that elusive trail. As I passed by the old 100 inch telescope, I saw a huge building surrounding it with a sign that said "CHARA Array" on it. I vaguely remembered seeing the name before, but I wasn't quite sure what it was. Then I saw a sign that read "Optical Length Compensator", and I had some ideas. I started walking around to look more closely, when some people saw me. One asked if I was lost and needed help. I told him that I just wanted to find out what the CHARA array was. He said he didn't have time to explain. I asked if it was a VLBI, and he was a little surprised, and confirmed that it was. However, he said he was only a machinist, and referred me to the guy he was talking to for more information. The other guy, who I learned later to be Lazlo Sturmann, a research scientist with the project, was a little surprised that this mountain biker would know what the array was. I told him that my project uses a small interferometer, so I understood some of the language. He was more than happy to take me on a tour of the facility. He showed me almost the entire optical path, even allowing me to stick my head into a semi-clean area to look at all the sliding carts used to compensate the changes in distances between the telescopes and stars as they tracked through the sky. I was so excited by what I saw that I did not think to turn on my camera until the very end.
The CHARA (Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy in Georgia State University) Array consisted of six 1 meter telescopes located around the top of Mount Wilson, all feeding their light into the building housing the Optical Length Compensator. Each light path will get distance corrected, combined, and converge on an observation point about 3/4 inch wide. It is the largest interferometer of its kind, with a baseline of 330 meters. It will be used to locate binary stars and other closely grouped objects in distant galaxies.
Somehow, Lazlo even knew about the Mojave Death Race, which I have participated in a few times. It was really neat talking with him, and I got a quick education on a very interesting project.
I eventually found the trail I was looking for. It is called the Sturtevant Trail, and it started near the 100 inch telescope, and went down into the Chantry Flats camping area above Arcadia. This part of Arcadia is on the east side of Sierra Madre, the next city east of Pasadena. The trail started out with some slush and snow, but quickly gave way to mud and dead vegetation. It was so rocky at places that I had to stop every 10 minutes to rest. So it is possible to get tired from just riding down hill. Of course, I was already pretty tired from the ride up, so I was having a little difficult time trying to control the bike. I captured a lot of it on tape, but at some point, the camcorder connector must have been jostled, and the audio got some interference on one channel that made it useless. At some point, the wind block on the other microphone got knocked off by branches, so that channel would get very noisy anytime I went faster than 5 mph.
When I finally arrived at the camp site, I found that the only way to get back to the road was up this steep driveway. More slow grinding climb that seemed really hard after the long ride I just did. At least it was paved. Once I got to the main road, it was downhill into Arcadia, and then home by way of streets through Sierra Madre. Just that took me about half an hour, and it seemed harder than it should have.
I was so tired and sore that I was uncertain whether I would be able to make the Rose Parade ride early next morning. But I managed somehow. Since I live pretty close to the end of the route, I just rode it backwards to as close to the beginning as the officials would let me. I've never done this before, but it was the first time I saw members of the FBI and ATF at the Rose Parade. I was supposed to meet my friends, who were supposed to be gathering at the front of the parade. We would ride the route, chased by the police on motorcycles, who will be clearing the streets ahead of the parade. But I could not find them, so I rode on by myself. This is the only day in the year that any bicycle can ride down the center of Colorado Boulevard. I managed to get a couple of video shots of the B2 bomber and the 2 YF-117 fighters as they flew over the route. However, I was not allowed to get near the actual grand stand area, so you won't see me on any of the TV coverage.
It didn't take long for me to ride the whole route. I was home, back in bed about an hour after the start of the parade. I don't usually bother to actually see it. Since they park the floats a couple blocks away from my house, we get a lot of traffic on our street from all the visitors who come by later hoping to see the floats close up. It's can be a real nuisance.