Modified saturday ride for me.

I rode from home and met up with Lynda and Gregg. I was running late. They hate that. Well, I hate it too. Just running late today.

We met the first group at Sierra Madre and the second group at Encanto Park in Duarte. Gabe had mud tracks on his back like a pro cyclocross. Michel and Gregg were proudly sporting their King of the Mountain Jerseys, apparently polka dots are very cool.

While the group headed over to Bonelli Park in San Dimas, I headed back to the Rose Bowl for a City Councilman’s meeting.

Gene, Neil, Paul, Richard, Kirk, me, Michel, Gregg, Phil, Lynda, Peter.

Gabe

Mike and brother

I scooted back to the Rose Bowl and just made it there in time. The Pasadena City Councilman’s meeting was on the 4th floor up, in the Luxury boxes. Rose Bowl Press Box.  Many grumpy old people in attendance. Bike haters gonna hate. I was the only cyclist there. I sat next to a moderately nice guy who told me most of these folks hate bikes, and pointed out couple vocal haters sitting nearby.

Pasadena Rose Bowl hosts 18 big events per year, which really puts out the neighbors. They are organized in regional associations. They wanted to complain about a lot of things, but today the meeting was focused on several extra concerts. The city negotiated the promoters of the extra concerts to pay an extra fee for Neighborhood Mitigation, aka, local appeasement. The neighbors continuously complained about how loud the concerts were and how bad the traffic and how much trash there was. They said $300,000 was not worth the traffic, noise, etc to them. The good news is the city will spend the $300,000 from the summer concerts on good stuff (1) re-painting the Rose Bowl Loop. New vertical posts. (2) playground at Linda Vista (3) trail improvement at East Washington down to the bowl (section is closed to car traffic). Since I was getting what I wanted, namely bike improvements at the Rose Bowl, I sat quietly and listened.

Dr. Steve from Pasadena Pacers.

Selfie at the Press Box.

As I rode home, I thought about how hard it is to run a city meeting with so many different points of view on how to spend the money. I just wanted to say at all of them, ‘Pasadena is a beautiful place. It’s world renown for being a great place to live, work, and play! Enjoy it here and keep it awesome.’