Mulholland Ride

Decided to try to ride Mulholland Highway/Drive from west to east.  Been reading Michael Connelly, which are all set in Los Angeles, plus Mullholland has a fair amount of history attached to it.  Started at Kanan/Dume Road since that's where my brother lives.  I may do the last western bit later this week.

Started at the Rock Store and rode west until it cut into Kanan.  Nice ride, not a lot of traffic.  Back down Kanan to the Rock Store, then off to the east.  Looking for that Hollywood sign.  The first sign I see, however,

OK, so some of Mulholland has fallen out of general use.  I'm OK with that.  I can ride seven miles on unmaintained (dirt) roads on  my Harley.  Certainly done it before.

Oh.  All right then. Certainly could have had that on the sign.  Road may be unmaintained for seven miles but that's not really relevant since you can only ride one mile on it.  So, back down the unmaintained road to loop around and try to pick it up on the other side. 

Beautiful view of the San Fernando Valley, though, one of the reasons that Mulholland Drive was originally built.  William Mulholland, LA City Engineer, wanted to build a highway that would give the people of LA access to the mountains.

Down Topanga Canyon Boulevard to Highway 101 and eventually ended up on a variety of roads out of Sherman Oaks that led me back up to Mulholland.  From the map, now that I know what I am looking for, it looks like about five miles of Mulholland are no longer an actively maintained or vehicle accessible road.

First view of the Hollywood sign.

And finally, Los Angeles from the overlook.

Mulholland ends at Cahuenga Pass so I dropped down into Hollywood which is confusing.  No signs for anything interesting, just lots of people and traffic.  Finally found Beachwood Drive (the entrance to the Hollywoodland development where the sign originated)

but it's confusing.  The only reason I found Beachwood is because there was a sign saying that the road was closed and you couldn't get to the sign that way.  No indication of how one might get there, no mention of Mt Lee Drive (alternative route that may have also been closed) but hey, I saw the sign.  It was quite cool.

Then back into Hollywood for:

Capitol Records

A house covered with cowhides

Seriously, how could you not stop and take a picture.  No signs suggesting that cowhides were for sale, just cowhides everywhere.

Anyway, that was yesterday's ride. 


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Recovering from a bit of sunburn so avoiding the surf until it fades out a little so a motorcycle ride seemed like the way to go.  Today, probably headed up to the Reagan Presidential Library and then tomorrow, back to the beach.

Fracking is perfectly safe

Says a leaked report that New York State has been trying to hide for the past year.

The facts are that they have yet to find any evidence of any groundwater contamination due to fracking, and not for lack of trying. The EPA went to Wyoming and did a pathetically unscientific study where they took four samples and couldn't find contamination (other than the chemicals that they injected themselves), New York will now have to admit that they couldn't find any evidence of contamination.

In spite of all this, Matt Damon is now starring in a new movie about how horrible fracking is and how unethical the energy companies are.  I wonder how many people are going to believe that this movie is based on fact.  Hollywood loves to claim that their movies are fiction and that they can't be blamed for the fact that people believe the lies that they include (Matt Damon himself claims that this movie doesn't take a side in the debate, but people who have seen the movie note that energy company employees are almost routinely portrayed as unethical and that small town people are likewise routinely portrayed as ignorant and unintelligent).  The problem is that when a movie is made about a current issue, there is an assumption by most viewers that the story is actually true.  No one believes that somewhere, in a galaxy far, far, away, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo are actually fighting the Empire (or even that they were a long time ago).  But they might believe that there is a corrupt energy company official destroying the environment for immediate profit if they see it in a film.

How many people still believe that PG&E, the California energy company, caused thousands of illnesses and deaths through their release of minute quantities of Chromium-6 into the water supply in Hinkley?  Probably most.  The reality?  There has been no scientific evidence that Chromium-6 could have caused any of the symptoms that the lawsuit claimed.  PG&E settled for millions of dollars rather than go through a trial that would have outraged the average person watching the news, as hundreds of people paraded through the courtroom with tear jerking stories, all of them anecdotal.  On the other side of the argument would have been some scientist pointing out that none of their symptoms had anything to do with Chromium-6.  Who would have won that debate?  Lots of sad, but non-scientific stories vs science.  Given the way our media plays up environmental cases it would have been a slam dunk for the sad stories and, even if the company had prevailed, we still would have been told that the evil corporations lied to get out of paying out settlement checks.  The settlement resulted in less negative publicity than PG&E would have received from a trial.

We need to start thinking a bit more about the science and a bit less about hysterical claims made by those who have no interest in the truth.  I don't know what the agenda of environmentalists is, or even if there is a single agenda, but it seems like they are always opposed to things that will create jobs (Keystone pipeline, fracking, industry) and for not doing those things that will create jobs.  Is there a way that we could have both, jobs, a better standard of living, and a clean environment?  Probably or maybe possibly. But it won't happen as long as Hollywood continues to demagogue and lie about the issues.