Brand Park Hiking Trails

Brand Park is situated in the Verdugo Mountains in the foothills of Glendale. For the hike to the top, start at the fire road behind the doctor's house and walk about a mile up past the landfill. Turn left about 50 yards ahead when you get to the large sycamore tree for the steeper trail. The more challenging side has a set of radio towers on top and ends at the top of Tongva Peak. It may help some people to wear cleats to get a better grip, but I have no problems using trail running shoes. This trail has a good elevation gain, but is a relatively short hike. If you run down the fire road to the west of Tongva Peak, your return trip will total 4.1 miles to the parking lot. This approach is steep and challenging. There is another trail that goes to the top east of here. It is significantly easier, but still difficult. It has a nice place to rest at the halfway point. It takes my wife and I 1 hour and 10 minutes to go up and back on the more difficult trail running briskly most of the way. Things to take into account: There is no shade There are little gnats, flies and hornets so use DEET There is no water Like any hike, you can slip and fall and crack your head open and perish and the plants and animals don't care so just enjoy yourselves and don't take any unnecessary risks. Superior views on clear days of the San Gabriel Mountains on one side, and the sprawl on the other Rabbit, squirrel, coyote, and a bobcat or two. A couple of nice oaks. Some sycamore and pine. This park is filled with cool stuff in general. There is a branch of the Glendale public library but you probably knew that. The Brand Park Arts Library is not like your ordinary inner city library branch. It does not get crowded with screaming, hyperactive brats wheedling away on the internet and smearing their filthy germs all over the keyboards. For sure, it is the crown jewel in their system. It sure has a lot of very cool art books and non-book materials. It is almost like a miniature version of the Arts Library at UCLA, but with free parking and a considerably more delightful setting. The Brand Family graveyard is on the premises as well, and has a very cool pyramid tombstone. There is also a trail with waterfalls that you can access by walking up the asphalt road at the north end of the park, and hanging a left at the drainage ditch at the fork in the road. When you come to a pork in the road, take it. This is a really good park to eat mushrooms and it is super cool when it rains! During the Summer, it gets as dry as a tinder box. The park closes at 10PM.

Chilao Campground

I came here afterwork yesterday and occupied campsite #39 in Manzanita Loop. There were a total of three other parties in the entire campground and the experience could not have been anymore magnificent. My godson who is three had his very first camping experience was absolutely delighted with Chilao. He climbed around the boulders, explored the vicinity of our space, ate s'mores, hot dogs, sat around the fire, watched the stars, and collected pine cones and rocks. He could not have been any happier. We will both surely never forget this fantastic little trip. We saw blue jays, crows, squirrels, chipmunks, and a couple of red tailed hawks. The forest has come back since the Station Fire and looks much better than it did the last time I was here approximately two years ago when it looked like Downtown Grozny. It was a fine night to go to Chilao. The temperature was in the 60's all night and the moon and stars were just breathtaking. Instead of the sleeping in the tent, I put my air mattress in the middle of a clearing so I could get a better look at the stars and planets. I turned on a little Frank Zappa and had some cold ice water and crashed. I woke up at 4AM and took a leisurely two hour stroll in the moonlight. The burned trees in the moonlight reminded me of skeletons and the purple flowers of the poodle dog brush glowed like they were under a blacklight. The forest looked hopeful and like a war zone simultaneously. An owl's call and some crickets were the only sounds in the canyon. I went to some intense boulders on one end of the canyon south of the park and climbed to the top of the stack and carefully observed what was going on around me. Life can be exceedingly disappointing when you look at the big picture, but very grand indeed because of times like this. Campsite-$12 Food-$25 Gas-$10 Firewood-Free Memories-Priceless

Mt. Baldy via Old Baldy Trail

There are several routes up Mt. San Antonio, but none as punishing as the Old Baldy Trail. The trailhead is located about 3/4 mile up a paved road behind the Ranger Station in Baldy Village. There are some National Forest Cabins to look at and the largest Lodgepole Pine in the world near the top of the road in some lucky individual's front yard. A creek runs through this canyon year round, and the road is shaded the entire way up. At the end of the road, the trailhead begins with some easy switchbacks through a shaded canyon with plenty of old oak trees and assorted wildflowers. You begin to see huge views after about a mile or so, and eventually you get to a campground situated among pines and yucca. The water source at this campground is the last one on the trail to the summit of San Antonio. Use a filter or risk intestinal infection. Now is when the true hike begins! You will rapidly ascend a series of steeper switchbacks. The trail is no longer shaded, but fully exposed. Yucca, wildflowers, contorted pines, chaparral, and some very cool rock formations await you at every turn. Raven and blue jays abound. This ascent continues for a while and eventually you will be able to see Twin Peaks, and the summit. There is a more narrow area, and some great views. The way down is significantly shorter if you run carefully down the same trail. It is like running in heaven. Mt. San Antonio is not a mountain to be fucked with lightly and the numerous annual fatalities documented in the local paper will attest to that. Take a jacket, a hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, food and as many of the other 10 essentials that you can get into your pack. This is a difficult hike by any standards and has a lot of elevation gain. The trail is clearly marked during three seasons. If you decide to come here in the Winter and tackle this trail, keep in mind that it is a dangerous alpine environment and you should proceed accordingly.

SD Thai Massage (Western and Lemon Grove)

Back in 2008, I noticed some numbness and weakness on one side of my right arm. My doctor at Cedars ordered an MRI which revealed a c6/c7 herniation. He ordered all of these procedures that cost my insurance company tens of thousands of dollars. In addition, the wonderful doctors over at Cedars allowed me to eat all of the Vicodin I could possibly want. It was as if I had a magical, never ending jar of narcotic painkillers in my medicine cabinet. While I appreciate the gesture, I don't think it is a medically sound decision to prescribe a tub full of these oblong yellow pills to people. The doctors at Cedars then convinced me to get a series of epidurals in my spine. This was a major procedure over there, and it even involved general anesthesia, and a bevy of well qualified medical personnel running hither and thither around the procedure room making sure that things were sterile and that all their instruments were in order. While the first one seemed to help quite a bit, the subsequent injections made me irritable, angry and super aggressive. I felt so out of control, that I had to take time off of work while the poison corticosteroids were leached from my body. For a while there, they told me that I was a good candidate for neck surgery, but elective surgery has always made me feel like something was rotten in Denmark. They soon stopped the fool-talk of surgery after Blue Shield of California dropped me like a hot turd and my new insurance, Aetna would not cover said surgery on a cold day in hell. My new insurance company sent me to a new pain specialist over in Koreatown (Anapa Pain Clinic) who talked to me in a more sensible manner, dismissing both surgery and all pain medication during the first consultation at his office. He made a suggestion to get a traction machine ($500), to do some exercises, and get more massages. For the super fucked up days, he told me to use an ice pack. Additionally, he said to resume exercising daily and always keep moving. What great advice! Fast forward to 2012. I still feel some pain and numbness, but the traction machine and the massages are without a doubt the most effective treatments around for me. The massages that I get at this place are exceedingly effective and leave my neck, shoulder and body in general feeling like I don't have an injury at all. There are three different people working here and all of them will have you feeling so great that you won't know whether to laugh or to cry. For sure you will feel much more relaxed all week. Unlike places like Pho Siam where the workers are so lazy, that they won't even use their hands unless you ask them, and tend to press way too hard, this place is a bonafide, professional Thai Massage place. The people here practice Thai Massage the same way that it is taught at Wat Po. They have herbs to add to the massage if you need it at no extra cost. It consists of a lot of stretching, and getting into the meridians of your body to get rid of your pain. Thai Massage is easily a few thousand years old. Western Medicine and Cedar Sinai are much more recent, and much less effective for this type of injury.