Places I've considered going in socal but haven't because they are too much of a pain to get to
One downside of a bike-first lifestyle is that your brain begins to see anything longer than an hour away by bike as "impossibly far." I could easily go to any of the places on this list if I were willing to get in my car and dedicate an entire day to the trip... but with so many other interesting places close to me and accessible by bike, I'm always able to find a different thing to do instead.
Often, that thing is work. I have a lot of commitments outside my regular day job, so my weekends are often clogged up with sit-down work sessions usually around 4-5 hours long. This puts a damper on a lot of social and sightseeing opportunities generally.
Furthermore, some of these places are possibly no longer operational since COVID, and they often require visitors to call ahead and schedule a tour anyway. When you add that research and planning to my already-packed schedule, these places just end up drifting further and further down the priority list, even though they seem like they could be quite interesting.
I figured I'd put the list here both as a sampling of weird local stuff for people to check out... as well as a kind of stake in the ground for myself. Maybe I can visit one of these places before the end of the year.
Mendenhall's Museum of Gasoline Pumps and Petroliana
A museum of historical car-related artifacts, including gas pumps, license plates, signs, and other mid-20th-century car-related items. I first learned about this place from this YouTube video about license plate sequencing.
The place requires an appointment to visit and involves a guided 1.5-hour tour.
I love small weird museums of any type, and this seems like a great example of the kind of weirdo personal collection I would love to visit. However, it's a hefty car ride away from me, and visiting would take at the very least an entire day (and a lot of hours behind the wheel I'm trying to spend fewer hours behind).
Palm Springs Windmill Tours
If I drive many hours and pay nearly $60 USD, I can get a tour of a windmill power facility! Damn, I'd like to do this. But I'd have to drive into the desert for quite a while, into one of the hottest places in the state, and I just don't have that kind of time.
I find driving past this particular windmill farm fun, in an eerie kind of way. You come down from the mountains and descend into this huge valley full of windmills and it really does feel like being in a Simon Stalenhag painting. Great stuff. Would love to get inside it.
The International Printing Museum
This one is a lot closer to me than the other spots I've listed here, but it's just far enough away from me to have fallen off my list every time I choose a weird place to go. That said, it is quite close to a "J line" busway station (by LA standards - a 23 minute walk, lol), so it's much more transit-accessible than anything else on this list.
The museum itself is a collection of objects related to the history of printing. It's got a bunch of gigantic old printing presses and runs a lot of "book arts" classes, where they teach you something related to bookmaking and let you take your creation home. The courses are all pretty expensive, but they come with all the materials included.
I have a personal interest in printing after a childhood spent working for school literary magazines and yearbooks. I took a book arts class in college for about three days, then dropped out when I realized that I could take fewer classes in my senior spring than I ever imagined, and still somehow graduate. I was too lazy to learn the book arts... and today, I am too lazy to go down to Carson to see this museum. I gotta whip myself into shape!!