Stewing from various trivialities among them getting the brush off from a person I’m profiling for a feature — that’s due Thursday! — I hopped onto the bike and expended some pent-up frustro by working up a goodly sweat riding five times around the Silver Lake Reservoir, arriving back home 56 minutes after I started. Not bad. Not bad t’all
The rescheduled interview — some two weeks in the voicemailing! — is to happen tomorrow morning at 11:15. Please gawd, let’s hope so. That leaves me the rest of Tuesday to transcribe the tape — and I do mean the rest. of. the. entire. day. — and Wednesday to write it. Sigh. Freelancing is anything but free.
I’m also bothered by the changes announced today to the course of the 2007 marathon. For the first time in its 22-year history it’s going a point-to-point route, that is, instead of a loop that begins near where it ends (as has been the case for the last few years), it’s now going to start way the hell over in one place and end way the hell over in another. In this case, it’s going to start near Universal Studios and 26.2 miles later end by the Central Library downtown.
I wouldn’t have much issue with it, and lawd knows the course has changed a lot over the years that I’ve participated, but see once again I’m planning on donning my duathlete hat and doing both the bike tour and marathon and frankly I’ve gotten comfortable with being so relatively close to the action here in Silver Lake these last few years. Now, with the marathon (and probably the bike tour, too) starting practically in the valley and gridlocking a much larger swath of the city it’s going to require an adjustment and answers to a buncha questions: Can I do both events without driving or being driven? If I have to drive and park how will I get back to my vehicle near Universal Studios from the marathon finish in downtown and will I be in any shape to do so? If I can bike or take public transportation to the bike tour where will I be able to change/stow my gear for the marathon? And again how will I get back to my bike after the marathon? Will the the bike tour course include having to roll up through Cahuenga Pass to get back to the marathon start? Is a frog’s ass truly watertight?
Preliminarily speaking I think what’s going to happen is one of three scenarios:
1) I’ll be driving myself and the bike and parking somewhere hopefully pretty convenient to the marathon start line so that I can return to the truck after the bike tour lock up the bike and change into my marathon gear and not have far to get to for the start of the marathon. Then after the marathon Susan will either be kind enough to give me a ride back to the truck or I’ll subway it back across town to it.
2) I’ll park the truck near the marathon finish line, bike or subway it to the bike tour start, secure the bike after that event, find someplace to change clothes, do the marathon and then truck myself back afterward to retreive my bike.
3) Bike/subway it from home to the bike tour start line, do the ride, secure the bike and find a place to change clothes, do the marathon, go home from the downtown finish line, and return the following day to pick up the bike.
With seven months and change until the big day there’s plenty of time for things to change and for alternate scenarios to be planned accordingly. But even this far out, the claustrophia-inducing thought of some 20,000 runners/walkers and some 15,000 cyclists converging all jam-cram upon Universal Studios just seems like not a very good idea to me.
Follow