Friday Afternoon With The Original Midnight Ridah

I passed a young lady while traveling inland along the Ballona Creek Bikeway who caught me up at the Duquesne exit to ask me about my bike pants.

“Do you mind if I ask who makes the pants you’re wearing?”

“Ironically the company’s called ‘Hummer,'” I told her. “The brand name is Endura. I got ’em on Nashbar.com.”

“Nashbar… right,” she said.

“They can be pretty pricey — like $90 — but Nashbar often has them for 20% off.”

“A good pair of bike pants is never too expensive,” she said wisely as I Iifted my bike over the entirely non-ADA compliant barrier gate at the bikepath entrance, where she saw one of the spoke cards in my rear wheel, the one from February’s Valentine’s ride.

“You’re a Midnight Ridah,” she said.

I told her that for a couple years I had been a never-miss participant, but wasn’t so much anymore because of how things had changed in the last few months, what with a lot of extracurricular activities and an exponentially increasing quotient of intoxicated and unskilled yahoos and that launched us into an extended conversation. Turns out if anyone would know how the rides have evolved it’s her because she introduced herself as the original Midnight Ridazz founder whose nickname is “Skull” and whose realworld name is Kim.

I thought she’d looked familiar as I’d not only seen/met her on past rides, but also seen her picture on midnightridazz.com.

She explained that after three years of organizing rides, in 2006 she and her fellow OG ridahz made the tough decision to give the ride over to the community rather than see it continue to become something they couldn’t manage or support.

Turns out we were heading to the same part of town so we rolled across the city via Jefferson and then up Vermont where we parted company at 6th with her heading to the Bike Kitchen in need of a break and a floor pump and me breaking off for home.

Sadly, when I got home I found that cam glitches left only the Vermont segment of our ride recorded.