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Leaving for work yesterday morning I found the rear tire partially deflated. While I can’t equate the lesson strictly to riding a bike, one thing I’ve learned from my time in the saddle that sometimes little setbacks have a purpose far beyond being a nuisance.

My assist in the rescue of Acorn the Jindo last July near USC pretty well illustrates that.

So while I don’t look forward to flats with anything resembling unchecked glee, I understand when they happen there may be a bigger picture involved.

In this case, nothing remotely heroic resulted from the delay. But the deflation probably saved me a future flat from this teensy fragment of glass I unembedded in the tread of my tire (that’s the edge of a dime in the back there):

See it turns out the flat wasn’t caused by this fella. It wasn’t until submerging the re-inflated tube under water and searching for the hole that I discovered the wee breach on the inside of the tube near the base of the stem, probably resulting either from a defect on the rubber or from basic wear/tear, or both. But had that flat not happened I might not have ordered up an inspection of the tire’s tread and found this potential culprit.

So the other lesson is that it always pays to get your eyeballs and fingertips close to the treads just as a regular matter of course, because you never know what’s gonna get stuck in there to eventually push itself through to make the tire go pssssssssssssh! at a later date.

So as part of the 63 miles involved in my cross-city tour Saturday from Silver Lake to the rocky tops of Chatsworth and back in order to be in attendance at my grandson Aiden’s first birthday party, I ventured across the San Fernando Valley via first part of the Chandler Bikeway in Burbank, and then joined the Orange Line Bikeway in North Hollywood for the rest of the journey to Woodland Hills.

The Orange Line portion is not without its issues. There are interminably long waits for lights at many of the streets the bikeway intersects with some of the worst being along the practically rural stretch between Tarzana and Woodland Hills. In addition, the crosswalk call buttons are situated in pretty much the worst possible location if you’re on a bike; far enough away from the curb apron to make a cyclist consider whether all that additional work is worth it to get to it, push it and then back in position to roll into the street. And the answer is, probably, but it’s a pain, and glaring proof that whoever designed it and approved it did so with pedestrians in mind, not cyclists.

But for all its faults it’s a huge improvement to what was. In a past life having biked from my Encino apartment to the first magazine job I had in Woodland Hills, I can remember pedaling down Oxnard and Topham trying to stay as tight to the gutter as possible so as not to incur the wrath of unforgiving motoristas, and dreaming of the day when that defunct rail spur to the immediate north might become something useful and bike-related, and now it is.

And of course my sunglasses cam recorded the whooooooole thing. The main problem was it did so in a 1-gig file that I had to shrink down to super tiny-sized in order to make it even close to remotely streamable/viewable.

So if you’ve been hankering to vicariously ride that route, got about 75 minutes of your life you’re not doing much with, and won’t be angry that you can’t get it back afterwards, then I invite you to click here to view a much much smaller version of the following frame from the video :

You know what the problem is? The problem is that “It Is The Wiser and Better Motorist Who Realizes That Fucking With Me In Any Way Shape Or Form Will Have Its Consequences” is really too big to put on the back of a tee-shirt. And even if it wasn’t, it would get covered up by my backpack.

So instead some people have to learn the hard way, which brings us to today’s incident with the idiot in the white SUV on La Brea.

I start the following clip back aways to show you that the soon-to-be-offending motorist coming past me was obviously lacking basic awareness while we were both southbound on La Brea. Had the driver been even slightly less attention-challenged going by me then something along the lines of “bicyclist!” might have registered and been retained in better preventing the blind and entitled veering into me in an unsafe attempt to change lanes. But of course with a pea brain like the driver’s it didn’t.

As a back-up plan to such a lack of awareness had the driver simply turned and looked first to the right before changing lanes into me chances are good none of what follows would have transpired. But it did.

And then, to leave no shadow of a doubt as to the quality of assbag involved, the driver had to go and honk at me for interfering with the vehicle’s righteousness and forcing an application of the brakes. Now, I can put up with half-asleep lane poachers, but when you sound the horn at me like your fail is my fault? Ah, well… the rest as they say is MeNotPuttingUpWithThatBullShit:

In case the comment from the person I passed at the bus stop got lost in all the street noise, she said “A lotta nerve, huh?” Indeed. Me and the jerk in the Explorer.

And speaking of nerve, if there are any folks with enough of the stuff to think what a big man I am for yelling at a woman, please understand two things: 1) I’m an equal opportunity confronteducationalist and I stopped and turned not knowing or caring if the jackass behind the wheel of the vehicle was male or female.

It was a little after 9 last night when I coast to a stop in the bike lane alongside a beater idling roughly at the red at National on Venice, which is pretty deserted. There’s a lot of smoke coming out of the old Chevy’s tailpipe. Rap music that’s almost all swear words along with a lot of smoke that’s not the cigarette kind comes out of the car, occupied by its driver and a passenger.

I get the immediate sense I should just just get the hell away and bail right onto National like that’s what I meant to do all along, but against my better judgment I opt to gamble that things’ll be cool, staring straight ahead for the few seconds until…

“That’s a nice bike, ” says the passenger to me over the lyrics that are mainly muthafuckin this and the muthafuckin that.

At face value that may seem a nice thing to say. But more often than not, such a statement is not a nice thing. More often than not, such a statement is not a compliment. More often than not it is not paid by a Century City lawyer or a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, but rather by some covetous lowlife, and it translates roughly into “I want your bike.” It’s a statement in the form of a demand along the converse lines that  “Where you from?” is a demand in the form of a statement. In short, it’s mostly rhetorical and arrives carrying a lot of baggage.

I give him a glance to find him presenting a general demeanor that would qualify as a definite lowlife. The hairs on my arms rise.

“Thanks!” I say too cheerily and I watch him looking over 8Ball like it’s another guy’s girl that he wants to get to know better 10 minutes ago. Looking away and ignoring him might have been the better tactic, But I didn’t employ it.

“What’ll you give me for it?” I ask and he takes his eyes off the bike and puts them on me and sits up a bit.

“How ’bout a beating?”

I take a breath and hold it. At this point I should dismount and get my feet under me, because Rule No. 23 of My Personal Defensive Cycling Code states:

At the outset of any confrontation a cyclist should always and immediately dismount his bike because with any potential for escalation to violence it’s easier to defend against and counterattack an assault without a bicycle between your legs.

But I decide not to follow Rule No. 23 for two reasons: One, he made no move to back up his talk with any action of exiting the vehicle. Two, executing such a maneuver might have been interpreted as some form of “Bring it then, bitch!” and thus forced him to get himself all up in my stuff.

But none of that happens. I stay put and he stays put and the thug and I hold each other’s stares the way enemies might tensely hold a handshake until he finally rocks his head back and bursts into laughter that the driver joins in on until I get let in on the joke.

“Nah, man. I’m just fuckin’ witcha.”

And I look away, not just a little in relief. I remind myself to breath.

It takes another lifetime until our light turns green. When it does, the Chevy starts to pull forward, belching smoke.

“Besides,” yells the asshole, “bikes are for pussies.” The laughter recedes as the car does, getting smaller and smaller like the imploding house at the end of “Poltergeist.”

I just let it and them go, physically. Mentally I spend most of the rest of the quiet ride home dwelling on what it is that makes certain people think they’re entitled to antagonize cyclists, be it passive or aggressive.

While the entirely unhurried pedestrian making her way so casually across 4th Street could be accused of acting like she was queen of the road, the ever-entitled motorist who — gasp! — lost a few precious seconds because of her pace proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he is king of the losers by finding it so ridiculously  necessary to sound his horn at her — and after she’s out of his way. Subsequently I saluted His Disgrace, per custom and protocol.

This past few week has been a bit of a behind-the-scenes whirlwind of anticipation. Thanks to a heads-up from LA Metblog Capt. Lucinda Michele, I found out about a great gig offered via Craigslist by an Aussie outfit looking for an author to write a guide book about bike rides in Los Angeles.

So I got busy submitting clips and stuff knowing how far I could knock such a topic near and dear to my heart out of the park. Then came the phone interview early in February, followed by an in-person interview last Thursday in Redondo Beach with the publishers who were on something of a hectic visit to the states, where they’re also finalizing writers for sister books in other cities.

On Friday out of something like 50 initial candidates I was told it was between me and one other person.

Tonight, as I was out behind my office building literally swinging my leg over the bike about to get on it for the ride home from work, my cell phone rang and it was the publisher and without much in the way of chitchat I was told the decision had been made to go with that other person.

I was gracious in defeat. I told the publisher that I understood they had to make the decision they thought was best for them and the project. I stopped short of saying anything silly like “Your loss” or “You’re making a mistake,” and instead expressed my appreciation for their consideration and wished them great success with their endeavor — and I meant it. The book can be a wonderful thing for cycling in LA… even if it isn’t my name on the cover and my dedicated efforts filling it up.

The ride home across town? Yeah it was a solemn and pensive journey but I worked out some of the kinks of disappointment along the way. Some. And I was thankful that I had my bike to ride through the rain-sprinkled streets of the city I know so well and love so much.

Begrudgingly canceled due to cold and wet weather that dropped in uninvited during our visit last Thanksgiving, I am excited to announce that Susan and I will be returning to Death Valley in early April not only so I can finally fulfill the 9-years-old dream of biking the 28 miles of bad-ass road from Ubehebe Crater to Racetrack Playa (inspired originally back in 2001 by this brief article, clickably pictured at right, that I found in Outdoor magazine), but also to check out any hot wildflower action that might be blooming out and about in them there vast solitudinous expanses.

Special bonus: we’ll be accompanied by family in the form of my cousin Margaret’s 18-year-old son Nathan (I think that makes him my first cousin, once removed), who’ll be coming out to California to spend a short vacation with us.

On the off chance any of you camping/adventuring types reading this wanna caravan out and join us, holler at me and I’ll send you the dates and details.

When it was announced that LAPD Chief Charles Beck was to be in attendance at this week’s City Council Transportation Committee meeting Wednesday, I would have bet good money that he wouldn’t show. Nothing against Beck, it’s just that in the recent past there have been blow-offs by the department to requests by the committee for reports and presentations, so it wouldn’t surprise me if its chief suddenly found something more productive to do than placate a passel of cycling types.

Then I heard that that Carmen Trutanich’s office had declined to file charges against the suspect who struck cyclist Ed Magos on January 6 and then, after getting out and observing a seriously injured Magos on the ground pleading for help, got back in her Porsche Cayenne and left the scene. This absolution against someone so criminally culpable and morally bankrupt compounded the frustration I was already feeling when I’d heard that the suspect later turned herself in to police telling them that “I may have hit something,” only to have the police for all intents and purposes condone such reprehensible behavior by sending her on her way instead of arresting her for felony hit and run.

Come the morning of the committee meeting I was pretty much the grumbliest cyclist in the city and made the snap decision to take a personal day, telling my boss something along the lines that “an important and pressing matter needs my immediate and direct attention.”

Then at noon I pedaled over to Heliotrope and Melrose in East Hollywood to meet up with a group of cyclists organized by the L.A. County Bike Coalition who were heading to City Hall and the committee meeting via the route that Magos took the day he got hit.

One of the items on my agenda as an Angeleno has been to visit City Council chambers, but never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d ever task myself with speaking there. But despite how much I hate doing so, I knew I had to do more than represent physically. For better or worse I had to verbalize it as well.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the lectern mic with all the bombast I’d been planning to drop. Beck took the wind totally out of my sails by addressing the Magos incident specifically in his opening statement at the beginning of the meeting. He said he recognized that the ball got dropped and that people were pissed and as such had spoken with Trutanich’s office, which had agreed to take another look at the issue (whatever that means).

So whereas I had been planning on using loaded words like “abomination,” “insulting,” “ignorant,” and “wouldn’t know justice if it hit them from behind and fled the scene” to characterize what I saw as uninvolved and uncommitted police and prosecution departments, I toned it down a bit, as follows:

I ask because I certainly got some guy in the Lexura coupe behind me all hot and bothered. Admittedly I was daydreaming southbound on Madison and missed the red turning to green in front of Sony Pictures in Culver City, hotbed of a high-speed transit corridor that it is.

Of course, I realized my absentmindedness a split second too late for the fellow and thus suffered the indignity of the driver burping his luxury vehicle’s over-compensating horn at me because how dare I make him a couple seconds late in getting to the red light a couple hundred feet away at Culver Boulevard.

The horror.

As you’ll clearly hear from my reaction, he got me a little steamy as well. And yes, for the WTF insult of the day I refer to him derisively as a “chicken bone.” I have no idea where that came from other than some sort of free-association thing. G’head, dwell on it.

Couple small points of order that motorists might be wise to heed:

1) Exploring opportunities that allow you not to be an impatient dick is a good thing.

2) It’s important to climb out of your coccoon of self-absorbed superiority and understand that in your hermetically sealed, sound dampened, climate-controlled cockpit full of burled wood and hand-rubbed Corinthian leather while thrilling over the latest offering from Kenny G, your motherfucking horn is not NEARLY as loud as it is to the cyclist whose ass you’ve pulled right up behind.

Well, this just has to about beat all. On my bike, I’ve been left-hooked, right-hooked, cut-off, short-stopped, tailgated, shaved, flipped-off, shoaled, poached, thrown at, laughed at, yelled at, cussed out, threatened and derided by all manner of motorists.

Never before — nope: NEVER EVER — have I experienced direct derision and disdain from someone so much further down the ladder than me until this morning when the very embodiment of Some Homeless Guy (SHG), looking about as fresh as he probably smelled, saw me as I rolled to a stop at Wilshire Boulevard, while southbound on La Brea, and decided to let the world know he thought I was just about the stupidest thing on the street.

Watching the pedestrians cross in front of me I didn’t catch that the tirade was in anyway directed at me. All I saw and heard mixed in with the din of the rush-hour cross traffic was the shaggy and begraggled SHG on the corner to my right with multiple duffel bags looking my way and incomprehensibly yelling — the latter being something that street people are pretty commonly and loudly known to do.

This tirade went on for the better part of 10 seconds, and I was doing pretty well at respectfully ignoring the gibberish right up until he ended his rant with something along the lines of “…and here’s this idiot on the street riding a motherfucking bicycle!”

Above image of SHG culled and photoshopped from video of the encounter, viewable after the jump.

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