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Earlier this week, our bike-friendly mayor helped unveil a new public awareness campaign a few months in the making long before Villaraigosa suddenly found it fit to champion bicycling as a viable commute form. The end-result of the campaign is a poster to be installed in a couple hundred locations throughout the city urging motorists to put a minimum of three feet between their vehicles and any cyclists they pass on the street. The screengrab above from LA Streetsblog shows a photo that documents one of the first of the signs found actually installed out there in the gridscape.

Sure looks pretty, doesn’t it?

But there’s one problem, and it’s a facepalm doozy in the form of good intentions badly executed. Of the three sides available on the triangular display, the poster’s been placed in the side that leaves it entirely invisible to motorists, the very people for whom its effective message of safety is meant.

“But Will,” you might think of asking, “couldn’t it be that the other two sides show the same poster?”

While that would be nice and ideal, as I understand it that’s not the case. The other two street-facing sides of the display offer different ads.

“But Will,” you then might think of asking, “surely this isn’t the case with e-v-e-r-y installation of the poster?”

I certainly hope not, but I’ve read in the comments to that post on LA Streetsblog that others have been found mounted in three-sided displays with the same street-blind placement.

Forgot aaaaall about this fella found on an afternoon bike ride of about a couple weeks ago (but who’s counting? I am. It was 16 to be exact.) at the corner of Mateo and something near the Arts District. I pedaled past it. Did a double take. Turned around. Stared at it for a bit suddenly doubting if it was spelled incorrectly.

You know how it is with some words you’ve known all your reading/writing  life but you see them in print wrong and they just catch you off-guard by suddenly looking right? It’s the flip of words that look wrong when they’re right. Like “weird” as an example. Weird always looks weird to me.

Anyway. So I snapped the above picture and forget about it 25 seconds later because since my cellphone had died I was on the hunt for a payphone to call 911 about a guy I saw from the 6th Street Bridge I’d just come across back from Boyle Heights who was prone in the LA River bed about midway to the 4th Street Bridge and thrashing about like he might’ve been hurt and who couldn’t hear me yelling at him to see if he was all right and so I figured since the LA River at dusk is waaaaaay down my personal list of places I’d like to be laying about and flaying I decided that while I certainly could be wrong it might not be anywhere near that dude’s first choice either so I reconciled it would be the far, far better thing I do not to ignore his potential plight and instead to summon people who might be able to help him if he needed it.

But that’s another story. Actually, no it isn’t. Other than finding that payphone across from Wurstkuche and reporting the situation and hoping the guy was OK, that’s about all of it. But wow. I don’t if I’m more impressed by the digression or the length of that run-on sentence.

Annnnnnywaaaaaaay. I remembered the typo when I saw the shot of it this morning browsing through my archives, and damn if it still made sense to me enough that I resorted to looking it up in the dictionary just to make sure “enterance” wasn’t in the dictionary.

And it wasn’t.

But it still looks like it should be.

I got on my bike yesterday for the rare commute to work in Westchester and back. Something I used to do on average 200-plus times a year, I now only have had to do twice since May 1, when I became a full-time telecommuter.

It’s pretty amazing what new things I discovered. There are sharrows on the streets, I found them on 4th Street between Commonwealth and Wilton. The Ballona Creek Bikeway entrance at Duquesne in Culver City has been fully renovated with fresh landscaping, and its decrepit chainlink fence has been refreshed with a stylish new barrier and gateway. Several streets have either been repaved and/or resurfaced.

Such awesome stuff is a reminder of how things can change when you turn your back for a moment couple months.

For the ride I also donned my sunglasses cam and at the corner of Venice and La Cienega boulevards captured a reminder of all the street theater I’ve been missing as well. Check out this foolish OG putting on an impromptu crosswalk performance while we all waited for a passing firetruck to clear the intersection (it’s particularly endearing when he mimes raising and pointing a rifle at the oncoming  fire engine):

No, this is not me trying out a costume for an upcoming group bike ride. This is me during my fourth-annual participation in the L.A. River Ride route marking the morning of June 5, south of Olympic Boulevard on Grande Vista in Boyle Heights. Photographed by my friend and fellow veteran route marker, Steve aka Mr. Rollers.

In past years, our duties involved simply the hanging of signs on various curbside poles outbound and inbound indicating where cyclists were to turn left or right. This year, I guess with hopes of having no riders miss a crucial turn, it was decided by the peeps at the LA County Bike Coalition that we would also lay down arrow stickers in the street to augment the aformentioned signage.

So why exactly am I sporting two sets of four different colored stickers? Very good question. The four colors were representative of the four diffferent ride distances: red for the 36-mile ride; green for the 50; yellow for the 70-miler; and orange for the century. The reason for two of each was simply to increase their visibility.

At the first couple marking spots on our stretch between Hollenbeck Park and the south end of Vernon, they were a royal pain in the ass. They were on giant rolls, not that easy to remove, so multiplying that times four and I had visions of this taking a lot longer than expected. Also factor in the fact that we were kneeling in the roadway to put these down we were also at the mercy of any oncoming traffic and having to wait for that to clear. From the Six Flags school of fun, with 6 being the most fun one can have, I was all ready to award this -5 flags.

Fortunately, by the third stop, I figured out a system. Arranging all the rolls in my backpack I could basically vend them from there, stick them all on me and then once traffic was clear I could get out into the street, slap them down and be done.

Happily that sped things up considerable and by the time noon rolled around, we were done and headed over to Blue Star restaurant for lunch.

BUT! Make no mistake: this was a pain in the ass (or the knees to be more accurate) that I think was a better idea in theory than in practice. For a couple reasons. 1) It’s never a good idea to be standing (or crouching or kneeling) in traffic lanes, either on your own or at the behest of an otherwise well-intentioned and awesome organization. 2) This is litter. Unlike the posted signs, which are taken down after the ride, the only thing that’s going to be removing all these adhesive-backed pieces of brightly colored paper from Griffith Park to Seal Beach and back is time and mother nature, and they’re going to end up stuck to vehicle tires and ultimately in the river and/or bay for as long as they take to biodegrade. 3) Overkill. In the previous nine years that the L.A. River Ride has taken place, participants have been told to balance their reliance on where they’re going not only on the posted signage (which is always at risk of being vandalized/removed) but more importantly on the detailed route sheets with which they are provided. Sure, a percentage of riders missed turns and got separated, but I’m just not sure any reward was worth the previously mentioned risks.

I have no doubt some of those otherwise wandering riders this year benefited from the added route direction visibility. While I’m the type of cyclist who knows where I’m going before I start getting there, even I’d appreciate the extra touch. As such you’ll probably see me dressed up similarly again this time next year, but also with the addition of an accessory I yearned for this time around: kneepads.

After riding from Silver Lake to Seal Beach and back to downtown, before pedaling the last five miles home, I was able to catch the last remaining competitors in the Tour of California Time Trials taking place on a course stretching between Bunker Hill and the Memorial Coliseum.

I was entirely blown away by the amazing display of speed, including that of past champion Levi Leipheimer, who I was barely able to keep in frame as he whizzed past me into the turn from 1st Street north onto Main Street (click for the bigger picture):

UPDATED (5.24): For a sense of the speed involved, here’s a brief video clip of the cyclist who followed Levi. I changed street corners for more of a coming-at-ya vantage point:

You may or may not have known that I’m now an official full-time telelcommuter. Have been for about two weeks. As such the distance now required to get to work has been reduced severely, roughly 15 miles to 15 feet — and no, I don’t bike from the bedroom to my desk… mainly because there are stairs involved.

It is an awesomely wonderful situation, but nonetheless in the blink of an eye the 150 miles I’d normally be biking each week has vanished, and in that interim I’ve not yet geared up to do early morning or late afternoon rides for something commonly known as “fun” (although that’s something I almost always considered my work commute to be). I expect that will be changing shortly with rides around Griffith Park and the LA River

It’s amazing how easy it was for me to bike 30 miles a day to and from the office, and how hard it is to get out at dawn or dusk (or even lunchtime) for a recreational ride.

So for Bike To Work Day tomorrow, no I’m not going to do some ceremonial ride around the block in my briefs and a t-shirt . Instead I’m going to load up my laptop and my AT&T wifi thingy and my cell phone and go velotastically mobile, setting up shops at various places around town. I’m calling it “Bike Around And Work Day.”

Among the places you’ll more than likely find me at some point but for either the entire day or for as long as it takes me to curse my crappy wifi connection and go somewhere else:

• The LA River
• Cafecito Organico
• Hollyhock House grounds
• Griffith Park
• Tarascos

Or if I want to broaden the horizons maybe I’ll start the day atop Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook and work my way back up into town for lunch and the afternoon at Farmers Market. We’ll see.

UPDATE (5.20): Well that was a total fail. An announcement this morning of  1 p.m. conference call left me fretting that wherever I might be out in the city might find me in a bad cellphone zone, so I ended up working from the home office all day.

I aaaaaaalmost didn’t go. It was yet another dreary morning augmented by a drizzle just light enough to bring the lurking oils and sludge to the roadway surfaces, making them slippery and slidey.

But I went. I pedaled through the spritz and shvitz across Silver Lake and Echo Park through Historic Filipinotown and up and over the climb up Lucas Street and rolled up to the location of the annual Blessing of the Bikes — and place of my birth: Good Samaritan Hospital — just in time to proceed past a robed gentleman who added a few drops of some holy water to the rain I’d absorbed.

And it quickly paid off, because in my circuitous route home wandering around downtown I ended up in front of Disney Concert Hall. Up on the sidewalk I went to get a picture of the gray building’s curves blending in against the gray skies, and banked a slow counter clockwise turn on the bike that rolled me over a stamped steel plate.  Next thing I know the front tire’s lost traction and slides out from me. And the next thing I know after that is that instead of flopflailing to whatever abrasions and embarrassments awaited me on the ground I somehow managed to unclip first my left foot than my right in a semi-fluid supersplit second and step over the falling bike, finishing the  maneuver standing beside 8Ball that I held by the bars in one outstretched hand as if I’d been practicing such a dismount all my biking life.

Blessed indeed.

By far the most satisfying moment of yesterday’s Frank Lloyd Wride happened at our stop at the Monastery of the Angels between visits to Lloyd Wright’s Sowden House  and his dad Frank’s Freeman House.

It didn’t begin well. Arriving at 12:20 to discover that the gift shop was closed between 12-1 p.m. for lunch, I was disappointed that I would be leaving without my requisite loaf of the nuns’ famous pumpkin bread.

Then a be-robed diminutive priest came out from a side door as we stood about the parking lot and he jovially welcomed us. Introducing himself as Father Lopez, he inquired as to what brought us to his place. I told him I was here for some of their delicious pumpkin bread but alas the place was locked up for another 40 minutes. He told me to ring the bell to see if they would open up, but if not he’d come back out in a few minutes and take care of us from his own “private reserve.”

I did as instructed and rang the bell — hesitantly, not wanting to incur any nun wrath — but none wrathed. They just ignored my intrusion into their break time.

True to his word, Father Lopez reappeared and I was pleasantly surprised that there were four others in my group wanting loaves. He then exited around the back of the building, returning shortly thereafter with an assistant carrying bags with the bread — and “a little something extra at no charge,” the Father told us.

So I paid him my $9 and looked inside to find a bonus bag of trail mix in with my loaf, which I thanked him for. Father Lopez then went on to tell us that with the help of coupons and arrangements with local grocery stores he was going to be able to turn the $50 we spent at the monastery today into $1000 worth of food to be distributed to the needy in the area. I was a bit skeptical that so little could begat so much, but as if sensing as much he produced photocopies of past receipts that featuring multiples of  $5 discounts down the right column that together effectively whittled the total waaaay down.

In short order we headed out and I was pleased not only to be in possession of the pumpkin bread, but also by knowing that my purchase of it went on to benefit others.

Without ringing my bike bell too loudly, the fourth edition of my Watts Happening Ride that took place May 8, 2010, was the best ever and the largest endeavored. It involved my most extensive level of internet-combing research for eight of the nine places we visited (I left Watts Towers to the expert tour guides on hand).

I was immensely pleased to share what I discovered with the nearly 20 cyclists who came along for the ride and tolerated my inability to edit (as well as my ability to get choked up at Eula Love’s home).

So out of pride and for posterity and for anyone interested in taking a virtual tour from the comfort of their internet access device, I present all that information in sequence on the following page:

Watts Happening Ride 2010

The next in my May series of Saturday rides is upon us, and will convene in a couple hours for a 10 a.m. departure from the SilverSun strip mall at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Parkman Avenue.

Suffice it to say that by the time the entire epic 32-plus mile ride is completed, those who do the entire route with me will be sick of my voice from the ridiculous amount of notes I have compiled and will recite at the following stops:

• Nobel Peace Prize Winner Ralph Bunche’s childhood home
• The location of the 1969 Shootout between LAPD and Black Panthers at Black Panther Part headquarters
• The Dunbar Hotel and the Central Avenue Jazz Corridor
• The site of the 1974 shootout between SLA members and the LAPD
• The site of the arrest that set off the 1965 Watts Riots
• The home of Eula Love
• Flashpoint of the 1992 LA Riots
• Site of Wrigley Field

If you might be  wondering why the Watts Towers isn’t on that list it’s because tours and info are available there for anyone interested and thus I don’t have to utter a single dang word about the inspiring landmark that to me signifies the true heart of Los Angeles. I will blessedly also have nothing to say about our last stop for food at King Taco on Washington Boulevard, other than “Two carne asada tacos and a large horchata please!”

Spokecards are ready. Now I’m off to prep my bike and pack. Hope to see some of you later!