[sic]

Yo! Check out that guy on the bike. He’s stopping to take our picture!
We’re sitting ducks! What do we do!?

We gotta get the hell outta here! Mom!!

I’m right here kids. Just chill out and follow me — tight formation!

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, good! But Rodney! Eyes front young man!

Riding home last Friday I somehow managed to hit a big enough bump or pothole to dislodge the business end of the awesomely bright rear blinky light on my bike, leaving me with nothing more than than the rear casing attached to my saddlebag.

I used some of my small strap-on LEDs in the interim until a couple days ago when I could roll to the Bicycle District Square Gateway Homeland Zone Quadrant Town Epicenter at Heliotrope and Melrose where the literal hole-in-the-wall shack that ist Orange 20 Bikes is located.

Honestly, my last couple visits haven’t gone so well. I was sold the incorrect style of brake cable on one occasion, and most recently I purchased a new set of tires only to get home to find they weren’t the same size.  Trifling and resolvable matters too be sure, but frustrating nonetheless. Coincidentally, both of those visits took place while co-owner Jim C. was elsewhere.

See, Jim besides being a legendary cyclist who knows a looooot about bikes, is also a guy who will take the time to do right by you, and he’s the reason why on my way home Tuesday I passed by Palms Cyclery on Motor north of Venice and Chubby’s on La Cienega south of Guthrie and kept on going straight to O20 — whether Jim C. was there or not.

If he hadn’t been, I would’ve just bought the light and bailed without asking anyone else working there for advice with a situation my bike had developed because frankly and in all likelihood I would’ve been blown off. It’s happened before. Never by Jim C.

Fortunately he was there, and as such after purchasing the light I troubled him to check out the clicking sound emanating from around the headset/stem area that had started sporadically enough but had since grown to be a maddening almost-constant reminder that something wasn’t right.

But what? Was it damaged? Was it metal fatigue? Was it a potential hazard either way?

Keep in mind Jim C. coulda said  “well it could be symptomatic of a problem that will require me to take a look and cost you money for labor and parts,” and I would’ve been all “OK.” But instead Jim C. stopped what he was doing, came outside and manhandled the bars of my bike a bit and heard a couple clicks and said there’s no damage, there’s no fatigue, and no it’s not a potential hazard either way. Then he told me a simple DIY fix that involved me greasing the stem bolts that hold the handlebars in place and also the insides of the stem because by most accounts he said it’s just simple dry metal-on-dry metal contact that’s occuring somewhere in there that’s in need of a little lubricationalization.

I did that this morning and guess what: no more clicks. None.

And that is why Orange 20 is my go-to bikeshop.

General consensus is that April’s the cruelest month, but for the second June in a row I’ve taken a decent spill on my bike that left me battered up.

Last year it was all my fault — mechanically speaking. Nothing random about it. I’d set myself up for a fall because earlier that day I’d matched up a set of cranks to a bottom bracket they weren’t designed for, and when one collapsed later that night (thankfully at slow speed) I managed to fall in such a way as to leave a lightning bolt laceration down the right side of my torso that looked pretty frightening — especially because whatever bike part I’d come in contact with (either the headset or the brake lever or handlebars) had actually started off by puncturing me between a couple ribs near the top most point.

Yesterday I fell not because I’d done anything mechanically questionable, but rather because I made the tactical mistake of trying to cross over a defunct and dusty service spur of railroad tracks on the right of all the backed-up traffic traffic on eastbound Jefferson approaching La Cienega. I went over them at a good angle so as to not get slotted into the tracks, but I went over a segment of one rail jutting out from the rough and tumble curb that had enough sand and dirt on it to take away any traction my front tire had. Putting rubber to steel is already a risky thing, but to factor in a layer of grit between the two substances makes it that much more of a hazard.

So basically the front of the bike slipped out from under me and I went down growling and sliding with my left knee (the torn pants leg of which is thumbnailed at right; and no the gore is not clickable) and the inside of my left elbow receiving the majority of the damage.

I was up in a flash with the driver of the nearest car to me looking horrified and asking kindly if I was OK. I did a quick check of myself and my bike and shrugged and “I think so,” having found nothing damaged other than my ego and the wounded knee and the chewed-up stinging dirt-encrusted roadrash on my elbow and I got back on my bike and road forward about a half mile or so beyond La Cienega to Redondo Boulevard where I pulled off and administered some rudimentary first aid before getting back onward and getting home where I doused the injuries in hydrogen peroxide, which hurt a helluva lot more than the actual wounds. In the morning-after they look relatively clean.

Falls happen, and if I only average a couple a year than I consider that acceptable. But in this instance on this particular day the spill was a bit of a buzzkill given that I’d discovered at the beginning of the ride home that my “Pothole of the Week” award-winner had been repaired and beautifully.

Warning: horn tooting imminent

Well I missed that by a mile — or 1,500 of them — didn’t I? Not even two weeks into the sixth month of the year and last night I rolled past my goal of 3,000 bicycling miles for 2008.

Officially the new goal is to be at 5280 miles (because I’m one of those that gets a geektickle out of doing stuff like “biking 5,280 feet 5280 times”) by New Years Eve, but I can’t say I’m not looking beyond it already at summitting the 6,000-mile peak.

Random rough-hewn stat: Of the distance I’ve already pedaled, at my truck’s 20 mile per gallon average that translates basically to 150 gallons of gas not used. The temptation is there to multiply that by today’s prices but I’ll just go with a random per-gallon price average of $3.78.

Total amount saved: $567.

Just as there are songs like Prodigy’s “Firestarter” and Wall of Voodoo’s “Ring of Fire” that I can’t listen to while biking because they make me ride punkass angry almost to the point of where I’m looking for a fight, there are also songs that calm me without fail. The late and great Eva Cassidy’s version of “Over The Rainbow” is one of them. I swear my hair could be on fire simultaneously while some fudgepot in an SUV is trying to shoot me AND run me over and if Eva’s singing into my ear, it’s nothing but all good: have a nice day, nothing Supercuts can’t clean up — and by the way Turner’s is having a special on hollow points this week. Peace.

Not only that but I can listen to it over and over and over and over and overover and I did just that this morning pushing the back button on my iPod four or five times on the way in to work because I was a little bit funked up and Eva said easy there big fella, come over here and put your head on my shoulder and let me tell you where I’ve been and what I know.

In addition to the five or six times in a row today, Eva has soothed my savage beastie on hundreds of other occasions and without fail each time I listen to the first notes sung in that fragile voice of hers I always get chills and semi choked-up. It’s so pure and so magic. Then later omes the anticipation of the crescendo’ing refrain she builds to near the end in getting to :

“…way above the chimney tops,
That’s where… you’ll… find… Meeeeee!
Somewhere over the rainbow,
skies are blue…”

It’s that elongated powerful coloratura’d Meeeee! that flows into the next line that always gets my eyes watering. It’s the happiest and saddest sound in the history of song. It’s a plaintive wail and a triumphant cheer. And for the first time in all the brazillion times I’ve cherished her hitting that note, I was on 4th Street crossing Vermont and finally heard what she’s been trying to tell me all those times. She’s saying she got there. That she found it. That she’s seen what it was like over the rainbow and it’s awesome but it’s also far away and removed and it’s next to impossible to come back to what you know and love once you get there so don’t be in such a hurry to escape that you fail to appreciate what you have.

God Bless Eva Cassidy.

Are cyclists increasingly becoming non compos mentis? I ask this because there’s been some reaaaaallllly thick-headed trash talk this weekend about the unreasonable costs ($39) attached to riding in the annual LA County Bike Coalition River Ride — one I’ve not only done three times as a participant/LACBC member, but also this past three years I’ve volunteered my time to help with the route marking.

My obvious bias* for the ride aside, what’s really gotten my goat is people not only criticizing the ride and the LA County Bicycle Coalition for daring to charge a fee to do it, but that they are failing to grasp that the event is a primary way that nonprofit gets the funds SO THEY CAN PURSUE THEIR MISSION TO PROMOTE BICYCLING.

I’ve been pretty reasoned and quiet as this has developed, but a comment that I just read at L.A. Metblogs talks about being unable to “…justify paying money” when there are all sorts of free rides to chose from such as Midnight Ridazz, RIDE-Ard, Crank Mob, and it put me over the edge in my own counter comment:

While carrying my bike around a closed gate on Elysian Park Road during the beginning part of another awesome edition of last night’s RIDE-Arc ride, in the darkness I somehow managed to spy something scurrying along the ground out from under my feet and my first thought was I’d disrupted some poor lizard’s evening.

Never In my wildest did I think I’d come across what was before me, but when it came to a full, very unlizard-like stop, a few feet downslope from me, I trained my bike’s headlights on it and could not contain my enthusiasm.

(click to triplify)

“Scorpion!” I yelled, and that drew the interested attentions of a few other fellow cyclists nearby who “whoa’d” and “no way’d” along with me. “How big is it?” someone asked. “Because it’s the little ones you have to watch out for!”

Good to know because this one certainly wasn’t b-i-g big, about three inches from pincer tips to surprisingly laidback stinger. Of course rather than move away I proceeeded to unholster the cam while simultaneously holding the bike tilted so as to keep its light source pointed on the obliging creature while kneeling to get closer.

“Good eyes,” said another cyclist to me who stepped up and brought his cam to bear on it to snap some frames alongside me.

Other snaps from the ride, which included crashing a film set in Griffith Park and being escorted out by every park ranger on duty that evening, are here.

Talk about a twofer this morning. In the first clip I come up behind an insecure moped rider on Venice Boulevard who — despite it being illegal and able to attain and maintain traffic flow speeds — opts to ride exclusively in the bike lane:

And in this next encounter a few blocks later I come up to a Fedex delivery vehicle parked like a tard in full blockage of the bike lane, so with room on the right (where the driver should have pulled the vehicle) I opt to avoid entering the No. 3 traffic lane and instead go the inside route instead:

Previously on This Is Why I Hate: Trucks & Wrong-Way Cyclists

UPDATE: I stand stupid and corrected. A commenter to the moped video’s page on YouTube wrote that I’m totally incorrect in my belief that mopeds are not legally allowed in California Class II bike lanes — and he or she is totally right. It turns out in my research I read an incomplete version of CVC 21207.5, which stated: “No motorized bicycle may be operated on a bicycle path or trail, bikeway, bicycle lane, equestrian trail, or hiking or recreational trail…” The part I missed was: “…unless it is within or adjacent to a roadway.”

So: it’s totally legal. And it still totally pisses me off.

Tis the season… for goatheads. Grrrrrrrrrreat.

I don’t know where I picked this fine fellow up but I saw it stuck in my front tire while I was still a couple miles away from work this morning. At least it had the decency to stay embedded in the sidetread and keep enough air in the tube to get me to the office without having to stop and patch it.

That’s what lunch hours are for.

There are few things I truly hate, but invasive plants — such as pampas and fountain grasses, mustard weed, fennel, and the creeper known simply and succinctly as puncture vine that produces these tire flattening beasties — never fail to piss me off. Puncture vine is especially and vehemently detested due to the fact that its spiked seeds are the most common cause for my flat tires during the summer months.

My 70-mile “Ride Of A Lifetime” last Thursday, helped me finish the month of May with 682.45 bicycling miles — topping my previous all-time high of March’s 651.08. Had I opted to go for a 24-mile ride Saturday I could have broken the 2,800-mile barrier, but I figured I’d save that for today.