[sic]

When you buy your own crown race remover and setter. At midnight.

Agh. While my trip to the Bike Kitchen tonight was entirely excellent in that with the excellent assistance of the supervising cook the crown race on the fork got set (the crown race is the little ring that the bottom headset bearings roll on) and so did the top and bottom headset cups.

The only thing left was to come home and install the new forks, except when I did I literally came up a thread or two short, meaning that there was nothing for the headset lock nut to grab onto.

I wondered aloud, how can this be, godammit? Even going so far as to extract the new forks and measure them up against the old ones — and they were exactly the same overall height with exactly the same 220-mm steerer tubes.

The problem was the bearings of the new headset were of the sealed variety in comparison to the bargain basement ring o’ exposed bearings that were the original equipment, and the new bearings casing was juuuuuuuust efuckingnough to keep the locknut from mating with the threads atop the steertube.

Gah!

So Le Noir is to be mothballed again for another day or two as I must now await delivery from nashbar.com of a fork with the 240-mm steerer tube and a set of spacers to fill in the excess should I not wish to risk cutting it down.

Of course now I’ve got to figure out a way to extract the crown race from these forks ‘cuz I’m gonna need it for the new ones.

Bikes, man. Just when you think you’re on, they pull you back off!

In the wake of the recent uptick in citations being issued to cyclists on unregistered bikes, my Giant OCR roadie is now legal. After work yesterday I rode it over to LAPD Central Division on 6th Street and Maple in the heart of downtown’s skid row — the only police station* in the entire city that issues bike licenses — and after presenting my ID and completing a short form, I was presented with the two stickers shown above, the blue/silver license and the yellow/white renewal sticker.

What’s extra special is that the license expires at the end of 2010, at which time renewal for another 2-year period is required. I didn’t even bother to ask why the license expires.

But I did ask if I’ll receive renewal notification in the mail.”

“No, you have to come back and renew in person,” I was told.

Lovely. Bureaucratically paleolithic, counter productive and patently ridiculous, but lovely.

And actually I’ll be back down on skid row in person on Thursday evening to register Le Noir, that is, if my trip to the Bike Kitchen tonight to install the new headset and forks goes successfully.

* The only other place bikes can be registered is on the USC campus at the Department of Public Safety office. The university’s Health Sciences Campus near Lincoln Park also hosts a DPS office, but its not clear if bikes can be registered there.

Ongoing issues with my mountainbike have me rationalizing getting a new one. Collapsed economy notwithstanding, me wantz new bikey.

The entry-level, full-suspension Ibex Apogee that I purchased in 2004 online served me well enough through the two years that ensued. But I haven’t put tread to trail since some time in 2006 and hell, I’m pretty sure the last time I rode it was the day of my 42 birthday that same year when in Death Valley we went on a 17-mile, on-road downhill from the 8,200-foot elevation of Mahogany Flat campground all the way to the Panamint Valley floor.

What a rush that was.

But the fact of the matter was and is I’ve learned from the Apogee that I’m just not in need of a full suspension bike. For the low-skill, slow-go way that I ride dirt, — both uphill and down — I just don’t need all that technology. In fact, if my beloved bare-bones 1990 GT Timberline hadn’t been stolen in 1998  I’d probably still be riding it and entirely happy. But instead after it dissapeared from its place locked up in the back of my truck inside the apartment’s secured parking (leading me to believe it was an inside job by some fellow tenant douchewad) I replaced it with a front-suspension Raleigh that I rarely felt comfortable on, and after selling that to a friend, I bought into the front and rear shock-absorbing hype and got the Ibex.

Not that there weren’t good times between us:

The troubles mentioned up top have to do with the gap in space that exists between the steertube of the replacement forks I put on in 2006, and the head tube of the frame — there’s just too much disconcerting wobble and bobble no matter how hard I try to batten everything down. Having donated the original forks to the Bicycle Kitchen there’s no going back to them. And sure, I could replace the replacement forks with ones that properly fit or get the bike in the hands of a perfeshunal who can properly diagnose a cure, but that’s still going to leave me riding a bike that has more engineering than I want or need.

In short, it’s time to put the Apogee out to pasture, or in this case the storage space under the porch (or donated to the Bike Kitchen), and of course that leaves me wanting a new ride and looking longingly at the following low/mid levels of the Motobecane brand’s mountain bike spectrum as seen on bikesdirect.com (the same outfit where I got Le Noir,  my presently incapacitated but otherwise marvelous Mercier Kilo TT track bike last January):

The first is reeeeeeally bare bones: A 29-inch wheel hard-tailed, hard-nosed singlespeeder called the Outcast:

Don’t she look sa-weet? Of course the trouble is the $400 pricetag is a tough swallow and the old-school solitary gearing with a 44-tooth chainring up front and an 18-tooth cog in back might prove an ordeal getting her upwards. But there’s something appealing in all its striped down basicality that purely pits rider against rise. And should the mountain prevail, a smaller chainring isn’t a hard swap to make.

But then there’s this $299 dame also on the nothing-fancy side with standard 26-inch wheels entry-level gears ‘n brakes ‘n stuff:

The price is certainly right, and again for the type of off-roading I do I’m sure she’d suit me quite nicely. But if I do decide to step it up a level or two and open the wallet a little wider, I’ll be looking twice and thrice at this more glorious gal:

At $600 she’d be the most I’ve ever spent on a bike — not counting the $900 Klein I impulse bought off the rack at Costco in the early/mid ’90s that I returned a couple days later when first I came to my senses and  second the thing started falling apart because, well… I bought it at Costco and it was probably assembled by a guy whose normal job was fork lift operator.

So we’ll see what happens. Either I’ll be prudent and put off the purchase, or I’ll commit to a new dirt bike, which of course means I’ll have to get out and ride it gee darn.

So I’m back home from my trip to Savannah and all’s good, with the exception of my wounded bike. Getting to the end of my chores while watching my Raiders find a way to lose yet again, I finally took a look at her bent forks.

To best illustrate the damage done in my embarrasing and infuriating slow-speed collision with a double-parked minivan last Tuesday, take a look at the front wheel jammed against the bottom tube:

There used to be well more than an inch gap between the rubber and the frame. Now that’s been eliminated and instead  everything’s all jammed the hell up together. Such is what happens when 215 pounds of person and 25 pounds of bike plus some 10-plus pounds of backpack (I was carrying a company laptop and accessories) heading uphill collide at 3-4 mph with the ass of a stationery minivan.

I’m actually quite lucky the damage to Le Noir and to me wasn’t worse.

My chin is healing up in excess of my expectations, and fortunately my favorite online bike parts source, Nashbar.com, offers a threaded fork with a one-inch steerer tube in the length that I need, so I’ve gone ahead and ordered one up. Instead of my first-choice material of steel (yes, I’m old school) these new forks are carbon  but the price of $90 is right.

So for the next couple days I’ll be riding my Giant roadie — and whether I’m doing 3 mph or 30 you can bet I’ll be looking everywhere but down at the pavement wherever I’m at on the roads.

PS. In case you’re wondering why there’s no video of the mishap, I’m not entirely sorry to say that the back-up battery in the cam at the time had crapped out about half-way home and as I was rather pre-occupied with the upcoming trip and getting home and packed for it, I just kept on going along Jefferson Boulevard when I noticed it had failed, rather than stop and swap in a charged power source.

Besides, I figured it would be just another uneventful ride not worth recording anyway. Ha.

Had I captured it, it undoubtedly would have been an awesome POV of me making a crawling beeline upwards towards and into the butt of the vehicle looming ever larger in the frame until contact occured. Just as I had no choice but to write about it despite my utter embarrassment I would have had no choice but to post it.

For better or worse, if there’s one thing you can count on me to relate without restraint it’s the absolutely crazy ass things that happen to me, and the one that happened a block from my house about 4:30 p.m. this afternoon will certainly qualify for Top 10 status if not  No. 1 pick for my personal Hall of Shame.

I’m still deciding whether I need stitches. About eight of ‘em it looks like. Maybe 10. Rhymes with chin. What do you think?

Here’s the now: I’m leaving tonight for a biz trip to Savannah. I finished up and got out of the office a little about 3:30 p.m. so I could get home and pack and give every one of my loved ones a few dozen extra hugs and kisses. That alone is making me rationalize against going to get sewn up. While blogging about it. Ha.

Here’s the then: It was an uneventful ride home across Jefferson to Vermont and up through HiFitown into Silver Lake where I soon find myself at the base of the Occidental hill that I need to climb to get to my block and my house. The same one I’ve done scores of times.

Instead of powering up it as I’m feeling kinda beat, I just start cranking up the incline, applying enough thrust to keep the pedals rotating. In English that means I’m doing 3 mph. 4 Max.

But here’s the thing. As a result of my slow exertions I’m up off the saddle with my upperbody weight fully forward and on my arms and I’ve got my head down because I could’ve sworn the roadway was clear. So all I’m seeing as I’m grinding up is the pavement passing under my front tire. In English: I’m not looking forward and seeing that a motherfucking minivan is double parked about midway up the slope.

Holy shit, where’d that come from!?

In a flash, I do see the minivan, about a millisecond before my front tire hits the rear bumper and the rear wheel comes off the ground as I spill over smacking my chin against the rear window before skidding it across the windshield wiper and then somehow I get my feet out of the pedals and dance a bit to the left and don’t fall over. A minor miracle.

I’m feeling three times as surprised as I am stupid and twice as stupid as I am angry, and right about then is when the motherfucking driver of the motherfucking minivan leans out of her motherfucking window wondering what just motherfucking hit her motherfucking minivan.

She finds me, bleeding down my neck and wondering out loud why the hell she was motherfucking double parked.

“I had my hazards on!” She yells in her defense.

“Is your car disabled?” I yell back walking the bike up along the side of the car where I then notice that the impact with the front wheel against her bumper has crumpled the fork backward enough to make the tire rub against the bottom tube. Great!

“No, she answers.

And it’s right then that I see the curb parking available a few feet further up the street.

“Well if you’re not disabled, why didn’t you park in that space that’s available RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR GODDAM NOSE!”

“But I had my hazards on!”

“We’ve been over that. Do you think having your hazards on makes it magically OK to double park”

“I was just calling someone,” she said, indicating the cell in her hand and then pointing it at the nearest residence. No doubt she’d been honking prior to calling instead of parking her car right and getting her fat ass out and knocking on the damn door.

Again I ask if that somehow makes it OK to doublepark.

“Well you should have been watching where you were going!” she announced triumphantly.

And I said to her: “You’re absolutely right. Had I been watching where I was going I would not have hit you.”

And she smiled as if she’d won something. I felt blood trickle under the collar of my shirt.

“But let me ask you this: If you had not been illegally double parked, would I have hit you?”

“Uh.”

“Let me rephrase the question. Had you been parked legally in the space available just a few feet forward. Would I now be bleeding all over myself instead of home up the street packing for a flight I have to catch?”

She paused defeated and then said “No,” very quietly.

“Now my bike’s fucked up, my head’s fucked up. So lesson learned: don’t fucking double park!” And I rocked the bike onto its rear tire to keep the now-stuck front one off the ground and I walked away home. Because far beyond who was at fault or how badly I might have been wounded, was the embarrassing fact that I’d smacked into the backside of a motherfucking stationery minivan at 3 mph in broad daylight — despite her motherfucking hazards being on.

In short I felt like an idiot and I just had to go. Still do. But whether it’s Savannah or the nearest emergency room — or both — remains to be seen.

I finally was forced to do something Saturday morning I hadn’t had to do since June 29: fill up my truck’s tank. What with all the bicycle riding I’ve been doing, I’d only logged 215 miles on four wheels. In comparison over that same period I biked 1,582.

Gas was $4.69 per gallon at the Silver Lake 76 eight days after the summer solstice. 10.66 gallons cost me $50.02. Saturday, two days before the beginning of fall it was $3.89 at the Silvr Lake Mobil and 11.37 gallons ran me $44.22.

By the way, on Friday night’s ride home from work I crossed beyond the 5,000-mile mark. It happened right here while eastbound on Sunset from Fountain heading toward the junction, with the infamous and derelict “Bates” motel off my port shoulder.

Also of note, this week will mark the fifth anniversary of the beginning of my “Biking For The Birds” ride, in which I spent eight days biking 475 miles from the Golden Gate bridge back to Los Angeles after helping to raise more than $4,000 for an organization dedicated to protecting parrot species.

Here I am on Day No. 4 between Pismo Beach and our destination that day of Lompoc. I believe this is somewhere around the town of Guadalupe (photo by Sherry Kramer a friend of mine  and fellow L.A. Zoo docent who graciously volunteered to pilot a rental car down the coast as vehicular support):

I still haven’t given up the dream of doing a ride benefiting California condor conservation efforts that goes from the state line at Oregon all the way down to the border with Mexico. Some day.

Then the punk pitched his cigarette at me.

But let me back up to the beginning a block away on Sunset and Parkman where I was stopped waiting for the light to turn green. A champagne colored Japanese coupe pulled alongside my right to make a right turn and as he passed me I heard the driver say out his open window “Way to take up the whole lane dickhead,” before making the right turn that he had plenty of room to make between me — in the bike lane for freak’s sake — and the curb.

Am I the kind of level-head that let’s that shit go? The answer to that is I caught up with him at Parkman and Silver Lake Boulevard where I reeeaaally took him by surprise — no shit he literally jumped in his bucket seat when I skidded to a stop beside him — and  asked him if he truly honestly thought I didn’t hear that shit.

“What shit.”

“Memory trouble much? You know like 15 seconds ago at Sunset you made a right turn past me and said — and I quote: ‘Way to take up the whole lane dickhead.’”

“Well you were taking up the whole lane.”

“OK, then, explain me this: if I was , as you say ‘taking up the whole lane,’ how on earth did you manage to get by and successfully complete a right turn just after calling me a dickhead?”

All he could do was puff on his cigarette and repeat his previous statement.

“Because that’s some righteous driving skills to be able to somehow get around me without hitting me seeing as I was in the fucking bike lane where I belong and you had the ability to do everything you wanted to do but keep your flapping mouth shut.”

And that’s when he said the funniest thing I’ve ever heard.

“Look man. I ride a bike.”

I looked his nondescript car over.

“Yeah? Nice bike.”

“No really. I ride.”

“Oh well, sure. That makes it all OK then,” and he nodded as if I was being serious so I added, “About you being an asshole I mean.”

He started to say something again, probably either “I ride a bike” or “”You were taking up the whole lane,” but I cut him off before he could get started.

“For argument’s sake,” I said, “let’s A) believe it is indeed true that you ride a bike and B) pretend that I give a shit about any aspect of your life. If so, then what kind of motherfucking idiot are you?”

And he just stared so I added, “No seriously. Please explain to me how you came to be such an impeccable monster asshat because that shit fascinates me.”

That’s when the few words he had failed him and he did this rather fey kind of jerky shudder — almost a petulant tantrum but it really looked awkward on someone his age and hipsterness — and he finished the maneuver off by flicking his cigarette at me and gunned it into Silver Lake Boulevard At first I thought the butt had missed me but looking down later I found the ash mark standing out starkly against the white of my shirt. Probably a good thing I thought his aim was as lame as he was.

Trouble was the braintrust didn’t leave. Instead he cut across the street and around a little island to where Parkman continues southward. And he stopped.

So I pursued. Hotly. And loudly. With language most foul and demoralizing.

And he ran to Marathon, where he made a right and then to Silver Lake where he made another desperation right — there he is in mid-turn:

Given his stupid attempt at escaping me I was able to stay pretty close behind all the while yelling at the top of my lungs all sorts of expletives. Then he made another right at Parkman to go around again and I realized a couple things: 1) he really had to suck if he didn’t know how to get him and his car away from a madman on a bike, and 2) he probably lives around here. As in, nearby. As in, to me.

Here’s looking for you, kid.

So I broke off the chase and left him with “I’ll be seeing you around, neighbor,” and I kept going north a bit  on Silver Lake before residual adrenaline forced me to double back and take a last look around. But he was gone, and so I turned back up Silver Lake then up the incline of Ellett Place to Occidental and home.

And yes, this time the timelapse cam was pointed in the right direction and functioning properly, and I’ve spared you the pixelated hell of YouTube by foisting the snippet upon my server as a Quicktime file here. But don’t get all excited, because with the exception of the frenetic little chase scene, most of the action’s taking place out of frame.

It’s hard to say if the two youths loitering on the side of Ballona Creek last night were there by coincidence or design.

It could be the pair of punks just happened to be standing around having found something interesting to watch in the waterway beside the section of the bikeway where it passes under the 405. Or it could be that they were there with a darker more predatory purpose.

I offer that second possibility because just this morning riding in to work the section of bikeway had been its usual unobstructed self. But as I biked home last night in the post-seven o’clock dusk that same dip under the freeway where a fellow cyclist was assaulted and robbed last month had strangely become littered with an odd assortment of baseball-sized river rocks.

I avoided the first couple stones, but at the darkest point where the path briefly bottoms out before inclining back up and out from under the bridge, my front wheel clipped a pretty large one after that and sent it caroming with a crack against the embankment to my left, amplified by the enclosed space. I kept my balance and hissed out a “nice” and on the way up that’s when I passed the duo just out from under the overpass. Immediately I noticed that even though they almost certainly heard the smack of the rock against the concrete and my sarcastic reaction that followed, at best they were looking at me sideways seemingly still interested in the flow of water down the channel.

In the next moment I was beyond them and didn’t give the situation a second thought until I was coming up from under the Sepulveda Boulevard overpass and my front innertube showed itself to be fatally injured  no doubt from its direct impact with the rock. With a flat front tire flopping on the rim I pulled over, put Le Noir belly up and commenced swapping in a spare. And in the course of doing so it dawned on me that those rocks may very well have been strategically placed and by those two wastrels in the hopes of potentially downing a cyclist or disabling their bike and pouncing.

My hackles stood at attention and as I reinflated the tube (by the way, it takes 200 cranks of my tire pump to get it up around 100psi) in increasing agitation and indignation I considered going back. I entertained the thought of parading back past the hoodlums, clearing the path of its would-be trap with them looking on in surprise. Of course when they’d object or otherwise attempt to intervene with my safety efforts they’d prove my theory that it was intentional and I would then drown the both of them in the creek and send their carcasses seaward, because in my mind I can be a dark sonofabitch.

In reality, my grateful wife appreciates that I’m far less psychopathically inclined and far more consequence-aware so instead of risking injury or the death penalty I reasoned myself into pedaling onward inland and let the 20-plus mph winds my adrenaline was generating soothe the hair on the back of my neck back down.

It took a few miles for them to go fully flat.

PS. If you’re wondering why I don’t have a timelapse video of the event, it’s because I picked the wrong commute to experiment with a rear-facing POV by mounting my cam on my backpack. Unknown to me its upward angle only allowed it to capture nothing-in-particular images like this one under the 405 overpass right around the moment of impact with the rock:

It all began this morning when I rolled up behind Mr. Pinkbike in his green-and-white-and black Helen’s Cycles Team spandex ensemble stopped on his neon pink fixie westbound at the corner of Venice and La Cienega boulevards.

His color scheme alone is post-worthy, but of course there’s more… much more — with his wasted transgressions well illustrated over our 4.5 miles together thanks to my trusty handlebar cam.

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