bi [sic] le

Whatever biological elements conspired to limit our property’s usual orb spider inundation this past year or two are not in effect this time around. These awesome arachnids have been out and about the yards early, albeit smaller in size than I typically see.

Until this morning, when I found this fine large specimen working on its web under the backyard bougainvillea (click it for the bigger picture):

For all you arachniphobes out there… sorry. It can’t all be hummingbird chicks and butterflies.

If it’s any consolation there is of course the drawback that I’m walking  face first into far more webs strung across walkways and such. But doing my exceptionally erratic version of the spiderwebfacefreakout dance is mostly a small price to pay to get to hang with such amazing creatures.

Mostly.

There I was sun-dappled and slaving away outside on the laptop, the tracks of a CD of Spanish guitar music filling the space with sound from the two wireless outdoor  faux-rock speakers I’m so glad I bought last week. Two cats were napping opposite me in patio chairs and a drowsy Ranger dog snoozed at my feet.

Such can be my workday hell.

When I first heard the tapping behind me I figured it would be just one of those rascally squirrels gnawing on a walnut from the tree next door and so I ignored it. But the noise continued and  there was something too percussive about it to be a rodent.

So I got up and looked closer and sure enough it was a rate treat: a Nuttall’s woodpecker doing its very best to extract and eat whatever insectivorous nutrition might have been available from the branch to which it clung. It also did its very best to avoid any positions on the branches that might allow me to get a great shot of it. Of the 48,004 snapped this was the best and least obstructed of ‘em (click for the bigger picture):

The supposed HD video capability of my iPhone doesn’t translate well to YouTube, but I did my best the capture the thundering herd of helicopters that passed over our house this afternoon and inspired me to go a bit acapella with the “Apocalypse Now” soundtrack. Apologies for that.

UPDATE (7.28): Commenter Frank sets me straight. They’re not Apaches, they’re AH-1W Super Cobras. Thanks, Frank!

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.

Coming back Saturday night from our inaugural visit to The Thirsty Crow Bar — our new favorite neighborhood watering hole — we decided to get some food to-go from Cowboys & Turbans up the street, one of our new favorite local eateries. In going there we passed a gathering of cyclists in the parking lot at SilverSun Plaza, getting ready for a group ride hosted by the MOM Ridazz crew, a group I’d heard of but didn’t really associate with because their reputation precedes them as partiers (their logo prominently features a marijuana leaf), and who did little to endear themselves to me when I found photos posted of a past MOM Ridazz ride some months ago in which one participant thought it awesome to climb the fragile Echo Park Lady of Lake statue. I’m sure their rides are great for those they appeal to, but they’re just not my bag.

Anyway, while waiting for our order outside Cowboys & Turbans, Susan and I were talking and in the distance I heard a loud thump, but it took a few seconds to register that the noise didn’t sound good. Stepping into the street and looking east up Sunset, I saw a person down in the bike lane next to a bike, and another person kneeling down next to them.

At first I thought it was just a case of a spill, but as I got closer and saw there wasn’t a second bike, I wondered if there’d been a car involved. Sure enough after getting the injured cyclist and his messed up bike out of the street, I found out the woman had opened her car door and he’d barreled into it — loud enough that I heard it 100 yards away and with enough force that the door now wouldn’t close.

The nasty knot on his knee, an abrasion to his back and some other aches and minor scrapes notwithstanding, the young man was lucky. Besides seeming not to have hit his helmetless head, he also avoided sprawling out into traffic where he might have been struck by another vehicle.

As with any traffic accident with injuries I wanted the police contacted, but the young man begged us not to, claiming he was fine, and despite my best efforts to encourage him at least to go to a hospital to get checked out, he was understandably amped on adrenaline and that just wasn’t really a priority to him.

Eventually the MOM Ridazz participants began their ride (which is where he’d been heading). Passing us the downed cyclist called out to them and a couple of his buddies came to his aid. His rather blunt explanation that he “got hit by a motherfucking car” with the apologetic driver right there drove her to tears and I did my best to calm her, telling her that thankfully it wasn’t any worse and that the first opportunity she had she should file a report with her insurance company — especially if he didn’t want to go to a hospital and  no one wanted to call the police.

In the chaos of the victim talking with his buddies and trying to get the bike working I wished everyone well and Susan and I got on our way home.

Coming home last night from work in the still-light late afternoon I opted to go the “long way” east across Jefferson to pay my annual spring visit to the Exposition Park Rose Garden, then up Figueroa to 2nd to Glendale around Echo Park Lake and home via Sunset.

Everything was awesome, up until I was northbound on Fig approaching 4th and the latest in the endless stream of inbred motorists dickwads — this one in a full-sized silver pick-up — passes less than two feet from me and lays on his horn despite having room to pass me without the honk and also to move to the left.

Here he is in mid-pass from my sunglasses cam, close enough not only to scare the crap out of me with or without the horn, but also close enough for me in the truck’s wake to get a solid whiff of the skunkweed emanating from the closed cab.

In the next frame, you’ll see he’s further up the block, prepping to make a right turn on 4th and either oblivious to or not interested in  my loud and heated invitation for him to stop and let me physically demonstrate my disdain upon his head and ass until he apologized for being a self-entititle cromag with no respect for anyone but his drug dealer.

Now here’s where it gets interesting. In the next frame I’ve arrived at 4th and I’ve wisely decided that the dipshit isn’t worth chasing down, much less the prison time I’d incur from stomping a hole through his stomach. So I stay on Fig and give the truck a dismissive wave and shake of the head as I pass. Trouble is those two fixie riders on the sidewalk you see there? They see me wave and for some stoopid reason they think I’m dissing them.

Of course I don’t know this until I get up between 3rd and 2nd streets and pull off to the side of the road, seething and half-hoping the truck might be coming back onto Figueroa from 3rd. This doesn’t happen, but in short order the two fixies pass me and the second guy makes a deliberate effort to dismissively wave at me and shake his head as he goes by, like so.

At first I’m all WTF, but since I’m not the dimmest bulb on the chandlier I figure they must’ve thought I was insulting them as I passed them at 4th and they were returning the favor. So, when traffic cleared I get in the left lane for my turn on to 2nd and catch up with them at the intersection, where I seek confirmation of my theory. The guy smiles and shrugs when I ask him if they thought I’d been dissing them and so I tell him he’s got it all wrong, that  I had been waving at a truck on 4th that had almost hit me, not them.

Dude didn’t look too convinced and was all “Whatever you say, man.”

I started to launch into a defensive sermon about my love for bikes and how I’d be the last sumbitch on the streetz to behave so ignorantly toward another cyclist, but I could tell it was lost on him so I just went on my way home chuckling at how only in my world can a motorist harass and disrespect me with absolutely no consequences — and in the end I’m left having to placate to some sensitive misinterpreting cyclists all because I elected to do the right thing and avoid confronting the bastard.

Sigh.

I’m having a lot of fun culling stills from my sunglassescam, heavily fauxtifying them and then lobbing them up onto the internest in the form of a Flickr set.

People in automobiles sitting inside their vehicles and traveling up or down whatever street or freeway might pass thousands more people sitting in their vehicles than I pass on my bike, but I’ll call any of them liars who say they experience a greater connection to their city or the people they share the roadways with than I do from the saddle.

Hi-ho 8Ball — away!

Here’s the set of the above thumbnails.

It’s just a fact of biking on the streets and I’m long used to getting crossed at intersections by all manner of civilian vehicles who roll through my right of way  pretty regularly — be it aggressively intentional or distractedly unaware.

This morning’s “meetcha in the  middle” partner was a first. Good morning, officers!

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.