bi [sic] le

It doesn’t help when I don’t read the Sunday paper or turn on the TV beyond an episode of “Nip/Tuck.” I’m just now at this late date finding out that Alabama running back Mark Ingram won the Heisman Trophy Saturday night, becoming the first Crimson Tide player in the history of the storied program to attain the highest college football honor.

From the CNN.com report:

“Alabama has won outright or shared 10 national championships dating back to 1925, according to the National Collegiate Athletic Association Web site, but before Saturday no Crimson Tide player had ever won the sport’s most prestigious individual award.”

What a remarkable year for my favorite college football team, and a marvelous achievement for one of its key players. I’m just blown away.

I began my 6,000th biking mile as I crossed the intersection of Venice and National boulevards at 7:08 p.m., but I stopped to commemorate the milestone with a more interesting background a block further on:

The above image is slightly biggifiable, or you can watch the brief vid from which it was culled (video because it was easier to capture the awesome Helms neon sign at the height of its cycle). Bonus points if you can make out some things I learned: 1) I need to practice holding handmade signs better, and 2) I chew gum like a freakin’ cow. Seriously, you’d think I was mawing an entire pack of the stuff instead of one little piece. The shame of it all.

The element that most consistently changes on this blog is that little box in the sidebar near the top of this front page titled “Bike Mileage Tally.” I’m pretty religious in its updating. Whenever I put my peds to the pedals be it for a short trip in my neighborhood, a mountain bike ride in the Verdugos, a work commute, or a much longer trek I get myself over to Gmaps, plot the course and log the mileage. Been doing that for a couple years now.

As of this morning my distance total for the year stands a few hundredths of a mile short of 5,980, and since my average work commute is somewhere around 30 miles roundtrip, that means that on tonight’s ride back home, I will enter my 6,000th mile for 2009 pretty much in front of the Helm’s Bakery Complex on Venice Boulevard.

I will probably pause and self-portrait the moment in time and space, and further up the road might be found procuring a couple Artie Lange cupcakes from Crumbs on Larchmont to bring home to share with Susan as a celebratory reward.

Last year, I got to that same mark on November 24, appropriately upon arrival to the Bicycle District at Heliotrope and Melrose where my somewhat lagging committment to cycling was reinvigorated back in August 2005 with a wheel-building class led by Jim Cadenhead now co-owner of Orange 20 Bikeshop, but then as a cook at the Bike Kitchen.

I’ve come a long way since then, baby. And I’ve got a long way to go.

Ride on.

One of the truly endearing things about the biking I do is that the locations of many of the milestones I reach are so unsung.  In 2007 I began my 3,000th mile traveling next to Lindberg Park tucked into a quiet little residential enclave of Culver City. Last year, and perhaps most appropriately, my 6,000th mile began after turning the corner from Melrose Avenue onto Hyperion, the intersection that’s pretty much recognized as the ground zero of the city’s burgeoning bike culture movement.

By chance on my lunch break I decided to add up my accumulated miles over these past 33 months, and sure enough I found out that by the time I arrive home tonight I will be at 15,007 miles, which means that my 15,000th mile will be achieved along the way — not on some main thoroughfare or through some famous brightly lighted intersection, but here, perhaps all by myself on sleepy little Cochran Avenue just north of an alley south of Wilshire Boulevard.

It’s a miracle mile in the Miracle Mile.

For those of you who might be keeping an occasional eye on that little bike mileage tally box to the right, you’ll notice I’ve surpassed the 5,000-mile mark in my annual bike ridings, both commuter and recreational.

I should be all happy about that, but somewhat frustratingly I’ve actually biked less mileage than I’d accumulated on this day last year. And while it’s only a deficit of 15 miles it’s still a surprise to me that I’m basically running even with 2008.

I’d started out riding strong in 2009. Over the winter and into the spring I built up a 200-mile “lead” over last year’s efforts. And when I finished April far below average, I responded with “Bike Every Day In May” and knocked out 849 miles in that month alone. But then I flat-out faltered in the summer months, erasing that overall cushion so that now I’m knocking on October’s door and I’m really going to have to buckle down and crank it if I hope to finish this year with more miles than the 6,608 I finished with at the end of the previous one.

See last October I ended up riding my original record of 717 miles for the month. So unless I come close to matching that next month, there’s a chance November will find me not just 15 miles down, but 150 — maybe more.

Given last November’s lowlowlow mileage of 247 I’ll have a chance to play catch up this November, but then the pressure will be on to match or exceed the 547 miles logged in December 2008.

I’m telling you: this has all the makings of coming down to the wire — especially if we have wetter weather than we did at the end of 2008. After the first quarter of 2009 I was thinking 7,000 miles was totally attainable. Now I’m hoping for 6,610.

I pedaled into my 4,000th mile of the year right about here on Bates Avenue between Lexington and Gateway:

Frankly though I’ve mourned the passing of a voice and talent that I literally grew up with, Michael Jackson’s public memorial madhouse service scheduled for Tuesday at Staples Center is so not a be-all/end-all event for me and I submitted my request for tickets rather sheepishly.

I’ll be veeeeeeeery surprised if my name gets pulled from among what will undoubtedly be the hundreds of thousands out of the proverbial hat. But if indeed I become the recipient of tix to the event and seeing as I have the day off I might just bike on down into the vortex of the grief storm to see what I shall see.

And if the scene turns out to be even more out-of-this-universe crazy than expected I can always adjourn to Wurstkuche or Blue Star and raise a glass in private tribute.

Well, when it rains it pours. First my handlebarcam finally goes kaput Wednesday. Frankly it’s something of a wonder that the Canon SD1000 lasted this long since it first started exhibiting troubles last December after four or five months of dealing with the hostile and unstable environment of being mounted to my bike — which is why I went and bought a replacement SD1100 and after the 1000 magically resurrected itself had the luxury of making my little timelapse vids and having a still cam at the ready.

It was camtastic.

But apparently the 1100 isn’t made of the strong stuff the 1000 was, because no sooner did I timelapse yesterday morning’s commute to work with it, when it malf’ed. Any attempt to power it up and the lens extends just a smidge before it powers down.

So I was cam-less for last night’s ride home, and anyone who reads me knows I hate rolling nekkid like that. Well, I did have my iPhone but anyone with one of those devices knows its cam is just laughably craptacular.

To add insult to injury, for the first time since 2003 I broke a spoke last night.  Right in front of the Culver City Cop Shop on Duquesne. Removing it I then disabled the front brake so the now out-of-true rim wouldn’t rub against the shoes and commenced rolling s-l-o-w-l-y to Orange 20 Bikes to procure a replacement (plus a couple spares, which I installed after I got home. I even managed to re-true the rim enough to be proud of myself.

This morning — which just so happens to be the 45th anniversary of my coming into the world — I’m searching for the the cam’s receipt so I can submit it for service under the warranty still covering it, but of course I can’t find that crucial bit of documentation, so it looks like I’ll be dropping the SD1100 off at Samy’s for repairs. In the timelapse-less interim I’ll be forced to use either of two back-up digicams: an old Olympus which is balky and predisposed to shooting everything in macro mode, and an older Polaroid that’s just a couple steps up from my iPhone cam.

Better than nothing.

UPDATED (6:43): Found the receipt! Happy Birthday to me!

That’s where my virtual bike odometer and I will end up for the year when I complete my planned 46-mile roundtrip bike commute tomorrow afternoon.

A huge part of that achievement was the fact that of 257 work days in 2008, I biked 197 of them — an achievement in and of itself.

But 6,606.16. That’s an achievement, too.

Here’s the 15 from this morning, along a different route that involved downtown and a flat tire:

Typically my commute mileage comes in around 30, but I’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning and taking the loooooong way in via the westside through across Brentwood to Ocean Park to the Santa Monica Pier and then the beach path to Venice and then through Marina Del Rey to the Ballona Creek Bikeway.

Just because.

Show of hands: how many people add miles to their trips to work, just because. That’s the magic of the bicycle.

On the return trip I’ll be coming home with decidedly less deviation along 4th Street and with one last climb up the Occidental rise south of my house. The same one upon which I pedaled into the back of that double-parked minivan back in September.

Of course there’s more to tomorrow’s extended trip than just because.  If I stuck to the routine I’d be 10 miles shy of the 6600 mark, and it just won’t do for me to be within striking distance of something — especially something so relatively irrelevant — and let it go unattained.

So there you have it. I set out this year to bike 3,000 miles. I had that done by early June. As to what’s in store for next year, at this late date I haven’t decided anything and in fact  I may just go all laissez faire and let the good miles roll across ‘09 without a finish line. We’ll see.

UPDATED (12.31): Make that 6608.17. I was cut loose from work at noon today so I cranked out a couple additional miles meeting my friend Manny at Langer’s in MacArthur Park and biking home from there.

As expected, I reached my 6,000th mile on my way home last night, entering it roughly in the Melrose Hill vicinity of Western Avenue and Hobart and exiting it on approach to Santa Monica Boulevard on Heliotrope. In the midst of it I stopped at no better place to commemorate the achievement than  where my cycling enthusiasm got restoked way back in the summer of 2005:  the Bicycle Square/Quadrant/District/Zone/Land/Arena at Heliotrope and Melrose… pretty much the ground-zero of the city’s bike culture:

Of course I timelapsed the whole 15-mile ride home, but for the sake of expediency I’ve extracted the momentous (and at times gridlocked and gloriously lane-splitted) mile and saved it as a Quicktime file — albeit about a 15-meg’er what with me slowing the frames down a bit — that can be viewed here.