[sic]

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.

It started when I was playing fetch with Ranger in the backyard and her attention was diverted to something happening beyond the north fence. Upon investigation I found our cat Jiggy on the other side and he was trying to “play” with what I first thought was a baby opossum. I shoo’d Jiggy away from the little critter and enlisted Susan’s help to keep the cat at bay while I raced around in full trespass mode onto our neighbors property with some intention of coming to the baby’s aid.

When I got there, Jiggy took off, and the critter was gone perhaps through a tight gap I found in the fence and so Susan commenced searching our brick and river rock pile for clues. Sure enough through an opening (indicated by the arrow above) she spied something moving and when I made my way back around to it she had broken out the bazillion candlepower Q-Beam and not long after aiming it into the hole did she clear the area with, “That’s a skunk!”

Sure enough when I dared to verify her findings I found the littler fella had the telltale stripe down the center of its muzzle and a bushy little head of white fur, and we realized where there’s a baby skunk and a den there’s a momma who might not take so kindly to us encroaching. So Susan and I retreated with me then getting busy setting up the SkunkCam in hopes of motion-capturing them should they chose to step out for a little nocturnal foraging tonight.

I’ll update with the results tomorrow.

UPDATE (04.20): Not much luck last night. The center of the three-image sequence (click to enlarge thumbnails) below, with its blurry flash of white in the den entrance is the only thing captured on the cam last night.

Did you know that back in the day if cyclists in Los Angeles dared to want to bring their bikes aboard any of the MTA’s trains (which back then consisted of the Blue Line, the Green Line and a Red Line that only ran between Union Station and the Wiltern Theater), the MTA wanted to know all aaaaaaaaall about them by insisting that a signed and completed invasion of privacy application be submitted in order to obtain an official “Cycle Express” (whatever that means) permit that featured the cyclist’s name and address and photograph, documentation of which they were then obligated to maintain possession of despite its inconvenient un-wallet sized dimensions of 3.5″ x 4″.

And the kicker? If so demanded, permit holders were required to present the permit — not just to fare inspectors or law enforcement personal but “any Metropolitan Transit Authority employee” when mass-transiting with their two wheelers.

If that’s not ridiculous enough, the permits were issued with expiration dates, necessitating a stupid renewal process.

How do I know all this? Because I was the recipient and holder of MTA Cyclist Permit No. 3046, which expired 11 years ago last September (click thumbnails of the front and back to enlargify):

It’s no wonder this insulting, discriminatory and invasive program was canceled, but it’s absolutely amazing that it was ever implemented.

UPDATED (04.18): I also found my Metrolink Bike Permit, which didn’t expire (there’s an expiration date line on the front but it was left blank), and its rules on the back were a little more well-thought out (i.e. permits must be presented only to fare inspectors upon request — not just any old employee like the MTA permit):

Maybe not, but this cyclist makes some noise about it.

My friend Stephen Box, tireless cyclist and cycling advocate and founder of the Bike Writers Collective (BWC), attended what he related the next day on the LAist blog to be something of a contentious March 18 meeting of the L.A. Transportation Committee regarding Councilman Bill Rosendahl’s motion to close a Ballona Creek Bikeway access gate at Culver Drive west of Sawtelle. Rosendahl put in the request in response to residents’ complaints that it made their adjacent neighborhood more vulnerable to crime.

When BWC member Eric Richardson brought the proprosal to the collective’s attention the day before the meeting, its members including myself, were decidedly put out by what we considered to be a short-sighted and ineffective solution that will remove the bikeway from its community far more than it will reduce crime. At the same time it was also understood that one gate is something of a little battle to pick. But as one gate’s closure can lead to another and another, I took immediate action the evening of March 17 to scope out the section of bikeway in question, with an eye towards identifying the various access points available and distances in between them.

Entering the bikeway eastbound at the entrance from Inglewood Avenue the first somewhat discreet access I found was a third of a mile away at Coolidge Avenue pictured below, where Culver Slauson Park is located. I then traveled under the 405 Freeway overpass to the gate Rosendahl wants closed at the meeting of Culver Drive and Purdue Avenue.

The distance from Coolidge Avenue to Purdue Avenue is a fifth of a mile. In other words, even if one subscribes to the belief that locking a gate will successfully eliminate any criminal element present from accessing or escaping the adjacent area, it is readily negated by the fact that there’s another opening just 1,000 feet away.

Next, let’s take a look at the Culver Drive gate and immediate fencing and see why even Rosendahl’s motion succeeds and the gate is shackled it will have little of its intended effect.

As pictured above, the material is simple chain link. On top of that the gate is about five feet all. The fencing that extends east and west of the gate is just as short but its built up from a concrete footing to give it a total height of about six feet. As a barrier this offers little in the way of security. Not only can the chain link be cut but with the concrete base serving as a boost step the fence is basically ready to be climbed over and quickly by any properly motivated hoodlums.

So what’s the solution? Do we close the Coolidge Avenue gate, too? Or perhaps do we spend money the city doesn’t have to increase the Culver Drive gate’s height? Surprisingly enough you can see in the following picture this has already happened on Culver Drive another fifth of a mile upstream beyond Sawtelle Boulevard at Beloit Avenue.

Beyond the noticeable difference in height between this fencing and gate along Culver Drive east of Sawtelle and the one seen in the previous image, it’s also very important to note that the gate is already closed and locked. This was not just a one-day occurrence. It was shackled shut when this picture was taken March 17, as well as when I rode by it on the 18th, 19th, 20th, and 21st. While I’m not privy to the circumstances regarding its closure, it’s not hard to imagine the residents of these streets perhaps lobbying for it for the same reason as their neighbors on the other side of Sawtelle are doing now.

But wait, there’s more! A tenth of a mile eastward and one comes to the inexplicably locked gates of the bikeway exit into the southbound lanes of Sepulveda Boulevard.

Entering and exiting has been denied every day this week as well. So unless one is willing to risk clambering over the upended shopping cart seen at the left of the frame (placed there perhaps by some enterprising cyclist or pedestrian or gangmember), in order to exit the bikeway you’ll have to travel under the Sepulveda Boulevard overpass and double back to the street an additional third of a mile.

For the healthy walker, jogger or bike rider this is no big deal. But let’s take a look at the potential of a worst-case scenario that involves someone injured on the bikeway in the vicinity of Sawtelle. Whereas there should be two methods of egress available to the injured person – at Beloit Avenue and Purdue Avenue – Beloit isn’t and now an exit at Purdue is in danger of disappearing. Furthermore, the only options are for the injured person to somehow get all the way under Sepulveda, go under the overpass and double back to the entrance, or make it the other direction to Coolidge Avenue.

And what if it’s a matter of emergency personnel trying to assist an incapacitated person at that point on the bikeway. It isn’t hard to imagine the potential delays that could occur if paramedics are prevented from coming to someone’s aid because locked gates block there way and force them in opposite directions and greater distances to gain entry.

While that might seem overdramatic or an exaggeration, it all goes to the matter of accessibility and whether we want to allow this important resource to be further separated from the community it serves, under the false pretense of protecting it.

I certainly can empathize with the citizens that Stephen reported on who at the meeting expressed fear over the present conditions, and I think Councilman Rosendahl is absolutely obligated to find a way to protect them. But he should redirect his sights away from the easy target he’s focused on and instead explore proactive opportunities that can be used to reduce the level of crime purported to exist there.

With two access points already locked down, closing what would be a third in a row to the Ballona Creek Bikeway is not one of those opportunities.

UPDATED (03.25): Coincidence? I think not. On my way in to work after a doctor’s appointment yesterday afternoon I exited the bikepath accessway to the northbound lanes of Sepulveda Boulevard and found the previously locked gate to/from the southbound lanes open:

Not completely visible about a tenth of a mile beyond it is the still-shackled gate at Beloit Avenue and Culver Drive.

With the news today that the brakes I ordered won’t even ship until Wednesday at the earliest but very likely Friday, I decided I couldn’t wait no more and so went to work moving the Tektro calipers off my Giant roadie and onto the new ride, then made a late night trip to Orange 20 Bikeshop to pick up new cables, which I installed while watching the new “Terminator” series and then taped up the bars and put her by the front door for the night

Here she is this morning. Ready for her close-up (click to quadruplify):

In short, I’ll be inaugurating her today first by pedaling over to my polling place to…

V O T E

…and then heading on into work.

UPDATE (12:40 p.m.): This is the beginning of a beautiful partnership. She did  excellently and felt great on the ride in. The 48-tooth chainring paired with the 16-tooth freewheel doesn’t differ much in feel and power from the The Phoenix’s 53-18 set.  If anything it’s a touch easier getting off the line with perhaps only a negligible loss in top-end speed. But I had her doing 27 mph on La Brea approaching Wilshire, which is faster on the flat than I’ve ever had The Phoenix, who usually topped out in the 24-mph range.

Indeed barely a day after the demise of The Phoenix and its corpse still warm where its been hung up in the garage, on my lunch break today I somewhat $keptically went online with no clear purpose other than t0 see what I could see in terms of potential new singlespeeders out there… and hopefully not come away to sticker shocked. I looked at various manufacturers: Windsor, Surly, Motobecane, Soma… everything looked great but conversely had prices far greater than I wanted to spend. See, I’m just not interested in spending $600-$800 to replace a bike that I spent a couple Saturdays and about $300 bringing back from the brink.

Then I rolled on in to bikesdirect.com and found this classic baby:

Beyond it nicely possessing a very similar geometry to The Phoenix, there were certain seemingly inconsequential old-school aspects of the frame had me practically gleeful — mainly the fact that it was conveniently drilled for the type of brakes The Phoenix sported, and that its frame is steel instead of aluminum (the latter being less forgiving of the bumps and thumps ones bound to encounter on the road). By far the biggest selling point was that it was available for well less than half of its MSRP. And bonus: free shipping.

But we’ll see how long it takes to get to me because there’s a bit of a discrepancy as to whether Bikesdirect has this one in stock or if it’ll be unavailable until March. If that resolves to be the sooner rather than the later then I’m ordering me up one o’deez right quick like.

UPDATE (01.23): It’s in stock and shipping via UPS today!

Things I Wanna Do This Weekend (and probably will):

• Bike up to the Hollywood nunnery and get a loaf of pumpkin bread (thanks for the reminder Militant!)
• Begin my Christmas shopping
• Clean the bike (and change the slow-leaking rear innertube)
• Take Susan to dinner at that new El Caserio restaurant on Silver Lake Boulevard north of the 101
• Put up the Christmas decorations

Things I Wanna Do This Weekend (and most likely won’t):

• Finish my Christmas shopping
• Drive over to The Kobbler King on Jefferson and check out their wares
• Drive a little further on Jefferson and pick up the abandoned fence post I saw ( if it’s still there; don’t ask)

Things I Don’t Wanna Do (but gotta):

• Go to the vet’s and get medicine and special food for Shadow
• Groceries (Costco & Vons)
• Clean the house
• Rake leaves
• Laundry

UPDATED (12/3): Not too shabby. The only things I didn’t get done were that visit to The Kobbler King, dinner at El Caserio, and my bike’s cleaning.

Saturday morning was spent with one last wander around downtown Charleston before saying goodbye and finally getting a move on up to the Magnolia Plantation, where we spent a few hours wandering the gardens before getting ourselves over to Charleston International Airport to board a 7:17 flight to Atlanta and from there climbed onto a 9:25 jet back here where we touched down a few minutes past 11 p.m. L.A. time and were home around midnight to find all our animals safe and mostly sound.

By mostly I mean that Shadow began manifesting some odd symptoms that our pet sitter called and told us about Friday night that either could have been a stroke or an ear infection (she’s otherwise mobile and alert, but with a marked loss of equilibrium, “drunken” walk and a head tilt to one side) and they ended up taking her to our vet yesterday and keeping us posted.

The vet thinks it’s none of the above and are running blood tests because they think it might be kidney related, noting that her blood is excessively thick. We’ll know more tomorrow when the results are back from the lab.

But in the meantime she’s happy to see us, as are all the animals — even moreso us seeing them — and we’re going to work hard chilling and milling around our own little plantation today.

UPDATED (8:49 p.m.): Further regarding Shadow’s condition, Susan went searching onling and her efforts seemed to have hit a diagnosis square on the head: Canine Peripheral Vestribular Syndrome.

Agh, us faultless “entitled” humans. Practically every day I’m shown another example of how we think we do own the planet. This time it was on a rather small scale via an alert to residents of the next monthly Silver Lake Improvement Association gathering later this week.

As highlighted above, one of the items to be explored concerns “our coyote problems,” and you just have to know that kind of slanted, narrow sillytalk just chaps my coyote-loving hide enough to whip off an email to the boardmembers:

In regards to the item on the agenda of this coming Thursday’s community meeting, I may have to show up for once just so I can be one of those pro-animal hardcase voices in the wilderness that points a resenting finger at it being referred to institutionally as a “coyote problem.”

Sadly it seems I should expect members of the SLIA board to roll their eyes at anyone defending the creatures, but the fact is the coyotes’ presence isn’t their fault, it’s the fault of those of us who — be it inadvertent or not — provide them with predatory and scavenging opportunities.

And then there’s that little matter of burning down a huge section of their habitat in Griffith Park last May and forcing them to relocate. Lest we forget, that catastrophe wasn’t caused by a coyote that was careless with a cigarette, it was one of us human problems.

Will Campbell

UPDATE (3:50 p.m.): I ended up receiving a very nice reply from SLIA boardmember Lorraine Kells that demonstrated how easily I misconstrue irony when it comes to critters I heart:

Will,

I’m the guilty one.  I hurriedly made up the flyer with my typical Los Angeles tongue-in-cheek, ironic stance because the whole idea of having a wildlife specialist explain to people that the coyotes were here first and attracted by our garbage and wasteful habits is NOT their problem, but the problem of those who refuse to admit they live
in what was a wilderness scrub and home to mountain lions, bobcats, and coyotes which once thrived in balance should be obvious, but it’s not.  So, it’s our problem about ourselves, which we call our coyote problem.  Officer Randall does a great job of stating that.  You’ll enjoy him.

I don’t disagree with you, but I’m responsible for the irony which you took for intent; nevertheless there are many who view the animals as pests, so bring out your friends and fight for those critters.

Warm regards,
Lorraine Kells

To which I replied:

Thank you Lorraine. I fool myself into thinking I have an eye for irony and a sense of humor but it seems that’s never more not true when critters are involved. I’m familiar with Officer Randall and I’ll do my best to get to the meeting, but I’m also one of those fools that commutes to work (in Westchester) by bike (or even worse: carpools). Either of those crosstown scenarios might keep me from being there Thursday night, but I’m sure gonna try.

Best,
Will

You’re gonna wanna click the above
Eureka Dunes panorama thumbnail

First off props to my beloved Susan because I gotta say it takes a special woman who says “hell yeah!” when I tell her that I want to drive out to the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night with our two dogs and spend the following day next to a the biggest pile of sand in California and then come home the day after that.

It was sooo worth it. Five and a half hours spent Friday night rolling up the 14 to the 395 to Big Pine and then the 168 up, up, up winding roads dodging brazen jackrabbits until going down, down, down to where the pavement ran out then dodging even more jackrabbits until we found the turn off for Eureka Dunes and 10 miles later we pulled into the deserted campground, stepped outside into the blessedly still but chilly (but not as bad as we’d expected) 1:30 a.m. air under as many stars as there are grains of sand in the dunes and decided we’d save the tent pitching for daylight and sleep in the car.

Four and a half hour later we were up with the dawn and it was even colder (but still wonderfully windless and deserted), and soon the coffee was percolating on the campstove and coyotes were yipping somewhere unseen in the distance and then the sun popped up over the eastern mountains and immediately began warming things up and we had breakfast of corned beef hash, bacon and eggs and as we raised the tent we openly wondered if we’d somehow lucked into getting the entire monstrously magnificent Eureka Valley to ourselves.

A short time later we had our first lookeloo: a fella in a sedan pulled out to take a couple photos and move on and by 11:30 it was still all ours ours ours and decidedly in the low 80s and gorgeous and so Susan and Ranger and Shadow and I hit the dunes. We didn’t make it to the 700-foot top, opting instead to romp around up to about 400 feet or so before heading back for ice-cold Coronas at camp and a nap that was disturbed occasionally by the passing trains of two-wheeled and four-wheeled offroaders, the latter stopping long enough to be overheard saying “That’s some impressive freakin’ dunes” before heading off.

At sunset we had a couple visiting pairs of people who parked nearby and made quickout and back trips onto the sand before coming back to their vehicles and leaving.

We did end up with a neighboring camp, but they had the fine sense to set up about a half mile down the road. As darkness fell, we got the fire going and had a great dinner of steaks and veggies and cheap red wine bought at the Stater Bros. market in Mojave. Afterward we marveled at a couple of bats and their acrobatics through our camp picking off moths drawn to our lanterns.

I tried my hand at several five and 10-minute timelapses of the starry skies but after losing patience I joined Susan and the dogs in the tent and appropriately bundled up we were all asleep or getting there by 7:30 p.m.

Up again at 6 a.m. to another phenomenally windless and glorious day I got a morning campfire going and coffee brewing. After breakfast Ranger and I had another romp to about the dunes’ 250 foot elevation, then came back to break camp with Shadow while Susan and Ranger headed out for one last visit to the sandy stuff.

We were packed and on our way by 10 a.m. as planned, leaving us enough time for a sidetrip to the Manzanar Interment Camp off 395 outside of Lone Pine. By 4 p.m. we were home to find all the cats had been well cared for by my mom. Afer unpacking we dropped the rental SUV back at Hertz and since then he dogs have pretty much been sacked out from their fantastic journey and Susan and I have been pulling pictures taken off our cameras, including that 18-shot 180-degree view posted above of the south end of Eureka Valley and the dunes.

Without a doubt everything conspired — the weather, the lack of other people, the location, the light traffic out and back — to produce one of the best camping experiences ever. Plenty more pictures to come. Later.

First it’s back to the grind of doing dishes and sleeping in a real bed.

UPDATE (11.12): My Flickr photoset found here; Susan’s is here!