One of the not-quite-so-hugely urgent decisions needing to be made is my choice of firearm, and I narrowed it down to two makes: Glock and Smith & Wesson. We don’t actual begin firearms training until the second month of the eight-week Module III course, but the duty belt comes with a holster fitted to a specific weapon so I figured I might as well get a move on about which one it was going to be.

So I headed down to the Los Angeles Gun Club south and east of downtown and rented a Glock 17 (above left) and a S&W M&P9 (right) with which to shoot 50 9mm rounds between the two pistols. Both felt good in my hand and were easy to manipulate, but when it came to firing I had far greater and easier accuracy with the Glock from the start. The S&W wasn’t inaccurate, it just seemed to be a bit more labor intensive and require greater concentration and focus than the Glock.

Thirty-six rounds later things were pretty even, so to break the tie I decided to take the remaining 14 rounds and use them in a seven-shot test for each gun. The gun that brings me the highest score is the gun that I get.

Here’s the results; Glock on the left, S&W on the right (click for the bigger picture):

What’s interesting is that with the S&W (which I shot first) I sent more bullets into the center of the target, but then for reasons unknown to me went wiiiiide right into the arm area (one shot just barely hitting) for a total score of 54. With the Glock, I only put one round fully in the center (the one on the line is more in the second ring), but overall had a much tighter grouping — and without really having to “try” as hard as I did with the S&W — for a total score of 62.

So. Glock it is.

Whatever the reason, it’s so very good to be back here at 220 after SO long away.. even if it’s only for a moment before I bounce back for a return trip to Room 222.

Hint: Not knowing about it for THAT long gives you a huge clue as to how little I’ve been golfing of late.

But I did pull my dust-covered and cobwebby clubs out of the basement a couple Fridays ago to go play a round at the Arroyo Seco Golf Course in South Pasadena with my friend Dave Bullock, and afterward when I didn’t throw the clubs immediately back into the basement in disgust I thought I might maybe just visit the nearby Majestic to go all hacktastic on a bucket’s full of dimpled devils.

Then, whilst biking home up Heliotrope Tuesday from Melrose, I glanced over my shoulder in direction of the range and found the protective netting was gone. Could they be remodeling? Or could the place have gone under?

Leave it to my friend Elson, to clue me in via this post in January 2011 at his Elsongeles blog:

Like many in the community, including LACC administration themselves, I had long anticipated the end of the 10-year lease, and the day had finally come, with the closure of the business towards the end of 2010.

As he states, Elson was one of many East Hollywoodians who had completely understandable issues with the monstrous range, and in his post he sheds no tears in announcing its closure. Me? I’m a little bit more saddened by the news because it was close to home and state-of-the-art as golf ranges go, but the statute of limitations on crying over its demise expired six months ago, so I’ll have to man up and just head up to the old-school Griffith Park range if I want to get my swang on.

But in memory of Majestic Golf Land, I offer this following multi-angle slow-mo video clip, of me making one of my better drives there back in 2008:

After:

At the beginning of this clip I’m at Lexington awaiting the green to cross Vermont in East Hollywood. Up ahead a block before Virgil I’ll make a left onto Westmoreland and go down hard. Wham ass over teakettle. It’s two or three quick frames of the timelapse. Blink and you’ll miss it. I was coming back home from my volunteer duties at SPCALA Tuesday afternoon, and I made that left onto Westmoreland so I could get up to Fountain Avenue and sneak a peek at the soon-to-be-new home of the Bicycle Kitchen there near Virgil. After making that left I stand up to get some momentum going up the short climb. Next thing I know my left foot is hitting the ground and I’m pitched forward into what becomes a 3/4s endo toward the roadway. On the way over the handlebar and down I connect with the front wheel first before tumbling and tangling up in the bike until I come to a stop. It felt like forever. It’s over in a matter of two seconds, maybe three.

The middle of the end: My head showing up in the upper left corner
of the frame indicates the endo has begun.

At first I thought the cause of the spill was the chain jumping off the sprocket just like it had done during CicLAvia on April 15, but the reason turned out to be much more disconcerting: my left crank broke in two just above the pedal. I found it down the street about 20 feet from where I finally came to a stop. Fortunately the only injuries I sustained were a nice bloody series of rather superficial scrapes on my left forearm near the elbow, a seriously large, angry and swollen contusion on my left thigh along with a smaller one on the inside of my left knee, and a few other minor bumps and bruises. Unfortunately in addition to the sheared crank, the front wheel cushioned (or not) my fall and ended up taco’d supreme. Broken spokes and everything.

Being about 1.5 miles from home I had no choice but to bust out the first aid kit (I don’t bike from home without it) and clean my bleeding arm as best I could and then limp it with the bike the rest of the way, stopping at the Golden Saddle bikeshop in Silver Lake on the way to see if they had a set of cranks that weren’t too expensive (they did and they were a bit pricey but it was an impulse buy I had to make in order to begin the healing  and restoration process).

Exhibit A: The broken crank end and pedal.

Along that walk I also had a lot of time to think about how much it can fuck with you when something on your bike breaks that’s not really supposed to. It’s amost surreal looking at the two solid pieces of metal that used to be one. I also had time to understand how fortunate I was that I wasn’t injured worse and that the crank severed while I was on an empty side street in a quiet residential area as opposed to next to a truck passing me on Jefferson Boulevard. Whew. No really: WHEW. I mean s.e.r.i.o.u.s.l.y motherfucking W H E W.

I’ll fix the bike and I’ll ride it again — I HAVE to. But for an open-ended amount of time I’m going to be riding even slower and steadier than usual and most definitely hyper-sensitively to even the slightest mechanical action that seems not right. Might even be staying mostly to quiet side streets, too.

Here’s a Twitcast vid I made once I got home and had a chance to decompress. You get a good view of how badly the front wheel suffered:

As to why I decided to post this timelapse clip to YouTube, it’s because it represents immediate forward progress from a complete fail. It’s about losing control, which is something I usually don’t mind keeping to myself. But more importantly it’s about getting up and getting on with it. I’m gonna take a measure of pride in doing that to help fill the void this crash left in my confidence.

And of course the moment such preventable things like this happen, Elysian Valley residents get quoted saying things like “We need to do something more than has been done about this shared-path conflict,” and “Let’s not wait until a serious injury occurs before we take some more positive action.”

While I couldn’t agree more at the face-value of such statements, ultimately the subtext beneath the “more” that needs doing and the taking of “positive action” comes loaded with a bias against cyclists who, through the thoughtless inconsideration of an individual, all get painted as being the cause of the conflict.

Because gawd knows, no peds ever do anything self-centered or careless. Not this speed-walker salmoning upstream fully hogging the wrong lane.

Nor this group of dog lovers with every one of their one, two, three, four pooches off-leash (click the images for bigger pictures):

Nah. Nothing wrong in these two encounters that yet ANOTHER sign pointing the finger at me on my bike telling me to slow down and share the path under penalty of law WON’T HELP.

I’m all for more the more that needs to be done and the positive action that needs to be taken regarding getting ALL users to be more responsible and less selfish and therefore make the path a safer place. But while I’m holding my breath waiting for that to happen I’ll just continue like most cyclists and ride conscientiously and carefully so as not to negatively impact anyone else on the river — especially those who negatively impact my enjoyment of it.

On our way back we deviated from any marked trail and meandered a bit where we made the totally lucky discovery of an awesome rock-lined spiral path, that certainly took some doing by whoever constructed it (maybe it was a team effort started by someone and then built out by subsequent visitors who happened upon it).

Of course, to honor the efforts of the mystery builder(s) I went to the center of the circle and walked my way out to the other end and Susan snapped me at a point in my progress:

Here’s the timelapse view of the spin I took through it from my chest-mounted GoPro cam:

Afterwards, I went looking on the internet for any information about the man-made formation, but found none. Zero. Then I went to GoogleMaps to see if the spiral was visible via satellite view, and wouldn’t you know? It is (gmaps link):

What a wonderful and entirely serendipitous bonus to an awesome first visit to Joshua Tree National Park, the moral of whose story is: don’t stay on the beaten path because you never know what you’re missing.

Then we went about making our way north through the park awed at the amazing scenery and solitude. By the late afternoon it was time to head home and pretty much as expected we hadn’t encountered either of the two animals. But then, at the last opportunity we literally intersected paths with a desert tortoise crossing the road about a mile from the exit at Joshua Tree.

Being a huge fan of Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” I immediately drew a parallel between this tortoise and the metaphorical one found crossing the highway in that book’s third chapter.

With a crowd of other passersby gathering there was concern the creature might stress and void its bladder (aka “drop its water”), which can often be a dehydration death sentence to a tortoise out there in the dry and wild. But any drama as to what to do with the tortoise who was really in no hurry to get off the warm asphalt, was nicely resolved when a park ranger happened upon the scene and moved it safely (and without dropping its water) well away from the other side of the road. What an awesome way to end our first visit to this amazing place. Next time: camping, for sure!

Personally I’d love to see another system or systems drop at least 0.93 inches just so I can report hitting the 30-inch milestone.

I hate that the only possums I get to hold are injured ones with little chance of survival.

Still, I retrieved it, half expecting it to expire in my hand. But instead after being installed in a safe box it went from being not quite completely dead (or at least playing at it very well, as ‘possums are programmed to do) to being very much almost completely alive as seen in the following videos I captured with my iPhone. Check out the adorable open-mouthed threat gestures:

In between those previous clips I also posted this one at Yfrog, but I can’t get an embed to work

It ended up nestling deep into the towel for the night and this morning it’s in that same position — blessedly still breathing. I’m hoping Animal Advocates near the Fairfax District might have room to take possession of it today, but if not it’s back to the California Wildlife Center we go.

UPDATE (4.25 3:41 p.m.): It was looking almost like a lost cause — not the opossum who continued its remarkable rebound — but finding a place to take it. Animal Advocates was at capacity, and I was further distressed when a call to California Wildlife Center ended also with a decline to help (due to having more animals than it could care for).  It seemed like my only option was to contact the city’s animal services department, but that was a death sentence. Finally at the suggestion of Animal Advocates I called Coast & Canyon Wildlife in Malibu and they welcomed the little opossum (female) with open arms. Bless C&C Wildlife!