2 x 101

Guest post today from my cycling acolyte Mario Obejas. Mario just completed the 2nd annual BCCC Santa Barbara ride, organized and led by Andy Rodriguez. Back-to-back 101+ mile days, Redondo Beach to Santa Barbara on day 1, the reverse on day 2. Each day a portion of the ride was on US highway 101 along the ocean south of Carpinteria, sharing the pavement with big rigs, weekend tourists and surf seekers.

Mario says…

216 miles on the bike in two days.

The weekend is over and it’s hard to believe but yeah, I rode two century rides two days in a row. 730am start, from the South Bay, through Santa Monica and the hills of Malibu, past Big Rock, through Point Mugu and the naval base, through the strawberry fields of Ventura and its harbor, through the coastal road that takes you right next to the surf, and the railroad, on the bike path on the 101 Freeway (really, it’s marked) with cars going 60+ next to us, through the construction area where they mysteriously ended the bike path without warning, through the hills and streets of Santa Barbara to our hotel.

One massage, hot tub fun, mandatory carbs at the Italian restaurant, and a crappy night’s sleep, and we were back at it in reverse. We headed out at 7:45am for what turned out to be a better and faster ride, the greatest challenge being navigating the urban zoo of Santa Monica on a warm sunny afternoon.

I had two flat tires, but learned that I can do more than I thought I could. I also learned about preventative Aleve (i.e. take it before you hurt).

I might repeat this next year.

The leg there:
http://www.mapmyride.com/workout/267518708

And the return trip
http://www.mapmyride.com/workout/268172730

Chapeau to you, Mario, and the rest of the crew who did the ride.

Mario “P Floyd” Obejas and the Velobum at Bluff Cove overlooking Santa Monica Bay

This Could Be the Last Time

For the cognoscenti, having carbone (really, look it up here ) extends beyond the synergistic whole of a beautiful bicycle down to individual components. Pages of rapture have been written about the aesthetically perfect bottle cage, bar tape with just the right look and feel, even tire levers made from recycled plastic milk bottles. So, when I acquired a slightly used Litespeed Vortex titanium frame and had one of my mechanics craft a complete bike for me, one object of desire included in the build was a carbon seat post. Lightweight, strong, lovely.

It lasted two months.

The metal head of the seat post, the part that grasps the rails of a saddle, de-bonded from the carbon tube. No falls, no shocks, and I weighed maybe 170 pounds at the time. Hardly a stressful existence for the post, yet it failed. Too bad, but not a show stopper. My mechanic replaced it with another new carbon seat post at no cost to me.

This one lasted two years, then it failed the same way. Here it is:

You can’t see it in the images, but at this point the metal head was loose in the carbon tube and would rotate while I was riding. Ooofa! I’m sure happy that my carbon fork is more reliable, but I just don’t have unwavering faith in carbon components. On other people’s bikes I have seen broken handlebars, fractured derailleur hangers, shattered wheels, all carbon. Not to mention this:

ouch

Just look at it – a beautiful Specialized carbon S-Works team issue bike from the 2006 Tour of California. The definition of carbone, and, unfortunately, part of a multi-rider crash on the first lap of the final stage in Redondo Beach. Nothing holding it together but the cables.

Two failed carbon seat posts are two too many. The replacement is aluminum and away we ride.

No Country for Cold Beer

I was shocked, shocked I tell you, to see that sign. Yet there it was as we rode into the small town of Santa Margarita, high on a post outside of a tavern. It took me back to my childhood, to my wasted adolescence, to my time at Wayne State University.

It was a sign for Stroh’s beer.

my olde beer

Stroh’s beer was a product of the Stroh Brewery Company, established in my home town of Detroit in 1850 by Bernhard Stroh, a German immigrant. When I was a child, our family spent many summer Sunday afternoons escaping the heat of the city by picnicking on the shores of Belle Isle in the middle of the Detroit River. Canada was just across the water and freighters steamed up and down the river. There was always a case of longneck Stroh’s bottles, some of them pretty well worn, since the bottles were re-used back in those days, but they always had new labels and caps.

In my teenage years, Stroh’s was one of the beers of choice, if we could find somebody to buy for us. Sometimes a friend who worked at a local banquet hall would liberate a case and share it with his buds, and we all toasted him repeatedly until we could toast no longer. I attended university briefly at Wayne State in Detroit and was living down there just off campus. A favorite pastime was taking tours at the old red brick Stroh’s Brewery just a few miles away, free beer for a starving student.

Alas, the Stroh Brewery Company became a conglomerate going national and the old brewery came tumbling down in 1986 because it was outdated. Eventually they lost out in the beer wars and Stroh’s became just another label owned by Pabst Brewing Company. But even before that happened I was drinking craft beers from micro-breweries or red wine, so I’d pretty much forgotten about Stroh’s.

When I saw that sign, all those memories came flowing back. But what was it doing in Santa Margarita? This is grape country, we’re here to visit the vines and the wines. I’ll not know anytime soon because it was too early in the day for that tavern to be open.

You might have noted that I wrote “WE rode into that small town”, “we” being the velobum and a lovely lass from Manhattan Beach named Janet. She and I were visiting the California central coast wine country to celebrate my birthday, bringing along our bicycles and rolling through the vineyards for a couple of days. We stayed, of course, at the Bike Lane Inn in Templeton, started and run by Elaine and Scott McElmury, both cyclists who moved here from San Diego in 2002.

Bike Lane Inn

For the many cyclists who visit the inn, they have “velo and vino” ride maps that highlight local wineries. Janet and I rode to Justin Winery on our first day, and on the second day stopped at Wild Horse. The rear rack and carrying bag on my old Joe Bringheli steel bike was just the right size for bottles purchased at the wineries.

View my set of pictures here.

Tubular, dude!

The first one happened just as we turned from West Channel Road onto PCH, heading north to Malibu. Tom Herman and I were at the back of the group and Tom said his front tire was soft. Sure enough, it was going flat and the group was speeding away. You see them going away in a situation like that and they suddenly seem less like your helpful training partners than a bunch of uncaring, self-centered wankers. As I was pulling over I yelled, didn’t seem like anybody heard me, but there was one fellow with us and he said he would chase and let the wankers know of Tom’s plight.

tube snakes

Tom said he had hit a bump hard at the bottom of Ocean Avenue where it drops down from the bluffs overlooking Santa Monica Bay and intersects West Channel, so it was most likely a pinch flat. He swapped in a spare tube and used a CO2 cartridge to inflate it, not in the fastest time I’ve seen, but we were on our way eventually. I started pulling to where I thought the group would be waiting and felt really quite good (tailwind effect).

We did find some of the group waiting, much farther down the road than I thought they would be. Maybe the others were off the front and could not be caught, or maybe they were in an FLG mood. By which I mean “Fuck’em Let’s Go.” Think it doesn’t happen? Check out this jersey.

ye olde South Bay Pro bikes jersey

pardon my French, but FLG

It’s from the old South Bay Pro Bicycles shop that was owned by Scott Palmer, who was a ex-cop with a seen-a-lot-of-shit attitude, so the FLG was not entirely a joke. I’m sure there were dependencies…

Tom and I slowed and stopped, with Tom having to endure comments regarding his less than speedy tube change. Off we went, me pulling again and feeling unexpectedly strong (tailwind effect). About a mile down the road I heard behind a call out for another flat. Now Tom’s rear tire had gone down. He had already used his own spare tube and the only CO2 cartridge that he had, so he had to borrow a tube and beg a cartridge. Tara offered up her spare tube and Tom mounted it, then tried to inflate it, but it wasn’t happening. We tried my hand pump on it, but as much air came out as went in. Tom pulled the borrowed tube out and we found a large split in it. Cheezy cheap tubes!

He had to borrow another tube, this one an expensive German model, carefully packaged in talcum powder that was now billowing around us as we tried to avoid breathing it in. Reassuringly, it did hold air, but there was not enough CO2 left in the cartridge and we had to top off the tire with my hand pump. I kind of feel sometimes like grandpa with his hand tools making repairs for people after a hurricane when the electricity is down. Off we went again, me pulling and feeling strong again (tailwind effect), and then we pacelined in a loose rotation all the way out to Cross Creek in Malibu.

That’s all Tara and I wanted, so we turned around and went back, straight into a headwind. Oh yeah, now I didn’t feel so strong, but I did see a fellow in a La Grange jersey up the road a bit, too tempting for a wheel-sucker like myself. So I made a little investment of effort to get onto his wheel and let him pull us. Blessed relief, but it didn’t last long. Suddenly I felt a little bump and heard a clang-clang-clang noise from my rear wheel, which also got soft right away. I pulled over, dismounted and checked the rear wheel. Crikey, there was a drywall screw embedded in it where the contact surface blends into the sidewall. The head of the screw had been clanging against the seat and chain stays of the frame. Good thing it’s titanium and not carbon fiber.

the pointy end goes here

What’s the probability of that? It’s not like that drywall screw could have been standing on its head, point up just waiting for me to roll along and over it. I need a physicist to figure out how it happened, it’s just too boggling for me. But, it WAS an opportunity to demonstrate the flat-repair-on-the-rim technique. Mike Barr, a fellow I work with at Raytheon showed me this technique years ago and this is the second time I was able to use it.

You have to know where the hole is, that’s the key to the technique. With the screw still sticking out of the tire, it’s pretty obvious where the hole is. So you just use the tire irons to force the bead off the rim for maybe an eight inch span and pull the tube out of the gap. The hole should be right there, so just get your patch kit out and do the sand/glue/patch steps. This is assuming you HAVE a patch kit. A lot of people don’t bother, they just carry an extra tube and a CO2 set. So patch it, stuff it back in, push the bead back on, pump it up and off you roll. The tire never comes off the rim, the rim never comes off the frame – magic.

The Digital Salute

People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? (R. King, 1993)

Bus stop, bus goes…

#!/bin/sh

commute_method=$1

case $commute_method in

car) echo “pay attention and drive”;;
bike) echo “ride like the wind”;;
bus) echo “try to nap”;;

esac

Today $commute_method = bike, but yesterday it was $commute_method = bus. I’m a lazy laggard, but on occasion I do save a few grams of CO2 and other noxious pollutants commuting to work by bike or by bus instead of driving one of my soon-to-be-classic vehicles. Classic not in a collectible way, just plain old. Some day in the future when the polar ice has melted and sea levels have risen I’ll be able to claim that I did my meager bit to stave it off. But then, all that driving to get to out-of-area-code rides possibly negates my argument.

When commuting by bus, I use Los Angeles MTA line 232 running between downtown Long Beach and the transit center at LAX. It’s a viable alternative, assuming one has adequate time. If I use the bus, the total commute time ranges from 45 to 60 minutes, including walking and waiting, versus 20 minutes when driving. The bus also has a bike rack in the front that holds two bikes, and gets used quite often. I have used it myself – a couple of years ago returning from a mountain biking trip to Catalina Island. I walked from the ferry dock at downtown Long Beach, with duffle-style suitcase slung over my shoulders and guitar case in one hand, pushing my bike with the other hand, to the first stop on the northbound 232 route. Another fellow was waiting with his bike, so the rack was full at the very first stop.

all aboard!

Some days on the bus are more interesting than others. If it’s not interesting, I just try to nap. Yesterday was one of those interesting days. In the morning I got on, dropped my token in the slot, and walked to the back of the bus past a fellow in grimy sweats with a halo of curly hair who was talking somewhat loudly. I sat near the rear in a forward facing seat and tried to figure out if he was talking to somebody, or just talking. Just talking it was. He was perched on one of the seats near the front that is positioned sideways to the direction of travel. I don’t care much for those seats. They do have the advantage of being up front in case the rear-mounted engine malfunctions and drives a metallic component through the floorboard, but as the bus lurches forward and back between pickup points and traffic signals, there is nothing to keep your body from likewise lurching left and right since you’re sitting sideways. If I can’t have a forward facing seat, I’d rather stand while holding onto one of the overhead rails.

So this fellow was positioned sideways to me, his head swiveling around left and right while talking to nobody, or perhaps to an imaginary somebody. I could see his right arm, which seemed a bit odd. It looked like the sleeve of his sweatshirt was pulled down over his hand, perhaps to keep his hand warm, but the forearm looked way, way too short. I could not see the other arm to make a comparison until we reached a stop where he got off. Several folks got off, but I was able to see him out the side window as he hurried down the sidewalk toward the back of the bus. He had a couple of bags with loop handles on them hung over his left forearm, which was angled upward to keep the bags from slipping off, and it was just as short as the right forearm.

He had no hands. Crikey, that’s horrible, but you’d think some prosthetics would be in order.

In the afternoon, I left work and walked to the bus stop at Sepulveda and Walnut in El Segundo, just south of LAX. So close that I could see the vehicles coming out of, or going into, the traffic tunnel under the south side runways. If I recall correctly, one of the scenes from the film “Koyaanisqatsi” was filmed from atop the building standing up tall next to me here, with the camera pointing down at that tunnel. I think that it was a time-lapse section showing the massive flows of traffic moving in and out of the tunnel, with a big 747 rolling along the runway above it.

Either I just missed the bus or it never came, since I stood there for 30 minutes waiting for one that is supposed to come every 20 minutes at that time of day. In my experience riding MTA, the “never came” scenario is not all that rare. If it happens a couple of times, I get fed up, boycott MTA and start driving more until my bleeding heart kicks in a few months later. Eventually a bus came, I boarded, dropped my token in the slot and walked toward the back of bus. I took a forward facing seat not quite as far back as on the morning ride.

A few stops later, an apparently homeless fellow boarded the bus carrying a couple of no-budget luggage baggies. He paused for a bit just inside the front door as the bus resumed moving. I noticed two fellows sitting near the front wrinkling their noses and then they stood up and walked to the back of the bus to sit again. A couple minutes later the homeless fellow migrated to the back of the bus, and as he walked past me a nearly visible cloud of severely unpleasant aroma moved with him. Quite literally I almost gagged.

somebody open the window please

Do you remember that summer day when it was so hot and unusually humid, and you rode that long route at tempo with votre amies cyclistes, sweating the whole ride like a Coors Light can sitting on a patio table in the sunlight? You were so exhausted at the end that you just peeled off your wet, salty maillot and tossed it in the laundry hamper only to forget it and find it two weeks later reeking under layers of moist bath towels? You were tempted to take it directly outside to the trash bin if not for it being a prized souvenir from Bourg d’Oisins in the French Alps.

It was far worse than that.

The two fellows who had moved to the back of the bus stood and returned to the front of the bus, muttering something to each other as they sat again.

I liked where I was sitting, I did not want to move. The choice of that particular seat was tactical. I was shaded from the late afternoon sun streaming in the windows, and I was facing forward so that I was not lurching about in one of those sideways seats. So I opened the window next to me to get a full force blast of cool air in my face while the bus moved forward. But when we came to a stop at a pickup or traffic light, the diesel exhaust from the rear-mounted engine had a tendency to creep forward along the outer surface of the bus and find its way to my window. So the commute became an exercise in opening the window while moving to keep the bad aroma at bay, and then shutting the window when stopped to keep the bad exhaust at bay.

The aroma of the homeless guy was actually more unpleasant than the diluted diesel exhaust, but I doubted that it would give me emphysema. As a miscreant high school colleague of mine used to say, that’s life in the big city.

The Memorial Ride

Just like weddings and funerals, at the memorial ride you see people you haven’t rolled with in years. You might not even know the person being memorialized, but it’s a chance to show solidarity with fellow riders and greet those people you have not seen in so long. All too often, the late rider passed due to a collision with a vehicle or a crash caused by hazardous road conditions. But sometimes, it’s just natural causes.

Just before Christmas last month, Steve Bowen, late owner of the Palos Verdes Bicycle Center, passed due to a heart attack suffered while on a ride. I didn’t know Steve, just knew of him, and how well respected he was in the local cycling community. I’ll defer to the Wankmeister to provide a description of what happened to Steve, as well as a
personal tribute.

celebrating a life

A memorial ride for Steve took place today in lieu of the normal Saturday Donut Ride, leaving from Riviera Village in Redondo Beach at 8am. There were hundreds of riders who took part and the group had a police escort from Malaga Cove Plaza in Palos Verdes all the way to the PV Drive West intersection with Hawthorne Boulevard near Point Vicente.

If this had been the normal Donut Ride, by this point I would have been thoroughly abused and shelled, just trying to hold a wheel, any wheel. But not today. Today is about staying together and celebrating a life.

The ride continued along PV Drive South and up the switchbacks to Marymount College, then continued around Palos Verdes on PV Drive East and North. I imagine that Steve knew these roads as intimately as anyone else on the ride today, after all, his bike shop was up on top of the Palos Verdes Hills that we just circled. At the end we were back in Redondo Beach, socializing over coffee and tea generously provided by and at Catalina Coffee.

For my part, I reconnected with a fellow rider named Dan Martin, whom I have not seen in 10+ years. Dan was/is a natural rider and regularly dished out helpings of hurt to me and most everybody else in our group rides. Dan dropped out of riding when his kids were young to concentrate more on raising them. The kids are starting high school and, like most teens, probably don’t want much to do with the folks other than as taxi drivers or portable ATMs, so Dan has some free time now to resume riding. He doesn’t look any different than I recall from back then and probably will be serving up short order pain pancakes in the coming months.

Click here for a set of pictures from the memorial ride today.