The Ride With No Name, etc., etc.

My buddy Eddie e-mailed me earlier this week to see if I wanted to go on a ride Friday night, and since I've been wanting to get on my bike more, I thought it sounded like a good idea.

After briefly considering the Tattoo Ride, since it started at Crankmob Park not far from my house, and promised a beautiful spoke card (which, since Eddie didn't have any, was quite an enticement for him), we decided to hit The Ride With No Name, as Barleye, the organizer, seemed like he'd put together a good ride, and I figured I'd know more folks.

So we loaded up the bikes and drove downtown. This was the first time I'd driven to a ride, and while there is something odd about using a car to get to a bike ride, if the choice is miss the ride or drive to the ride, driving makes a fair bit of sense. Rode the mountain bike tonight, as I didn't know how many hills there would be, and there really is something convenient about having gears and a freewheel. It's good to have options, although a fixie does give you a kick-ass workout.

The starting point was in the middle of the Arts District, pretty close to the "Warehouse District". A lot of this ride was around serious urban industrial locations. Warehouses, factories, truck yards, etc., etc. At one point, we rode over a bridge and below to the right we saw what must have been a concrete recycling plant in operation, and it was one of the most surreally beautiful things I've seen. It was a GIANT open warehouse, with no front or side walls, with sodium lights hanging from the ceiling, giving the place an eerie orange glow. Inside this monster building a huge yellow excavator was picking up chunks of rubble and concrete, and dropping them into big metal box, that presumably was the crusher/recycler, judging from the huge mounds of sand piling upnet to the building. I'm sure there are Sisyphean metaphors to be made about spending one's Friday night in a huge machine making sand out of rubble, but as a visual spectacle, it was pretty impressive.

One that would surely have been more impressive for you all had I actually brought a camera.

So we road around warehouses and trucks and overpasses and whatnot, and eventually found ourselves riding across the USC Campus. At one point, we found a quad with a band playing at one end, and the 60-80 of us rode around the quad once or twice, and then rode off again. It must have been fun for the audience, as they we're just sitting there watching a show, when dozens of cyclists show up out of nowhere with lights blinking and bells ringing, and circled for a few minutes and disappeared again.

That's one of the things I love about rides like this. We're basically a bicycle parade, and people love parades. On most of these rides, people will wave and smile and cheer or honk their horns, and by far most of the honking is positive. Not only do people get to see swarms of smiling people and blinking lights, but hopefully some of them decide to get on Google and figure out how to come along.

These rides are so much fun, and they're SO accessible, regardless of your budget. You can ride high-end bikes, or you can ride in something you bought at a yard sale for $20, and have an equally good time. In a time of global economic crisis, it's nice to know you can have a full evening of fun and entertainment for very little money. (My total cost for the evening was $3.99 for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, which was a pretty cost-effective Friday night.)

After USC, we made a couple of stops and rode around more of SE downtown and Boyle Heights, and ended up on the 6th Street Bridge and hung out for a while, looking down at the L.A. River, and West at downtown. While here, I ran into some people I'd met on previous rides, and met some more people that I had only known from the midnightridazz forum. Most of the people that go on these rides / post on the forum consistently are really cool mellow folks.

From the bridge, it was a few miles back to the starting point, making for a total distance of about 15-17 miles.

Eddie got his first spokecard too, as Barleye had whipped up a set with a picture of the principal from the Breakfast Club and the timeless phrase "You mess with the bull, you get the horns."

All in all, a pretty great night.

Tomorrow night's the Crankmob Food Fight Ride,which has the potential to be a colossal mess, but also tremendous fun, as the Crankmob rides usually are.

In the pink (but not yet).

The pink bike is on hold at the moment.

Sadly, the powdercoaters called me today to let me know that they did not have RAL 4010 (aka Telemagenta) in stock, and would have to order it from out of state. Then they called me back to see if I wanted another color.

So I looked at the powdercoating color chart, and I considered luminous red, luminous yellow, luminous orange, and gold over a white basecoat.

In the process I also found what might be the most politically incorrect color name ever, which is odd, as most of the color names are relatively innocuous, like traffic blue, grass green, and strawberry red.

But then, there's color number RAL 1021, which is called, I kid you not:

RAPE YELLOW.

Now, obviously, this color is named after the bright yellow flowers of the canola (aka rape) plant, rather than the sex crime, but you'd think that in this day and age, they might go ahead and update the color charts with something new.

Be that as it may, after a few minutes of clicking around, I realized that if I'm going for something truly hilarious with this bike build, I'd better stick with my guns and have them order up the telemagenta powder coat.

I also learned that telemagenta got its name because the color magenta has been copyrighted in Germany by the T-mobile telephone company, and other companies have been sued by them for using that color. So not only do Germans love David Hasselhoff, they also allow the trademarking of colors.

But they should get the powder in next week sometime, and hopefully I'll get the frame back next weekend. Must hurry up and buy the rest of the parts, as I can't wait to get this one built.

Maybe it is a zen thing, kinda

Got back on my bike today for the first time in weeks.

Between working pretty decent hours at my new job in Glendale, and spending 1.5-3hrs a day in the car (for a 43 mile round trip), I don't have a lot of time and energy left when I finally get home, and I couldn't really ride this weekend since a big chunk of SoCal was on fire.

But today I got home and got on my bike and headed over to the Bikerowave to true my wheels, and it was awesome!

Forking out the extra dinero for a shorter stem and a stem riser and some mountain bike toeclips has made all the difference in the world.

Getting a bike to fit properly is kind of a pain, because you need to set up the bike so that your legs are able to pedal efficiently and effectively, while having your hands and seat in the proper position so that they are both taking a fair share of the weight.

This basically means that unless you're a standard shape, or luck into a bike that fits perfectly, the first month or two of riding your bike involve regular adjustments to: stem height, stem length (have to replace stems to do this, usually), seat height, seat angle, and seat fore/aft position, and there's nobody that can do this for you as well as you can, so you just have to keep an allen wrench handy.

I think I'm pretty close to having mine dialled in. The flat part of the handlebars is just below the saddle now, instead of 3-4 inches below, which means I'm not reaching down 8-10 inches or so to get to the drops and use the brakes. Now I don't have to angle my seat down anymore to be comfortable, which helps me balance out my not insubstantial weight. (Seriously, if your groin is carrying your weight rather than your sit bones, try raising your handlebars. It may not look nearly as cool, but the pain and potential impotency zero out the cool factor bigtime.)

Riding today was what cycling is supposed to be. Really really pleasurable. The bike felt perfect, the air was finally pretty clear, the moon and stars were out, the temperature was perfect, and the roads were wide open and more or less flat, so it was a perfect night to ride a fixie.

I took some main roads on my ride, and realized that while I feel a lot safer on the side-streets during the day or during rush-hour, it feels safer and is a whole lot more fun to ride the major streets at night. The big streets are better maintained, and there are so few cars that there are plenty of lanes open which makes it easier for those in a rush to get past you.

All in all an A1 evening.

Now I just need to have more.

P.S. I laugh every time I look at that ridiculous bike in the picture below. I can only hope that it will be that hilarious in real life.

Potential Next Bike

http://www.pedalmafia.com/mafid/mafia_id.html

This is what the old Schwinn frame rattling around in my trunk may become.

If the final version doesn't make you laugh, I will have failed.

(Of course, some might say taking the time and effort and money to build something this absurd would constitute an epic failure in and of itself.)