To Live and Train in L.A. #5

So I’ve certainly been a decent and productive citizen on the ‘high’ roads of Los Angeles this week. This means suiting up at 2:35 p.m. and rolling out the driveway and promptly 3:00 p.m. (Mag? It takes you twenty-five fucking minutes to suit up?) and then negotiating insane Silver Lake/Glendale traffic for a wild mile till, voila, I’m spinning joyfully westward along the L.A. River bike path and waving to the various homeless dudes camped along the fence next to the 5. I say, “Hey, motherfuckers, what’s up?” They say, “Fuck you.” And we are all very happy living here on the Villa Borghese.

Over the last couple of weeks, since I’ve put the cross bike in the stable for a well deserved rest and have been tooling around on the road bike instead, I’ve been forming a series of friendly alliances with roadies on the bike path. The roadies on the path are all doing the same circuit: 4.4 miles one way, turn around, 4.4 miles back, and repeat, and repeat. They’re all just out there spinning in the little ring and avoiding aggression: So it’s perfectly natural for roadies to come together in pacelines on this endless down and back. Conversation is always minimal under these circumstances, but the atmosphere is friendly enough, and I have to admit I really enjoy it (with the possible exception that I’m currently wearing some cheap-ass Pearl Izumi bibshorts and the pad has reduced my ass to something into which even Pickett wouldn’t charge). This friendly environment has in fact made me think about starting a Monday/Thursday easy-paceline group ride on the bike path between the Fletcher Avenue bridge and Griffith Park. Imagine it: two hours of group pacelining, low heart rate, short pulls, and the only pauses would be turning around every 17 minutes or so? I figure Monday would be perfect because nobody wants to ride hard on Monday (except dipshit triathletes with aero bars and testosterone misalignments) and it seems to me that Thursday’s a good day for an easy two-hour spinner, too. You agree with me, don’t you? So holy shit, how am I going to get this group ride started?

I am very lonely on my bike, in case you didn’t notice. I’m not depressed in any dangerous kind of way about this situation, but I as sure as fuck want to change it. How’s that sound for commitment and personal resolve?

Anyway, I did a few hill intervals again in Forest Lawn Cemetery yesterday, and I’m starting to think maybe that’s a fucked-up, inappropriate thing to do. It’s not so much climbing the hill, it’s bombing the descents on the cemetery’s ultimately perfectly pristine black asphalt that I think could disturb not only the mourners but the dead. Worse, what if I were to crash at high speed and had to be hauled off in an ambulance right in front of a funeral? This would be a rude distraction for other people at their time of grief.

All right then. This is too much talk and not enough work. I gotta work and ride. Drop me a line if you’re up for group ride on the L.A. River Bike Path. As always, the rules will be 1) Wear a helmet and 2) Don’t ride like a jackass. I mean, feel free to be a jackass in your personal life; just don't fucking ride like one.