To Live and Train in L.A. #16 Long Miserable Week Edition

I keep trying to find a way to say this with a sense of dignity and a level of articulation that befits a person with a top-notch education like I have because whining is bad, as we all know, and because even worse than whining is a horseshit, turd-class, below-one’s-dignity, guttural use of our blessed English language, but the essential fact remains the same and the only precise way to say this is like this: I had a motherfucking awful week on the bike. The weather, of course, was fine, despite the storm clouds pictured above and below, and my bicycles were in perfect working order with the possible exception that what both of my bikes need is to become brand-new bikes. The problem was simply that I didn’t give enough of a fuck to send my very best from my ass to my knees to my ankles to my feet and into the pedals. Not once did I feel suiting up and rolling down the hill and rolling along the river path to grandma’s house and up to the top of the climb in Griffith Park or however the song goes or wherever the route off the bikeway might lead. I have forgotten. These days – and you have to understand this, now matter how fanatically excellent your cycling year has been going (and I know you’re having a fanatically great year: good for you) – I’m a lot more interested in my life away from the bike than actually riding, which means when I’m riding my bike I’m thinking, fuck, fuck, fuck, I should be working instead of having fun, but then again, if I keep working and don’t go out on my bike, I keep thinking fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m turning into the Michelin Man here at the desk.

So I’ve been agitated. You understand how this works? Used to be I thought that if I were to win the big lotto I would never work again and would ride my bike all day, every day, all year long; now I’m kind of thinking if I were to win the lotto, I could afford to do some nifty things with my writing? In any case, I’m enjoying my work at the expense of my riding and I’m feeling like my riding is make my work suffer.

Currently, I search through yonder black clouds for the solution set to this equation and the only answer that comes to mind is cyclocross season.

Oh well. A couple of amusing events did occur during my horrible week on the bike. The cloudy/stormy day, especially. So after I stood in Frogtown and snapped those pictures above I mounted up and started pedaling toward the rain because 1) that’s where I was headed anyway and 2) I love riding in the rain. About a half mile from here, around that first corner, I glanced to my left, into a cul de sac, and saw a long-haired kid on a mountain bike rolling at speed toward a black plastic garbage can and he totally pegged that garbage can and went flying through the air. Of course, I skidded to a stop and dismounted and ran in that direction to see if the kid was okay. Turns out, he was back on his feet and jumping back on his bike and laughing and just then a fat guy with tattoos emerged from the house to which the can belonged and start yelling at the kid in Spanish. I think I had just witnessed a very cool form of urban cyclocross: smack garbage can with bike and fly through air, then remount in time to avoid your ass kicked by an angry fat dude.

So all was well and I rode toward the rain. When I neared the rain, I could see the sheets of it along the 5, where the cars were completely halted owing to the Southern California fear of water, and I also saw a number of cyclists hammering toward me on the path, and when they would approach me, they would hold up their hands and point their thumbs behind them and scream, “Rain!” As if they were outrunning a firestorm! I kept on. I got wet. I was happy. Maybe that’s enough to keep a person going out riding every day.