riding the other direction

Once a month I go to an evening meeting downtown – well, almost in downtown, at the "Union Station Metro Gateway Transit Center, all passengers please exit the train." I’ve been taking the train there, but would like to bike it sometime. It’s not very far – just about 6.5 miles – but I’m not very familiar with that area and route. I tend to ride away from downtown for obvious reasons (Brown).

Today I went on a little recon mission to check out possible routes. I took the road bike. I don’t mention that bike much. I probably ride it the least of any of my bikes. I wanted to be able to make a swift attack so I could get in and out of there quickly and keep up with traffic so that I could more easily “take the lane” – so the road bike was a good match except for the fact that, as one would expect in a major downtown area, the roads could be described as very rough.

It’s different riding through downtown. There are cars and buses and people everywhere. It was a good urban intensive refresher course. Now riding around “uptown” (not that anyone calls it that) will be like riding through white chocolate puffy clouds on a rainbow swirl lollypop bicycle.

In theory I could now bike commute to my meetings, but the ride home in the dark might be a touch sketchy. Maybe I’ll stick to the train – it’s mildly entertaining anyway – there’s something about that after nine o’clock in the evening train crowd…

After downtown I headed up Sunset through Silverlake, along Los Felis, past Griffith Park, into Hollywood, turned around near Beachwood Canyon, back around through Silverlake, Glassel Park, Highland Park, across the York “Gauntlet” Bridge over the Lower Arroyo and back home. There sure are a lot of cars out there – to their credit though, most of the drivers were pretty accommodating. It was only a 28-mile ride but it felt a lot longer.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll take a nice quiet ride along the creek trail under my mountain.

1972 Olympic 800m

mule days

I’ve heard that the San Gabriel mountain range (just north of home and home to the infamous Brown mountain) is comparable to some of the steepest ranges in the world. Its other claim to fame is that it is one of the rare transverse ranges, that is: it “travels” west-east, rather than the more common south-north.

Even the paved roads in the foothills of this range are pretty steep, particularly because they head straight up the mountain without any twists and turns. Luckily, I have Mindful Mule to ride up these mountains. She’ll happily carry all kinds of crazy loads and supplies up these slopes without complaint, albeit slowly. Yesterday it took us 70 minutes to ride 9.25 miles – steeper and steeper as you go - thank god for triple chain rings.


Coming down the mountain is all together different - we hit 25mph before I even managed to get my toes clipped in. (Which reminds me, I’ve got to fix those toe clips with some more duct tape.) Stopping on the way down is nearly impossible, though, so we usually take the quieter side streets.

And then, there’s the other kind of Mule Days…

not by bread alone...

Give us this day our daily home-baked bread…

a day and a quarter, actually… each quarter has one cup of whole grains and a dollop of acorn wort…

and allow us some Japanese eggplant and olive oil and salt and a pint of warm beer…

and we will rest and recover well from our running about…

arroyo tour

I was a little worried this morning that I hadn’t been running all week and that the upturning trend from last week could lose its momentum and I could slide back down into the realms of three to six mile weeks, which is actually not bad, many would even call it good or great, but it’s not what I want for my life right now.

So I dragged myself into the running kit thinking I’d at least get the week started with an easy three or maybe seven if everything came together.

And then I had to keep stopping to give people directions to the freeway and I thought maybe I should just turn around and go home since my whole rhythm was off. Note to horseless carriage drivers: Bugger off! I’m running here!

But something inside just wouldn’t let me turn around and pretty soon I’d ditched the buggies for the trails so I kept running for what turned out to be a three-hour tour of the arroyo – up to the Brown Trailhead, more or less - actually, a little more. I was pretty tired out by the end, which was about the time I started thinking about burritos - usually those thoughts start to surface within the first hour. I didn’t have anything other than water during the run since I didn’t expect to be going so far, but I did focus on drinking more water than usual from each fountain I came across. This seemed to help.

Oh, and Happy Spring!

poppies

gather ye wild water while ye may

I’ve been thinking about drinking the water from a little creek up towards the top of Brown mountain for a few months. It looks so clear and cool and refreshing and alive and real. There’s really nothing going on above it – no livestock, nary a trail, just the peak of Brown. Brown is a soulful mountain and seems to have a hold on me so it seems only right to sip from its waters.

I was up there yesterday on the bike. Great ride – out of the saddle a lot – going for it. Incredible blue sky cool perfect day with huge winds at the top and lots of ocean to view. A great day to sip wild water - no chemical treatment, no sterilization, no plastic bottle, no theft, no aqueduct, no transport – just rain on the mountain.

But, the creek was dry. Spring in the angeles…

lazing into spring

I’m not sure if this is even possible, but I think I just saw five recumbent bicycles on my run this morning. They seem to be growing in popularity. And, I have to admit, they did look pretty comfortable to ride. I wonder, does the lower position make them more aero than a traditional bike and therefore easier to ride over long distances? The biggest concern they present for me is that they seem to be too low to be seen well by all the horseless carriages out on the road. It seems that recumbents used to frequently have a tall flag flying off the stern, but nowadays I don’t see that so much.

My running miles are slowly creeping back up again. I’ve been under ten miles per week for a few weeks. Today I went out for nine and bumped the weekly to twenty-two. Hopefully this trend will continue.

I might try to put together a spring poppy sequence over the next few weeks. They’re just getting ready to pop. Here’s stage one:

rest, a miracle elixir, and a low tech hub…

I went out for a short run this morning feeling fast and strong. I have a few explanations for this. First, I haven’t been running so much lately – I’m down to about one or two runs per week for the past few weeks – so I’m “running rested.”

Second, I baked some acorn bread yesterday – actually, it turned out more like a scone. I didn’t have any yeast so it was a dense hunk of powerful fuel. I only used about a heaping tablespoon of the acorn wort in the dough but that stuff is like some sort of super life essence elixir. I could feel the power of the earth coursing through my veins even as I ate it. It’s no wonder Mr. Muir touted acorn bread as one of the finest foods in the world. Well, he once wrote something along those lines anyway…

Third, I’ve been riding the fixed gear around a little more lately. The fixie does two things: it forces you to power through sections where you would normally downshift, bringing in an element of speed/interval training to everyday riding; and it creates constant resistance/feedback to parts of the leg that are normally bypassed, thus developing core leg strength – actually, core whole body strength. Interestingly, when I first started riding the fixie I felt like my legs were being ripped apart and I thought I’d have to stop to avoid serious injury, but I think/hope that was just the early learning curve – teaching those little joints and muscles to kick up their work load after decades of “coasting.”

commuting next to “the Dude”

Yesterday I was riding down the length of lake street. (Actually, it’s Lake Ave, but everyone in my world has always called it lake street -it has a better ring to it – like Sesame Street. Lake street is a long straight road that runs for about 4 miles up to the foot of the mountains.) As is often the case on a Friday afternoon, I had a shovel strapped to the right side of my bike – in line with the bike, outside my right pedaling circle like a sidecar/lance (You know the saying, “If you have to ask…”). So, because of the shovel I needed to ride a little more into the lane than I normally would. Miraculously, and oddly, there are Sharrows on Lake Street. I was still well to the right of these, however – I tend to skirt the doors too much, but whatever, it works for me, knock, knock, knock. So there I am cruising along down the hill on a Friday afternoon with my side-shovel and my big straw hat flapping on its neck-string, pegged-up jeans, white California Poppy t-shirt, moustache... you know the look. I’m pedaling along keeping up with traffic (downhill) and a car pulls up alongside me at around 15 or 20 and he’s edging me out a little further into the door zone (don’t get your hopes up this ends safely and happily) but nothing imminent, or threatening – just a little tight, you know. So, I ding my bell a little just to say hi, and don’t get any response. At the next light, I pull up alongside of him and catch a glance through his passenger side window. He’s got an open can of Coors Original in his cup holder. Classic. Who can complain about that… just easin’ ‘er on into that there weekend…

still life with coffee

a Sunday

I always watch the LA Marathon (on tv). I’ve been watching it for probably close to a dozen years or so. I really like that they stagger the elite women’s and men’s start so that they can race for the tape/cash. But yesterday I missed watching the marathon. I totally forgot about it. I guess I was a little more focused on the bike this weekend (this fortnight, really – don’t oft get to use that word). During the marathon I was on a road ride with Dan the Man.

The sun and the blue and the warm were out again. And so were all the cars. We were surprised to see a coyote at midday taking a right off of busy Foothill Blvd and heading straight up the quiet street that we were riding down – she was sprinting for the mountains – smart. Maybe we should have been doing the same – paying heed to her action, her warning. Moments later, we were back in the heat of the urban car culture and dealing with all that negative aggressive car-centric mind-stall. Mind you, this was a quiet little foothill community we were navigating - it should have, could have been a serene stroll of a ride but for the honking and veering and squeezing and trying-to-get-first-to-the-stoplight (and the superfluous cup (wax paper bucket) of soda flying out of a Prius(!) window) - hilarious and pathetic, really. So much for “Sunday drivers…”

Later, I rode off into the sunset to that hip little reservoir community, over all the potholes and broken glass, under train tracks, over bridges, under freeways, over cemented river channels, into the evening through alternating dim streetlight and darkness… and then suddenly, the town fell asleep and all was quiet as I glided along through the cool, quiet night toward home with tired legs to dream about running…

grey and green and brown

It was another cloudy/foggy day today. I thought it might clear up at the base of Brown Mtn or somewhere on the ascent, but it just kept getting darker and colder and cloudier and wetter as I went up. Visibility was low at around 100 feet nearing the top.

It’s interesting how the various shades of green plants tend to pop a little more when the day is grey. I must have seen a thousand greens today and nice white-flowering Ceanothus, and blue-flowering, too, and thick green carpets of moss on the road cuts/cliffs that disappear over the summer.

Everything looked so different up there today. Twists and turns that are so familiar to me were suddenly new. I felt like I was riding in Big Sur… hmm, there’s a great idea for the future…