Feel My Legs, I’m a Racer 2007

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For the second year in a row I woke up the morning of this event not knowing if 10 or 100 people were going to show up. Feel My Legs, I’m a Racer is a Swarm! event based on Danny Chew’s Dirty Dozen race. I found the ten most brutal hills in LA; the group rides together to each hill and then ‘races’ to the top. We regroup, ride to the next hill and do it again. There is a point system to declare the fastest of the day, but for most people just getting up all of these in one day is a huge feat. Hell, the LA Wheelmen make a huge deal out of the their ride up Fargo St. (notice Swarmers! Brian and Alec doing it on a tall bike!) and on Feel My Legs it’s only one of ten…Check out the GPS data of the ride. Almost 3000 feet of climbing in less than 20 miles.
Last year it was dry at the start and started raining at the first hill. This year we woke up to rain that slowed and then stopped before the meeting time of 930am at Pershing Square. We took names, did a warm-up through downtown and headed for the first hill that goes from 5th st to Grand and up. Check out some of Budge’s pictures of the first hill (and others) on his myspace page. Stephen Roullier has some fantastic pictures up here.

The hills:
1. 5th st to right on Grand
2. Sunset to White Knoll to Marview
3. Quintero (off of Sunset)
4. Echo Park Blvd to Left on Baxter to top
5. Baxter St (north of the previous hill)
6. Fargo St
7. Earl St to left on Bancroft to top of Earl
8. Silver Lake blvd to Duane
9. Mulholland fountain to Hillhurst to Vermont Canyon to Observatory
10. Mitcheltorena

I didn’t count, but I think 25 people finished.
We had a fantastic time out exploring LA in our unique way.

None of this would of been possible without the team of volunteers, Budge, Morgan, Kiecker, Michael, Alec, Stacy, Plex, Chris Palestine, Gnuzycats, Luz, Molly and LA bike winter. Thank you.

All finishers got this dope shirt.

Where does the name come from? I’ll give you one hint: S&M. Winner gets a free tour of the course.

Parties and Cupcakes for Training

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Friday night was the 2nd anniversary of the Santa Monica Critical Mass ride and the Green Party opened up its doors to us for an after-party yet again. I missed the ride cause I was preparing my music to be laptop DJ (which ruled). The party was fun, we raffled off a bunch of great prizes, etc, etc. About a dozen of us left at 130am, heading across town. Budge was super drunk, which was funny when he was kicking mirrors on Porsches, but less funny when he was falling on the ground.
I road Molly over to Echo Park and took a long way back so it was almost 4am when I arrived back home. This is part of my sleep deprivation training. I read for a couple of hours and made food then went on a 32-mile road ride at dawn. What was most odd was that I felt cold the whole time, but I knew that it was not that cold out. Afterwards, sans spandex, I rolled over to Janie’s for her cupcake ride.

I brought a bright pink shirt to have a pink cupcake screened on. They rode to some bougie place in Beverly Hills that doesn’t have any vegan options (and were pissy when asked). So instead I rolled by the house to scoop up Jack, Megan, Morgan and Budge to meet the main group at Mannie’s for some breakfast and vegan sweets.
Side effects of no sleep:
Patience for annoying shit reduced
Tolerance of people on the westside very low
I ended up catching a 3-hour nap around 3pm, before heading out for the night. Including the commute miles, I rode almost 100 miles in the 33 hours I was awake plus I had run for an hour and a half early Friday morning.
Sunday Stephen and I did Tony’s gravity race and then did a moderately paced 40 miles through Griffith Park and then up Chevy Chase and back.

Sometimes weather is unfavorable even in Southern California

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Team Swarm! met up with some of the Dock Riders today for some fast, flat miles on PCH. Ended up rolling 9 deep. Caught another group from Santa Monica to Pepperdine and suddenly almost 20 of us were cruising along the coast at 24 MPH until we dropped them all on the climb (I think commuters have a real advantage in climbing. Or something!). There was only a 30% chance of rain, but it rained on us for most of the ride. Not so bad as the temps were in the low 50’s, much warmer than two weeks ago. Has anyone else noticed that suddenly we ride with some fast people? 100 miles in 7 hours or so. This pic is from Magu Rock in Ventura County, our turn around point (thanks Jesse). Looking forward to rolling to the Death Valley double 16 deep.

San Diego 200k Brevet

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Start of ride. Notice that everyone else is gone.

Is Randonneuring French for Beauocracy? In preparation for yesterday’s 200k I sent off my membership to Randonneuring USA (RUSA) and included Swarm! as my club. About a week ago I got a response from someone at RUSA saying that my club was not official and that he would just put that my club is RUSA. Funny thing is, Jack just made our club official with USA Cycling. Politely I relayed this info to the membership coordinator or whomever at RUSA and he said we still did not count! What is a club then? I ride bikes almost every day with my friends and then we do long distance rides on the weekends. We were a club pre-namesake, unlike, I imagine, most ‘clubs’. Our list of 2006 events is pretty impressive (doubles, triathlons, 508, Messenger World Championships, etc) so I passed this on to him with our President’s info (Jack Lindquist) and Chris Kostman from AdventureCorps as a reference. Finally, he said we were borderline, but he would count it anyway. Thanks for the favor. He also refused to recognize the ‘!’ in ‘Swarm!’.

Despite all that, at 345am I was up and ready to head to (near) San Diego with Paul and Zack in Paul’s truck. Budge decided not to go last minute after not sleeping a wink. Plus he hasn’t ridden much. Not much traffic at 430am and we are there early! The Randonneur scene is like a subculture of a subculture. Wasn’t sure what to expect, but the riders were similar to the double century crowd (some racers, some fast-looking old dudes, some people with racks and tons of stuff and mostly non-descript guys and a few females, on bikes). I paid my $5 and both Paul and Zack joined RUSA in order to get medals. Then, even after being early to the start point, we were late leaving. Fifteen minutes behind the group start, which is a mental fuck.

I had heard poor things about the route, but is was not too bad. We saw our friend Lynn on tandem who insisted on introducing me to everyone as ‘Matt who did 508 team on a fixed-gear’. I looked like I should be much faster than I am, but this is not a race it is a Brevet. Therefore it is also self-supported; my jersey and seat bag were filled with 2 bananas, an apple, 2 lara bars, 2 clif bars and some Sustained Energy. The self-support thing may be an issue for the longer rides, but for this it was fine. It makes Brevets an interesting combination of ultra-distance cycling and bike touring.

Other highlights:
I ate a Clif bar out of the garbage at Control Point 2
Rode to almost dark!
PCH route to SD- Had memories of with Justin, in 2002 on the way to Belize, when we saw the steel worker who had ridden from Ohio after he lost his job. That was almost five years ago! Also, Matt Pro and I were on this route when we did LA to SD in one day training for my first double in 2004. Self-supported 175 or whatever it was, was so huge back then.

Zack signing his route card after finishing. Paul celebrates with a donut.Afterwards we headed up to El Segundo to hang out at Brian’s dad’s place again and pretend to live the life for a night. Food, chillin, hot tub (this time there were some females at least). In the morning four of us went for an hour run on the beach. Yeah, California!

Broke Fixed

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Isn’t the title an odd linguistic structure?
Regardless, on Sunday my fixed gear frame snapped when Megan and I were riding to Lomita to meet up with Jack, Brian, Max, Jenny and Kiecker. We picked up Alec on the tall bike and we were riding through Redondo Beach when I saw a big JESUS sign someone had put up against a pole. Like all good citizens, I took democracy into my own hands (foot, more specifically) and kicked it over as we rode past. Yes, sometimes I am still 15 years old. I know this. Three blocks later I got an odd wobble in the front end. I say odd because this bike wobbles often. After pulling over and inspecting it I found that the lug was cracked all the way through. Uh-oh. We were close to Vege House so we road slowly the rest of the way. After eating, it only took leaning hard on the bars for the tubes to separate. Is this a sign?
I’ve been riding this bike for almost three years, after someone in the A-house gave it to me in lieu of one month’s rent. Not sure how many miles I’ve put on it, but easily several thousand. Many of those riding in LA with friends, at events, etc. I put on the Jam Master Jay sticker almost straight away. The frame deserves a proper memorial, but we have not thought of anything yet. Will keep you updated.

New Zealand 3-day bike trip

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Ever think ‘This is a really bad idea. We shouldn’t do this. There is still time to back out.’? Usually, I would do so. A voice in the back of my head this time (which was slightly mumbled and maybe British) said, ‘Come on, it’s an adventure. What’s the worse that could happen?’. It was boxing day, a strange Kiwi holiday the day after chirstmas, and Matt Pro and I were suppose to leave the next day for a 3-day, 300-mile bike tour from Christchurch to Nelson (a beach town on the northside of the south island). The problem was, we had one road bike, one fixed gear (49×16, mind you) and a broken single-speed mountain bike. No racks. No panniers. Bonnie, one of Matt’s friends I had met, was planning the trip, but we did not know the other two guys. Neither had bike toured, one didn’t really ride bikes. Yeah. We managed to scrape together four panniers and a rack and Matt bought another rack. We decided to take the fixed instead of my broken bike.

(unfinished post!)

New Zealand X-mas

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Matt Pro has an adoptive family here in Christchurch that has taken him in. They are friends of a friend and they say you can’t choose your family, but if he could of chose his adoptive family I don’t think he could of done any better. He is there for all the holidays and tends to go over quite a bit just to chill out. Also goes for the Kiwi tradition of getting the barbi (BBQ) going, which seems to happen every day in the summer. The picture on the right is of 13-month old Tahunuiarangi, Dave (grandfather) and Josie(mom).
We spent x-mas eve chilling out and watching a lot of tv including Sione’s Wedding and No 2 , both are choice and I’d recommend them, especially the former. Also watched Bro-town, a funny animated show from here in NZ about 5 kids growing up here in Morningside.

When we rolled up X-mas morning to go over to Pat’s (grandmother) brother’s place they had gifts not only for him, but for myself as well. Josie and her (american) husband regularly get chocolates for the family and they went out of their way to get Matt and I dark chocolate. There are these huge bars of Ghana chocolate that has been imported since 1896. Yum. They were happy that I had mine half-eaten before we even ate lunch.
For the x-mas meal they made us a huge plate of broiled vegetables that included pumpkin, potatoes and kumara. Kumara is sweet potato-esque, but much better. Not as sweet and has an entirely different texture than any potatoes I have eaten. Had some pasta and veggie sausages as well. I didn’t cook anything, which was nice, but odd. In the picture below you can see x-mas crackers (not the people), which apparently is a tradition as well. Is this so for anyone else? I’ve never seen it. I also never had cranberry sauce with Thanksgiving, so what do I know? There are toys and jokes inside which made the meal a bit more lively than otherwise may of been.
Another sort of tradition, since it is summer here over x-mas, is the ‘X-mas day water gun fight’. Matt and I stayed inside the best we could to the taunts that the americans are ‘weak’. The others managed to soak each other pretty well.
The house we were at for x-mas is in what I considered a normal suburb, but Matt informed me that it is not a regular suburb, but a ‘lifestyle bloc’. It is close enough to Christchurch that you can commute there for a regular job, but large enough that you can still have animals and maintain some of traditional rural Kiwi culture. Behind the house were some fenced off sheep (four of the 43 million on the two islands, more than 10 for every person) and some chickens in what I guess would be a coop. I’ve never seen a chicken coop, but I imagine a place where you keep chickens can be a chicken coop so that’s what it is in my mind.

It just dawned on me that I spent Christ’s birthday in a town called Christchurch. That is especially funny; this is the most secular country I have ever been in and well, I am obviously not religious. Apparently the city is named after one of the schools at Oxford one of the original settlers went to. Why don’t they change it? The place is so non-religious that I don’t think anyone cares. I am going to try to post some images of the city in a separate post. For now enjoy the sheep: