Found a cheap flight to the bay for one of very few weekends open to meet up with some of my workaholic (and other) friends in the Bay. The whole Bay area has this vibe that is really fascinating, and quite wonderful. Maybe because so many subcultures I am/was involved in are overrepresented…Is it possible to like both LA and SF? Is that allowed? While I feel most people when they talk shit on LA, two things bother me and this trip exemplified them. There is tons of traffic in the Bay and the public transportation is not all that. It’s good, but it is not worlds above LA. Is it better utilized? Yes. Is it also more expensive? Definitely. If you live and kick it in SF, that is one thing, because all you really need is a bike ride away. But, from anywhere else, dare I say, the Bay is ‘so spread out’? You have to take BART ($$$) or drive ($$ and traffic all hours of the day). Was it horrible? Not at all. But, its not the glorious car-free mecca that people make it out to be when they talk shit on Los Angeles.
Friday was able to hit up
Maggie Muds for some vegan ice cream and then did some hiking in Bernal Heights. I was on one hour of sleep, so we didn’t do much outside of seeing Tim for dinner in the Piedmont section of Oakland.
Picking our breakfast in a garden definitely rules, as do warm, sunny days, anywhere you are. Fresh mint tea and chillin with the chickens. Hanging out with ‘foodies’ that are not strictly vegan adds an element all of us vegans need to think about. How does GMO soy, a cash crop from Brazil, compare to eating eggs from chickens running free in a backyard? Which is better for the earth or its inhabitants? I am not
questioning the ethics of veganism, but most vegans’ understanding of or (lack of) concern about food systems. Check out the Buy Fresh, Buy Local link on my sidebar to see what I am talking about. And not to mention that most vegans I know could eat a much healthier diet.
What else? Rode an S-Works at XfrankX’s bike shop, hiked in the Berkeley hills and fell asleep at the top, reconnected with some tight friends, ate at a vegan Japanese restaurant (Chaya’s), saw a crazy variety show in a bar with plays, skits and a dude eating a light bulb.
for the crew going to Death Valley for their first century or double century
The first weekend in March, 20 of us are going to Death Valley for the century/double. This is my third year going to the Spring event and I am honored to be rolling deep for 2007. I know for a lot of you from the Swarm! list this will be your first century or double century. Here are some things I have learned, that I want to share:
1. Read the website so you are familiar with the route, rules, etc.
2. Get enough sleep on Thursday night. This is more important then Friday night.
3. Start with full bottles and a little food in your jersey pockets. The first 18 miles to Badwater (checkpoint 1) are mostly downhill. Budge, Morgan and Luz will be there helping out.
4. Start with warm clothes, that you can shed easily. The temperature difference between 6am and 2pm can easily be 30 degrees. A vest and arm warmers is usually adequate.
5. Have your lights sorted. There are drop points for where you think you will need them, usually at Badwater (checkpoint 5), mile 130. Make sure your batteries are fresh. Also carry a tube, a pump and a patch kit.
6. Don’t hammer from the start! I still make this mistake. When I rode the triple century my first 100 and 200 miles were PR’s. I paid for it later.
7. Eat something every hour. No matter what. Not eating/drinking enough takes out more people than lack of ability. The ride is well supported with 7 checkpoints with gels (bring a gel flask), bars, fruits, PBJ sandwiches, etc. Eat your money’s worth. Always put a bar or fruit in your jersey pocket for between check points.
8. Stay focused. When you get tired your efficiency drops, but less so if you are mindful of it. Over 200 miles the difference between a 12 MPH pace and 14 MPH is 2.5 hours. Don’t think about your finish time, but what you are doing at that point in time to keep your pedal stroke, etc efficient.
9. Ride with others at a similar pace. Pacelining saves energy and increases motivation.
10. Don’t hang out at checkpoints! Do as we say, not as we do, right? Swarm! has a reputation of chillin hard and wasting time. It adds up fast.
11. At this point, it is all mental. Plan to spend the whole day (and into the night!) on your bike and look forward to being able to do so. Death Valley is beautiful and it’s effect on you will change with direction, light, feelings, etc. Take it in. There will be mental ups and downs; this is what life is about.
12. If you’ve been riding, which I know most of you have, forget about the physical part. It’s a spiritual journey (to quote Morgan Goat Beeby). Compare it to running: A sub four hour marathon is a tough physical endeavor, but walking 26.2 miles in one day would not be difficult, if given the time. You’ve got the time for this ride, so do not stress on the physical component.
I don’t want any Swarm! DNF’s! My props to you for taking this on. See you at 6am for the group photo.
Feel My Legs, I’m a Racer 2007
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.
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.
Bike Winter Metric Century
Molly and Swarm! put on a metric century as part of Los Angeles Bike Winter. We met up at the bike block where the Kitchen and Orange 20 are. About 25 people showed up and for many this was the longest ride they have ever taken on. Congratulations!
There are some other pictures here.
Check out the GPS data(thanks Paul!) as well..
Parties and Cupcakes for Training
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 r
ide.
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
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.
2007 Feel My Legs, I’m a Racer Design
Chris got this to me recently and I wanted to share it cause it rules so much.
San Diego 200k Brevet
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
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 Signs
