Ghost bike...Milen Dimitrov...

I apologize for the delay in this one. It was brought to my attention a few days ago when I saw it on Biking in LA.

Milen Dimitrov, 4 September 2010

Can you imagine a factory being allowed to operate with a safety violation track record equivalent to that with which our nations highway and street systems operate. Such a factory would be shut down in an instant. Careless distraction and recklessness would not be tolerated. The police officer responding to the above tragedy admonished everyone to "remain aware of your surroundings whether your a cyclist or in a vehicle". Sound advice of course; advice that most responsible people whether they be cyclists, drivers, or pedestrians for that matter, follow daily. Unfortunately, no matter how vigilant you are, there are those who do not take their responsibilities seriously and put others' lives in danger. Surviving on the road, the simple act of getting from point A to point B, should not depend on whether you have used up your lifetime quota of dumb luck.

My Favorite Routes II: Mountain Junction Loop...

Thank goodness for Monday holidays and the extra weekend day for riding. This ride, which I call the Mountain Junction Loop, was one of the first rides I discovered when I moved to Claremont some seven year ago. At that time I would do it several times a week, not just on the weekends, but during the week after work as well; it is short enough and fast enough that it can be ridden well into late September/October in the evenings before it gets too dark.

Using Chaparral Park as a starting point, just like my Quick Ride, posted earlier, you will head up Mills Avenue for 1.5 miles, before turning right onto Mt. Baldy Road. Continue riding steadily upward between the overly large homes, through the light at Padua Avenue (where for the Quick Ride you would turn right). Maybe half a mile past Padua the road will take a noticeable upward pivot. This hill takes you up to the top of San Antonio Dam, will cause anyone to slow, but if you are used to climbing will not cause any undue problems. 

The road turns upward.

Top o' the dam. Frankish Peak in back. Link to mtb ride there, here.

Anyway, once you have reached the top of the dam, the difficult part of this ride is over. The road levels off to a steady and slight uphill grade. In quick succession you will pass junction with the Palmer-Evey road (there are almost always cars parked here belonging to hikers, trail runners, mountain bikers heading up to Potato Mountain), and then the National Forest boundary sign. A short distance more and you reach Mountain Junction. This is where Mountain Avenue comes up from Upland. The road, of course, continues on up the Baldy Village and beyond to the ski lifts, but for this ride we will turn right and head down mountain. At the bottom of a short, sharp decline you will cross a bridge over San Antonio creek, which today had only a little water in it, but can create quite a rumble when it is swollen with snowmelt.

Parking for Palmer-Evey.

Entering the Angeles NF.

Nice gentle grade. Mt. Baldy in the distance.

The hillsides close in.

Mountain views.

Mountain Junction.

Looking back out to the canyon mouth.

A little water under the bridge.

Area behind the dam.

One of many.

Bend right at this intersection.

There are a few small ranches up along this section of Mountain Ave and there can be some heavy equipment from the sand and gravel operations behind the dam, but except for when there is snow up above, traffic is normally quite light. Once you swing away past the dam Mountain bends to the right at an intersection. Follow the sign and you are back in the city, the San Antonio Heights area of Upland to be exact. Continue down Mountain for another mile and a half or so, then turn right on Benson, following it around a couple turns, over the 210 Freeway, and then make a right onto Baseline Road. Take Baseline to Mills, turn left and after approximately 12 miles, and maybe 1500 feet of climbing, you are back where you started. It is a short ride, so if you are looking to get a decent training ride in you will need to do it more than once, or maybe as part of a longer ride along the foothills. Both Mt. Baldy Road and Mountain Avenue are popular routes with local cyclists so you will no doubt see other riders either headed up or down. It can get hot during the summer, but since the ride is so short, the heat is more likely to be an annoying inconvenience than anything. Even though you never really get that high (elevation at the junction is 3000 ft) there are some nice year-round views of the surrounding peaks. Enjoy the ride.

Headed down Mountain, back in the city.

My Favorite Routes I: the Palmer-Evey

Slow Sunday scenes from the Village...

Yesterday's long ride in the heat sucked more life out of me than I expected, so even though I had an invitation of ride GMR, I opted to take it easy and just spend a slow day around town.

Blue biking

Sometimes cute comes with a motor

By bike, or by foot, the two best ways for getting around the Village

Cycle chic, but on the sidewalk?

Holding the parasol for his girl

Townies don't get any better than a Bianchi Milano

To market, to marked to buy a...?

Huzzah! Coates/Back Abbey team!

Two wheels, two ways.

This week's C & V at the Velo was all set to be this 1970s powder blue Cycles Gitane mixte with Simplex:

But then this guy rides in to share his Guerciotti and say hey:

I really like that spider. The ones they are producing nowadays [coughShimanocough]

lack a certain style. Anyway, two C & V for the price of one this week.

From the library: 1987 Tour de France...

Those who are in the know are aware of my fondness for all things Irish - my Irish book and music collection, Master's work on Irish culture, trips to the Ould Sod, even an Irish flag I used to have flying from my saddle, are all testaments to that. As a result, 1987 was a fantastic year, it was the year Stephen Roche won the so called Cycling Triple Crown - the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, and World Championships. One year for my birthday some racing buddies got me this Winning magazine special edition recap of the Tour. It is 64 pages, in length, full of photos from each stage, along with a written account of each, Roche's Tour diary entries, posters of Roche, Andy Hampsten and Raul Alcala. It is a quite well put together piece of cycling memorablia and Tour history. (My apologies for the photo quality, the printed versions are much better).

Roche being interviewed by Ruppert Guinness during a restful moment.

Raul Alcala gets a page and numerous other photos.

Laurent Fignon celebrates victory on stage 21 ahead of Anselmo Fuerte. Fignon would finish this Tour in 7th, 18:24, back with Fuerte right behind at 18:33.

Meanwhile Roche collapses following his stage 21 effort to minimize his time loss to race leader Pedro Delgado. Three stages later Roche would out ride Delgado in an individual time trial to seal his victory.

American Jeff Pierce of the 7-11 team wins the finale on the Champs-Elysees. At this point he was only the third American to win a Tour stage.

Sam Emerson racing photographs...

I just came across this Facebook page. Quite a nice collection of historic racing photographs taken by Sam Emerson. Most of the photos are black & white and dating to the 1980s. Races around Southern California mostly, but some beyond the border as well. When you have some time to give them a good look, it is well worth it. Some of the big names of the local racing scene are represented as well as some who went more than a bit further; here is just a tease:

Mark Rayner and Thurlow Rogers

Ride History II: Wednesday Griffith Park Ride...

The Wednesday evening ride in Griffith Park was likely the first group ride I participated in on a regular basis. The ride set a very high standard by which other, subsequent, rides would be judged. In the late 1980s, after finishing school at UCSB, I moved to Burbank, and like a lot of people who lived in that area, found myself riding at Griffith Park, a lot. I quickly discovered that on Wednesday evenings there was a training race that took place. Hooked immediately, I became a weekly fixture. Like most of your weekday evening rides, the Park ride only ran during daylight savings time. At the end of the season, one lap would be cut off the ride each week, until the time change at the end of October. The Griffith Park ride had been around since at least the 1970s, and, unless my memory fails me, was organized, literally organized, by the North Hollywood Wheelmen. I emphasize organized because the ride was like no other regularly run ride I have participated in since. Riders would pay $1.00 per night and sign a standard USCF release form. We were given a number to pin to our jersey showing that we had paid for the night; since most riders tended to keep their numbers, different colored stickers started to be given out and affixed to the number, identifying the paid riders. There was a motorcycle lead, and course marshals with stop signs at either end of the course to stop traffic as the peloton swept into view. The course was a simple elongated loop starting at the Los Angeles Zoo parking lot; the finish was at the Los Feliz exit / entrance to the park. While not going up into the hills, the loop did take in a stretch of rollers which usually served as a launching platform for attacks.


The ride would generally start with a parade until swinging 180º at the turn-around just before Los Feliz. It would start in earnest at that point, circle around the zoo lot (remember, this was when there was a one way road circling the parking lot, as opposed to the current two-way configuration along the east side) and head back to Los Feliz to complete the circuit. Being held on a Wednesday, the Griffith Park ride was sandwiched between the Tuesday / Thursday Rose Bowl training races, and many people, myself included, would do all three training days during mid-week. In many ways they were complimentary - the Rose Bowl was/is a pure speed workout, where the speed might often be higher than in actual races. Griffith Park seemed more relaxed and social. The Rose Bowl has long been a draw to many of the regions local pros and  professional teams, so it could usually be counted on to be fast; the Park ride, on the other hand, seemed to draw predominantly from catagory 3 and 4 riders, with perhaps a smaller number of 1 and 2 riders. That does not mean that people would not try for the win at the close of the evening, or try to stretch things out on the rollers, but with the more prestigious Bowl ride at the fore and aft, I think riders on the Park ride were content to take things a little easy. Easy being a relative term of course; it was during this ride that I saw my first fist fight in the peloton, not pulled off to the side mind you, but smack in the middle of the group, arms and fists swinging, people yelling, but the ride continuing on as usual. I guess I was new enough to the sport to be impressed by their bike handling skills, even if their choice of location left something to be desired.


Unfortunately, in the City of Angels, where transitory is like a motto, and good things all too often come to an abrupt end, the Griffith Park ride faced a losing battle. The city Parks Department, who at least tentatively, favored the ride at first, or at least tolerated it, (remember we were paying a fee each night for the privilege) abruptly changed course. The roads in Griffith Park, especially the section along the golf course have always been rather narrow, and the large peloton racing along these roads heightened drivers' sense of inconvenience, the Park withdrew their support and the ride was shut down. What irked me then, and still does when you get right down to it, is that city parks exist to provide recreational space to a city's residents and visitors. Here we were, using the park for just such a purpose. Many, if not most, of the drivers passing through the park I am convinced were there simply to avoid congestion on the 5 and 134 freeways.


The year 1993 was the final year of the Griffith Park ride in this form. On the very first night of the year, April 7 the police were out in the park and using their radios to suggest that we would be stopping at all stop signs; a bit of muffled laughter rolled through the group, and no one stopped. A week later there were more warnings with no effect. Ominously, the park superintendent paid us a visit in the zoo lot following the ride. In my log I wrote that "he seemed cooperative, but said he would have to shut us down if we didn't start stopping at intersections." I further noted that the city's bicycle coordinator was there as well, saying that he "wants to make the ride legal again." What this meant was that though the peloton continued to gather and train as always, the ride was no longer sanctioned - that 1992 was probably the last year of North Hollywood Wheelmen organizing, the last year that we paid a fee for the privilege of riding.


One more week passed before I noted: "Well it happened - the Park ride has been suspended for a couple weeks. The city bicycle coordinator showed up with the chief ranger and the director of Parks and Rec. and talked some before the ride. The coordinator expects his plan to be approved soon, but then the ride will have to be organized, and who knows how long that will take." The next week, April 28, the outlook had turned completely around: "The bike coordinator was there again with the latest news. Apparently the city has approved the plans and we now await a USCF training race permit. Explorer Scouts have been found to serve as course marshals and N. Hollywood Wheelmen will again run the show." Such are the politics of riding in L.A. however. On May 26 I wrote: "The Wed. nite ride seems to be in its death knells. For the second week in a row the police were out giving tickets to cyclists while letting cars speed along." People continued to ride on Wednesday nights, sometimes in groups of over 30 riders who continued to hope that the organized ride would be revived. It did not happen that year, nor in subsequent years. Skip forward one more year; we still gathered and rode as a group, though I do not think that anyone expected to see the old ride again. Then on June 1, "the hand of big brother is heavy and tonight it came down on us cyclists again. The ride was really fun while it lasted... I kept myself at the front taking several more pulls until a lap later those bastards pulled us over and warned us about stopping. I guess parks aren't for recreation anymore, the speeders sure are never persecuted for using it as an alternate to the freeway." Finally, on June 23 I noted, "lots of pairs and trios and soloists out but gone are the days of the mighty peloton."


While the Wednesday evening ride had come to a final and lingering end, it was of course, not the end of riding at Griffith Park. Other rides would continue to pass through the park, some use the park as a staging area, a start and finish. Smaller groups of riders would continue to ride at the park on Wednesday nights, taking their chances by doing the same laps as they always had. I continued to ride there as well; Wednesday became a climbing day, where I would head up into the hills, either solo or in the company of small groups. Up in the hills there were fewer cars and even roads that were closed to cars, and we could ride in relative peace.


Ride History I: Bicycle Doctor Shop Ride

The poloists are back...

With apologies to Thin Lizzy:


...Friday night they'll be dressed to kill
Down at Dino's Bar and Grill
The drink will flow and blood will spill
And if the boys want to fight, you'd better let them...


The poloists are back in town...


While out for a ride this evening, I could have sworn that I saw someone riding the opposite direction with a bike polo mallet on his back and headed for the colleges. A little while later I went down there myself, but did not see any practice taking place; I haven't heard any chatter, or seen any announcements. So, I came home and checked online and found out from the Bumstead's blog that the Claremont kids were playing down San Diego way a couple weekends ago, confirming that they are indeed back in town. I'll have to check around again on Friday, their other practice night. Here is a pic from the Spring:

and if you did not see it in April, follow this link for a slide show of more.

From the archives: Mexican Independence Day Criterium...

This is the peloton sprinting the hill at the 1989 Mexican Independence Day Criterium. The races claim-to-fame was this short, but sharp, hill which essentially forced everyone to sprint each lap. It would have been one thing to do this hill a handfull of times, but to do it each lap, when a lap is no more than a mile around, would eventually take a toll on the riders' legs and string out the field no matter the catagory. The hill made it one of the more diffucult local criterium courses at the time. With the groupo being pulled apart on each lap, there was little opportunity to sit in and recover. I did the race this year and again in 1992, but am yet to determine how many years, before or after, the race was run.