Westside BikeSIDE!

I’m standing on the outside edge of sweeping arc of pavement. An unintelligible whooping cyclist whizzs by. As the gust of her passing hits my face, I discern a clamor of hoots and yells behind me. Swinging round I see a loose herd of cyclists and skaters bearing down. Lumbering forward they appear svelte in the presence of a bulky BMW. They are refugees fleeing normalcy, and they bear predatory smiles.

I survey the horizon. I recognize a cluster of office buildings in the distance and I learn something. I am standing on a freeway interchange. It is the swooping interchange from the I-10 East to the 405 North. A few slow Northbound cars in the left lane pass the animalz in the right lane, on their way to a lazy river of merging traffic. Below and above it’s a beautiful day for a freeway cowboy: slightly overcast and cool, blues and greys in the sky, greys and grays on the freeway plains below.

I note the firm press of Cherry Limeade against my hip, and the weight of a camera against my chest. I’m here, so I ought to snap a few photos. The already animalized bikers explode in celebration when I raise the camera. One rider of a triple tall bike is unable to put his fist down. His arm is locked in a gesture of triumph, and concern flits through my thoughts at the difficulty of his dismounting in that pose. I hope his celebration isn’t permanent. It is a tragedy that it can’t be. As the last of these Crimanimalz passes, I decide to follow their lead and ride.

I throw my leg over Cherry Limeade and, when I kick her pedals, she surges forward. She’s strong, a good horse, and what’s more, she tolerates my cowboy day dreams. Steel is real. We sense this is no longer the place to be, and she makes like a bandit’s getaway horse and gallops down the ramp. A fitting steed for a man with a bandana over his face and black cowboy hat.

We escape to the parking lot known as the 405 and trot across to the fast lane. There, cars and trucks amble at 8 mph through the waist high boredom, just like the cars and trucks in the slow lane. One man sending a text message, looks right into my eyes and then returns to texting without the slightest glint of recognition that something unusual was afoot. A woman didn’t notice us animalz at all as she put makeup on using her driver’s side vanity mirror. She held open a three ring binder in her lap, and a newspaper was draped across the steering wheel.

These zombie cattle infuriate me! I become totally animalized, screaming to my fellow cyclists “I do what I want!” The scream of the thrill possesses me and my nostrils flare with Cherry’s. Cherry springs forward, rocketing toward the edge of the now stampeding herd of Los Angelopes and Crimanimalz. Rushing in front is a cacophony of barely human noise that shatters the drone of idling engines. Berserk, the normally vegetarian Angelopes roar between lanes, urging this invasive species, TRAFFIC, forward toward the Sepulveda pass.

Hardly disturbed, traffic’s pathetic emulation of a stampede of American Bison trudges on toward the San Fernando Valley commuter dumping grounds. Hopefully, when they arrive, they will quietly board trains embarking to “I consider 3 hours stuck in traffic each day more tolerable than renting an apartment”-ville, never to return. These freeway plains have been cultivated to grow boredom, the local standardized test for why you hate your life. Even Cherry Limeade can’t help but be subdued by that unassailable monotony.

Suddenly, a hard gust drenches us in ozone and humidity, startling the Crimanimalz. FUNDERheads loom on the horizon. As one the herd breaks hard right, exiting the freeway grasses for the low built canyons of West LA. We’re gone, never to return. Like byke-ning, Crimanimalz never strike the same place thrice.

(Go watch the Crimanimalz ride the Freeway, do it right now!)

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