Westside BikeSIDE!

(This is a guest post by Tom Bosch, Bikerowave’s head mechanic on Monday nights.)

When I was a kid, I would ride my big sister’s beat up bike through the neighboring apartment complexes in my hometown, rain or shine, riding as fast as possible, sometimes near the brink of disaster. When disaster struck, whether it was a bent stem after sliding out of a curve, or a broken pedal, I’d fix the problem and keep going. That pretty much sums up my relationship with my bike. I got lucky and survived my fair share of close calls back then, never even broke a bone.

One near-disaster that will always stick out in my mind is a time I could’ve easily killed myself but rode away safe. I was riding one evening after school, and cut between two cars, one turning left and the other right. both onto the street in front of me. I barely squeezed through the two of them at speed by assuming they both would hit their brakes once they noticed each other. I’ll never forget that because it was one of the first times in my life I realized self-control is an important virtue.

I still ride with the same energy, and I might sink more money into it now, but it is still just as much fun. It’s what I do to unwind after work and on the weekends. It’s all I think about when I’m in my car driving from client to client, and too much of my time is spent on the internet reading about all things bike. Lately I’ve been doing too much browsing and too much driving though, because I’ve been on a pretty consistent bike-riding to non-bike-riding calendar. It goes something like this:

1. Ride 2 weeks all out, 5 days a week, no matter what.
2. Get my ass run over.
3. Sit for 2-3 weeks and let bones/bruises heal, collect parts to,
4. Rebuild damaged bike.
5. Repeat.

I’m currently on my third repetition in so many months.

I adhere strictly to this schedule because I can’t help but get hit by cars. Maybe I’m terrible on a bike, but there’s something about being a cyclist in Los Angeles, and the cyclist’s relationship with the automobile, that never fairs in my direction. That should be obvious, right? Why should a bike be on the streets of LA anyways?

I have to say, I completely sympathize for the four-wheeled mentality. I cannot understand it, or accept it, but I truly feel for the indigenous peoples of Los Angeles County and their shit commute. For my job, I have to drive 25,000 miles per year around Southern California. That’s one trip around the Earth, and change, every year on the most congested roads in North America. Understandably, I am as guilty of road rage as anyone. It’s impossible to expect that anyone should maintain a sane mind while driving in the traffic of LA. It is completely intolerable, and does the human race, and one could argue all living things, a disservice in every way. But, at some point, one has to learn to deal with it, to have some self control.

I learned this lesson in earnest last December. While driving on the 10, merging to the 101 from east of LA, I was cut off while trying to make an exit by a car doing about 90mph in an exit only lane. While swerving to miss him, I lost control of my car and wound up doing donuts across the highway. I amazingly missed 4 lanes of traffic and wound up in an embankment in a heartbeat. Again, I walked away from a situation where someone should have showed more self control, but this time it wasn’t me. The theory became law: on these roads, when given the opportunity, assume everyone will do what’s right for them, and wrong for everyone else.

Since then my mentality has changed. I’ve learned to relax, to not let the road make me dangerously impatient or irrational, to slow down, and to notice the world around me. And as it turns out….amazingly… beyond all shadows of a doubt… if you treat the speed limit as what it is: a speed one should not exceed when given the chance, driving in LA is not stressful at all. Fancy that.

Someone once said that you have to think of life like a song. Once that song starts, you simply don’t rush all the way to the end to be done with it, you enjoy the process of development, your mind focuses, you experience, and then, the finale. Ideally, the analogy should translate to every second of the day, but apparently that is impossible for the allotment of time Los Angeles spends in its vehicle. Instead of controlling their emotions, most of Los Angeles prefers instead to take it out on whoever is in their way, which then causes the rest of us to become just as irrational, and so on and so forth.

As we all know, every last traffic light in this city is timed in symphony with the others. What is the time saved driving to the next red light a block away at 45mph vs. 35mph? Oh shit, it’s zero, because your dumb ass isn’t going anywhere. Even on the highway, driving from downtown to the beach, about a 15 mile drive, at 4:30 am, what’s the time saved going 65mph vs. 85mph? About three minutes. If someone is going to put theirs and everyone else’s lives in danger to get somewhere maybe seconds sooner, do they really even appreciate that time?

Well of course, that time is critical. In those precious seconds, L.A. can do whatever L.A. wants, which almost always is, of course, to not be in it’s car, to be happy, to enjoy freedom, and maybe to pee. I’m not one for religion, but being human I need a belief system, and I’ve come to believe that to have all of those things, all you really need to do is not be an asshole. That excludes the peeing thing though, for that you might want to consider having an empty water bottle available.

The first time I got hit, I was rear-ended by a mid-30s gentleman in a Nissan Armada who simply wasn’t paying attention and veered into me. Of course this would not have happened if the fellow’s car wasn’t too wide for his lane, but que sera, no real damage was done, and he was extremely apologetic. We were both happy I didn’t get hurt.

Most recently a girl made a right turn into me as I was riding home from the beach. Luckily she was kind, and gave me a ride the remaining two blocks home, and some cash for my injuries and damage to my bike. The injuries were minor, just some cuts, and my bike wasn’t that messed up, but it was a nice gesture, and I accepted.

The accident in between, I was run off the road by a Jeep Grand Cherokee. The Jeep didn’t like me taking up more than my fair share of the right lane, which legally is all of it, even though I was keeping up with traffic on a three lane street. After honking a bunch, the Jeep swerved into me. I tried to avoid him, but ended up hitting the curb and doing my best superman impression over my handlebars. My bike then sailed over my head, as my front wheel bounced merrily down the road. I fractured ribs, bent my front wheel, brake, and fork. The Jeep didn’t stop, and neither did anyone else.

For 10 seconds I lay face down in the right lane of Sunset Blvd. between Gower and Bronson, unsure of what just happened. Cars began honking, people cursed at me and revved their engines as they passed to show their anger. I didn’t know if I should try to move, I could barely breath, it sucked. With not a single concerned look from a passerby, I walked a few miles home, my bike over my shoulder, dripping off my arm onto my taco’ed front wheel, limping all the way.

Accidents happen, as a cyclist in this city I have to expect them. This is my life. The questions begin to pile up: why do I go on? Why do I continue to spend money and rebuild my bike? Why do I go right back out onto the same streets that could’ve claimed my life? I seem to be asking myself this more after every crash. They are sobering questions to consider, but only because there is no suitable answer.

I honestly don’t know why I continue to get back up. The best answer I can come up with is because riding is fun, and while that’s true, it’s also simplistic and dismissive. There’s a lot of macho, masochistic reading material out there about cycling, and it’s deep history of being the most grueling endurance sport on the planet, but I don’t give a shit about any of that. Maybe deep down my ego would like to say I think it’s glorious to suffer and all that crap, after all I was raised Catholic. And suffering really is a popular theme in this puritan country of ours, ingrained in all of us, but that really has nothing to do with it. I simply like to unwind on a bike, to see the world, to be in the sun, to feel healthy, to challenge myself beyond what I think I am capable of, and to look bad-ass and sexy as hell doing so.

Maybe those really are all suitable answers, but not as long as I have Los Angeles to deal with. Los Angeles wants me either dead or in a car. Why? Because I stand in the way, I am an obstacle between LA and it’s eventual, yet unattainable end, which can’t seem to come fast enough. I wanted to end this little piece with a quote, but instead I suggest listening to all 10 minutes and 39 seconds of the Parliament classic “Funkentelechy”, it pretty much sums up my position on the subject with a much better horn section.

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