Just Be Glad You Weren't Walking

Chris is always smiling, always positive, and everyone likes him. I don't know how we're friends. He almost makes me wish I was from Africa, too, instead of the 51st state.

Chris hates eating. I still don't understand how this is humanly possible, but I've seen him push away food after climbing 25 miles up to Mt Baldy. His disregard for his taste buds shows, too. He bragged to me about hitting the gym and putting on weight; he's up to 136 pounds. (That was a braggadocio for him, that's how humble the guy is.) Needless to say, at his weight, Chris is built to climb. And what better way to parade your prowess than with the ultimate climbing wheels?

Chris directs motion graphics for a living (thecore.la), and I would assume from the wheels he just punctured on a ride to Palos Verdes that business is good — Campagnolo Hyperon Ultra Carbon wheels retail for over $3200. Don't worry too much about the wheels, though; that money is probably small potatoes next to what he's spent customizing his other raced-out ride, a track-ready VW R32.


Oddly enough, Chris was smiling again very shortly after he got the nail out and put a new tire on. Jimmy Cliff had it right: you can't keep a good man down.

Flattened Fauna of Mandeville Canyon

Coyote not sleeping.

Mandeville Canyon is a tony area of Brentwood; guys like The Governator live there. Less importantly, it's about a mile up my street and has a climb of about seven miles. The convenient location and lack of traffic lights make it popular with road cyclists, and the top of Westridge Canyon, which shoots off from Mandeville, provides access to LA's most popular fire road and mountain bike trails. In short, lots of bikers use Mandeville.

The only thing that kind of stinks about the canyon is the impatient traffic. There aren't too many houses in the canyon, and residents want to enjoy their quiet, private cove where they can walk their dogs and ride their horses -- you know, enjoy the tranquility and slower pace.

Residents also make time to complain about the danger of cyclists riding side-by-side, or mountain bikers parking in front of their homes, and equally important issues. While the speed limit signs say 30, cars will blaze past while you descend at 30. Bicycles are not the hazard on this public road, and you'd think residents would appreciate the quiet of bicycles over the roar of another turbocharged Rover, but apparently not: last year one doctor living in this little Eden pulled his luxury car in front of a couple of dudes descending and slammed his brakes, sending one guy through his rear windshield, tearing off part of his face.

Ultimately, I think some residents of Mandeville are a little delusional and oblivious to the most obvious danger in their nook, because the amount of roadkill speeding cars generate there on a daily basis is always shocking. I pedaled up the road yesterday morning, and these animals were littering just one mile near the bottom. Surprisingly, no deer; but it's possible a coyote dragged one off the road.

Raccoon not napping.

The squirrel inside the squirrel.

Unidentifiable bird/feather mash-up remix.

Gibraltar Mountain. Or, It's All a Little Foggy

Gibraltar Mountain, looming above scenic Santa Barbara, is often called the Mont Ventoux of America for its steep, dramatic switchback ascent and gorgeous views of the landscape below. (FYunculturedI: Ventoux is a mountain in the south of France.) Of course, me being me, this is where the bumps in the road begin.

I was staying at the posh Montecito Inn (Charlie Chaplin-themed hotel, pretty cool) with my special something for a weekend wedding. The rehearsal dinner was at the Four Seasons the night before--very fancy--but I moderated my alcohol intake for the sake of the morning ride, because my priorities are fucked. That night, I dreamed of clear views of St Barbie and the Channel Islands, maybe a few blue whales flopping around in the channel for my amusement.

I woke up early, but not bright. The weather was dark and raining, about 55 degrees, very atypical Southern California weather in July. Nevertheless, I rode my way up into the mist above Santa Barbara, to the base of fabled Gibraltar Road.

No views from the base of Gibraltar today.

Once inside the clouds, I was reminded of a visit to Crater Lake that Brian Dolen and I made on a road trip to Bend and Mt Hood. I think the photos below demonstrate what we did not see.

Nothing to see at Crater Lake.

Same place, clearer day.

Crashed trucks littering the road to Bend.

That blizzard in Oregon wasn't a total loss, though; we learned that most trucks suck at bumper cars.

Having never taken Gibraltar Road, I didn't know how long or steep the road really was, and couldn't see more than 30 feet ahead for the first 30 minutes; I was just pedaling through the fog hoping I didn't meet a car head-on. After a long period spent inside of clouds, I came up into Rattlesnake Canyon, and my whereabouts became a little more clear.

Coming up into the sun.

Soon, I'd reached the tops of the clouds.

Above the clouds...

And figured out I was only about halfway up.

Looking back toward the Pacific, nothing but clouds below.

After a while, I made the top of Gibraltar, and continued west onto Camino Cielo toward La Cumbre Peak, the tallest of the Santa Ynez Mountains at 4000 feet. (Cumbre is brown-speak for 'peak', so properly translated it's The Peak Peak.) It was getting hot above the clouds, but I had this song from my childhood playing in my head:



Rather than descend back into the fog and stormy St Barb from The Peak Peak, I retraced and went east on Camino Cielo, which straddles the top of the Santa Ynez Mountains and offers views off of both sides.

Camino Cielo.

According to the Google Map I'd studied, I could take Camino Cielo east all the way to Romero Canyon, and descend back to the coast, then ride back west toward Montecito, making a big loop. Naturally I get going about 40 miles an hour along Sky Road when suddenly, after rounding a corner, I unexpectedly barrel onto a single-lane dirt road... I'm still writing this, so I didn't die or anything worse, but it was quite a test of balance and skill braking from 40 to zero, on dirt, with a cliff off to one side, on 1/2-inch wide, slick road bike tires. Google Maps doesn't show it, so allow me to inform you: Sky Road ends very abruptly and Romero Canyon is unpaved.

Abrupt change in road surface noted.

Oddly enough, I looked up to catch some breath and thank The God(s?) for not going over a cliff when I noticed vultures circling above me. I'm guessing they knew these roads (and where they end suddenly) better than me, and had previously profited from it.

Vultures: pretty from far.

I couldn't really make too many more wrong turns and still make the wedding on time, so I retraced my way back up to where Camino Cielo crosses Gibraltar Road, and bombed back down into the clouds from whence I rose.

During my ride up in the sun that day, I could often hear rattling when I would coast along--not unusual, since a ticking freewheel sounds a lot like a rattle. But something else was rattling at times, too. I think they were responding to my back wheel's mating call. And since I'd climbed Rattlesnake Canyon, I knew some serpientes were probably about.

Naturally I ran over a rattlesnake on the way down. There was no way to see it while dodging potholes on the descent, but I felt it, and by the time I'd come to a stop about 100 feet down the road, I could see it back up there, coiled to strike. The snake was fine, because within seconds it darted into tall grass. Snake in the grass... I wasn't chasing it.

Rattler not to scale.

The rest of the ride was uneventful. I never got any ocean or Santa Barbara views, just cloud-tops, then cloud interiors, then cloud-bottoms, which explains why these photos are so mundane and only a bit scenic.

The wedding was eventful, at The Ranch north of Santa Barbara, near where Michael Jackson used to live. I think Poppy got some ideas. Oh no.

Oh no.

Haze, clouds, fog, rain, precipitous cliffs, Biblical symbols and flashbacks... This ride could have been one grand metaphor for my own mental state. But it's not.

Mulholland Drive: The Disorganized Race and The Disorganized Report

David Lynch's Mulholland Drive features a nightmarish dumpster monster in horrifying contrast to the dreamy, delicate beauty of Naomi Watts. Ye be forewarned: this Mulholland Drive tale is more akin to the former.

Hollywood's rough.

Casper Casparian organized a "gentlemen's race," or, as I prefer to call it, a disorganized race. (And seriously, his parents must be total homophone-philes; they probably say stuff like "Our son's rose buds rose from their meaty, stocky stalk to meet the sun.") While an organized race has start times and finish lines, numbers pinned to jerseys, legal releases, race officials and other honesty-preservers, a disorganized race adheres to the much-flawed honor system. After all, real gentlemen don't cheat, and if they did they'd face any insinuation of dishonor with a pistol duel like formerly honorable Congressmen used to.

This informal race was posted on Facebook, the online home of honor, honesty, updates about fro-yo and manic thoughts. Surprisingly, this format apparently proved popular at attracting some of the best racers in the area, who're all over 30... Creepy.

State Champ Hime Herbert looking virginal.

Beginning at 8 am at the intersection of San Vicente and Ocean, the route would take us on a "fast but neutral roll-out" along the Pacific Coast Highway for about 35 miles to the bottom of the Mulholland climb, the real start of the carnage.

A huge crowd of macho dudes in colorful spandex blanketed the intersection, and the finest local race teams (LaGrange, Helen's Cycles, Ritte van Vlaanderen--I don't know, some ersatz Belgian-themed club replete with excessive vowels and a strange dearth of glottal stops) were well represented. I don't usually race with the best guys (it's bad for everyone's morale), yet the elite racers were ready with their $2000 carbon deep-dish wheels with hand-sewn "tyres" and gay Oakleys in colors like "Retina Burn."

(As long as we're wasting time on a blog: I don't know if it's possible to make uglier glasses, but that hasn't stopped Oakley from trying with models like the Jawbone, shown below in the popular "Retina Burn" colorway.

Inorganic, yet grotesque.

Of course, as long as we're talking ugly brOakleys, I'd be remiss if I passed an opportunity to plug my all-time favorite brOaks...

Clearly Bluetooth headsets in line at the grocery store weren't dickhead enough.

No, not the horrible Thumps with a built-in MP3 player and headphones, but the over-the-top in every way, "What? I don't have ears?" monstrosities popular with poker dorks and this slick dickhead below. Anything this ugly could only come from HR Giger and/or Oakley. Fuck, look at this tool. I'd love to join his homophobic, Bud Light-sipping, cigar-smoking foursome with the Hummer golf cart... Wait, is this John Daly?

"You fuckin' nailed that shit, bro."

Bark all you want about faux-kley marketing-speak cliches like Iridium® and Unobtainium® and I'll splatter you with O-Matter®. Oakleys are hideous, and only ever cool in an ironic-moronic 'so bad it's great' way.)

With that out of the way... We set off on the roll-out along PCH with about 80 riders, chaperoned by the lovely Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. They'd properly surmised that this group was either going for a bike ride or about to riot, harassing us over the megaphone with ludicrous requests like "Ride single file, please." Finally, the Sheriff picked out a guy in a red jersey (literally, "Hey you in the red jersey, pull over NOW!") and the rest of us pushed about 26 miles an hour toward the start.

Robin Hood: Men In Tights takes a piss stop. Diedrich smiles, and Tuttle rocks the World Champ stripes. Still making fun of him for it, too.

A bathroom break, which took place behind the Chevron station at Trancas or Zuma Beach, preceded the start. It was pretty funny seeing all those bikes stacked behind the station with streams of urine trickling down toward the highway... Just like any old day in Paris. (The French take a little piss anytime/place they can, like dogs marking territory.) It was then that my training buddy Tim dropped out of the race for an immediate morale boost. But with a group this big, at least I wouldn't race alone.

We proceeded right on Mulholland and the race was ON. And upward. I don't know what happened behind me, but I stuck with the lead group as the road veered immediately toward the sky. I was climbing with a group of about 10 dudes with a combined body fat percentage of about 3%--real racers, nothing but tight little muscles and huge bulking veins. I should know, I was studying them from the back, trying to hold onto a wheel for about ten minutes at my maximum heart rate of 190. Cliche-ridden announcers know the mountains separate the men from the boys, and I quickly learned I was a breathless little girl. In cycling-speak, I popped.

"Not a problem," I'd have said aloud in an English accent if I'd had any breath to spare, "I'll simply drop back into the chase group. Surely they're holding back a little." No sooner was I caught by the first chase group of about five before being dropped by them. "Fuck!" I exclaimed without accent. I was solo again, with no other group in sight below me; I was hurting, my heart was pounding, my legs were screaming, it was just the first five miles of the race, and I was going to have to go it alone. It never got any easier from there, either. Heading over the mountains into the San Fernando Valley, the temperature started to skyrocket into the 100s, and I quickly realized that wearing my all-black kit had been an unfortunate idiotic choice.

"This is how I get high." --Andy MacDonald

I could go all sentimental/ubi sunt/southlandtopology.com about the beauty of the coastal range that is Malibu's backdrop, how I prefer the solitude of the mountains to the thousands of $20 million-dollar mansions stacked six inches apart, forming a stucco seawall along most of Malibu's (and SoCal's) once-beautiful coast. But this day I didn't notice much beyond the brain-sucking heat and my own breathless suffering. This was a race, not a ride, and that created a myopic focus on the challenge at hand: "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women." At least that's how Conan the Barbarian would've described my flailing mission.

Casper creeping up out of nowhere.

A few hours later, finally relieved of solitude by Casper "The Casp" Casparian creeping up alongside me, I crested Seven Minute Hill (I think it's called Cold Water Creek Drive by non-cyclists) to reach the finish. There were a lot of dudes who'd whooped us--probably about 15 or 20 already there. Oddly, not very many came in after us. Out of 80 or so who started the race, only 25 or so finished. Everyone was completely wiped. And now we simply had to climb over to the ocean side of the coastal range to get home. In the words of Casper, "Next time I'm going to pick a route that ends closer where we'll finish."

Finish line/middle of nowhere. I think Calabassas?

Thankfully there were some cold Cokes and workout beers/Lance beers (Michelob Ultra) waiting at the top of Old Topanga, which helped us over the final hump.

My computer says the race was around 70 miles with 3300 calories burned; more importantly, I didn't get last place.

They say competition is half mental, but I'm pretty sure this race was full-mental. I really enjoyed abusing myself, I hate myself a lot.

Yah trick yah!

I'll look forward to the next disorganized race. Then I'll steal another photo of myself looking fast and pain-free from rockstorephotos.com, to leave another alternate yet photographic impression of that day's reality. Like a mother after labor, I'll look back somewhat blindly, and fondly.

I didn't pee myself, that's the sweat running off my chin.

Highs and Lows: Tioga Pass to Half Dome Lookout

In the epicurean spirit of Tall Paul Roseman's tales, I will review my intake before the main course, the ride. The evening before, I radiated a can of Trader Joe's vegetarian chili with tofu, into which I added about two cups of frozen spinach from Vons. With this hearty, monotonous comfort food I paired a healthy dose of Mammoth's tap water (outstanding, cold) and a Long Hammer IPA from Redhook Ale Brewery (it simply sounded like it might make me pedal harder than Tecate Light). At 6.5% ABV, after two Long Hammers I was asleep. (I used to have a much more macho tolerance, but cycling seems to have rejuvenated my liver to that of a teenage girl.) I may have also kissed a glass hippie pipe with a small amount of fragrant herbs from a Napa-adjacent estate in the verdant Santa Rosa growing region.

On the day of the ride, I had a cup of Java from Guatemala (drip) and a bowl of Post Raisin Bran bathed in Lactaid, just because that's the milkish that Ben (who shares the condo in Mammoth) buys.

I drove to the base of the pass in Lee Vining (elev. 6700') along Mono Lake (another story altogether). I'd ridden to the gates of Yosemite from Mammoth Lakes two weeks before, at which point the road beyond the gates was not cleared of snow. The ride up the pass was inspired, but the ride back to Mammoth over Deadman's Pass and countless undulating hills was drudgery. I wanted to focus my energy on the real shit, not the hour-plus ride to-and-fro alongside Highway 395, which is especially workaday after savoring the tranquil beauty of the Tioga Pass solo. Plus I don't know if I was up for 100-plus miles of climbing again. Call it what you will. I wussed and drove to Lee Vining.

Joining me was Mammoth guy Austin Stiles (real name). I'd met Austin on the road two weeks earlier, on his way back from Tioga, and he'd inspired my first ride up. We also rode a century from Mammoth in the Sierra Nevadas over to the White Mountains and then the Nevada state line. Then back. Into a 30 mph headwind and snow flurry. Like any true cyclist, Austin is an absolute masochist. My other Mammoth roommate, Dolen, was also along. He mostly climbs mountains the old fashioned way, but proved equally adept at going up on wheels.

Without any warm-up, we climbed straight up into the Alpen landscape. I wish I could say the upper reaches of the pass are even more visually jarring than the lower end, but truth is the whole shebang is breathtaking in the most literal sense. It's long, steep enough, and the sheer (again, literally) beauty of these steep, rocky peaks is awesome, in the literal sense of inspiring awe, dude.

After not a little huffing and puffing, somewhere around 10,000 feet we reached the gates of Yosemite National Park, after which the road was closed to cars. The cars weren't really ruining the landscape for me, but it was nice to hop the gate and ditch the auto-tourists. It was more a victory of smugness, such smugness being the domain of the delusional cyclists who believe they're getting away from it all along a paved,  maintained road.

Once beyond the gates, the park was ours. I stayed in the middle of the road all the way through Tuolumne Meadows to Olmstead Point, which is a lookout for Half Dome (as seen below). I could've kept going. It was a nice, brisk day.

Retracing our pedal strokes, we climbed back out of the park in peace. Upon reaching the gates again, we were looking at a loooong descent on which Austin likes to hit 60 mph. No guard rail, thousand foot drop into the valley below. That's Austin. I, however, was confronted with my own pusillanimity. For some reason (the interest of preserving my own life?), I get freaked out when my bike goes into a death wobble at 45 mph and I'm wearing only spandex pajamas and a foam hat for safety. Long story short, I descended this pass like a pussy. On the bright side, I didn't notice any effects riding at around two miles above sea level for five hours.

I followed the finish with a cold cut sandwich and potato salad at the Whoa Nellie Deli in Lee Vining. It was gross, I only finished maybe 1/3 of it, despite being starving. Sad sack ending overall, with only myself to blame.

End of the line.