Score!!!

From the sale bin at the Manhattan Beach REI. Sweet. Since one of these tubes will last me 2 - 3 months, this is almost a year's worth of sunblock.

Yay!

The need to feed an addiction

I hate it when I get addicted to a product, and all of a sudden it's gone. It happens more often with bras (I'm hard to fit) and underpants that won't ride up, but this time, it's happened with sunscreen.

I've got very sensitive skin that's prone to burning (curse my Irish ancestors), so many of the sunblocks either don't work well enough or make me break out.

Neither is good, of course.

So when I found Scape, I was happy. They made an SPF 50 which didn't run into my eyes, didn't wear off and didn't make my skin break out.

Except that I'm out and I've had a horrible time finding it.

I checked all the usual places, and no one had it, but at Tri-Lab, they told me that the company  has simply stopped responding to vendors. They've been ignoring re-order requests and aren't returning phone calls.

Supposedly this has been going on for two months, and the assumption is that the company is out of business.

Dammit.

What the hell am I supposed to do now? The other sunblocks on the market either stink like death, don't work, make me break out, or cost so much I can't afford to use them.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Bicycle Christmas!

Twice a year, the city of Los Angeles sponsors CicLAvia, which closes streets downtown to cars and lets the cyclists, runners, roller bladers, etc.. take over the streets.

It was conceived as a way to force Angelenos to interact with each other and think about our streets as a public, shared space, and it's become so wildly popular that it's starting to become a victim of it's own success, but despite the crowds, it was a wonderful way to cruise downtown. This event always leaves me with a huge smile on my face.

Double Dutch in the street.

Pinata district. Yes, this is a real thing.

Fairy wings, and a sweet Xtracycle.

Steel drums. Gave the intersection a Caribbean feel.

Car-Free streets! Yay!

Traffic jam

4th St. Bridge, downtown, closed to car traffic.

The next event is in October, and I wish it was sooner. I always have such a good time!

Road Rage

In general, I find the vast majority of drivers that I meet to be fairly courteous towards cyclists.

Sure, one has the occasional problem, but really, when one considers the traffic volume of Los Angeles, it's amazing that there are any cyclists left alive.

Most of the time, if I'm involved in any sort of incident, it's unintentional and the driver gives me that sheepish smile and small wave, and I smile and wave back because it's all good and no one got hurt.

But every so often, someone behind the wheel of a car is a callous, horrible, soulless asshole who deliberately tries (and succeeds) to seriously injure a cyclist.

Over the weekend, cyclist Susanna Schick, aka Pinkyracer, was hit by a car driven by a horrible excuse for a human being who got angry about an exchange of words that was probably completely trivial, chased down a woman on a bicycle, hit her with his car and then drove off.

Yeah, that's a real man, there. That'll show that cyclist who is the boss. Duders.

The full story is on BikingInLA, along with a link to a fund to help her pay for medical bills, since she has a concussion, broken collarbone, six broken ribs and a shattered pelvis, among other injuries.

Reading this was especially poignant today, after nearly going 'splat' on my morning ride.

A friend, who rode the L'Etape du California (a fancy French phrase for "horrible long uphill grind from hell"), wanted to do a recovery ride today, so we did a few loops of San Vicente Blvd. here in West LA.

It started out nice - the street was full of cyclists and runners, the sun was out and it was a gorgeous morning, even if I was hungry and talking about bacon way more than I should have.

On our third (and final) loop, we were slowing down as we approached a stoplight and a lady driving a giant SUV (of course) cut us off in order to wedge her boat into a parking space.

By slamming on the brakes, we missed hitting her door by about two inches. If she'd chosen to pull that move 100 yards earlier when we were riding faster, we both would have hit her.

Of course, as we rode by, we shouted at her.

Not anything cruel, but more along the lines of "Hey, watch it".

Lucky for us, she just looked sheepish (no smile or wave, though), and we rode past.

How many times have we all done this?

Although I like to solve problems with a smile, I'm certainly not above yelling at someone if they're making a really bone-headed move.

I've never had anyone chase me down and my first instinct is "get on the sidewalk, that way the car can't hit you", but I'm willing to bet that whatever happened to Pinkyracer happened so fast she couldn't do anything about it.

It's inexcusable, horrible and makes me really hope that if the police do find the guy who was driving the car, they throw him in prison with gang members and puppy kickers.

But they probably won't find him, so if anyone can afford any donation to help her, please do so.

And if you're in your car, try to give the cyclists some warning before you pull across the bike lane. That would be awesome. Remember, we're just trying to get where we're going in one piece.

Starting over

Today was my first day back on the road bike since Solvang. I've taken a few trips on the commuter, but nothing resembling actual training - like keeping a minimum cadence or speed or paying attention to form.

Since I'm going to be working long hours for the next few days, I decided to do a brick today - 2 hours of hill repeats on the bike, followed by a slowish run (out of the water, yay!).

Admittedly, the hill I did was a very gentle hill, maybe a 2 % grade, if that, but I've lost enough lung power in the few weeks since Solvang that the first lap really made me wheeze, especially trying to maintain 90 rpm.

Once I warmed up, though, I was fine, and as a bonus today was a beautiful day with temps in the 70s and blue skies.

Also, the coral trees are blooming, and they make me happy. I thought they were poinsettia trees for the longest time until someone with actual knowledge of botany set me straight and kindly didn't mock me.

After my ride (26 miles in two hours. Not great, but good enough for the first day back), I went for a nice easy run. The heel held up very well, which is good, but just to be safe when I got home I sat in a tub of cold water for 10 minutes.

The cold water that comes out of my tap is impressively cold (or maybe that's just because in my old place the cold water was tepid on a good day), so much so that I'll go completely numb after sitting in just cold water for a few minutes.

Which is good, because not only do I not have an ice-maker, I don't have space in my freezer to store half a bag of ice.

The two ice trays I have are full of serving sizes of the raw food diet I feed my cat (whole different story there).

So - tub of cold water for 10 minutes.

Tomorrow, before work, I'll go swim, and that will have to do for the rest of the week. 

A sunny April Fool's Day

After either working insane hours or having it rain buckets (seems to alternate lately), I actually have a day off when it's sunny and gorgeous outside!

Although going for a run is tempting, I'm going to be good and aqua jog at the pool (sigh). Since it dumped rain last night, the roads are still a bit too wet to bike, but hopefully should dry out by afternoon since I'd love to get a ride in, even a slowish one on the commuter bike.

On another note, I love Google Voice.


It came in handy last week. I'd signed up on a job hunting website (just seeing what's out there), and it required a phone number, so I gave the Google Voice number.

24 hours later, I was getting robo-calls from some college sales department (not a good college, one of those internet ones), to the tune of 3 per hour. Crazy.

Thankfully, I was able to block the number through Google because if they'd had my actual cell number I would have been able to do nothing about it (thanks, Verizon).

Yay!