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.

Open water season ends

It's officially fall here in Southern California, which means that the fun we've all had swimming in the ocean (and making friends with various sealife) is now officially on hold until next year.

Which sucks for me. I much prefer swimming in open water to swimming in the pool, but even though I'm totally game to hop in the ocean when the water's below 60 degrees, no one else is, so I'm stuck staring at the black line until summer.

Yesterday, a group of us went for our last OWS of the year - I just dragged my legs, although I could have kicked as the water made my feet, hands and face go numb after a few minutes.

The downside was the visibility - about 18 inches (although given what's probably in the Santa Monica Bay, that might be an upside. I don't really want to see the shopping carts and used condoms.), except that every so often, we'd swim through these odd warm patches of water.

I know that it's just an ocean current thing, but part of me kept wondering what it was that could pee that much and how close it was to our group.

We swam about a mile, which was a bit longer than usual, but we had to swim an extra few hundred yards to find a place to exit that wasn't crowded with surfers.

I don't mind surfers, but I don't want to be swimming near them when one of them loses a board.

We managed to go through the surf zone in between wave sets, which is good for swimming but bad for body surfing.


It was a great morning, and I'm sad to see the seasonal end of the ocean swims.

Guess I'll have something to look forward to for next year.

Because of the injury, I've dropped out of what was to be the final race of the year - the Palm Springs HITS Olympic. I'll probably go and cheer team mates, but it's not the same as actually doing the race.

My Achilles Heel

So the soreness in my left Achilles tendon escalated during Sunday's race, and when I went to the doctor Monday, he gave me the bad news that it's now full-blown tendinitis, and told me very firmly that there is to be no running of any sort in my life for at least the next four weeks. 

Which is fine, there's still biking and swimming - except that Tuesday, when I got in the pool and tried to do a flutter kick, the tendon hurt when it contracted, so now - no kicking, either.

Except that I won't give up swimming. I just won't.  You can't make me.

I figured I'd just use the pull buoy and still manage to get some swim work in - which was fine on Tuesday. Tuesday's workout is very drill-heavy and focused on form, so I really got a chance to pay attention to my catch and pull.

Today, however, was the masters workout with the Sadist (and yet he looks so normal), and true to his reputation, it was 2200 meters of speed work.

All of which I did with the pull buoy.

I can still feel my arms, but I kind of wish I couldn't.

The upside is that after a month of this, I'm going to be super ripped! Yay! 

The Laws of Physics

Today was a team ride, doing what's called the Amalfi Loop on the Westside.

It's a great training ride, because it's a steep hill with some switchbacks - one of which is a hairpin turn to the right on a steep hill. Said turn is excessively banked, so when one is riding it, the bike tries to veer to the left, thus requiring the rider to lean right to correct.

When I was halfway through said turn, I chose a spectacularly bad moment to reach - with my left arm - down to grab my water bottle, and, of course, started to fall over. Also of course, since I'm usually accustomed to unclipping the right foot first, that's the foot that I got unclipped first.

Unfortunately, I was falling to the left and turning to the right so not only was the wrong foot unclipped, the combination of my weight, the turn, and the angle of the hill meant that I got up close and personal with the pavement, resulting in a really nice scrape on my left knee and a chainring mark on my right calf. Like so:

Gary bit me

This was taken at the end of the ride after I had washed the blood off my shin

This resulted in high fives from my teammates, and a lecture from the well-meaning sports massage guy (who was there to give promo massages and get us all hooked) about how I should better learn to use my clipless pedals.

He really did mean well, so I just smiled, nodded and refrained from trying to tell him that the reason I fell was because the laws of physics, not because of my ineptitude with the clipless pedals.

Massage guy turned out to be very knowledgeable about vintage bicycles,and may be able to help me locate a stem bolt for Gary, since the one he currently has is stripped, making any height adjustment of the handlebars impossible.

Massage guy also gave me a discount card (and a free sample of BioFreeze), so a sports massage may be in my future.