Mountain Bike Thoughts

 Writing is not an every day event.

But I try to ride everyday except lately it has been hard to do with the hot weather. Temperatures in the shade here can reach a hundred and it doesn't cool down much until the sun starts to set.

Many moons ago I was living in El Toro, California which now is called Lake Forest. After I moved from Huntington Beach to El Toro I was involved with motorcycles and didn't do much bicycle riding although I still had my old Schwinn Paramount that I did ride in Huntington. 

There was a bicycle shop in El Toro on Muirlands called Bicycle Etc.

It then was a small shop ran by a husband and wife.  I did buy a Motobecane Road Bike with sew-ups with Stonglite cranks with 10 speeds. Getting a pair of leather shoes for riding was a chore and I think I remember getting the cleats mounted at a shoe repair shop. The nearest bike shop of any size then was a really nice place in downtown Santa Ana.

I did buy a set of rollers there and later a mini ten speed for Beanie (France Jean). I also later purchased a nice Motobecane ladies bike with clincher tires. There was also a bunch of Stingrays left over from the beach. Several times we would pile into van and drive to Newport and ride along the beach. My riding then never got very serious and I started running and playing tennis almost everyday and sometimes twice a day. 

The running became nuts and I was running twice a day too. Every Tuesday and Thursday myself and three others would meet at the tennis club and play doubles. One fellow was a perfume salesmen and worked for Bonnie Bell. He would bring me Runners World magazines (they were in black and white) and that fueled my running addiction. 

The four of us all lived close and Tony later decided to start running also. He then became interested in Iron Man but he didn't have a decent bike so he came to my house and I gave him my Motobecane for training. He kept it and for repayment bought a new Schwinn mountain bike for me. I rode it but it wasn't a big thing. I took the Schwinn to Bonneville to ride around the pits during the week of racing. When I returned home I set it in the garage and when I went to ride it again the chain was frozen solid with rust. I took the mess to the bike shop and had it fixed,

The Schwinn never got much use then and we even had a horse/trail behind our house. Then the county opened up a wilderness park called Whiting Ranch in Foothill Ranch. At this time mountain biking was exploding and El Toro went from one shop to 5 shops. With one placed next to the entrance of Whiting. I started riding by bike up to the park and back and it was fun but I never went overboard. 

There are some jumps and gaps in this blog so please bear with me. I never stopped the running and on Saturdays I would go to Laguna Niguel and run around the park (10k) with several other runners. Then to help with the training I started riding a bike to the park, run and ride back. A good friend of mine who worked at Hughes in Fullerton and lived on Balboa Island blew up in weight and got to 220 pounds. He saw me at a 150 pounds and decided to loose weight. He changed his diet and started jogging at lunchtime at the Hughes rec park. We had a party went Hal reached 200 pounds, He kept on with the program and was soon running marathons with me.

One day I had to go to work in Santa Monica and stopped at a bike shop just to look. The next thing I was doing was loading my new Bob Jackson into the rear of my Corvette. Then I was living next to a golf course at the top of a hill. Hal decided that we should enter a Iron Man Contest as a team. I was the bike rider. 

We were in the 40 and over class and finally after a few tries finished first,

I couldn't decide where to live and moved back to El Toro. My office then was in Laguna Hills and I would ride or run at lunch time. The Iron Man races got me interested in bike racing again and then riding in Southern Orange County was too bad.

Santa Ana College had a few instructors that were interested in starting a bike club with racing but at a different level that older established bike racing. They had races for free at Hof Mile Square in Fountain Valley. It was a lot of fun racing on the old Marine Corp. runways. They even had a century semi-race from the college to San Diego that was a blast. 

At the Saturday races I met an old friend named Rudy that had worked with me at Autonetics in Anaheim. Rudy after the riding at Santa Ana College also got serious and moved to sanctioned racing as I also did. Rudy went over board and actually quit working in electronics and got a job working at a bike shop. 

My attempts at a higher level of racing wasn't that great as I was training enough. I was fit enough to win motocross races but not hang with the fast roadies.

Enough for now and I have barely started running my mouth off about mountain bikes.

All of the above photographs were taking with a handle bar camera riding in Red Rock Country in Big Park, Arizona.

NEEDS EDITING

Beyond My Bicycle Budget

Does Johnnie Walker Black taste better than Red? In the past when I was a scotch drinker I also worked in Canada. Canadian whiskey prices were much lower above the border than in California where I lived. So I became fond of Walker that was priced out of my California budget. Ask any bartender or cocktail waitress if the bar customer can tell the difference between "well whiskey"  and expensive label drinks after a couple of shots. I would suspect the answer would be no.

Fuji Pro and Schwinn Paramount 1938

I have been riding bicycles for more than a few years. I don't drink scotch any more but I have two sailing friends that drink scotch. One buys his at Costco the other imports his from Scotland both taste the same too me. Back to the bicycle thing, I prefer my wheels to have matching rims, tires and hubs. My fixed gear rear wheels collection includes one clincher, two sew-ups (tubular). I can make an almost pair of tubular but not so with the clincher. I need to purchase a matching pair. Prices vary from dam cheap to several thousand.

Painting Bob Jackson 3 years ago

My last matching pair were Zipp with a carbon disk rear and Zipp rim with Phil Wood hub and bladed stainless spokes. The most expensive Zipps out there now are close to $4,000.00. I am still stuck in 1950s price range.

Schwinn Paramount

My knowledge of current prices comes from reading Bicycle Blogs and Internet searches. My budget is beyond purchasing bicycle magazines to look at and there is no reason if I can't afford to purchase the mag I sure as hell can't afford the shiny stuff inside.

This clip is from YouTube and is my son Dylan recently jumping stairs at UCI. The reference to El Toro is the stairs at El Toro High School which is located in Lake Forest. Before Lake Forest became a city the area was called El Toro. The Main street is El Toro Road, El Toro Library and Post Office then they got fancy and changed the name. There isn't any natural forest there or any real lakes. The El Toro Stairs add rails and attracted zillion of skateboarders then later twenty inch bikes. My daughter Frances went to ETHS but you will not find that in her bio. The area around the campus is somewhat hilly and when the school was built they did't grade it level so the parking lot between the Gym and office building has a small slope on it. Same with the stairs from the lockers down to the office. Many years past I was skateboarding with Frances and she fell there and banged her head. Neither of us wore helmets, probably no skater did then. Anyway Frances has not been right since then. (Father Humor).
N. Y. Bike Snob makes a living bashing Freds and I enjoy reading it. This morning I was reading a local blog where the author described the pleasure of shelling out almost 2k to buy a Brompton so he could use public transit and save the operating cost of his fossil fuel 4 wheeler. A fold-up can be purchased at Big 5 Sporting for $199.99. If one has the money to buy a Brompton please don't think I am whining it is good for the manufacturer to sell product. My neighbor suggested I get a folding bike and suggested Big 5. I have ridden the trains here in Los Angeles with my bike and there is ample room but I don't do rush hour so a fold-up doesn't fit in.

My current bicycle collection stands at seven. Included is one Specialized S-Works Cross Country that retailed for around five thousand USA dollars. My out the door price after discounting was $3,500. Now that was several years ago but the current S-Works CC is $11,500.00 plus sale tax in Los Angeles, California adding $1035.00. The S-Works shown in the link in a 29 inch whereas mine is only 26 inch.

These price increases don't make too much sense but I am not a MAMIL or a saddle based weekend jolly.  All these clever descriptions (middle age man in lycra) can be confusing as I first thought it was another reference to something similar to Rapha or Assos. After receiving a nice compliment yesterday about my tanned legs I coined a new acronym "OFSSL" (old fart still shaves legs).

Currently I am trying to get some Thorstein Veblen books and since he existed before e-books I might just have to ride up to my local library (it is all up hill) and get an old fashioned style book with pages. Velben Goods and the Theory of the Leisure Class. Being of a discursive nature Velben got me thinking about reading Vance Packard books and his bashing.

This is not me riding.