Back in May I was reading The Rules by Velominate and books about Merckx: Half Man, Half Bike. Five months later I am reading bicycles blogs and have grown a fucking beard.
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| Fenders on Schwinn |
Saturday I sidestepped one of my basic rules: "Don't use your car to transport yourself to go ride your bicycle, ride the bike where you what or need to go."
There was an event in Long Beach and I live in San Pedro. If you stand on a hill around here and there are plenty you can see the skyline of downtown Long Beach looking to the east. It is not that far away. Unfortunately you can not ride a bicycle directly because LA Harbor, Terminal Island and Long Beach and the path over the closest bridge only allows for cars and trucks.
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| Flag in Anaheim Street |
Two methods, one that is most absurd is to catch the Catalina Express in San Pedro go by boat to Avalon switch ships and return to Long Beach on the Express. That crazy path I found using one of the popular mapping programs.
The second path is to ride along the harbor going north to Wilmington then head east and cross the LA River bridge on Anaheim Street. Since Anaheim Street is where I wanted to go that made some sense and I have done that before and it is ten miles to Long Beach. Add the six mile course of "Beach Streets" and the return is only twenty six miles.
My choice was neither as I chose to use my Nissan to haul my lazy ass over the bridges and then park my car and unload the Simionetti.
Rationalization is the use of feeble but seemingly plausible arguments either to justify something that is difficult to accept or to make it seem ‘not so bad after all'.
After violating my rules I then needed to lie about it to make it okay. This is how one develops the Art of Being A Fred.
A partial list of not following the Rules.
1. Installed a rack on my Schwinn
2. Installed a reflector on Schwinn
3. Adapted two handlebar bags and hose clamped them to rear rack
4. Added a bell on handlebar
5. pedaling using flip-flops
6. riding while wearing baseball hat
7. riding with cut-off shorts
8. wearing a hoodie
9. turning a road frame into a Fixie
10. Mounting brakes on a fix-geared bike
11. putting flat MTB handlebars on a road bike
12. Installing Shimano SPD platforms on a DurAce bottom bracket
13. Using BMX grips
14. installing a set of fenders on my Schwinn
Actually the rear rack was discarded and the handlebar bags is sometimes is used in a Fred-like fashion.
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| Dirt Pump Track |
The reading of bicycle blogs got me interested in attending Fred Festivals where Fred's associate with other weirdo's that are really strange such as roller bladers. Even roller skaters which I must confess I used to be really good at.
Back to Saturday: The City of Long Beach has this street festival called "Beach Streets" where the streets are blocked off and all type of riders and walkers take control. A park was step up for roller skaters, skateboarders, a dirt pump track for BMX and MTBs lots of time and effort was expended. Along the way many bands were playing and bike racks were installed in from of the numerous bars and eating places. The Tommy's Hamburgers had Mariachis playing in their parking lot.
To see dancing in the street check out one of the side bar widgets.
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| Ramps and rails for kids |
While all this was going on, where everyone seem to be have a real fun time, protests against Trump were filling the downtown streets of Los Angeles.
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| My son Dylan is sponsored by them |
Another video of street riding in Los Angeles
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