Day 13: ALC Day on the Ride

For today's training ride, I went out with hundreds of LA area ALC riders for the "Day on the Ride," a 65-mile simulation of the LifeCycle experience. I was determined to not get caught in the hoards of riders (I hate cycling crowds. Who knew?) so I rode out with the fast Training Ride Leader (TRL in these parts) who also happened to be ex-child star Chad Allen. BTW, he is really good humored about his past as a teeny bopper. I informed him that my sister used to have his picture on her wall and he laughed about it and said "it was an interesting way to grow up." So much fun! All of the faster riders (including Dario, David, Melissa, Tom, Chad and the other members of the team "Funky Monkey") played cycle-tag throughout the day and traded off who was in the lead. I felt completely challenged by riding with such great athletes. Also, Dario had a minor spill (complete with bike flip) when he hit a crack in the road just was we were turning onto Westmont from Gaffey. It was an elegant spill yielding only minor scratches on his arms and legs. If you are going to fall, that's how you want to do it... I was afraid that we was really hurt, but he did just fine.

Day on the Ride is never an "easy" ride. The ALC planners always try to set us up with a challenging, yet doable, route through the South Bay area. We had the big climb up the north side of the peninsula early on and another slow climb after lunch. Predictably, I had some difficulty on those rollers. They are a challenging set of hills. And with the temperature edging up to the high 80s and sand all along the beach bike path (NO!), it was a challenging day. I rolled across the finish line around 1:30.

PSA: Cyclist at Fault

On Saturday, I got into my very first cyclist-at-fault collision with a vehicle. I was on my way from my folks' house to the train station. My partner was leading and was extremely worried that we would miss our train (which we did, due to the accident) and was running stop signs left and right. But then she rolled through a two-way stop, and I followed. Then I collided with a Mercedes. Talk about stupid.

So kids, do not roll through stop signs, especially when you think no one is out. You never know when that 4 way stop is really a 2-way stop. And you don't want to liable for damaging an expensive luxury car like a Mercedes. Two seconds is a small price to pay for the pain and monetary cost that come from a jolting collision.

Public service announcement over...

Wreck

Please forgive me, but I am in a lot of physical pain right now. Today, at 8:00 AM, I was hit by a mini-van at the corner of Barrington and Olympic. I was going straight, she decided to try to go around me to make a right-turn. I was essentially cut-off and thrown to the pavement. It was bad. I am bruised all along the left side of my body, and my left elbow and hand are sporting a seriously nasty looking road rash. She was the better kind of impatient motorist: she stopped to make sure I was ok, listened to me as I explained what she did wrong, put me and my bike in her van, and drove me to UCLA's student health clinic. She also gave me all of her information and never once tried to blame me for what happened. What's sad is that her behavior is the exception not the rule, and that makes me sad. But I'm not blogging today to complain about her, the van, or the intense pain I currently feel in my left arm.

Instead, I need to complain about the many motorists who had the nerve to honk at me once after the accident happened. OK, so you see a cyclist and a car collide resulting in a pretty nasty looking wound including blood, a dazed cyclist, and a whole lot of confusion. Does honking really help the situation? I wonder: if the accident had involved a pedestrian would the other impatient motorists have felt the need to honk at the injured party? Just thinking aloud here...

Ghost Bikes: Agents of Change?

Just two days ago, I was riding to a doctor's appointment when a woman in a Prius nearly ran me off the road. (This was near the intersection of Westwood and Wilshire.) I yelled at her as I almost slammed into her. I suspect she didn't hear a word: her eyes were clearly focused on entering the parking structure at the Oppenheimer tower. Minutes later my drive chain got stuck between two gears in the middle of the intersection and I felt like I was dead in the water. Talk about scary!

But this brings me to another point: ever since I started commuting by bike, I have noticed that a high frequency of my scariest incidents on the road involved Priuses. (Rarely do my fellow riders believe me on this one.) My doctor confirmed the point. She owns both a Prius and a Civic hybrid and said that Priuses have such terrible visibility that it forces safety-conscious drivers to be especially vigilant on the road. My favorite comment of hers was when she said, "I myself avoid being near Priuses on the road." I am wondering if Toyota is aware that their cars are so dangerous for their fellow vehicles in low emission. It makes me sad that their incidence of near accidents is so close to the other big offenders -- SUVs -- the polar opposite of the Prius in terms of political and environmental ideology. (Full disclosure: my partner and I will likely purchase a Prius in the near future.)

Speaking of dangerous road conditions, the Ghost Bike project is finally getting some widespread attention, not for the project itself but for how it has inspired Portland, Oregon to become even safer for bicyclists. The recent surge in bike-related deaths in the city, which in the past may have caused me to doubt the city's level of safety for bicycles, have contributed to an increased level of activism and awareness within the city's cycling community. And what a result! After the high profile death of an LA cyclist at the corner of Santa Monic Blvd. and Wilshire last year, there was a lot of anger and awareness. It pales to the activism and awareness that produced results like Portland's.

It makes me genuinely jealous. Can you imagine a clearly-designated space for cyclists to wait at intersections like Portland's "bike boxes" in major cities around the country? Surely such a move would help with visibility problems and an awareness that there are bikes out there. What I especially like about the article is its frankness in discussing the type of driving maneuver that causes the most accidents: right-turns at red lights. It was certainly a right-hand turn that produced my scary moment just the other day... So, when is moving day?