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I’ve been finding less and less time to ride my bike. I miss it. Today I woke up and said “It’s the first of the month. I am starting this month right by getting on my bike and going for a ride, damn it.”

I went for a little spaghetti ride after work, and it was great. Only 14 miles, but pretty good speed for a fat guy who hasn’t been riding lately.

The funny part: After the ride, Runkeeper told me it was my “fastest week and month.”

Dude: I went on ONE short ride. Maybe wait a few days at lest before handing out the awards.

This was a nice surprise:

I haven’t been on a real ride for a couple of weeks. Sure, I did CicLAvia last Sunday, but that’s sort of a lazy amble through downtown. Today, I actually got to do my regular Warner Brothers – Forest Lawn – L.A. River – Burbank Bike Path loop. I didn’t push, just rode comfortably… and had my Eighth fastest time for the route. Neat.

Two Points About Bike Physics:
(Note: If you are looking for bike psychics, please go here.)

1. When a rider want to make a bicycle move, they apply force to the pedals, which transfer that energy into the crank, chain, gears, and wheels. The wheels transform the energy into acceleration. This acceleration is limited by the energy the rider puts into the system. Energy is also lost to forces like friction and gravity. In general, the amount of possible acceleration is lower than the acceleration possible from a car. So: If you are in a car, and you’ve pulled into a bike lane behind a bike to make a turn, it’s very likely that it will take the bike more time than the car to accelerate.

   

2. Honking your horn will not transfer energy to the bike and so will not decrease the time it takes for the bike to get out of your way. In fact, in may increase the time, for the rider might stop to find out why you honked and/or stop to yell at you for honking at him while in the bike lane.

SCIENCE!

CicLAvia was yesterday. It was a version of my favorite route, all through downtown. I did the same thing I always do: bring a backpack full of camera stuff, then barely take any pictures because I’d rather be riding. Someday I’ll learn that I like to bike, and I like to take pictures, but I don’t really like to bike AND take pictures.

Oh, and I saw students there. That was cool.

Yeah, Spaghetti Ride. That’s what I’ve decided to call the rides where I just try to keep moving, even if it means I have to ride in loops to avoid stopping.

Here’s tonight’s ride:

Highlights of tonight’s ride include:

• looping twice past of Jamie & Brian’s place
• getting caught in a narrow space by Costco and technically continuing to ride by pushing up the street with one foot on the sidewalk
• mostly riding legally

Side note: I always enjoy looking at these maps because they include the old names for the neighborhoods. Why doesn’t anyone say they live in La Paco, or Vega, or even McNeil? Those all sound like more interesting places  than North Hollywood or Burbank.

Remember that time you wanted to spend three minutes watching me fix a flat? NOW IS THE TIME!

Twenty years ago, someone started “Walk to School Day.” Not to get all grandpa here, but when I was a young’un, every day was walk to school day. These kids today with their fancy minivans and whatnot don’t know what it was like!

Then someone realized that there are other ways to self-propel yourself to school, and the name changed to “Walk/Bike to School Day.” I think using the word “and” would be clearer than using the slash, which makes reading it out loud sound like you want people to walk their bikes to school.

But today was the official day, so I rode with a few students and adults to school. It was about a half mile from the meeting place to the school; I actually rode about five times as far to get to the meeting spot. I decided to be Mister Safety, so I wore my nighttime reflective jacket. It’s like wearing a plastic bag. I transformed into Mister Sweaty.

But it felt good to ride, and the kids who went with us seemed to enjoy it. I’ll do it again next year. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even ride my bike to work sometimes when it’s just a regular day! Crazy!

Original plan for today: Ride up to Griffith Park Observatory. I always fight with hills, but I was pretty confident I could get up the hill. After all, that’s why bikes have granny gears.

Then I woke up this morning. I don’t know if it was a lack of sleep, or spending yesterday in the sun taking pictures, but I was TIRED. Not sleepy-tired; exhausted tired. I decided to try anyway. Google maps picked a funky route. I think it was trying to keep me off scary roads and level my ride out, but it was still reasonable.

I knew my success wasn’t likely from the first mile. Even the flats were a struggle. When I started up the actual hill, my legs said “You MIGHT be able to do this, but you won’t enjoy it.” I know: that’s what muscles always say to get out of work. But this time I knew they were right. I skipped the Observatory and instead went to the Hollywood Farmer’s market- just in time to watch it close. I thought “Well, at least I’ll get in the hill back to the San Fernando Valley, but my legs laughed and told me to take the subway.

The moral of the story: Always bring your TAP card when you ride.

Next weekend: I will get farther up that hill.

Most of the time when I ride, I do some sort of a loop. I get my distance in, and I get new scenery for the whole ride (though, as Katherine’s mother once said when she was a kid, “When you’ve seen one scenery, you’ve seen ’em all”).

Sometimes I ride to a destination. The my ride is just a line; I go somewhere, then I go back. Not as interesting to ride, but it gets me where I’m going.

…and very rarely, my ride looks like this:

This happens when my goal is to just keep moving. The light is red? Time to turn! Left turns are more challenging, as you can tell by the way most of the lefts on this route are three rights. I just keep moving, trying to get as far away from my starting point in roughly half the time I want to be riding. Plus, I get to try and figure out what shape I’ve “drawn.” This one looks a bit like a snooty mouse.

My bike is lighter and faster when my ride is the first thing I do for the day instead of the first thing I do after working all day.

Some things I see on my usual ride by approximate distance from start:

Mile 1: Bob Hope’s house

Actually, for the most part I see the wall around Bob Hope’s house, but you can see it when you get to the gate. Toluca Lake is currently fighting to stop demolition on the property.

Mile 2: Warner Brothers

The mural at Warner Brothers changes. The image above was how it looked in 2003. In 2009 it was redone with a focus on superheroes (but Daffy & Bugs still showed up).

The coolest thing about this version: It’s hard to see in the daytime, but at night the heroes were fairly dark and villains were projected across the bottom!

Now it’s a Teen Titans Go! mural. It’s got a lot of fun comic book in-jokes, but I miss the villains.

I have learned that starting a blog about something you want to do is an excellent jinx against it. Every day brings a new unwelcome excuse to skip riding. Meetings, appointments, classes, whatever. I managed to squeak in a short ride two days ago, and now I won’t have time again until Saturday. I need a time turner.

On the plus side: today’s road block (ha! I am clever) was sticking around after school to see my students applying the skills they’re learning in my class to their other schoolwork. It’s like they’re learning something, or something.