I’ve been riding Bike 2.0 around a lot – partly to break it in, and partly because of an ear infection that’s keeping me out of the pool until after Thanksgiving.

Since I ride on the Pacific Coast Highway and through Westwood Village quite a bit, I see a lot of really stupid driver behavior when it comes to dealing with bicyclists.

Mostly it’s obvious stuff like failing to check a frakkin’ bike lane for oncoming bikes before opening car doors into them, or weaving all over the place when there are a) bikers everywhere and b) tons of “SHARE THE ROAD” signs indicating that even if you don’t see them now, there are lots of bikers who use this road.

Once in a while, something will stand out as particularly stupid. Monday, I thought it was going to be the woman who looked me straight in the eye as she opened her car door right into my path. But no, I found a much, much greater stupidity.

I was coming up PCH right around here, headed back towards the Santa Monica pier to go home. There was a homeless guy pushing about four shopping carts up the shoulder. He was walking against traffic, which basically meant right at me.

The shoulder at this point is not wide enough to accommodate parked cars, me on my bike, and a homeless guy pushing four shopping carts, so I looked over my shoulder to see oncoming traffic in the lane I would have to briefly pull into. There was one car, but after that, my lane was clear.

I made a hand signal as I approached the homeless guy, pulled very slightly into the lane, and then WHOOSH. A mid ’90s beater of a Ford Taurus that had apparently been in the other lane comes flying by me, missing me by about a foot.

That’s pretty damn stupid on its own, but here’s the really stupid part: This car’s passenger door swings WIDE open. If it had come open about a second earlier, it would easily have knocked me off my bike and probably injured me fairly seriously.

The door just swung there in the breeze for about ten seconds, an empty garbage bag fluttering in the breeze from the passenger seat, and then a hand from the passenger seat nonchalantly reached over and pulled it shut as the car zipped along at 50mph, like this shit happens all the time.

I really couldn’t think of anything to do but just shout at the car, “ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?!” at the top of my lungs, and then start laughing.

I mean really, if the door had hit me the chances that a) they would have even stopped or b) they would have had insurance if they had stopped were pretty  low. If you can’t even get your car fixed so your door doesn’t swing open when you change lanes, odds are you’re too broke to buy insurance.

And the only reason I was anywhere near that door was that some homeless dude decided it’d be a grand idea to push a bunch of shopping carts several miles up from the nearest store that actually HAS shopping carts.

The odds of those two bits of stupidity happening to converge at one specific point in time are minuscule, and I’m lucky that the even more minuscule chance that it would have wound up with my ass splattered all over the pavement (again) didn’t wind up happening.

But sometimes, you just have to laugh at how incredibly, dangerously, hilariously stupid people are.

July 29th, I bought a new bike. It took three months minus one day for it to get stolen.

I got home last night around 10pm, and as I have for the last three months (minus one day), I locked my bike to my roommate’s flat-tired, rusted-out bike, which is (well, was) locked to a giant concrete pillar.

This afternoon around 2 when I went to ride up to the pool, I walked into the garage to get my bike, and both bikes were gone. No clipped lock on the ground, just gone, like they’d never even been there.

I thought for a minute the landlord’s people, who have been on a “let’s clear unused things out!” spree lately might have gotten a little overly aggressive, but the landlord denied it and the handyman who happened to be at the building mentioned that he’d seen the garage door next to mine had been left open for an indeterminate amount of time when he came back from lunch.

Thanks, neighbors! How nice of you to allow thieves to come in and steal my three month old bike!

My lock was a crazy Kryptonite U-Lock, but that security fell apart a bit with my roommate’s combination lock with a wire that apparently was entirely vulnerable to bolt cutters. The thieves apparently decided they’d rather deal with the U-Lock back at their den*, and just took both bikes.

I’m pissed, but I’m not HULK SMASH pissed, like I thought I’d be when I plunked down a good chunk of change for the bike and wondered how I’d feel if it got stolen. My thoughts run more along the lines of, “Goddamn it bike thieves, I had better shit to do with my weekend” pissed.

I filed a police report, I called my renter’s insurance company and found that I am covered minus a fairly reasonable deductible, and then I thought, well, I guess I still ought to go work out. And I got on with my unexpectedly bus-intensive day.

If the bike had been a bit less associated with injury, I’d probably be angrier. This is the same bike I crashed a month after I got it, and one of the gears up and bit me on the leg a couple days ago as I was riding to the pool – I’m going to have a couple little gear-tooth-shaped holes in my leg for a while as a nice souvenir.

And I suppose that having owned bikes pretty much since I left for college in 1999, having this be the first time I’ve had one stolen is something of a minor miracle.

All in all, I’m irritated, but it could have been a lot worse. It’s not like the time tweakers broke the window on my car right after I moved into my old place, where the financial loss was a lot lower, but cleaning up the mess was WAY more of a pain in the ass.

The bike is just gone, along with a chunk of money for my deductible and a new lock. But life goes on.

* – UPDATE 10/30 – Actually, as my roommate discovered as she was walking to the bus to go to work Friday, they took both bikes to a nearby alley, tore her bike to shreds to get mine off of it, and still ran off with mine. No sign of the remnants of my lock, which means it’s apparently a pretty good lock if it stayed on while an entire bike was disassembled around it.

Also, my renter’s insurance company is awesome and has already initiated a direct deposit for the reimbursement, which means I went out and bought a new bike yesterday, which is exactly the same as my old bike except that for now, it remains unstolen. Hooray!

Sunday afternoon, I finished all my homework early. I wanted to have a nice long workout, and I debated going for a bike ride or going for a swim. It was a really nice day, so I decided to go for a bike ride.

I should have gone for a swim.

About 32 miles into my ride, I was coming back towards the Marina near LAX, when a pair of tourists decided that they should cross the bike path in order to get down to the beach.

Bikers have the right of way on this path, but it’s not terribly well-marked so you get a lot of idiots meandering across it and causing all sorts of problems.

I saw them going at a speed that would cause me to run into them, so I rang my bell at them and then shouted when that didn’t seem to budge them. They sped up imperceptibly, causing me to have to swerve around them.

I swerved right onto what turned out to be more sand than I thought, and I lost traction completely. I was probably going about 15-16 miles an hour, and I ate it hard right onto the concrete bike path.

I was down for a few seconds after it happened, and several bystanders rushed over to ask if I was all right. I was definitely a little dazed, but I also definitely noticed that the idiot/asshole tourists just kept on walking towards the beach, not even caring that they made me crash.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it now with significantly more vehemence: Fucking tourists.

I was very, very glad I was wearing a helmet – my brain would have been splattered on the concrete if I hadn’t been. All in all, I’m pretty lucky – I could have done much more serious damage to my head and could have really fucked up my shoulder if I’d landed a little differently.

I’m still pretty banged up. Almost all my weight came down on my left arm and my left leg, causing some really awesome road rash on the former and since I carry my phone in my left front pocket, shattering my phone and leaving the biggest, nastiest bruise I’ve ever had (more on that later).

I wasn’t anywhere near a place where someone could come pick me up easily, and my bike was too jacked up to ride, so I started walking with the bike towards the Marina.

As I did, I figured out that although the screen was shattered and the LCD was shot, I could make phone calls using the voice command feature on my phone, and about 1/10 of the time manage to swipe frantically enough at the shattered glass to answer incoming calls.

After lots and lots of phone calls and about three miles of walking, I walked into an ER in Marina del Rey, where I was promptly informed there was a 6-8 hour wait.

Luckily, my friend Jessica, who is my new hero, called me back right then and after I was miraculously able to answer the phone, she offered to come rescue me and my bike, which was pretty much the best timing ever.

We took my bike home, making a pit stop at Carl’s Jr. on the way since I was ravenously hungry. I’d basically biked off about 2500 calories before I crashed, then walked for an hour after the crash.

We then went to UCLA medical center, where the wait was only 2.5 hours, which seemed so much more civilized. Gotta love the ER theory of relativity.

The ER docs determined that since I didn’t have a headache and that eating a Western Bacon Cheeseburger made me feel better and not worse, I didn’t need a CAT scan, and gave me a metric ton of antibiotic ointment for all my road rash.

Jessica dropped me off around 11:30, and I noticed just before I went to bed that where my phone had hit, the bruise hadn’t formed yet, but there was a big swollen lump about the size of a baseball. “That’s going to get ugly,” I thought.

It’s now a bruise the size of an appetizer plate, and about 15 different shades of purple. I do not bruise easily – a spot on my right leg where it’d hit the pedal hard enough to leave an outline of where it hit is barely discolored – so for me to have a bruise this gnarly is something of an accomplishment.

The bruise is still warm to the touch, which I suspect means it’s still not done forming. I put the over/under on how long it’s going to take to dissipate at 2 months, and so far, anyone who’s seen it in person has taken the over.

I managed to get the phone fixed for about $150 and was back up and running on Monday. If you’re in LA and you bust your iPhone, the guy at LAiPhoneRepair.com is the man.

The bike’s still at the shop – I was due for a warranty tune-up so that will probably take at least some of the sting out of it, but they’re going to have to clean about four tons of sand out of the chain, gears, and brakes, not to mention all the damage done to same by the actual crash. I’ll be stunned if I get out of that for under $200.

Plus my $100 ER copay plus whatever else UCLAMC decides to ding me for (I’m sure that big pile of what’s essentially Neosporin will wind up costing me about $45), plus having to buy a new helmet because they’re really only designed for one good hit, and the total cost of crashing my bike will come in somewhere between $300-500, probably.

I’m extremely glad this was more of a fiscal misadventure than a medical one, but still: Fucking tourists.

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Addendum: This is apparently Bad Bike week for everyone I know. I had two friends have bikes stolen (one off a second floor balcony, apparently by Spider-Man), I crashed, Lindsay crashed – Seriously, if you know me, lock your bike up tight and then stay the hell away from it.

I went for a bike ride this afternoon, partly because my cheapo necklace finally broke and I needed to buy a replacement. Fortunately replacements are 2 for $10 at Venice Beach.

I actually dragged my giant camera with me this time because it’s been pouring rain and a lot of the usual pollution and gunk has been washed away, and things are much, much clearer than they usually are.

Anyway, some of the better pictures from this little excursion are up on my Flickr, which you can access via this link or this lovely slideshow:

I will say, days like today make me wish I had a working point-and-shoot camera. The small-ish one that I carried around Europe with me (and which compared to today’s point-and-shoot cameras, is freakishly huge) died some time ago, and sometimes the iPhone’s camera just isn’t enough.

I love the pictures my D50 takes and the level of control it gives me, but there’s no getting around the fact that lugging a giant DSLR around with me on a bike ride is a humongous pain in the ass.

I saw it in the distance. And I thought,”What the fuck is that sitting on the sand? It looks like a boat. It…is a boat…”:

Okay, so it’s a boat just sitting in the middle of the sand on the middle of a very busy beach. I have a few questions.

1. How exactly did this boat get there? It hasn’t been stormy enough for the damn thing to just wash up, especially not that far up the beach and particularly not relatively upright and totally intact.

2. Why is it just sitting there? If it’s for a TV show or a movie or something, which is about the only rational explanation I could think of besides it just washing up, why is there nobody guarding it?

3. If it actually did wash up, why the hell did they put a fence around it instead of removing it?

So bizarre. I’m hoping I can do some more riding this coming week – though I seem to have re-aggravated a pectoral muscle that’s been giving me trouble for a couple weeks by hauling my heavy-ass backpack around for 31 miles, so I may have to figure out an alternate way to carry all my water and Gatorade and granola bars before I go out again.

But we’ll see if the boat is still there in a few days or a couple of weeks. Anybody else got ideas of why the hell a boat would randomly wind up sitting on the beach a couple hundred feet in from the high tide mark?

I rode my bike roughly 86 miles between Wednesday’s 46 mile ride and Saturday’s 40 mile ride. Saturday also featured some ridiculously high surf. Click the link to See my ever-so-fun iPhone video of it (still trying to figure out a way to do embeddable flash without sticking it on YouTube Edit: Aha! Flickr does short videos):

I think it came out well, although it does motivate me to try and acquire a copy of the iMovie version with the image stabilizer software…

In case you’ve ever wondered, “So, what happens when you’re biking along and a car creates a small pothole and sends little chunks of asphalt everywhere?”

I can now say: You hear the bang, and half a second later you feel an intense pain in your thigh. You pull over for a second, say, “OW, what the FUCK?” and stare at your thigh, and see a little red circle about the size of a dime where the chunk hit you.

The red circle will turn into an angry red welt, but the pain at least goes away after five minutes or so (or at least it does if you continue biking). However, as my dad pointed out: Better that it hit me in the thigh than in the face.

It’s been less than a year since I first headed south on the Marvin Braude Bike Trail, a trail I’d formerly been content to ride the five or six miles north to its terminus, then turn around and stop wherever I’d started.

The first time I rode south, I got my ass handed to me. I rode with my friends Jessica and Dan to Hermosa Beach, about 15 miles south, but not anywhere near as close to the end as we thought we were when we cried uncle and went to an Irish pub for a burger and a beer.

By the time we got back, I wound up availing myself of Jess and Dan’s offer to give me and my bike a ride back to my apartment, because I wasn’t sure I could make it the final two miles without falling over into oncoming traffic.

The next time down was even sillier: I decided to ride to the end of the trail, which I thought was about half a mile south of the Hermosa pier, but was in fact at least 3 miles further, two miles south of the Redondo Beach pier.

But I managed to not only make it all the way to the southern terminus, I managed to do that AND make it all the way back to my house in one piece. I could barely move for two days afterwards, having brought nothing but a ton of water and a granola bar with me, but I did it.

I’ve been working towards riding the whole trail ever since, incorporating such radical ideas as “bringing a lunch” and “drinking some Gatorade.”

I wanted to go for it last week when my car needed the first of its two hideously expensive repairs, but last week it was so windy I had to get off and walk for long stretches of time.

But today, during repair #2, it was overcast and about 65 degrees with minimal wind. I ate a giant breakfast, and I set out with lunch, granola bars, a crapload of water, and 32 ounces of Gatorade, and I did it.

I rode the whole fucking 44 mile round trip trail in just under 5 hours, including a couple fairly long stops for lunch and another rest when I got all the way to the north end, and a bunch of shorter breaks.

Once you throw in the six miles I rode getting to and from the mechanic’s, it works out to almost exactly 50 miles. And while I’m pretty damn tired, I’m not the kind of bone-exhausted that I was after that first ride south.

While the weight is not coming off the way I’d like it to anymore (although at least it’s staying put), it’s milestones like these that make me feel like I’m still making good progress.