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.

—–

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.

Garfield Minus Garfield

My friends Jessica and Dan were kind enough to invite me along when they wound up with an extra ticket to today’s Rose Bowl. The only difficulty was that Northwestern was playing in the Outback Bowl at 8am, and the Rose Bowl was in Pasadena at 1:30pm.

I initially figured I’d just watch the NU game downtown and take the train up to Pasadena after it ended and walk to the Rose Bowl. The problem with this idea was that none of the bars I’d been planning to go to downtown opened until 10am.

So I said screw it, I’ll just go to Pasadena. I can take the express bus to Union Station and the train to Pasadena, and it’ll all be good. I’d make it at about 7:45 for an 8am kickoff and I’d have to fight Rose Parade crowds, but it was totally doable.

I should have known better than to make a plan that relied on LA County public transportation being on time.

I walked the 20 minutes down to the express bus stop and got there at about 6:15 for what was supposed to be a 6:31 bus. With no sign of it at 6:47 and the next express bus not scheduled until 7:31, I said screw it and hopped on a crosstown bus instead.

I eventually wound up on an LA city bus with a bus driver who was either insane, high, or both. He mumbled in misunderstanding if I asked him if he went to the Gold Line, and he literally shut the door on people and took off giggling if they dared ask him questions about the line if they didn’t get on the bus before they did so.

I was very, very happy when someone (talking to him in Spanish and still making very little headway, but at least more than I made) managed to figure out that the light rail stop he was driving up to was at least on the line I wanted to be on, and I could at least get off his goddamn bus.

So I finally got to the Barney’s Beanery in Pasadena at about 8:30am, which was not horrible, all things considered. The game was…the game.

It went badly until I ordered a beer, and then it started going great so I ordered another. I got about 2/3 of the way through the second when the bartender, in the midst of mixing drinks, knocked the rest of my beer onto my lap. And of course that was when it all went completely to hell for Northwestern.

Clearly, the lesson for whatever game I wind up watching next year is that I need to make sure that a) I start drinking at kickoff, no matter how early it is, and b) do said drinking from a sippy cup.

Anyway, it was heartening to see an entire bar full of Ohio State fans having a post-parade, pre-game beer cheering for Northwestern to beat Auburn, and all of them consoling me as I was banging my head on the bar after that stupid fake field goal failed at the end of OT.

After that I blew off steam by walking to the Rose Bowl (a considerably longer walk than I’d anticipated). I actually had quite a bit of fun for a game that I was very minimally invested in, though it probably helped that I was sitting with a bunch of rabid Ohio State fans who were really, really entertaining.

I promised my friends who got me a ticket to this game that I’d get them tickets to the Rose Bowl the next time Northwestern made it, a promise that got a slightly bigger laugh than intended. But they gave me a ride home, so I forgave them that.

All in all, it was a damn fun day and a great way to kick off the year, despite that ridiculously frustrating NU loss. We’ll get ‘em next year.

And now, in honor of the holidays, a slideshow of some of my (heavily, heavily cropped due to all the cars coming through) photos from the LA DWP’s Light Festival:

Full sizes of everything can be found at Flickr – I realize some of the cropping doesn’t make for the best viewing in the slideshow format.

I’ve been rather bad about blogging consistently, so in case I don’t get a chance to post again until after the holidays, I hope everyone travels safe and enjoys the holidays.

But when it does, Conan O’Brien shows a pretty close approximation of what happens next:

Hat tip: LAist.

The LA Dodgers are playing the St. Louis Cardinals in the baseball playoffs right now, and as per usual, the mayor of St. Louis and the mayor of LA are making the traditional Stupid Food bets.

There are two twists to this one: First, the bets are, of course, occurring on Twitter – Villaraigosa’s items are spread out over several tweets and a linked photo, and the mayor of St. Louis’ items are so abbreviated as to be almost entirely incomprehensible (the LA Times somehow translates his list as: Toasted ravioli, a build-a-bear, and a Twitter t-shirt).

You might have noticed, however, that Villaraigosa eagerly threw in one more thing: The L.A. Times.

Yes, that’s right, my many journalistic and formerly journalistic friends, one of the largest newspapers in the country is now being placed (albeit half-jokingly) on the same level as toasted ravioli and a gigantic burrito.

Click this link to the Air Quality map for the greater Los Angeles area. Hover over zone 2, Northwest Coastal L.A. County.

If the AQI Value is anywhere over 50 (yellow), that’s bad, and I am probably cranky and complaining a bit about my athsma, but mostly just being bored and unemployed and watching too much TV.

If the AQI Value is anywhere over 100 (orange), that’s awful, and I am probably completely miserable and whining about nothing but how much my lungs hate me.

If the AQI Value is anywhere over 150 (red), that’s atrocious, and either a) I’m dead, b) I’m in the hospital, or c) I’ve grabbed the cat and just started driving someplace where I can actually fucking breathe, and will send for my stuff at a later date.

Repeat for the next week or two to know how my life is going.

You’d think someone who does enough cocaine that they’ve bothered to purchase a coke spoon would realize that turning the overhead light off in their busted-ass Benz while they’re snorting a giant pile of cocaine would probably be a wise idea.

Or perhaps you’re just doing so much coke that you really don’t care who sees you inhaling a small ski mountain.

Either way, thanks for being an L.A. cliché. This will be an awesome story I tell to people for years to come, even once I’ve fled this (often literally) flaming cesspool.

Also, I’m very glad I managed to make my way out of that parking lot before you even considered starting your car. As amusing as that was, I doubt it would have been anywhere near as funny if you’d attempted to drive instead of simply sitting in your car, high as a goddamn kite.

Spotted in Encino yesterday:

It does look a bit browner in this picture than it does in person – the other non-painted lawns in the neighborhood were looking pretty darn sickly.

I was on my bike, sitting in the left-turn lane on my way back from the gym this afternoon when a guy in a brand new red Mini convertible flicked his lit cigarette onto the ground right in front of me.

I was about to express my displeasure with his action when a guy pulled up behind him in a black Audi S4, shouting, “It’s called an ashtray, dickface!”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. And thanks to him, I didn’t have to. Thank you, my anonymous, foulmouthed friend.

That was definitely the most intense earthquake I’ve felt – a 5.0 in Inglewood, lasting quite a bit longer than the last few little wobbles we’ve had.

It lasted juuuust long enough for me to be worried it was the beginning of a larger quake. People closer to the epicenter had stuff knocked off their shelves, but it didn’t even knock out my wireless internet, which has been incredibly finicky lately.

Chaplin was duly unimpressed, sleeping through the entire incident. I will probably be jumpy every time someone so much as slams a door for the next few days.