Tara’s big birthday adventure
June 25, 2013 § 24 Comments
Yesterday a group of about twenty-five riders rode from Malaga Cove to the downtown L.A. Ciclavia. Along the way we picked up riders along Crenshaw as we made our way to Wilshire Blvd., the epicenter of the big event. One of our number was Tara, who had mistakenly hopped in thinking we were the Wheatgrass Ride.
It was Tara’s birthday and she had opted out of the Ontario crit and decided to do an easy pedal around the hill. “Where’s this ride going?” she asked.
“Downtown,” I answered.
“Well,” she said “I hope it’s an adventure. Today’s my birthday and I want an adventure.”
Your wish is my command
We got to the Ciclavia and learned an important fact about bicycle riding. The slower you go, the hungrier you get and the worse you have to pee. Stephan was ready to gnaw the covering off his saddle after our two-hour stop-and-start meander to downtown. Alan was chewing on an old inner tube, and as I stared at my compadres everyone was starting to look like a different kind of food item. It didn’t help that as soon as we got to Wilshire, Raja started talking about Tommy’s Chili Burgers and Chili Fries.
“You don’t have to order chili on your burger,” he said. “Just order a burger. It’ll have more chili than hair on a nun’s butt.”
“Yeah,” added Charles. “If you order chili, they’ll just put chili on the chili. It’s alright if you’re not too concerned about stuff like cardiac arrest.”
The Ciclavia wasn’t yet in full swing, but there were already tens of thousands of people walking and riding along the street. We stopped at the food trucks at the end of Wilshire and ate, then coffeed up around the corner. Several of the group were going to return to the coast, but I had planned to attend Kevin Phillips’s hour record attempt at the Carson velodrome, so my route would take me down Central Avenue.
“Heading home via Watts and Compton,” I said. “Who’s with me?”
“Uh, I, uh, am taking the beach route,” said Raj as the entire crew pretended not to hear me.
“Beach route? You’re FROM South Central, dude.”
“My ghetto card expired,” he confessed. “But you’ll be fine. Skinny white dude on a $5,000 bike. No one will notice. Maybe tape a few Ben Franklins to your arms to be more incognito. Before they stab you to death just tell ’em you’re looking for women and crack. You should be fine.”
Tara piped up. “I’ll go with you. I want to see Kevin tackle the record.”
Raj nodded with approval. “Yeah, man. Skinny white dude on $5k of bike and cute white chick on $6k of bike and tight pants. You cats will blend right in. You know how to dial 911, right?”
Most of what you’re afraid of is wrong
Raj let us go because he knew the ‘hood, and he knew that people in South Central L.A. are a hell of a lot friendlier than the average Angry PV Housewife Behind a Benz. We pedaled along for a ways, passing Moreno’s Bike Shop and Mother’s Bike shop on Central as we cruised through Watts.
After a while we saw two riders ahead of us, one wearing a stars and stripes jersey. We picked up the pace a bit, passed them, and then mistakenly veered off onto Clovis. As we rode in the bike lane, a giant mound of broken glass appeared in front of us. I wasn’t worried, having made the clever choice to ride my ‘cross bike and its mondo, bulletproof 700 x 34 knobby tires.
Tara, on the other hand, was in trouble. “Are those tubulars?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said.
“Where’s your spare?”
“I don’t have one.”
“No spare?”
“No.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know how to change a tubular, so it wouldn’t do me any good even if I had one.”
“I know how to change a tubular.”
“Too late for that. But I have this.” She reached into her jersey pocket and whipped out a giant tube of Fillitup, a goo injector that looked bigger than the cartridge from a grease gun.
“Man, I hope you don’t flat. That thing is useless. When you’re riding urban routes you have to run beefier tires. Otherwise you’re asking for trouble.” I pointed expertly at my awesomely honking-Foxworthy-approved-mondo-treaded tires.
On cue, there was a loud hiss — pfffft — flapflapflap. From my rear tire.
“You’re rear tire is flat,” said Tara.
I cursed a tiny little bit.
“We can pull over here and change it if you want.”
“Uh, that won’t be happening, unfortunately.”
“You think it’s dangerous here?” Several local denizens were curiously eyeing us from the edge of their shopping carts.
“Dangerous? Shit, no. You see, I, uh, don’t have a spare tube.”
“No spare?”
“Uh, no.”
“How come? These urban routes can be pretty rough on tires, I’m told.”
“Yeah, I, uh, well, you see, I’ve never flatted on these tires and I figured they wouldn’t, you know, like, flat today.”
“Ohhhh,” Tara said. “The old ‘these tires don’t flat’ deal, huh?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, keep pedaling then. Goodness knows I don’t have a spare.”
Manuel y Pablo’s Hardware y Pupuseria
We got back over onto South Central, and after a mile or so, just at the end of Watts, there was a dude smoking a cigarette on the porch and grinning at us. “Hey, man, is there a bike shop around here?” I asked.
“A what?”
“Bike shop.”
“Whatchu want one of them for?”
“I got a flat tire.”
“Aw man, you fucked. Ain’t no bike shop in the ‘hood less you go back uptown and hit Mother’s. She gon’ fix you up.”
“No, that’s too far the wrong way.”
“You can try Manuel and Pablo’s. They got tacos and hardware, man. Maybe can’t fix yo bike but you can eat up like a dog and get some hardware if you need any.”
“I don’t need any hardware.”
“I know that. But yo skinny ass could use a taco, know what I’m sayin?”
“I really need a spare tube.”
“Manuel might have that too. Might as well have a look ’cause they’s on your right a half mile up.”
“Thanks, man.”
We pulled into Manuel y Pablo’s Hardware y Pupuseria just as a lady was putting away the dogs. The small one was about as big as Tara and lunged so hard against the leash that if it hadn’t been wearing a spiked choke collar it would have ripped free and mauled us both. Tara held my bike while I went in.
The lights were almost completely out and it took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. The tacos smelled great. “How can I help you, senor?” a very nice girl asked.
“Do you have any inner tubes for a bike tire?”
“Oh yes, senor, we have so many ones. On the last aisle over there.” She pointed off into a distant area where it was darker than a black hole. I made my way over. Two dudes in cowboy hats were smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and looking at me.
“Hi,” I said. They nodded. The bigger of the two had out a monstrous Bowie knife that he was using to pare his nails. A scar ran down across his forehead, and his front teeth had so much gold they glittered like Smaug’s treasure hoard despite the gloom.
I found the inner tubes and squinched my eyes hard to read the labels. Bowie Knife sauntered over. He was so big he blotted out what little gloom there was. All I could see was the glint on his teeth and the shine on his knife. I was so fucking scared I thought I would crap in my pants.
“Man, whatchu lookin’ for?”
“A…inner…tube…sir…” I stammered.
“Ya, man, what kinda tube?”
“It’s for a kind of bigger style bike, ‘cross, I mean, uh, bigger wheels.”
“Ya, man, you want a 700 x 34. They got one right here. He reached over and pulled the box off the shelf.”
“Oh, gee. Thanks. Yeah, exactly. 700 x 34, that’s exactly it.”
He squinted then reached over and pulled it back out of my hands. The knife glittered. “Ya, man, but you don’t want this one.”
“I don’t? I mean, of course I don’t.”
“Ya, man. I saw your bike when you rode up, man, you’re runnin’ Presta. These are all Schraeder. In the ‘hood it’s all Schraeder. You want Presta you gotta go back up to Moreno’s or Mother’s.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“That’s some nice SRAM Red shit you runnin’, bro. Want a beer?” He thumbed over to the half-drunken case of Tecate.
“No, man, but thanks.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
I went back outside. “Let’s go.”
“No luck?”
“Zip.”
“Even if they had a spare, you don’t have air do you?”
“No.”
“Or levers?”
“Those, either.”
“Well, with sixty years of experience between us, we’re pretty unprepared, aren’t we?”
“You said you wanted an adventure…”
A little help from my friend
As I thunk-thunk-thunked along the rutted asphalt, a great idea occurred to me. If there was one person alive who could help me out in a pinch it would be Mr. Freewheeling, a/k/a “Phil.”
Phil was the best mechanic alive and I just happened to have his phone number. So what if he lived in Austin? I dialed.
“Hello?”
“Phil, this is Seth.”
“Seth?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s up, man?”
“I’ve got a flat rear wheel, no air, no spare, and no levers. How do I fix it?”
“First just pull off the tire, then stuff it with grass. You’ll be fine.”
“I don’t have any levers.”
“Can’t you pull it off with your bare hands?”
“No, I mean I don’t think so.”
I could hear him rolling his eyes. “Really?”
“Really.”
“You’re dead to me,” he said, and hung up.
For the next hour my rear wheel went bump — bump — flapppp, bump — bump — flapppp, all the way to the velodrome in Carson. Tara had slowed down to my lumbering 7 mph and accompanied me every inch of the way. “Adventure?” I asked.
She grinned. “Unforgettable.”
Cycling in the South Bay 
Oh man. Perfect time to tie a knot in it. http://m.pinkbike.com/news/Tech-Tuesday-Flat-Repair-Without-A-New-Tube-Or-Patch-2011.html Well, if you had levers and air…. 🙂
My nickname is “Dollar Short, Day Late.”
I laughed. I used to carry a tubular patch kit (that’s right…with needle and thread) and two spares..this was before ‘clinchers’, and I do NOT fondly remember flatting for the third time and stopping to actually sew up the tire. It happened more than a few times.
You are a tire god for doing that even once.
At least you saved the weight of carrying all that extra stuff.
My thoughts exactly. It’s a lot easier to ride around without all the weight of that self-respect.
Cause, you know, an hour record’s an everyday occurrence ’round here, but a puncture? Man, that shit is special 😛
(just kidding)
Hour record? Who?
Gosh, Seth, you gotta hang with us dorky club cyclists. We not only carry tubes, levers, air, and CO2 – we also have nifty handwipes, bandaids, munchies, Tylenol, and in at least one instance, a portable speaker for tunes while riding. What DID you have in that messenger bag? And thanks for the ride, by the way!
Well, I didn’t notice anybody besides Tara who wanted to tag along! And what do you mean, “dorky”? I’ve had MY dork certification since 3rd Grade.
Now waitaminnit…Messenger bag? You were going to tell us you were carrying a messenger bag, but didn’t have ANYTHING to fix your bike, right?
Much funnier if you remember to include that little detail, doncha think?
I’m still too ashamed to reveal its contents. I’m already a laughingstock, but this would be, like, the END.
YOU DIDN”T DRINK A BEER WITH THOSE GUYS?! Oh Seth, Seth…you might even have gotten a tattoo or a new scar. Tara too! A birthday she would never forget!
You have to go back and bring tequila. This social gaucherie of yours has got to stop. Remember what Blake said about “Opportunity?” Also, I’l bet there was plenty of grass around to stuff your tire with, if you know what I mean.
Gotta run. I’m having new t-shirts printed: “In the ‘hood it’s all Schraeder…”
In the trailer park, too.
Ciao!
tj
Back story is I was trying to get to the velodrome in time to watch Fukdude break the hour record.
Arundel Dual Seat bag, Innovations Carbon Second Wind inflator/pump, cartridge(s), tube(s) and patch kit. Never forget the patch kit. Take it out of the silly green box to save space, but always ride with it. The day you forget the patch kit is the day you flat one more time than the number of tubes available. I can supply you with pics of pros with seat bags during training if you think it’s too fredly.
Was in the messenger bag? Leica, MacBook Air, pork pie hat and black rimed glasses? 😉
Contents of messenger bag to remain secret forever.
*Snip*..this one went into Evernote..:-)
Ha! Thanks!
A tube, patch kit and tire boot. Don’t leave home without them. Ever.
Hey, I’ve only been doing this since 1982. It takes time to learn, okay?
Funnier still…all of the friendly advice!
“Ummmm…ya know…it would probly be…ya know…a good idea to take…ya know…sum toobs or sumthin…”
Folks, HE KNOWS! He just…ahhh, fuhgeddaboudit….
Shhhhh!
Best and funniest comment EVER!!
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