shirtless keith | Cycling in the South Bay

Just riding along

February 14, 2020 § 3 Comments

This is what you say when you’re about to tell a bike story and you want to make it clear that it wasn’t your fault. Bike shops hear it daily. “I was just riding along and my derailleur fell off.”

“I was just riding along and this jersey tore in half.”

“I was just riding along and my forks snapped.”

It’s such a thing that in bike shops it’s called “JRA.”

Yesterday I had finished teaching a class at the LA Law Library in Torrance, after which I rode over to San Pedro to meet with a client. I finished about 4:00 and decided to take the hillier, but shorter and more scenic way home along the coast.

That’s when something happened that I’m pretty sure has never happened before. Think about it. How often can you say you’ve done something on a bike that is a first?

Won the TdF? Yeah, so have a hundred others.

Hour record? Been set lots of times.

KOMd your segment? Ah-hah.

Anyway, there I was, just riding along, and it was windy. Really windy. I had a good 40 minutes of slogging to go, with a backpack, on fat tires, in sneakers, and so I decided to pass the time by practicing The Knight’s Tale.

I’m a little more than 1/4 of the way into this 2,000-line beast, and it has been rough sledding. Before long I’d gotten to Hawthorne, which is a long gradual climb of a few miles up to where I live.

About halfway up I noticed a shadow, and not just any shadow. It was a bicyclist wearing a cowboy hat, a big one, which you don’t see too often, by which I mean “never fucking ever.”

I checked the shadow which was now glued up right behind me, and then I went back to my recitation in Middle English. I figured he was going to pass me.

But he didn’t. Instead, he appeared to be sitting back there listening to the poem, which is weird because it’s not like there are many people who understand Middle English. Away I recited and his shadow remained.

I didn’t look back because one of the key rules in cycling is “don’t look back.”

Soon enough we got to the little steep pitch past Monaco and his shadow moved over to the left. “Here it comes,” I thought, still babbling out loud about “Yow loveres axe I now this question/Who hath the worse, Arcite or Palamon?”

Cowboy pulled up along side me. He didn’t say a word, just looked over and kind of glared. I’ve seen that glare plenty of times. It’s the “I’m gonna drop you now, pal,” glare.

He was bathed in sweat and riding a very old Shirtless Keith-style hybrid bike with a rack, knobbies, and 26-inch wheels. I turned my head slightly, still spitting out Chaucer, as he made his move. However, and this has happened to me more times than I care to remember, once he hit the wind to make his move, he realized that the 30% effort he’d been saving on my wheel was now all gone.

Without changing my pace we rode side by side as he slowly buried himself into the violet, then the light blue, then the green, then the yellow, then the orange, and finally the red, after which there was only the deep red, after which there was the heaving, rolling, roiling, shaking, swaying, gasping, full-body shudder of “blow.”

He spiraled away behind me like a spent rocket stage.

“That,” I said to myself, pausing my recitation, “is certainly the first time in the history of cycling that someone has been dropped by the recitation of a Middle English poem.”

END

July 4 Holiday Ride recap

July 5, 2019 § 9 Comments

Shut up already about “safety.” You were 1 of 250 idiots racing full speed in an illegal, un-permitted street race, endangering the lives of pedestrians, the lives of fire hydrants, and the lives of each other, all for the glory of getting dropped on Mandeville.
Yes, that is a traffic light. Like a coop of chickens smelling a fox, every time we approached an intersection, half the wankoton cackled “Light!” “Slowing!” Are you fucking kidding me? Anyone who can’t see a traffic light or notice that people are going from 30 to 10 IS ON A DIFFERENT RIDE. And … “Crack! Hole!” on Vista del Mar?? THAT STREET IS A SOLID 3-MILE CREVASSE, MINEFIELD, AND RUBBLE PILE. Stfu and pedal..
Start is start. The Holiday Ride starts at CotKU. If you were a hop-in wanker somewhere along the route, please note that on your Stravver.
Pull like Keith. Shirtless Keith drove the front and blew up repeatedly all the way to San Vicente. I know it sucks to get sweat on your $250.00 custom team jersey, but it sucks even more to be on a bike ride and NOT RIDE YER FUGGIN’ BIKE.
How the West won. Why were all the South Bay wankers shelled in the first 500 meters up Mandeville? Why was the leaderboard populated exclusively with Westsiders? Because the South Bay is a) Old b) Soft c) Weak. d) All of the above. [Hint: Correct answer is “d.”]
Kit winner of the day: Shirtless Keith. Of course. Best boots and Pop-Tart strap-on outside a prison work gang.
Butter on a griddle. That’s what the peloton looked like when Rudy Napolitano took a 23-mph pull all the way up San Vicente. Number of pretty boyz/gurlz who followed his example and took a pull: 0. Number who decided suddenly that this was a rest week: 50% of the peloton.
Riders killed or horribly maimed because helmetless: 0.
Blowhard #socmed heroes who were obliterated in the first 1/4 of the climb despite never taking a single fuggin’ pull: All of them.
Best Gram videos: Baby Seal and Ramon, of course!

END

The day the earth stood still-ish

February 16, 2018 § 4 Comments

It takes a lot to shock me when it comes to bicycling, but yesterday, pedaling home from a cup of coffee near the Center of the Known Universe, I got a shock. A big ‘un.

I was on Esplanade in Redondo Beach, about to start the ascent into Palos Verdes, when I saw a familiar bare back a couple of hundred yards ahead. Blonde hair, check. Jeans shorts, check. Work boots, check. Shirtlessness, check.

It could only be Shirtless Keith. And it was … I thought.

As I approached, though, the picture didn’t add up. Sure, that was Keith on a bike. But it wasn’t the bike, not by a long shot. Instead of his legendary Raleigh hybrid, 55-tooth single chain ring with a Pop-Tart strapped to the rear rack, Keith was riding a NEW BIKE.

And not just any new bike. This was a spit-polished, all chrome GT BMX single speed. I did a double take, then a triple, then a quadruple. “Hey, Keith,” I said. “What’s up with the new bike?”

“Aw,” he said, “my old one broke. Cracked the frame just before Christmas, and then the crank sheared off. She was just done.”

“How many miles did you have on that thing?”

“I dunno, but I logged 19,000 last year.”

“All in PV?”

“Yep.”

“That’s about 100 feet elevation per mile, so you’re at nearly 2 million feet.”

“I reckon so.”

“How many years you been riding that Raleigh?”

“Well, a real nice old lady gave it to me ten years ago, and it had a big wicker basket on the front, and I rode it a bunch, you know everything broke on that bike, but I could always fix it.”

“20,000 miles and 2 million feet of climbing a year for ten years works out to about 200,00 miles and 20 million feet. And I’ve seen you ride. You don’t go easy. I’m not sure that bike was designed to handle that kind of riding.”

“It was time for a change with that cracked frame.”

“How do you like the new ride?”

“I like it. It’s got a beefy rear hub, real solid. Bike weighs 34 pounds, which is nice; the Raleigh was about 36, so I’m actually saving some weight.”

“What about the single speed?”

“It’s okay. I don’t mind it.”

“How’d you get into riding, anyway?”

“Like I said, lady gave me that Raleigh and I just started riding it, couple laps around the hill, one lap is about 22 miles, and then I lost a bunch of weight and was having cardio problems and some other issues but they all cleared up.”

“How much did you weigh when you started?”

“230.”

“How much are you now?”

“About 170. That’s a good weight. Anything less and I start eating too much.”

By now we were going up Silver Spur, a really steep climb followed by Basswood-Shorewood, which are even steeper. Keith cruised up the hills, chatting and not even breaking a sweat.

“People are gonna be surprised seeing you on that new bike.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But it was time.”

We parted company, me to go home and rest, Keith to knock out the remainder of his 65-mile ride. I still couldn’t get over the sight of Shirtless Keith on anything other than the Raleigh + Pop-Tart. There was hardly a rider on the Hill who hadn’t been dropped by Keith and his legendary rig. The new bicycle sparkled as he rode away with a wave.

END

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shirtless_keith

The Legend of Shirtless Keith

March 18, 2017 § 45 Comments

If you ever meet someone who claims to know what’s up in the South Bay, you can ask this simple question. “Do you know Shirtless Keith?”

The answer will tell you all you need to know.

Shirtless Keith isn’t legendary or even mythical. He’s way beyond that. He is the Holy Grail in bicycling.

Shirtless Keith rides (you’ll never guess) without a shirt. And instead of girlish Italian cycling shoes with fancy clip-in pedals, he rides with boots. Big, heavy boots. Boots that you can use for pedaling a bike or for walking 10 miles one-way to the brewery. Yep, he did that. And after having a few beers, he walked home.

When it comes to nutrition, Shirtless Keith don’t need no fancy-shmancy biker Barbie food. “Cyclists” carefully consume properly balanced foodstuffs made by elves who grew each organic ingredient on a small plot of earth farmed by earthworms and hippies from the 60’s. When Keith starts running low on fuel, you know what he eats?

Pop-Tarts.

Yep. You heard me right. And when he gets a hankering for a Pop-Tart he doesn’t reach into his jersey pocket because, shirtless, he don’t wear no stinkin’ jersey. Instead he pulls over, unstraps the bungee cord on his rack that holds down the Pop-Tarts, and eats it on the spot. And Shirtless Keith don’t need no water bottle. When he gets thirsty he rides over to a water fountain and drinks.

You think I’m joking? That’s okay, you’re just proving that you don’t know squat about the South Bay.

Keith rides an old cromoly Raleigh with knobby tires and a steering tube that’s longer than a fishing pole. Keith don’t need no carbon and no 25mm tires. All Keith needs is a 55-tooth chain ring, and that’s all he’s got. If the 55 is too big that just means he has to pedal harder.

And Keith don’t need no Internet coach. He rides 48 miles a day, seven days a week. But his favorite day is Saturday because that’s when the Donut Ride goes off. Keith rides around until the group comes barreling up to the Domes and he hops in with the leaders, goes to the front, drops a couple of people (usually me), then swings off and finishes the climb by himself.

Keith’s signature move is to troll for wankers. It never takes long to hook some mid-40s dude on a $15,000 rig. The dude takes one look at Keith’s boots, 40-lb. bike and shirtless back, rolls his eyes, puts the hammer down, and blows by. Dude looks back and sees that yeah, he passed Shirtless Keith, but now Shirtless Keith is passing him. Fast. Dude hops onto Keith’s wheel and pretty soon he’s stuffed into the pain burrito as Keith gets the 55 rolling.

Then Keith stands up and starts pounding like the world’s biggest mashed potato maker, and pretty soon the dude is gazing down at his $5,000 power meter which is telling him that he left his FTP back in Portuguese Bend and it’s exactly fifteen seconds to detonation time.

Shirtless Keith rides away.

If you talk to him he is humble and polite and the friendliest guy on the Hill. One time he hopped in with the Aussie women’s national team and rode with them around the peninsula. Like the classy guy he is, he asked if he could join before hopping in.

The funny people are the ones who tell him to “get a road bike” because he’ll “be a beast.” These are always people he’s shelled, by the way, like a rotten pecan.

Keith don’t wanna be no roadie. Keith don’t want no road bike and no fancy outfit. Keith wants to ride his bike, troll for wankers, hop in on the Donut every now and again, and enjoy cycling his way, on his terms, not yours. One Shirtless Keith is better than all the Velominati put together.

Like I said, the Holy Grail.