tonight’s ride

dark comes more quickly these days. i rolled out from UCLA a couple of minutes past six today without my front light, but had to stop at san vincente and sixth to put it back on. i’m still a bit jumpy after last week, and decided it was better to take the minute than regret it later.

home safe and sound now, and still trying to work through some more thoughts after BikinginLA’s recent work. nothing yet, though i think the central issue for me is this: how do you balance legislation with engineering? with activism? with plain old driver education?

all of that said, one of the reasons i wanted to start a more cycling-specific writing effort was to give some sense of how possible it is to ride in this city. talking to friends on campus, a couple of them often seem a bit incredulous at the thought of riding from UCLA to koreatown, and so i thought it might be an interesting project to start putting together some maps of my rides. this one here was tonight’s.

Advertisement

change

seasons come and go here; and you know you’ve really fallen for the angeleno dream when you start insisting on the subtle nature of the seasons here. let the blue ridge mountains have their riots of color and the upper midwest have their first drifts of snow, the thinking goes, we’ll take our incremental weathers.

agree or not, it was a beautiful day for a brief ride on the bike. stiff wind in off from the ocean, the air scrubbed a clear blue over griffith park, a bite to being outside. as a ride, it wasn’t much to speak of: from beverly and kenmore, up heliotrope, past orange 20 and the bike kitchen, weave through the bungalos and apartment buildings of little armenia, up edgemont to franklin, then over to hillhurst. on the way back down, vermont felt free enough to ride, even freighted down with groceries.

a brief stop in orange 20 – it’s still shaping up, filling in, stretching out – and a passing thought about a new backpack: my messenger bag (a well-worn Timbuk2) doesn’t carry it’s weight all that well, and i’m trying to figure out a new way to take weight longer distances. any suggestions would be much appreciated.

but then home, all too quickly.