[sic]

Note: I’d written this to completion December 28, but an inopportune FAIL of Wordpress’ draft-save function left only the first few paragraphs saved and the rest unrecoverable after I clicked “publish.” In the frustrating aftermath I’ve spent the last week grousing and harumphing miserably at all that had been lost, waffling between junking the saved portion or trying to recomplete it. Here goes an attempt at the latter option.

Two posts elsewhere — one here on LA Metblogs about arroyo restoration work halted and another on LAist here about the benefits of snow in our local mountains — reminded me of the time shortly after my introduction to mountain biking back in the year of our lawd nineteen hundred and ninety.

It was under the thick clouds of a pretty powerful storm and in the midst of a couple days of significant rainfall, when I finished up a light route day on the job as a Sparkletts Man and decided I’d head home that mid-afternoon, get my faithful GT Timberline and take it for a ride up past JPL into the upper Arroyo Seco, long a popular trek  for hikers, bikers and equestrians known as the Gabrielino Trail.

If you’ve never been in there, it’s really a marvelous place, and you don’t have to hike far to get a feeling you’ve gotten away from it all. The scenery is beautiful and under a canopy of tall sycamore and maple the winding trail itself is characterized in part by several crossings of a winding creek. It was there months earlier and in much warmer, dryer and shallower conditions and that I’d taken my very very first ever inaugual mountain bike ride up to the Brown Canyon debris dam and back. I think the draw to do such a wet version of it was enhanced by the allure of naturally running water (something I never got enough of in my L.A. youth) and my desire to see how different the trail was in a deluge.

Boy was it different.

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Given my self-competitive nature, I’d been hoping to top last year’s haul of seven trees, but could only lash down a matching number — albeit with a couple asterisks that make this pick-up “better” than 2008’s.

Asterisk No. 1: Last year the seven trees  included our own — which was one of the reasons I started this silliness of sweeping our neighboring streets for pitched pines. I figured if I’ve gotta go to the recycling center anyway, I might as well pick up any others I see that would otherwise just sit there on the curb decomposing for weeks. This year we decorated our fledgling living tree, so technically there was no reason for me to go much less make the rounds and clean up after my thoughtless neighbors.

Asterisk No. 2: The volume of this year’s catch was far greater than last years, which included a couple dwarf trees.

Thankfully this didn’t take a lotta time. The first three were found in the two blocks south of our house and, the final four were stationed at that popular drop zone on the corner of Bellevue and Silver Lake Boulevard, which is where Susan snapped the picture of me lashing down the last of them.

The really good news is that along the surface street route we took from there to the recycling station at the L.A. Zoo’s parking lot, it was entirely tree-free.

The disappointing news was that upon transfer of our trees to the city employees involved, there was no reward. In past years there were energy efficient lightbulbs, coupons for free mulch, and seedling trees given out. This year. Nothing but a thank you.

But I’m not in this for the freebies. I’m in it because someone’s gotta be and because I take far greater pride in my neighborhood than any of the seven lame tree tossers in my immediate vicinity who don’t.

Small Flickr photo set here.

I had a custom plank I’d put together and purchased at the famous Val Surf back in 1977 that I rode like a crazed wanna-be Dogtowner through the rest of my junior high years. Cherished though it was, by the time I hit high school it was reduced to gathering dust in the long spaces between those rare days I’d roll it around the neighborhood or ride it to/from school. And in the end it suffered the ignominious task of ferrying the apartment building’s 10 garbage cans I’d roll out of the garage to the curb the night before pick-up day  — a chore negotiated with the landlord that gave my mom a $20 break on our rent — hey, every little bit helped us back then.

After completing one such weekly trash transfer I left the board with the cans for some unremembered reason, and learned for the umpteenth time an important rule of life: Just because one’s regard for something is low, doesn’t mean it’s held in the same depleted esteem by the rest of the world. When I returned from whatever to retrieve it, it was gone.

I never replaced it.

A few weeks ago La Mano Press in LIncoln Heights was having it’s farewell sale, and Susan and I visited the place on its last day open to the public, wherein I browsed  around somewhat noncommittally until I came upon the board you see at right (cliackable for slight biggability), the bottom of which features a segment of the awesome woodcut titled “Infinite Night” that master printer Artemio Rodriguez created (and was later used for the 2007 Dia de los Muertos festival at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, where he was the featured artist.

I went into immediate WANT mode.  I think I even uttered some rather embarrassing mewing sounds and my outstretched hands made grabby gestures.

Artemio was gracious enough to autograph the other side of it and for the last few weeks it’s sat near my desk not whilst I mulled what sort of trucks and wheels to match it up with — oh hell no. I was more interested in figuring out a way how to display it — the perfect solution for that coming in my finding plate hangers at Home Depot yesterday.

It’s pretty much taken most of my life for my mother to gain position possession of the trunk pictured above that’s been in her family she thinks since perhaps as far back as when they came to this country from Wales, whenever the heck that may have been.

Seriously, my mom wanting this thing and my aunt Frieda for whatever reason not getting it to her has been a contentious and ongoing issue between the two going back to when I first learned about it when I was something like 7 years old.

I may have the story all wrong, but I believe it passed from my mother’s grandparents to her aunt Nell who wanted my mother to have it when she passed. But that never happened in part because my mother had come to California after college and so my Aunt Frieda accepted it on her wayward sister’s behalf.

At various points in my life, my mom would grouse and fume about Frieda never sending it to her, and however it came about, my aunt finally shipped the trunk out to her a year or so ago, where it’s since sat taking up space in the spare bedroom of my mother’s apartment, and while happy to finally have it she’s been grousing about it’s poor condition and threatening to spend waaaaay too much money restoring it.

Seeing as it may be somewhere around 150 years old (or more), I think it looks great.

And the reason Susan and I suddenly now have it is because mom’s looking to do something with the tiny spare room and she very well can’t with this monster gobbling up most of its space. No kidding: the thing’s almost as tall as it is close to four feet wide! So on New Year’s Day yesterday after getting our fill of her traditional meal of “hoppin’ john” while watching the Rose Bowl, I wrestled this thing out of her apartment and into the truck and home, where it now resides in the basement for the time being — at least until my mom wants it returned or we find a place for it in the house once our renovations are completed later this year.

You can bet should mom say bring it back, I’ll get it over there without delay!

So in terms of resolvolutions for the new year, in regards to my bicyclingz I’ve decided not to peg a 2009 finish line to any specific number. Instead, my goal for the new year is simply to Bike Every Day — whether it’s one mile or 100 — and see how far it takes me across the year.

Toward that end, here’s the begining: my first 10 miles on the first day of the year, which of course features my first encounter with a sightless driver in Elysian Valley (blink and you’ll miss it at around 1:42 in) who makes a full stop at her cross street stop sign but then basically bursts across the intersection right in front of me. Glad one of us was paying attention:

PS. There’s nothing quite like standing at the top of a year-long accomplishment on December 31 and less than a day later starting the long climb up from the bottom of the next one to put it all in perspective. I know it all adds up, but erasing 6,600 miles and replacing it with 10 in my little bike mileage tally box on the right was a lot tougher than I thought it would be.

That’s where my virtual bike odometer and I will end up for the year when I complete my planned 46-mile roundtrip bike commute tomorrow afternoon.

A huge part of that achievement was the fact that of 257 work days in 2008, I biked 197 of them — an achievement in and of itself.

But 6,606.16. That’s an achievement, too.

Here’s the 15 from this morning, along a different route that involved downtown and a flat tire:

Typically my commute mileage comes in around 30, but I’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning and taking the loooooong way in via the westside through across Brentwood to Ocean Park to the Santa Monica Pier and then the beach path to Venice and then through Marina Del Rey to the Ballona Creek Bikeway.

Just because.

Show of hands: how many people add miles to their trips to work, just because. That’s the magic of the bicycle.

On the return trip I’ll be coming home with decidedly less deviation along 4th Street and with one last climb up the Occidental rise south of my house. The same one upon which I pedaled into the back of that double-parked minivan back in September.

Of course there’s more to tomorrow’s extended trip than just because.  If I stuck to the routine I’d be 10 miles shy of the 6600 mark, and it just won’t do for me to be within striking distance of something — especially something so relatively irrelevant — and let it go unattained.

So there you have it. I set out this year to bike 3,000 miles. I had that done by early June. As to what’s in store for next year, at this late date I haven’t decided anything and in fact  I may just go all laissez faire and let the good miles roll across ‘09 without a finish line. We’ll see.

UPDATED (12.31): Make that 6608.17. I was cut loose from work at noon today so I cranked out a couple additional miles meeting my friend Manny at Langer’s in MacArthur Park and biking home from there.

It is one of the two handmade Leon cigars my wife got me for Christmas.

It is an ice cold bottle of Pabst from the landmark Galco’s in Highland Park, the wonderful beverage repository I’ve been to only a woeful three times in my life; twice in the past week.

It is a break taken in one of the adirondack chairs stationed atop the loose brick patio — mossy and damp from the rains — that I crudely fashioned a couple years ago at the northeast corner of the backyard from some of the bricks that made up the 102-year-old house’s original 102-year-old foundation.

It is the aftermath of my victorious weekly war, and I survey the backyard battlefield raked and swept mostly clear of the fallen foliage dropped to the residual muck by gravity and quantified by the Christmas storm and subsequent winds.

It is an almost summer-like experience in shorts and a tee with the tinkling music of an ice cream truck heard somewhere not too far away, the sun shining over blue skies, and the 70-degree temps a welcome warm respite from the chilled days past.

It is the dog coming out with its ball to play.

It is my wife coming out to tell me she is going to the market.

It is the cigar smoke wafting into the sunbeams.

It is the leaves rustling in the breeze; none fall before me.

It is the gulls high in the sky flying back toward the sea.

It is my reward.

It is my heaven.

Outside my office window on Christmas Eve in surprise I spied bits of white suddenly drifting by on the breeze.

I wondered: snow? But the answer: no.

Instead it was feathers — lots of them floating on the current, and shortly thereafter I found the source of the stuff in a peregrine falcon that had made a kill and was tearing it apart atop the roof of the office building adjacent the one I’m in.

Above and below are  crappy 12x digizoom images, but the lens isn’t dirty on the bottom snap. The smudges behind the bird are a crop of feathers it’s just torn from its prey (unseen at its feet) and patooey’d into the air.

Nothing says Christmas in Southern California quite like successful predation!

…Oooooooone Squuuuuuuuaaaaaaashed Thuuuuuuuuumb!

The picture might not do the mash justice, but see that abnormally discolored cloud of sadness within the bed of my thumbnail? Yeah:  hurts like sunovagunzabeech.  Suffice it to say it was bike-repair related and idiocy induced, and by way of a more detailed explanation let’s just go to the series of Twitter posts from the immediate mash aftermath going forward about 20-30 minutes:

1. Right now I’m really admiring how long the pain lasts after you squish your thumb between the fork and spinning spokes.
2. Beneath the nail is already some angry black ‘n bluing.
3. De-Christmasing my bike & giving it a thorough cleaning as well as new front/rear brake pads, and I’m repaid in thumb squished agony? Nofair
4. It’s one of those hurts were you almost wish the offended digit had just been lopped off. I said almost.
5. Spewing a stream of invective to rival those which the father was famous for in “A Christmas Story.”
6. snagdragalbasturdenfrakostenkluntbisquitweavernard!

Why is it such a really  good idea as breakfast on Christmas Day at one of my favorite never-closed places in LA is an idea that never occurred to me until now.

Oversights like that frustrate me to no end, but I guess it’s better late than never to start an annual Breakfast At The Pantry tradition, which we kicked off with my mom, who came over for Christmas Eve and then spent the night trying not to freeze while asleep on our couch.

Coincidental bonus points for our server’s name being Jesus — who we left a 50% tip because anyone forced to forsake their own lives and those of friends and family on this day to instead serve strangers deserves nothing less!

Merry Christmas!