my ride with mr. hall

well i’ll get the stats out of the way tout de suite cuz they weren’t the focus…i still care a little.

time = 1:51:56

dst = 27.8 miles

avg = 14.9 mph (c’mon! i’m not a llowed a leisure ride?)

max = 37 mph 

so it all started a few months ago when i was working downtown for some silly tv show and i had rigged it so i got to ride my bike every single day. and, much like every other spot where 99.99% of the people there drove, when they see a bike they tend to ask questions. one of those people was mr. michael hall. but he didn’t just ask questions like normal people. he was genuinely interested and wanted to know how he could get a bike. we talked everyday for almost a month and then the show was over. he never did get a bike. but then a few days ago i texted him out of the blue. and low and behold he’d bought a bike! he said “let’s ride tuesday.”

so today i shot him a line and we agreed to meet at griffith park. my whole plan was to just chill out and ride around the whole park and do whatever. so if you don’t know griffith, there are two enterances on los felis blvd. one just off the top of western and one down by the expressway across from riverside dr. i shot ol’ mike a beamer when i got to the western entrance and told him to meet me at the one by riverside cuz it was closer to him.

i started pedaling again and quickly caught up to a guy mashing out on a fixed gear. as much as i wanted to blast him i decided to chill it out and just hang behind him. he took the big hill on los feliz due to his totally appropriate choice of fixed gearing he held steady at the same speed from the flats to the down hill. i rode the brakes like mad on a hill where i normally push 40 mph. i should mention that even though fixie guy was a slow poke we both managed to pass a half mile of cars that were crammed up on los feliz.

so then i noodled around and found a shade tree and began waiting for mr. hall. i then thought to check my phone and found out via various messages that apparently, like many of the bikes on craigslist.org that look super cool and are a “good price”, his bike had decided to quickly and without warning stop working properly. we decided that since it wasn’t shifting it would be a bad idea to meet up and we would try again once he got it all fixed up.

so then i was free to do whatever i wanted…i hadn’t thought about what i would do if i was alone. i was totally locked in “buddy ride” mode. well, what i decided was that i was going to explore the shit out of griffith park. if i saw a hill i’d ride to the top. if there was a hill heading down once i got up there then i’d go down it. and that’s what i did.

let me say this, griffith park will serve your ass up on a silver platter and it is totally fucking worth it. the hills seem to go straight up and never end. which is amazing once you’re at the top cuz then you get to bomb out like a mad man. besides the hills there is a ton of stuff that i never knew existed in the park, like a merry go round!

it also has a guy that chills in his car in a parking lot with three big ass birdcages on his trunk just selling birds in griffith park. go there, you’ll see him. he’s better than the guy selling crazy balloons and cotton candy in pan pacific park. in fact, i will go so far as to say that the bird seller feller in griffith park is my new favorite guy.

on top of circus type shit, there is a camp. not like a camp ground, like a camp for kids with cabins and random play ground equipment. it’s at the top of a giantly steep hill that i basically died to get up to the top of and then almost died getting back down. so steep and twisty! i felt for the first time ever that i need better brakes. the turns were so sharp…amazing. flat out amazing. 

after cruising the park i blasted out and head home. los feliz hill going the opposite direction has always been something i feared, which is why i’ve never done it until today. but now that i’ve done it, like most things i’m scared of, it wasn’t too bad. and even better when i rounded that final curve from los feliz onto western i remembered that it’s all downhill. it’s not crazy steep but it’s enough to let me easily keep up with traffic and make every light and is basically everything bike riding should be in a city. 

no map of the ride cuz gmap hates griffith park for some reason. all in all it was a really good ride and hopefully mr. hall will find a way to fix that derailer and get his ass out on the road with me soon.

chirp,

hillary