so for like the 9th time (and this will be the last time i type about it), i got smoked out of the gate at a stop light. i was doing usual not too fast not too slow approach to a red light a a funky lil’ intersection on riverside where the road curves all haywire and there is an on/off ramp to the 101 and lights been red for a while and so i know it’s gonna split and then some guy on a colnago (pronounced “really expensive snooty italian bike that people only buy to let everyone know how much they spent”) just blasts me really close on my left.

okay, so the weird/not so weird part is that he brushed his hand on my arm when he passed. it’s weird cuz no one has ever done it to me before. it’s not weird cuz in the cycling world people touch each other all the time to let everyone know exactly where people are. cuz when you’re in traffic and sucking wind and more often than not have headphones on it’s safer/polite to let someone know you are there. this guy i think did it just to be prick-ish.

he blew past and i decided to not go out like a bitch even though i’m sure i’d already ridden twice as far as him got up at 5am and spent the last 10 hours moving furniture (yes that is what my job consisted of today and it was oddly quite fun).

i caught him before the next light, which was red and he just ran it, which was sorta okay cuz it was clear but kinda janky cuz there was no way to tell it was clear until you were in the intersection.

i slowed a tad to be “safe” in the intersection and then caught him again and i got right up on him and put my hand on his elbow right as i said “boo.”. i think he shit his pants. i mean didn’t hear or smell anything but he looked over and by the look on his face he definitely thought he left me in the dust.

i hit my brakes just enough to fall in behind him and then i put the presh on and stayed right on his tail. he pumped it up and the one glance i took we were doing 31 mph.

we got to the next stoplight, which was red, and instead of looking forward and left and right he looked back. i can’t say i was stunned but it seemed really dumb to look back when entering an intersection. i hit my brakes cuz there was no way to see. he trucked on.

he got a good 20 yards ahead and i tried to catch up but by that point i’d burned myself out for the moment and decided to coast it out.

he “got away” but i had eyes on him for the next mile or so until i had to skip off to into griffith park and he had to go off to hell or somewhere.

i decided to see how hard it was to blow past someone at a stoplight so i wouldn’t feel like a total pussy. the only problem was that even though i saw like fifty million bikers around griffith park they were all going the wrong way. and then i never saw another. so i decided to just use cars.

i found a toyota matrix that looked just like my wifey’s and decided that it was on like a mug yo. so at every light down beverly i just hung back until the light turned green and then blasted ass as hard as i could until the next light.

one result was that i passed the matrix every time and then it caught me and we rode/drove side by side until we both had to stop.

another result was that i was/am dead tired now after racing a car down beverly for miles on end.

one other thing is that it reminds me of an article i read about a guy that put a bike mileage counter on his car in los angeles for 15 years and found out that he averaged 17 mph over that time…heart warming.

chirp,

hillary