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Some how last nights RIDE-Arc “Storm Watch 2006″ ride became the roughest night ride I’ve ever been on. I didn’t get plowed by a car or anything, but yowza - everything that could go wrong did, or at least, almost did.

Above - We gathered at the Universal City Metro Rail Station. Here our ride was delayed by a the omen-of-omens, a pre-ride flat.

Above - While we were waiting, I hung out with Michael Kwan, who’s both the oldest RIDE-ARC rider and the one who travels the furthest to go on the rides. He comes all the way down from Santa Barbara to ride his mountain bike. That’s commitment.

Just after getting started, we had flat #2. One of the “adorable couple with matching fixies” bikes got a flat and some of us stayed behind to assist in the repair.

We moved on from the flat to go on an extended detour, to see a two block long mural of the history of Los Angeles from 20,000 BCE to the 1984 Olympics.

Above - After our mural detour, we re-grouped at an AM PM. The owner looked like he was going to shit a brick when he saw all the cyclists pull up.

Above- At the AM PM, I got a decent picture of this awesome too-tall bike that one of the riders came on. I overheard later that it was built for a bike jousting competition, which makes sense. Looked like a ton of fun to ride. After filling up at the station and taking a break, we moved on into the night.

We rode around for a bit, and ride leader Alex Amerri gave us some history on the 800+ square mile watershed that we were riding around in (hence the theme of the ride). We cruised some suburbia and then Ventura Blvd. for a while before moving on to the “lights out” portion of the ride, where we had flat #3 to deal with, before we could move on. We were running past midnight at that point and some of the folks were busily putting together groups to ride home, as they were definitely going to miss their trains.

Flat fixed, we rode on down into the overflow area behind the Sepulveda dam, which is a huge empty concrete expanse with a dam in the middle. We all had our lights out and had a blast rolling in the dam, but that’s where my personal troubles began. After almost losing my glasses (which are essential to maintaining my neo-fascist appearance, in addition to driving without running into things), I managed to earn a little road rash sliding down the concrete embankment on our side of the dam. But we had a great time, with lots of people sledding the embankment on a plastic road blocker sign.

Above - A great long exposure shot taken by the fellow riding the tall bike, who also happens to be a professional photographer, of someone sledding down with a bike rear light clipped to his back. One of the best shots of the fun at the dam, only exceeded by Will’s great shot of someone riding a BMX down the side of the thing.

We got ready to leave, which is when I noticed something was wrong with my bike. I would pedal, and then the chain would just lock up and stop moving. Not good. Thinking it was just a stuck gear, I tried shifting around, but no luck. We started riding, and by the time we were headed out of the concrete expanse of the overflow area, I totally knew something serious was wrong. What it was, I had no idea, though.

Folks asked if I had a flat, and I said no, and told them to not wait up. But one dude stopped to give a hand, and I owe him a fistful of beers for the help. Without Billy, a rider from Queens on his first night ride, I would have had to hike my bike out of the dam and then call for a cab or shoulder my bike for a long, long walk back to the metro station.

So in the dirt, we used my bike light to get figure out the problem, a jacked up gear linkage. The linkage was all spread out and catching on everything, which was locking the chain and bad news for everything. I was pretty resigned to walking the bike when I remembered that my multi tool had a mysterious gadget, referred to as a chain tool (seen above - the chain repair doohickey is the unit on the left and I can’t begin to really explain how we figured out how to use it or if that was even the proper way to do so, but it worked, and I’m never leaving home without it again). So, getting out my tool, we spent the better part of an hour learning how to remove and attach links on bike chains, in the dark, with only a single bike light to guide us in the darkness. It was a good thing that I keep a set of individual allen wrenches on hand - the ones on the multi tool are never fun to use. Billy was a real trooper, patient as all hell and full of good ideas, the kind of dude who’s good to have in your foxhole. We ended up having to disassemble a the cogs on the derailleur to re-thread the chain properly after we had jury rigged the linkage back together, which took another fifteen or so minutes. Good times.

So not willing to risk changing gears, and being constantly reminded of the limits of my chain repair skills by the thunk of the jury rigged linkage sliding around the front gear, we made steady progress back to the Metro Station. We even ran into a trio of riders who had separated from the pack and who were riding home, two of them looked pretty zombified by the late hour. Splitting up at the Metro, a feeling of relief oozed over me - being able to finish the ride on my wheels, rather than in the back of a cab or on foot seemed like a kind of triumph.

So, ride accomplished, I stowed my bike, got back into my car, and hit the Hollywood to downtown, to catch the 110. I was tired, and I kept seeing Highway Patrol cars - I was presuming that my night was going to get capped by getting pulled over, it was that kind of “personal raincloud” night. I always hate driving between 2 - 4 AM, as the road is full of either cops looking for people to give a hard time to, or drunks testing their “getting home in one piece skills.”

So I hit the 110, pop left to the fast lane and what do you know? A wall of taillights ending right at the entrance to the overhead carpool lane. Some drunk driver had wiped out on the barrier dividing the carpool land from the rest of the freeway, causing more damage to one of those dividers than I have ever seen. It looked like he hit it pretty much head on and then went right, like one of those executive decision maker toys with a plum bob that hits a upward pointed metal wedge. After hitting the barier, he rolled the car at least 2-300 feet down the freeway, spitting parts, body panels and bumpers, all of which we had to maneuver around as we wedged down to the one remaining open lane. There were like a dozen cop cars, but no ambulance - I’ve got no idea if other cars were involved, but the wreck of the car that hit the barrier was a pretzel, almost devoid of body panels on the side that was facing me. The whole front and side of the car was basically skinned and the whole thing was smoking and steaming - never seen a car in that bad shape that hadn’t been on fire…

Which leads me to the end cap of an interesting, weird and exciting night. About 5-10 minutes from the Gaffey street terminus of the 110, I saw a car on fire on the side of the freeway, with a dude walking away from the blaze. It wasn’t a car on fire in the “engine burning up” school of thought, though. It was a “CAR ON FIRE” as if someone had doused the whole thing with gasoline from nose to tail and then tossed a slo-mo zippo to kick off a Viking funeral pyre. It was bright orange and yellow flame 10-15 feet into the air, as if the whole car was made of kerosene soaked straw bales. The guy walking away was taking a “I got no idea what to do” glance back towards the pyre, and I have a feeling that I’m going to have the image burned into my memory for the rest of my life. It was like one of those things that you wish that you could paint or sculpt or imagine, but never could, the flames were so intense and somehow regular that it almost seemed engineered or animated. I got nothing more to say or write, other than that I’m looking forward to fixing my chain, getting back on the bike, and enjoying next month’s RIDE-Arc.

Beloe- Back at home with my road rash! It’s more difficult than I thought to get a good picture of your outside calf, without a wall mirror.