Industry Figure Tom Chappell

Ron and I have been trying to have a big mountain bike ride for weeks now, and it has just been one thing after another. Rain, injury, you name it. I almost had to cancel this one, because I was sick as could be on Friday and Saturday mornings, but always seemed to feel better in the afternoon. Weird. And come this morning, I felt great, and the weather was perfect, so…we rode!

This was the same 55-mile ride in the mountains near my house up to the Angeles Crest, down around the Rose Bowl grounds, and back via La Tuna canyon that we had done a few times before. Nice ride, if a bit grueling.

I took a few pictures of one of the more interesting and scenic stretches. But be sure to read past the pictures, because there’s mopeds, man, mopeds!

Josephine Peak, our Nemesis. You can see one of the roads cutting horizontally through its middle. Yes, it’s going downhill, but we have to climb up to that.

Josephine Peak again, with the second bridge [on our ride] over the Tujunga Canyon Wash.

Detail of the bridge. Note trees underneath, and tiny car on left.

Downstream from the bridge. Those are trees in the middle there, not shrubs.

Upstream from the bridge. Not a lot of water coming from the dam! I like that terracing on the right.

It’s me, looking thinner than ever (205 pounds), yay!

Ron. Little did he (nor I) know that he would trounce me today.

Because he did trounce me. Well, we spent about 5 hours peddling our bicycles, and he beat me by two and a half minutes, about 1% faster (I know, the shame.)

One really neat thing was that I am no longer as slow on the downhills as I used to be: now that I weigh as little as John Blackburn did when he and I did the Angeles Crest ride together, I too was able to sail down the Angeles Crest Highway for twenty-one minutes without touching my brakes, except for prudent slowing immediately before the blind curves. Quite a change from even the Mt. Wilson ride, where John chastised me (from 500 miles away) to “Savor gravity’s gift!”

While on La Tuna Canyon, we were surrounded by the Moped Army, come from all over the country for the Los Angeles Moped Rally. It was indescribable — hundreds of young people between the ages of 15 and 30 or so, all riding mopeds, many apparently vintage, still with their pedals, and in various states of repair:

After they had passed, I kicked myself for not getting a picture. But taking your own pictures is –so– ten minutes ago. Here’s a whole photo album that a fellow named Ugly Rudy has already posted to web about this weekend’s L.A. Moped Rally, which gives you a pretty good sense of what it was like to be surrounded by them (actually, it sounded like being in the middle of a pack of model airplanes, or what I imagine an angry swarm of hornets to sound like):

A small fraction of the many moped rallyists. Click on the picture to see more photos of the rally.

And finally, the inevitable stats:

From MapMyRide.com:
      distance:    54.4 miles
  total ascent:   4,100 ft

Tom's Cycle Computer:
      distance:    55.8 miles
   saddle time: 5:06:50       (not counting rests)
 average speed:    10.8 mph   (not counting rests)
previous speed:    11.1 mph   (not counting rests)

Ron's Cycle Computer:
  saddle time: 5:04:37       (not counting rests)
average speed:    10.8 mph   (not counting rests)
previous speed:   11.1 mph   (not counting rests)

That’s funny, Ron and I both fell from 11.1mph in our immediately-previous ride (different rides for each of us, because I rode this route while Ron was out for repair), and both fell to 10.8mph, at least, as claimed by our respective cycle computers.

“Eek, Mopeds!!!”