Image by WatchCaddy via a creative commons licence on flickr.

I was catching up on my blog reading and spotted this bit on Truth About Cars.  The maximum fine for driving and using a cell phone is increasing to a maximum of $528.  Bicyclists are being included for the first time as well though their fines are only a maximum of $50.  I think they should be on parity with each other but what the heck at least the disparity is being addressed now.

Link to the senate proposal HERE in pdf format.  Pages 2 and 3 are where the good stuff concerning the changes to the cell phone and driving proposals can be found.

I for one am glad to see some stiffer penalites coming for using the phone while driving.  What say you?

There’s about eight miles of Los Angeles River separating its bikeways in Elysian Valley and the city of Maywood. Like most normal people you probably haven’t troubled yourself wondering if that entire stretch of riverbed between those two points is navigable by bike. But if you’re like me and my friend Andrew it was time yesterday to see if we could connect those two dots. We did.

A selection of stills from the trek are viewable here on Flickr, most notable among them is the Bicycle Monument installed below the Olympic Boulevard Bridge, the in-water river chair (full functionality proven by Andrew) south of the 10 Freeway overpass, and best of all: the fellow south of the Washington Boulevard Bridge sitting on a utility cable spool reading a newspaper who looked at us as funny as we looked at him. A map of the entire 22-mile-route we rode is here.

During Wednesday’s bike trek up the Arroyo Seco creek bed and back, ’twas found sprayed under one of the bridges, an urgent call for drastic change, whose typo — whether intentional or not (my vote’s for NOT), made for an entirely unassailable pro-pedagogical position:

It’s not an invalid question to wonder why on earth would one want to pedal the length of the Arroyo Seco Creek bed from the Los Angeles River up under the Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena and back. The answer is: why not?

This trek yesterday followed up on our Los Angeles River bed ride last week. My friend Errin biked over from Alhambra and and we literally met up at the Arroyo Seco’s confluence with the LA River before heading upstream about 7 miles to its spillway under the Colorado Street Bridge in Pasadena and then back. Errin split off by the stables at the top of the Arroyo’s bikeway to head home, and I continued on solo back to the Los Angeles River Center where I started. Trip total: 15 miles.

And in related news (that proves Errin and I aren’t the only freaks fascinated by our forgotten waterways): The Los Angeles Urban Rangers is hosting an LA River Ramble tonight at 7 p.m., meeting at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary.

A fellow named Errin who I follow on Twitter saw my tweet of the above photo taken by my wife Saturday and because he has this awesome water-ready bike called a Salsa Mukluk tweeted back that he’d like to do this. So we’re arranging to meet tomorrow (Tuesday) at 10 a.m. at the Crystal Springs entrance to the Los Angeles River westbank Bikeway (pinpoint map) to roll the eastbank south of the Fletcher Bridge in Atwater and the riverbed further downstream to points to be determined.

Short notice, indeed. But if you have a wide-tired bike, a sense of adventure, shoes you don’t mind getting wet, and nothing pressing on your Tuesday morning schedule, you are welcome to join us.

Found the wisdom of Kali this morning during what’s become a regular ride for me along the East Bank of the Los Angeles River (my wristwatch added to validate the statement’s veracity; image is clickably embiggifiable):

On that first day of the anticipated/feared “Carmegeddon,” in Los Angeles , while other far fleeter pedalers were kicking ass over a jet plane in a race from Burbank to Long Beach, I was joined by four awesomely like-minded cyclists — Ann, Harold, Robert and Thaddeus — for a more casual 47-mile bike tour that began and ended in Silver Lake and included a climb up from the valley to the top of the Sepulveda Pass for a look at the ongoing demolition of the Mulholland Bridge over an entirely emptied 405 Freeway.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately depending on your tolerance for stopmotion videography) I can’t show you the entire ride as my camera’s memory card filled up at Mile No. 37, just as we were entering Beverly Hills on the way back to our start point.

But it was an awesome day and an awesome group with which to ride.

Route: http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4642041

From the Skirball Bridge (click for embiggification), taken at the midway point of today’s 47-mile Autocalypse Now Ride.

The other day the entire world collectively pointed and laughed at the obvious publicity stunt unleashed by JetBlue, where they announced plans to offer $4 fares from Burbank to Long Beach to avoid carmageddon. But flying seems pretty fast right? I mean, you are in a plane and all. But how fast is it really? Fast enough to beat Wolfpack A? Seriously, easily the most elite street cyclists in LA, possibly in the country started doing the math and think they can make that trip faster on bike than JetBlue can in a plane. You know what? I think they are right. I’ve seen the hustle in action. I’ve seen Wolfpack A win race after race. I think this is totally legit. Several folks are already trying to get JetBlue to accept the challenge. Let’s see what happens!

UPDATE: IT’S ON! Details being finalized right this very second, but this is happening. Point to point. It’s a battle of commuters. A house in Burbank to the Long Beach Aquarium. More details soon!!!

This third edition of Los Angeles’ CicLAvia events was a much, much quieter one. While originally planned to be as full-on as the original CicLAvia in October 2010 and the second one last April, organizers decided in May to throttle back and take the one planned for July 10 off the calendar so that efforts could be better focused on the extended one set for this October.

But that didn’t stop them from putting out the call to come ride the open roads with them on a nine-mile route beginning and ending at Boyle Heights’ Hollenbeck Park, and I met up with friends Stephen, Alice and Ann in Echo Park to pedal out to the Eastside and join in the festive, leisurely paced trek with a couple hundred other CicLAvians.

After crossing the 6th Street Viaduct and coming down Central Avenue to pay a visit to the African-American Firefighter Museum, we headed into downtown, where on our approach to Chinatown, the four of us broke off from the ride and continued up to the LA River’s West Bank bikeway. Saying our goodbyes at Atwater I headed back through Silver Lake home. Wonderful day. Wonderful ride.

Total distance covered: 21.98  miles
Route link: http://tinyurl.com/6g4785r

So this past Monday I boldly went somewhere by bike that I’d never gone before. And so, for the lack of a substantive and/or interesting post on any number of prevalent topics, I do hereby give you: The Los Angeles Riverbed Ride. In which I navigated downstream from the south end of Elysian Valley down to the Seventh Street Viaduct and then back. For your viewing pleasure, these are the 12 spans I pedaled under, beginning with the 110 Freeway and ending at Seventh Street.

A slideshow of the above Flickr set of images is viewable here.

After the jump is the SFW video-still of the naked guy I encountered under the First Street Viaduct who was bathing in the water (given its quality I use “bathing” in its least optimistic sense), along with the obligatory timelapse video of the entire ride. Enjoy.

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I had such a blast discovering the east bank of the Los Angeles River by bike a couple weekends ago, that I’m going back to get me some more laidbackification this holiday weekend. So if you’re not headed/heading out of town for the holiday weekend and don’t have anything cooking July 4 morning, feel free to join my wife Susan and me. We’re planning on setting out from the Fletcher Avenue Bridge around 9:30 a.m. for a heat-beating, entirely casual out-and-back roll that’s about six miles in length.

The Real East Side: 1967 Chevy Chevelle SS. Artist: "Adam."

In my 475 years  of existence in this city, I have been visiting the Los Angeles River for 323 of them. But ALWAYS the west bank south of Fletcher Avenue. Never the much more rugged and less-accessible east bank. Until yesterday, when stuck inside my head I prescribed a self-medicating  bike ride instead.

Boy did it coat, soothe and relieve.

Pedaling from Silver Lake to Atwater Village, I accessed the far side via Sunnynook Drive and then headed south, finding the river partially sandbagged and diverted at Fletcher for what looks to be stabilization/reinforcement work that’s being done to the underside of its bridge.

Scooting under the span I then had the three-mile length to Elysian Valley enfuckingtirely to myself, and I felt Lewis & Clarksian in discovering some seriously amazing scenery that strengthened the bond I have with our misbegotten waterway.

Anywhat, it was just what I needed to clear my cranium. And you know if it’s me on a bike there will be handlebarcam timelapsification of the entire trip for your stop-motion viewing pleasure:

If I told you that someone driving a car ran into a stationary object, would you think the fault rested with the driver or with the stationary object? What if that object was a person? Now whose fault is it? What if that person was actually several people. A large group in fact? And what if I told you the driver had been drinking? Still with me? And what if I told you the driver made no attempt to stop, left no skid marks, and by some eyewitness accounts may have even sped up? Any idea who might be at blame here? And what if this collision sent many of those people to the hospital, some in critical condition, many with broken bones?

So just to clarify. If a driver, who had been drinking ran into a large group of people who were standing still (that is, they didn’t jump in front of the car or anything stupid like that) without making any efforts to avoid them – who do you think is at fault?

If you said the driver, congrats, you have some shred of common sense. If you said it must have been the fault of the people the driver hit, you must work for the LAPD.

This is disgusting.

The author as Thatawayman somewhere between Boyle Heights and Vernon last year (Photo courtesy my friend and fellow route marker Stephen Roullier).

I’m a far more consistent Los Angeles River Ride volunteer than I am a participant. Though I can trace my sporadic involvement as a rider back to 2001, I’ve only done the LA County Bicycle Coalition’s annual trip to Long Beach and back four times.

Part of the reason for such laxness is that I’ve been far more consistent every year since 2006 in getting up the morning before the big event and getting my ride on helping to mark the section of the route from Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights to Imperial Highway and back.

This year’s no exception. And the reason I’m telling you this is not only to remind you the ride itself is Sunday, but also to invite you — if you’re both morning-embracing and volunteeristically inclined — to join me and the hearty band of route markers tomorrow morning either at 7:30 a.m. in front of Echo Park’s Brite Spot for the ride to the Los Angeles River Center, or at 8 a.m. there (map). Either way have a bike in good working order as well as a pack-pack to help haul the materials.

If the volunteer ranks marshaled tomorrow by organizer extraordinaire Colin Bogart end up a bit thin you might get pressed into service marking another stage, but if  the no-shows are minimal feel free join me and my friend Stephen Roullier. We’re planning after we finish placing arrows and hanging signs (somewhere around noon) on lunching at the Most Awesome Blue Star in the Scrap Metal District before heading back uptown.