After having done the Acura LA bike tour I was expecting to have some animosity and one-upmanship as everyone tried to be sleeker and faster and have more knowledge of the road than the next. But really there wasn't much of that. What there was alot of was a mimicking of police sirens, which totally confused me. I can only think that is an inside joke from the last ride but Daniel didn't seem to know either and he was on that ride. Also, if we passed a barking dog, then everyone would bark at it. If someone honked at us to get out of the road, we would cheer. I didn't quite follow.

So as trite as it sounds, we took over the streets. The ride's organizers would block traffic at the stop lights and wave us all through. Of course, all of the people in the cars were delighted to stop at green lights. None of them got out of their cars brandishing cell phones as weapons and of course, no one in a white mini-van attempted to drive through the crowd like a drunken publicist. Wait, yes they did but they weren't a publicist, they were just drunken. Certain seedier parts of the ride, near USC, offered the most opposition. We seemed to disturb some patrons of the sex trade in Exposition Park who had to start up their SUV and drive away in a huff when one looked up to find them surrounded by 200 people on bikes.

When everyone flooded the front steps of the Natural History museum the cops showed and everyone started cheering and again, mimicking the sirens. Then the white mini-van showed up again but this time they had all this beer and were listening to Slayer. I think it might have been a different group of people. Some people were actually excited to see us go by and would cheer and honk. We definitely got mixed reivews.

The ride was easily 15 miles long and ended somewhere around Santa Fe Street and 2nd downtown at some warehouse party. We left at that point, partially for fear it might be the warehouse where those people got shot on Halloween and partially because it if was that warehouse, we hate the people who run it and we didn't want to give them our money.

The End.

12 April 2005 - 5:40 PM

previous * next