pedestrian saga

My new mantra– Just show up.

For a few weeks, I’ve been excitedly admiring Bike Summer from the creature comfort of my living room until suddenly the celebration is almost over. High time to get out there and ride (and earn myself the right to sport the gorgeous Bici Verano Luche Libre guy). Nothing like cycling for chow or cinema to motivate me, and today it was the good folks of Different Spokes and their promise of dim sum in Chinatown to bring me out.

“But what if they’re hard-core racers, all muscular on their sleek road bikes, and they laugh my flabby, dorky, hybrid-riding, hetero, honky ass out of the parking lot? And 30 miles? How humiliating if I couldn’t keep up! What if there are hills? What if it turns out to be a small group of regulars plus flabby, dorky, hybrid-riding, hetero, honky me?”

Shut up! Just show up. It also helped to tell the bike nut I’m trying awfully hard to impress that I was planning to go.

I’m so happy I went. I’m so high from this ride. Starting near Home in Burbank, I connected the familiar territory of Griffith Park and the L.A. River path to the should-be-familiar-’cause-I-used-to-live-around-there-but-it’s-really-not terrain of Silver Lake near the reservoir and Echo Park near the lake to the new ground of Angelino Heights and Chinatown via Bunker Hill.

Angelino Heights. “There’s a steep hill coming up, but there are beautiful, historic Victorian homes to admire at the top!” Bunker Hill. “There’s another hill here, but we’ll stop to admire Disney Hall at the top!” And you know, I huffed up those hills, and admire the views from the top I did! Also had a lovely conversation with a county security officer on the Disney Hall plaza. He moved here from Detroit two years ago, likes the weather all right, but finds many people unfriendly. He works double shifts.

On to destination: dim sum at Empress Pavilion, this hopping and crazy-huge local institution. Dozens of servers push around carts offering stuffed dumplings and things. At my table, we’d get a vague idea of what something was, accept a plate of it, and the server would stamp our card. I ate, um, steamed and fried dumplings, stuffed with… stuff? Shrimp and scallops mostly. (Tried to avoid the pork.) I remember a green pepper in there somewhere, and I snarfed down seconds of the fried calamari, thereby committing seafood sins to last me the whole rest of the Year of the Rooster. Savored a pot of tea and the conversation of friendly strangers.

Belly fed, I posed for a group photo (I’m the short one, leftish, bright future) before setting out for Elysian Park. “And Then Some” turned out to be a daunting climb through this neighborhood of Dodger Stadium, but with the exception of one major gear slip at mid hill (certainly due to my graceless and panicky downshifting), I managed to keep pedaling. There gathered some dark clouds of doubt about the time I was wheezing my way past the Barlow Respiratory Hospital, and I briefly considered giving up and checking myself in, but I prevailed and reaped the massive thrill of zooming downhill on Stadium Way (notably faster than the traffic creeping south on adjacent I-5).

I parted ways with the group in Griffith Park and headed Home on Riverside grooving to the momentum of accomplishment. (”Flabbiness and dorkdom, I banish you, for I am Iron Thighs, sultry velo goddess!”) Home… to rouse the dogs for a walk! Plow through the rest of the Cherry Garcia, shower, and nap? Bah! A nap is out of the question now that I’ve been turned on to the amazing eleki boom of Takeshi Terauchi and the Bunnys! Suddenly I feel a manic urge to mop the floors…

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 26th, 2005 at 6:41 pm and is filed under Loco-motion, Muckamuck. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.