My goal was to break 400 miles in an October and somehow I managed. I know for a “real” cyclist it’s nothing, but I don’t suffer from that condition, so for me it was a nice accomplishment. Like normal I did end up getting sick – 3 times! – but I somehow was able to still get enough days in. The last week has been particularly difficult. Monday I was flat on my back, don’t even talk to me sick. Tuesday, I realized I had left my cycling shoes at work. I rode anyways in my worn out Van’s, both feet went numb, my phone (mp3 player) hated me, and I had to take detours. Not to mention I had a late start due to an early morning dentist appointment. My teeth were awesome, but still it’s never fun. Wednesday, my knees were sore for some reason, probably due to riding Tuesday without the right gear, and I had to leave work late which meant riding home in the dark. Again, I know all of the “real” cyclists immediately want to chime in with how the dark is nothing, and they’ve endured much worse… I guess I don’t care much since this is my blog and I’m just an average joe that needs to get his cholesterol under control. Anyways, back to my complaining, I still haven’t put the front light on my bike or converted my sunglasses to the clear lenses, so riding in the dark was a pain especially since I was in some pain. Regardless, I accomplished what I set out to do and even finished a day early.

Tomorrow begins November. I have no goal for November since November has historically been a horrible month to me in regards to riding. Not only have I been frequently sick, the sun sets at 4:30, and then there’s always 12 billion things to do relating to the holidays. Not to say that I don’t like November, I actually love it, but I know it will test my discipline and diligence. I just wish they wouldn’t do the time change thing…

Yesterday during my evening commute I exited the SART (Santa Ana River Trail) at Chapman to test out a new route.  This was after getting rear whipped by a stinky guy on a crappy, heavy mountain bike!  The guy didn’t even have any calves.  I managed to keep pace but it seemed like I was working and he was cruising…

So yeah, I exited on Chapman which actually wasn’t half bad for a bridge with no shoulder followed by a freeway onramp.  Compared to Orangewood earlier this week it was actually enjoyable.

I then turned south on Flower which wasn’t particularly busy but the asphalt was pretty lousy.  From Flower I turned east on Almond Ave which turned out to be a nice ride.  The surface isn’t great, but it’s not horrible.  There were some cars parked in the right hand lane at times but not a ton of them.  From Flower to Cambridge I was only passed 6 times (and this was during rush hour), and the cars had room to pass me without having to cross the center divider.

The route also takes you right by Orange Cycle which I’ve been to, but it seems like a plus to have a bike shop available to you on your way home.  The route also takes you right by the Orange Circle if you wanted to take a break.

I ended the route at Cambridge which has a bike lane, allowing you to go south to Santiago Creek bike trail or north up to Walnut.

I don’t know that I’ll ever take this route again, but it’s not a bad way to go.

Yesterday was evidently a SART (Santa Ana River Trail) cleaning day. There were trash trucks out in full effect. In riding by today, it appears that any changes were temporary. Not that I don’t appreciate the effort, because I absolutely do. Maybe even as much as I appreciate street sweepers. I got to say, I really do appreciate street sweepers; it’s amazing how quickly the roads can become almost unrideable for a road bike if they are not cleaned weekly.

Anyways, as I was passing the First Street under crossing or maybe it was Warner, there were 4 cops cars on the “on ramp” to SART.  I’ve been searching the news for any idea of what was going on but to no avail.

I did come across a series of stories about people throwing crappy bikes out in front of cyclists and they fly down the underpasses.  After the cyclist crashes, they beat them and steal they’re bikes.  It’s not a pleasant thought, and it makes me wonder why the cities or county or whoever’s in charge leaves so much room under the bridges for people to hideout.

On another note, significant progress has been made on the Edinger bridge, which hopefully means the Harbor detour may soon become a thing of the past.  I’ll be the first to admit I won’t miss riding my bike down Harbor one bit.  So far I’ve had to take the detour twice this week.

Update: CrimeMapping.com shows a disturbing the peace violation at 7:26am near the the riverbed and 1st St.  Maybe someone got pissed that the garbage trucks took their stuff.

Regardless, November 3rd will mark the end of daylight savings time.  This means that on November the sun will set at 4:57pm.  Which means the sun will set before I get off work, which of course means riding home in the dark. Then it will be March 2014 before I can get home before sunset again.  Four cold, dark, lonely months.  I think we should just adopt daylight savings time year round.  Maybe I can convince my work…

Anyways, I’m thinking about finding some alternate routes that avoid the SART during the dark months.  It’s just too easy to pick off a lone rider at night, especially since all the MAMILs (middle aged men in lycra) riding in their herds and the young male UCI students with something to prove have all abandoned the trail.

We will see, I’ve never had a problem, but it’s pretty crappy that other people have.  It would be amazing if someday the O.C. made an attempt to be cyclist friendly instead of just telling people to ride to work on the sides of buses.

Fire in Orange

Somehow I missed this by a few minutes on Friday.  On Monday, I rode by the same area and was startled to see it blackened!

The fire was at approximately 33.778175,-117.84617

According to my GPS, here’s where I was :

<trkpt lat=”33.778144999999995″ lon=”-117.84625199999999″><ele>21.899999618530273</ele><time>2013-10-04T23:46:53Z</time></trkpt>
<trkpt lat=”33.778104″ lon=”-117.846064″><ele>24.299999237060547</ele><time>2013-10-04T23:46:57Z</time></trkpt>

23:46 – 7hours for PST – 12 (to get to 12hr time) = 4:46pm

According to the article the fire was called in before 5pm.  Pretty crazy.

So I’ve been looking at a particular route on Google maps for some time. It starts at the Santa Ana River Trail (SART) and Orangewood (Walnut), goes past Chapman University and Orange High School and ends at the Santiago Creek Trail near Grijalva Park.  Google keeps telling me that this is the safest route to get where I’m going.

I’ll admit I was skeptical, but I’m always looking for safe ways to get from the Santiago Creek Trail to SART so I guess I was skeptically hopeful?  So yesterday evening, I took the route for my evening commute.

When I got off SART on Orangewood, I was immediately greeted with no bike trail or shoulder.  The far right lane is a right turn only lane to get on the southbound 57.  The second lane had the option of going straight or getting into a lane to get on the northbound 57.  The cars that are turning are getting on the 57 and are not going slow.  I was able to get into the far right hand lane and take the whole lane since there wasn’t enough room for a car and a bike, then I had to split the lanes between the cars that were going straight and the ones that were getting on the northbound 57.

I’ll admit I’ve gotten somewhat used to these kind of issues, but I do try to avoid them, and I would not consider them “bike friendly” in any way.

Still trying to maintain some optimism I thought to myself maybe the intro to the route is a little rough but the rest of the route will make up for it.

As I proceeded down Orangewood there were two lanes, but the right hand lane is not particularly large and the road winds a bit.  While not horrible, I did have a constant flow of cars on my left elbow, and the bends made me nervous that a texting driving could be an issue.

Orangewood turns into Walnut at Main St. and enters a more residential neighborhood.  I figured this must be the good part.  Turns out it wasn’t good at all.  There were cars parked along the street for the entire stretch.  The remaining lane is not large enough for a car and a bike to share, and the steady oncoming traffic made it impossible for cars to drive around me.  So I was forced to take the lane to the aggravation of the motorists around me.

Passing by Chapman University I had to evade a young driver pulling out of a parking lot while texting.  Near Orange High School, I watched a young driver run a stop sign.  While this could happen anywhere, there was in general a lot of chaos and experimental driving near the schools.

The route did get pretty decent past Tustin St, for that last quarter of a mile or so.  I’m going to submit my recommendations to Google Maps, but alas, you can’t believe everything Google says.

Last Friday my wife sent me a mysterious text asking me if I wanted to picked up from work.  I ride to/from work almost everyday, and I’ve decided to try to beat my personal best for miles in a month this October.  So why would I want to waste a perfectly good opportunity to add some miles to my monthly total?  After all Fridays are one of the best opportunities to add miles, even if you’re tired (and I normally am) you know that you have two full days to recover.

So I told her I was fine and asked why I would want to be picked up.  She told me it was windy over where we live.  I explained to her that I am superman and a little breeze never slowed me down.

Turns out it wasn’t a breeze.  It was the dreaded Santa Ana’s, the devil winds!  For those of you that live in Socal, they need no introduction, but for those of you who live elsewhere and because I’m bit bored let me explain…

We pay a lot for homes and for rent in Southern California, in return we expect the weather to hover around 70 degrees.  If it drops into the 50’s, we complain that it’s too cold, if it breaks 90 we huddle around our A/C units and wait for FEMA.  If you choose to ignore the seasons completely, you could probably manage to wear t-shirts and jeans all year.  However, several times a year the weather betrays us, and the whole region goes into chaos.  One such case is when it rains (for those in the midwest, when I say rain, imagine drizzle); drivers take it as divine instruction to rear end one another, and in the absence of another vehicle to simply drive off the street.

Another such case is the Santa Ana’s.  A high pressure system of dry air forms out in the Mojave Desert, then squeezes it through our mountain passes (for those in Colorado, think foothills, for those in Alaska think… flat?) on it’s way to the ocean. Idle cigarette butts and sparks from campfires are transformed into massive wildfires with 100 mph winds and single digit humidity.  Satellite pictures of Socal during the Santa Ana’s show dust and ash filling the atmosphere even miles out to sea.

Our streets become almost unrecognizable as it’s covered in debris.  Landscaping and trashcans find their ways on to freeways, billboards are shredded, and signage of types is redistributed through the region.  For those of us who make our abode in Socal we feel like we’re on vacation to one of those other places that you visit and then go home…

So… after ignoring my wife’s appeal for good sense, I started off from work into the wind.  When I say into the wind, I mean directly into the wind.  Due to a lack of a proper windsock I went on accuweather’s app to see which the direction was coming from, if you drew a line from my work to my house that line would be the exact direction of the winds.

During the first stretch of my commute, I go beneath 12 overpasses.  I suppose I could say encounter 12 underpasses?  Anyways, I normally take these underpasses rather aggressively with the idea that if I build enough speed going down one side, I’ll have enough momentum to get back up the other side without killing myself.  As I dropped into the first underpass to my shock and horror I found myself slowing down instead of speeding up.  The wind was being funneled through the underpass with such pressure that the force from the wind was counteracting the force due to gravity.  I tried to stand momentarily to get more force out of my legs, instead I found my body to be a sail, with each gust pushing me off balance.  I dropped to some ridiculous low gear, and sat and spun and spun and spun…

To make matters worse, the amount of debris on the bike trail and streets began to accumulate, with each mile it became more difficult to avoid the branches and “urban landscaping” that wanted to pop my tires and break my spokes.  Some considerable branches and whatever that brown bark like stuff on palm trees is, broke off in front of me, requiring me to take evasive actions.

One of the natural benefits of the Santa Ana’s is to spread seeds and spores over a wide region increasing biodiversity.  I think I ended up with a whole angiosperm in my sinuses.  The wonderful flora, fauna, and fungi mixed with the single digit humidity made my throat burn and my head throb.

But at last I made it, and felt accomplished in some childish way, much like a kid who’s just burnt an ant or something.  I paid for the experience throughout the entire weekend, but was able to get back on the bike the Monday morning and start a new week.  So 7 days into October I sit at 107 miles and today is not done.

Orange County Bike Trails

Google has a nifty little feature, for those of you who don’t know, that shows many bike trails around the world.  Trails are broken down into whether it’s an actual bike trail, a road with a bike lane, or just a bike friendly street.

For my rant today, I would like to point out the somewhat non-revolutionary point that Orange County has been segregated into two worlds.

I live east of the 55 and work west of the 55.  As I began commuting on my bike I made a grim discovery.  There is no way to easily cross the 55/5 barrier from South Orange County to North Orange County.  I mean at some point you take your life in your hands and go for it, but there’s no simple way through.

Looking at the map, another observation becomes apparent to those of us that have spent a good deal of time out on the roads, what passes for a bike friendly road in North Orange County is a far cry from a bike friendly road in South Orange County.  Looking at the map some optimist decided the whole stretch of Taft from the Santa River past the 55 was cyclist friendly.  I understand taking that route, and I have on numerous occasions because of a lack of a safer route, but it not cyclist friendly.  It’s merely better than Lincoln or Katella.

The Santiago Creek Trail gets you past the 55 and the 5, but like most of North Orange County’s bike trails, it leads to nowhere.  You have to get off the Santiago Creek Trail prematurely and enjoy the fun that is Main Street in Santa Ana.  This problem could be easily remedied except for the fact that a small number of Santa Ana’s top 1% don’t want a bike path through public land in their neighborhood.

From the 55/5 junction down the 55 corridor to the backbay no one even pretends that there is a way across the concrete curtain.  You can go down Main St. in Santa Ana past the airport (and I have), but I would never call it bike friendly.

You could go all the way down to the backbay and take 22nd to Victoria (which I’ve done on occasion, but there’s a reason 22nd isn’t green, and for most people I know, it’s a long way out of their way, for a marginal solution.

I supposed someone could counter with the question as to what makes a bike friendly road.  At least two thirds of the people I see on bikes in Orange County are over 50 or under 20.  Most of the routes and bike options I see in North Orange County are not safe for a jr. high student or a senior citizen, but that’s what they’re stuck with.

I see signs on buses and on the occasional billboard telling people to ride their bikes, but Orange County is not serious about this.  It is not safe to ride your bike in Orange County, not really..

After finishing September strong, it’s back to zero to begin October. It’s always hard to get that first mile in, it would be so much easier to take a day off. I brought baby wipes to work today to go with my tums and Motrin. The creature comforts of a cyclist. I think I want to try a new chamois cream to leave at work for the ride home. The cow cream has been working great for the ride in, I might just get more of that. If this post is TMI just know I’m trying to warn you of the perils of urban cycling. If want to get in shape go to the gym and make friends with a stationary.

Had a cop stop me today to make sure I wasn’t go into Floral Park the wrong way?!! Ended up having to go down 17th past the college. Gets pretty tight, cars were friendly close. Oh well, change of scenery. At least there was no Harbor detour today.

Set a new personal best for miles on the bike in a month. What’s interesting is that my previous best was last September. Matter of fact three of my top 5 mileage months have been Septembers. Octobers are normally pretty decent, but somewhere in October I get sick and have to shut it down. Four years in a row. This year I’m determined to make it through. I’ll try some new vitamins and bag balm, and see if I can break 400 miles in an October.

Other notes from today, had to take the Harbor Blvd detour again today, still don’t know who thought that was a good idea. A cop pulled someone over in the bike line while going up the overpass, pulling into traffic on an hill, always fun. Also got chased by a stray miniature black dog, the mean little sucker held about 15mph for probably 30 yards. Still don’t know why people like mean little dogs…