Santa Ana River Trail Exploration

The Santa Ana River Trail is convenient in so many ways. It's only about 2 miles from the wigwam I live in. It offers a good 30-something mile ride along unhindered, car-free pavement. I usually ride it starting where it intersects with Orangewood Avenue and go South to the beach. Then I turn around and go back to my wigwam where I raise griffins and miniature ostriches. The other day I thought, what if instead of going South I went the other way. You know, what the hipsters call "Ironic South". I went all the way to the end, which is how I imagine Christopher Columbus felt when he finally fell off the edge of the sea into oblivion, or what we call modern-day Texas. Before I got to the very end though, there was a lot going on. 

First I had to pass through the Gateway of the Five Freds.

Flat bars and an aero-tuck. The Five Freds race through the ages.

Having passed through the Gateway of the Five Freds I made my way closer to the Ironic South Pole. Soon though I had to answer a riddle while keeping my hands in plain sight:

"How many SWAT guys does it take to parallel park a truck?"

It takes 2 SWAT guys to park a SWAT-mobile.

I was lucky enough to answer the riddle correctly and go on my way before the SWAT trolls found out I was transporting expired NyQuil for sale in the neighboring county. As I rode along the path I noticed they were building a new train station. I rode by and yelled at the construction workers telling them to forget all the OSHA crap and hurry the hell up. 

They tried to appease me by working faster but I still wasn't satisfied.

GO FASTER!

Having fulfilled my duty of yelling at people and acting like a complete jerk I came upon a miracle. A traffic jam had formed and people just started abandoning their cars and walking. Either that or people were parking really far away from the Honda Center and walking towards it for the latest Backstreet Boys reunion concert while others simply sat in traffic for a really long time. Nevertheless I buzzed past all the commotion and continued. 

My mission was to ride the Santa Ana River Trail as far to the Ironic South as I could. 

That's right ladies, walking is a good idea.

I soon came upon a winding road with yellow flowers. I also yelled at the flowers as I did to the construction workers. They did not respond, which was disappointing. I don't intend to yell at the flowers again because riding my bike and photographing them at the same time is exhausting.

Curvy roads with flowers on either side make for good riding.

I trudged on and rode at my cruising speed of 35 mph (I get closeout deals on equestrian grade EPO) but soon I had to come to a screeching halt. Some IDIOT had installed a fence in the middle of the path and it was LOCKED! I started cursing and stomping my off brand "Especializados" shoes so that thunder echoed throughout the land. As the townspeople cowered in fear I soon realized that I had gone as far to the Ironic South as I could and that I finally reached the end of the Santa Ana River Trail. I claimed the end of the trail for the Queen and decided to return towards my wigwam.

The end of the line. Sort of.

Was it dangerous? 

No not really unless you're scared of homeless people that live under the bridges. They have a habit of walking onto the path without looking which can get interesting when they pop up around blind corners. Riding the Santa Ana River Trail has pretty much always been a good time for me. Now that I know where it ends I can finally say I know the entire length of it like I know the names of my miniature ostriches and griffins.

Was it tiring? 

The way towards the Ironic South Pole was easy as cake. The way towards the regular South was hard. The wind doesn't like to let me hold my 35 mph cruising speed and I had to slow down and get into an aero-tuck not much unlike the aero-tuck of the Five Freds.

Did I make any friends? 

Haha, no.

So there. If you ever wondered what the Santa Ana River Trail was like you can thank me for finally giving you the most in-depth guide that there ever was. You're welcome.

Masi Gran Corsa

Please accept my somewhat-sincere apology for not posting any updates for a while. I happen to have a life that is obsessed with pulling me away from the only thing that really matters, which is updating this blog.

Before you prepare yourself for a blog update full of humor and cheesy rhetoric I must confess something:

The only focus of this post is to convince you to purchase a beautiful Masi Gran Corsa that I've acquired from my vast network of contacts. Basically just people that no longer have a need for a bike either because they are getting old or lack space to store bikes. In this case both.

Masi Gran Corsa bike frames were built in Italy and shipped bare to California where they were painted, assembled and sold. In terms of craftsmanship they are some of the nicest riding steel bikes available.  This model is a 62 cm sized frame although I measured 60 cm from the center of the bottom bracket to the center of the top-tube. Either way it's too big for me. If you want more information regarding Masi bikes don't ask me. I don't know much about these bikes but I became somewhat of an expert after reading about them here.

The bike has a full Campagnolo Record Titanium 9 speed gruppo including the hubs and headset. The carbon brake levers are without signs of scrapes or other damage. This bike was babied and well-cared for. It comes with a computer and a set of Wellgo SPD pedals.

Take a look at the pictures...

Reynolds 531 gets all the steel junkies excited.

Full Campagnolo gruppo.

9 speed straight block cassette. It's almost a 10 speed!

Hub-ba hub-ba!

New tires.

Saddle has MASI written all over it. Can you tell?

I shot these wheels with my gun and my camera, and nothing happened. Bullet proof.

Old Bikes, New Gimmicks

Here in California it's been sunny and warm for like 2 weeks. It's been so warm in fact, that I've started researching ways to stay cool. You see there's nice weather, the kind that doesn't require you to unzip your jersey, then there's half-unzipped jersey weather, and finally there's totally unzipped, flapping in the wind jersey weather. That's basically all the types of weather I know, but now I've learned there's a new kind of weather that requires you to pay $250 for a device that basically pisses on you.

Meet the KoldRush. A device that you've never needed, until NOW!

My favorite thing about this video is that neither of them ever acknowledge that they could just use a water bottle to do the exact same thing. Perhaps carrying an extra 5 pounds of water and AA batteries makes more sense. Especially since you can cool yourself off while you wait for your wife to pick you up when you get a flat tire. A flat tire that you can't fix because you've ditched your saddle bag for a water dispenser.

Save yourself some money and just do this:

Ancient technology called a "plastic water bottle".

In my last post I mentioned that a friend of mine found a bike in the trash. The bike was a Raleigh mixte and it looked like this:

It fit his wife so he asked me to get it set up for her to ride. Her only requirement was that she couldn't ride the bike with its current handle-bars. Her idea of a nice bike is just a beach cruiser so "roadie bars" were too weird for her. So I grabbed my tools and started working.

I started by hacking off the bars with a grinder. I know I should have pried the stem open but I couldn't find my good screwdriver so I ended up with this:

I lack finesse, apparently.

The new bars!

Then I tried to true the rear wheel which was so badly bent that I ended up cracking the nipples from over-tightening. When I learned the rim had a flat spot on it I ditched the wheels altogether and ordered some new ones.

The new wheels are rounder, true-er, and shiny-er than the old ones. I think that's an improvement.

Busted nipple. Did I mention I lack finesse?

The new wheels.

For a bike that was found in the trash it wasn't in bad shape. No obvious signs of rust, bearings were in good shape and the chain has plenty of life left in it. It needed brake pads, wheels and some serious derailler adjustments but it's more bike than what you can get at Wal-Mart or Target. You also get the satisfaction of knowing that someone put a lot of time into building this bike in the first place.

It's brown, I know but brown was cool at one point in history.

Here's some detail shots for the bike dorks:

Awesome details at the head tube.

Back in the day bike manufacturers branded the components even though they were made by someone else.

This bike was sold originally in Deerfield IL at "The Pony Shop".

The head tube is split into two narrow tubes with the rear brake cable in the middle.

SunTour downtube shifters.

Yes it's a Brooks but it's made of vinyl not leather, so don't get all excited.