"The Acura LA Bike Tour" 03.02.08

Once a year, over twenty miles of the Los Angeles roadways are blocked off to vehicular traffic to allow cyclists to dominate our city's poorly maintained streets for 'The Acura LA Bike Tour'. At around 5am, cyclists began creeping out of their homes and exiting freeway ramps with their bikes on racks (tisk, tisk) to get ready for the ride. The crowd of cyclists was as diverse as the types of bicycles in the tour. Tandems, tall bikes, mini tall bikes, road bikes, touring bikes, mountain bikes, single-speeds, fixed gears, beach cruisers, recumbents, sports wheelchairs, cyclocross, bmx, and tricycles. The route began at Exposition Park near USC and headed toward Downtown LA, East LA, Koreatown, Mid-Wilshire, and back to the beginning.

Some Los Angeles based bicycling crews were gearing up for the bike tour starting as early as Saturday night and early Sunday morning. L.A. Fixed took the early bird approach to avoid the crowd and began the route at 3am. And while they had the blockaded city streets to themselves, they missed out on the exhilaration of being surrounded by a ocean of cyclists, riding east as the sun rose and warmed their face. The Midnight Ridazz took the "one of us" approach by beginning at 6am with the herd of thousands of cyclists. One cyclists pulled a trailer with a sound system and a playlist so good (Joy Division, Talking Heads, Gang Of Four), that you forgot that you had been up for over twenty-four hours waiting for the bike tour to begin. The Los Angelopes garnered the most adoration and attention with their unique, colorful, and innovative home-made bicycles. Crowds that stood on the streets to support the cyclists with cheers, signs, and cups of water cheered even louder when a Los Angelopes tall bike or mini tall bike rode by. It was as though we had a new governor of California and he or she were passing out certificates for free health insurance. The crowds loved it!

Other bizarre, unusual, and/or unpredictable incidents that occurred during the Acura LA Bike Tour & LA Marathon was the dangling of donuts and handing out of beer to the participants by The Cacophony Society of Los Angeles. And an embarrassing LAPD officer threatened to ticket a cycylist for 'vandalism' because they were cheerfully offering "Free Green Mustaches!" to other cyclists at the finish line, who were enthusiastically consenting to the face painting. Only in LA.