Douchebag Arsonist Sentenced to Prison

The other day Gary Allen Lintz, a freckle faced 44-year-old who was featured here last year on charges of trying to burn Griffith Park to the ground was found guilty and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Think Gary will be called fire crotch in prison?

A big reason why Gary was apprehended stems from the fact that while he was attempting his big escape Gary tried hide himself within a group of spandex clad cyclists.

Hopefully Gary will spend his incarceration fine tuning his criminal skills so if bicycles are still around when he's released in 2025 he'll be a little more aware of his surroundings and be caught riding with a bottle of kerosene in his bottle cage.

Why-o, why-o, did you ever leave Ohio?

Came across this chap yesterday on my way to the post office.

He was already waiting at the light and taking into account his bag and the lack of gears on his whip, I came to a stop behind him as logic dictates that a rida like this will naturally be fast.

While waiting for the light to change I was able get a closer look at this fella and realized he wasn't the urban street warrior I'd assumed him to be. Nope. He was fresh off the Greyhound from Ohio.

Had to be, because:

1) A trucker cap. Specifically a "Vote for Pedro" trucker cap. Even the ironic wearing of that headgear died in 2005 but things are always a little slow to catch on in the Midwest.

2) A Patagonia messenger bag. Really? Must have been a hold over from his My-two-favorite-things-in-life-are-shell-necklaces-and-the-Dave-Matthews-Band phase.

3) The rolled up black slacks and white shirt isn't the hot new summer time courier style but the time honored uniform of a waiter.

Nothing wrong with that. Guy's gotta earn a living somehow but please, Fresh Faced Youngster from Ohio, ride your bike a little quicker. I'm proud to say the worst decision I made yesterday was assuming you'd be riding your bike above a walking pace. Maybe you were just taking it easy since your chain was so loose it was dragging it on the ground. Next time you have some tip money burning a whole in your pocket, don't blow it on a Napoleon Dynamite Talking Key Chain but go down to the hardware store and get yourself a wrench so that you can ride a little faster.

Signed,

The Guy Passed You on a Beach Cruiser.

Cat III racers, oh how you disappoint me.

12 seconds in, suddenly the III's look like a bunch of V's.

Just in time for Mother's Day: Fetus Sweaters

Tomorrow is Bike Night at the Hammer Museum. If your ideal cup of tea on a Thursday evening includes hanging out with hipsters while eating vegetarian snacks and watching Breaking Away before experiencing an experimental violin/cello duo, you might want to go check it out.

One of the organizers of Bike Night at the Hammer is Lisa Anne Auerbach a textile artist, photographer and bike advocate. In case you're wondering what it takes to add artistic flair to the textile medium, a good start would knitting a protest sweater featuring not one but eight fetuses.

You've just been served tampon in a tea cup!

The Los Angeles Times has a nice story about Lisa Anne in which she labels Breaking Away as a film that's "super cheesey and kooky" then goes on to give it credit as "the film that spawned a hundred thousand bike people."

Lisa Anne then goes on to explain how she took up riding at the start of the Iraq War "to abstain from the oil dependancy that she saw as the root of Middle Eastern confilcts. She soon discovered she was 'addicted' to riding."

It's funny how the start of the Iraq War coinsides with the start of the fixed gear phenomenon. Talk about one of those things that makes you go hmmm.

However, on her personal blog Lisa describes her affinity for Breaking Away in further detail. Apparently she rememebers watching it in 1979 but but somehow missed seeing it again over the next 20 years until a fateful night in a hotel room:

"Anyhow, I saw Breaking Away again in a hotel in Utah when I was doing a story for a ski magazine ten years ago or so and I was totally jazzed. I'm pretty sure that seeing that film again, sitting on a yucky hotel bed while outside a storm raged, led somehow to the hanging up of my skis and the embrace of my two wheels. Skiing's great, but you have to go somewhere special and have a lot of gear. Biking's something you can do everywhere and it can change your life and you don't usually end up with frostbite. At least in LA, you don't. It's rare to find a movie that has an impact on your life. It's a cheesey, romantic, silly, sweet film, Breaking Away is, but it crept into my consciousness right at the right times."

So, what I think she's trying to say is that it's hard to ski on the streets of Los Angeles. Is that right? I never knew there was a rule that says you if you ski you can't also ride a bike.

You'd think as an artist, Lisa Anne would have been able to conceptualize a way to do both. Couldn't she have knitted a ski rack to her bike?

I might actually stop by the Hammer and check out the scene mainly because I'm intrigued by the idea of an all vegetarian spread. While hipsters and bacon seem to be heading towards a rocky divorce, bacon addiction is not an easy thing to shake and might just have to roll up with my lil' hotdog cart and set up shop if only to try and enicte a brawl between veggies and carnivores.

Hey buddy, your child will remember the trauma.

I stumbled across this finely engineered machine the other day and was socked with a flashback deep into the last century.

As a wee lad, a lot of time was spent wedged into a rickety plastic seat which was bolted to a rickety sparkle green Holiday Cruiser 10 speed that my dear mother picked up at a Holiday Gas Station in 1970 during her road trip to start college.

The bike was an impulse purchase along with a pack of gum. As I write this, I'm confused as to why a gas station would even be selling bicycles. It's not like a bicycle would have been any cheaper than a tank of gas, even back in the days of yore. Maybe gas stations sold bikes as a last resort remedy for all the broken down Volkswagens that would have been on the road during that era.

Talk about one of those things that makes you go hmm...

I would just love to be there the day daddy decides to branch out and give his son a front row seat introduction to the world of mountain biking. I have a hunch the look daddy will have on his face when he realizes he's impaled his son on a bar end will be rather priceless.

Apocalypse La Jolla

Last weekend I took a little road trip down south. I only went 110 miles down the freeway but I might as well have slipped into a portal and taken a trip to Bizarro World. By all accounts La Jolla was nothing short of a seaside bicycle paradise. Took a 60 mile ride and all but 20 of those miles had bike lanes. The ones that didn't weren't exactly mean streets as motorists were so friendly it was truly confusing.

Really? You're going to wait for lil' old me to make a left? Really? Cause in any other part of the world, that move just sets the table for a trip over the hood of a car. But if you do insist, I'll go right ahead.

About halfway through the ride I realized that this bicycle utopia was just a very clever ruse to disguise the fact that the people on bikes are by far the biggest kooks in the Western Hemisphere. Seriously, you could take the snootiest memeber of Velo Club La Grange and even he would think the average La Jolla cyclist's butthole was wound up more than a little tight.

What I'm about to write is a the request of my therapist. She said that writing down a traumatic experience, is a great way to take ownership and turn the tables on what traumatized you is a big step in moving forward with your life.

There I was in La Jolla. Riding along the coast minding my own business. It was about 8:30 in the morning. The Pharcyde was playing on the iPod and the clouds were starting to break. A great sign that the day was shaping up to be very nice.

Then suddenly without warning, the distinct sound of Wagner filled the air and the breaking clouds started to gather once again.

From behind I heard the whir of a giant fan blade and turned over my shoulder to see what was causing a noise not of this earth. I saw a guy on a tri bike. Then I blinked. When my eyes opened three were two more guys on tri bikes flanking the first one. If you are familiar with The Empire Strikes Back, this is what's known as "attack pattern delta."

It didn't take long to realize I was the next target in their sights. The were the cheetahs and I was the hunted gazelle so close they could already taste me.

The only problem was that I was already crusing at 20mph and this pod of triathletes, despite being in a paceline in their aerobars were only able to manage somewhere around 20.1mph which effectively means I was swarmed by the wild beast that is a group of triathletes pacelining in their aerobars.

I can't believe I was just able to write that without breaking down. But I did and now I'm stronger. For I have been in the belly of the beast, looked death in the eye, gave my self paper cuts then just jumped in shark infested waters for a laugh and a swim. I have been through the black hole and came out the other side without fear.

Thank you tri guys for making me afraid of nothing.

Quick, somebody get C-3PO on the horn...

We need him to calculate the odds as to whether or not this guy has ever been laid.

I'm not exactly a bookmaker but I'd wager that the chances of this guy having touched a girl who wasn't employed as a Bomber Girl at Interbike '02 are certainly greater than the line of 3, 720 to one Threepio dropped on Han Solo as he pointed the Millennium Falcon into the nearest asteroid field in a valiant effort to escape Vader's wrath.

What I like about his guy, aside from the fact that he might quite possibly be the biggest bike geek west of Guitar Ted, is that every possible nuance of his being was carefully chosen to ensure that he was the king of the bike geeks gathered at the Hope Rides Again Ride and that he would not be getting laid while in Hollywood.

Working from top to bottom:

1) Mellow Johnny's cycling cap. Did he take a trip to Austin or mail order one like a punk? I didn't find out because I didn't want to talk to him.

2) The mustache. It must be a newer addition since it has yet to be shaped like a handlebar.

3) You obviously can't tell by the pic but this gent is wearing a LiveWrong t-shirt. Ha-ha-ha what a punk. Everyone else is wearing a LiveStrong t-shirt and he's proudly rocking a LiveWrong shirt. Oh I'm sure he'll still be laughing about it right up to the point where Lance gives him cancer.

4) Tweed knickers that are more like elf pants. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this pair of chick repellers were made at home while watching Klunkerz for the 42nd time.

5) Budweiser socks. If you're going deep you might as well put on every stupid accoutrement at your disposal. Seeing these Budweiser socks gave me a little flashback to 1980 when I was dropped off at grandma's for the weekend and before she took me on a field trip to her favorite bar, I attemped to put on three different sets of Underoos so that I could be three times more impressive to the neighborhood drunks. Oh how I had visions of them being in awe of the kid who had Bobo Fett, Luke Skywalker, and Green Lantern Underoos. Unfortunately grandma brought me back to earth by reminding me that she wasn't going to be doing any laundry and that if I stuck to my genius plan I'd be out of clean underpants after day one. OK, I now realize I probably should have saved that story for the therapist.

6) Sidi Dominators. These at least make sense since he's got a mountain bike and all but for a two mile ride you gotta think this man would have been capable of riding sans special shoes. And I only bring this up because there was a time back in the last century when I walked into a happening nightspot with Dominators strapped to my feet and had a conversation that went like this:

"No, these aren't rock climbing shoes they're for biking."

"Oh cool, what kind of motorcycle to do you ride."

"I don't have a motorcycle. I have a mountain bike. It's locked up outside if you'd like to see it."

"Uh no thanks. My friend just showed up. I have to go."

7) Finally, we've got the bike. Rigid. Singlespeed. 29'er. Pretty hardcore rig to most people but then again I have to assume someone of his caliber is only slummin' it with his 29'er until his custom 36'er is finished off. My favorite details by far though are the purple anodized bits one big ugly statement that this guy has been riding since the dawn of man- or at least 1993.