Riding the Bike

 As I've noted before, I love my bikes.  I was out riding today (Across the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles if anyone cares.)  when I was passed by a whole bunch of guys on fixies.  Most of them were on the standard, metal frame conversion jobs, but one guy was riding a converted Cervelo.  Now, it might be possible to find a Cervelo frame, on sale,  under $2,000, but not a full bike.  Too, the guy riding it was taller than me but he was on a smaller bike.  He was also wearing those basketball type shorts and an old ratty tee shirt.

Maybe this was a guy with far more money than sense, but the average cyclist, willing to put down all that money for a top of the line bike isn't going to convert it to a fixed gear, he's not going to buy a frame that's way too small for him, and he's probably going to wear the whole Lycra thing.  That bike was almost certainly stolen.  I've got to say, I see converted fixies that may not have been stolen by the person riding it, but were clearly taken by someone, often enough to wonder why Lo-jack doesn't make some more profit with a bike tracker.

America's Ongoing War On the Poor

The city of Costa Mesa, California has banned bicycle parking on public property except at city provided bike racks.  As an example of just how few city owned bike racks there are, drum roll please, there are a grand total of 38 legal, approved spots in the city's 30 public parks.   As a cyclist, my first reaction on hearing this bit of insane news was that some bike hating city councilman was having his own against an imaginary spandex clad, two wheeled communist threat.  But, it's a bit more than that.  The ordinance has come out of Costa Mesa's Homeless Task Force.  It seems that many of the homeless have traded their shopping carts for old bikes; loaded down with all their possessions, more often pushed than ridden.  Why deal with poverty and homelessness when it's so much easier to harass the down and out.  With any luck, they'll head over the city line and become another town's  problem.