I can empathize, but I can't sympathize.

I'm no expert on biking amongst cars, but I've been through two bikes, been hit three times now and do most of my writing in the most carrific driver's city in the United States. And your buddy's take on Los Angeles did him no favors in the credibility department but we'll get to that in a minute. Or shit. Maybe now. Let's see what this structure looks like.

The article you linked is short on fact, long on opinion. Short on specifics, long on generalities. The bike article, on the other hand, has actual points of debate so we'll start with that.

Where to Stay: Santa Monica is for 23-year-olds. You’re an adult professional with a bike to ride - you want Glendale/Burbank.

FUCK EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT. Glendale is a concrete shithole full of narrow lanes partially occupied by parked cars that you have to weave in and out of traffic constantly in order to get anywhere. Burbank is similar, but also hotter, and with more restaurants and fewer car dealerships. You're also an easy hour and a half from anywhere you might have "meetings" whereas when I lived at mutherfucking LAX I could be in Santa Monica in 45 minutes and Sunset in an hour.

I mean, if you wanna get clipped riding through tiny boxes made of tickytack on your way to Ruby Tuesday's, Glendale all the way. But if you want... well, we'll get to that, too.

. Helen’s has a big selection of relatively new (or very new/fancy) rides for rent (Cannodale, Trek, even Pinarello) and is very convenient for to/from the airport.

Right. You're going to pay Helen's prices to pick up a Trek in Marina Del Rey so you can ride in Glendale.

Bicycle Johns in Burbank will rent you something weird and random but probably awesome (I got a Serotta w/ 9spd Ultegra).

Bicycle Johns sold 6'1 me a 17" Marin. It took me a year to figure out I ride a 21". Thanks, Bicycle John's. That setup fee sure came in handy. Choads.

Either way, it will cost you about half of your baggage fees and you’ll stick to traditional gross ways of ruining hotel towels.

Bikeflights.com, yo. Got my 21" specialized from Seattle to LA in 3 days for $70. That's a one-day rental of some Cannondale I don't know anything about because I don't ride things that require $4,000 deposits.

But let's really get down to it:

Where to Ride: The main route up & down is Angeles Crest Hwy (2), easily accessible by climbing up and over Chevy Chase rd. (a nice Cat 3 warmup). Once in the national forest, you can climb up to Clear Creek (10ish miles of climbing), Red Box (14ish miles of climbing) which is the turnoff for Mt Wilson (18ish miles of climbing). From Clear Creek / Red Box you have a lot of options, including Upper and Lower Tujunga Canyon and water at both locations.

That's Angeles Crest. Yeah, not everyone drives like an asshole up there but enough people drive like assholes up there that me, on 1100cc of Italian hyperexotic, did my playing elsewhere. And I'm commuting 30 miles a day in this place:

Last year I would have said, “LA? Leave the bike at home.” After all the city is known almost as well for traffic and sprawl as it is for weird sex parties.

So let's get down to it:

No, the people writing angry comments aren't murderers in the making. No, they don't truly believe that you ought to take up an entire lane. And they're pissed off that you ran that stop sign because fuckin' A they just passed you and now they have to do it again. But primarily you're getting these comments because you say shit like this:

"If all drivers are educated and mindful, you'd have no fatalities."

That's effectively saying "It's always 100% the fault of the motor vehicle driver." And it's technically correct - the worst kind of correct. You can technically feel morally righteous when a Miata clips the shit out of your rented Cannondale around a blind corner up Angeles Crest. You can technically feel indignant when undocumented Mexican nationals cream you in a crosswalk at 5am (I did, and do). And you can technically say

So you saw a cyclist, or many, break a traffic law. I could argue that far more cyclists obey the rules than don’t but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because a cyclist could have just run a stop sign, kicked a puppy in its adorable little shit-sniffer while giving Beyoncé a wedgie and it still doesn’t give you the right to murder them. 


...but the fact of the fucking matter is, if you're vertical you aren't going to be seen and when you're running stop signs (and I do, hourly), you're doubly not seen. Know what we call that in the land of motorized two-wheeled transport? A SMIDSY.

You know what those comments are saying? YOU'RE ANNOYING. Nobody reads a Youtube comment and presumes the poster literally wants you to die in a fire, or that they honestly believe you to be a dromedary comprised of feces. But they do want you to know that your self-righteous "I'm never at fault" attitude is unhelpful.

To reiterate: I've been hit three times. First time was an AT&T van on a 5-lane road trying to get onto the PCH and didn't notice that I was in the lane next to him. He literally turned into me and I was lucky I didn't go under the wheel. Should he have been paying attention? Sure. Did I know better than to be on Lincoln? Fuckin' A I did. I've only ever ridden that road once and that's because it's death on a stick (I needed to buy a gift and it was between where I was and where I was going). Second time I was creeping past a VW that I could tell wasn't paying attention and I was hopeful that by being the very large object directly in front of him he might look before he gunned his way out into the intersection. Psych! VW drivers pay attention to fuckall. Third time I was in my astonishingly sketchy neighborhood crossing an astonishingly sketchy street - in the crosswalk - with the light - and a car ripped through it like the light wasn't there because I live in a shitty neighborhood. And all three times I was right, and two out of three times the drivers felt bad, but at the end of the day I know I'm fucking invisible, lights and all, and ain't nobody going to take care of me but me.

So when you insist that all fatalities are everyone else's fault, you simply aren't helping. And a lack of helpfulness is often frustrating, particularly to people who are legit scared of you, son, because they know how fragile you are, and they know that you might dart on or off the sidewalk at any moment, and you'll use hand signals sometimes but not predictably, and you'll use a whole lane when people could easily squeak past you safely but then ride two abreast and rip through stop signs and cruise to the front of the line so they have to pass you seven.freaking.times on the way to the grocery store and every single time, you're an erratic spaz cutting shit way too close and making it impossible to pass and fuckin' A, dude, it makes people jumpy.

And I'm that guy. Riding through traffic. Trying not to get creamed. But knowing that it isn't personal, it isn't murderous intent, it isn't even negligence it's fucking evolution and if you don't think the roads weren't meant for cars not bikes you're high and if you're going to cruise around on them on 17 lbs of carbon fiber and 120psi tires half an inch wide you are doing ZERO.GOOD by making it about the drivers, son, and you HAVE to know that.

Rant off. I'm sure he's a nice guy. But people like him are the reason I refused to wear a bike helmet for seven years...

...because I didn't want to be associated with him.