That’s How I (Used To) Roll

As a kid growing up in the Crescenta Valley (a sleepy suburb in the foothills north of Los Angeles), some of the many middle class perks that my friends and I took for granted included living on a quiet, Mayberry-like street (Harmony Pl.) only a few houses away from a beautiful public park (Two-Strike), with my elementary school (Monte Vista) and then Jr. High (Rosemont) within walking distance a little south of my neighborhood, and wild, undeveloped, adventure-filled mountains (I was a kid, alright?) only a long block to our north.

We kids had almost unlimited roaming rights for many blocks in any direction with our only boundaries being the dinner hour (6:00 o’clock sharp) and the setting sun. Even then, a phone call home from a friend’s house could quickly procure a stay of punishment and sometimes even permission to stay overnight or at least until the night’s episode of Gilligan’s Island or the Man from U.N.C.L.E. was over.

Our ability to extend the boundaries of our territory even farther was greatly enhanced by the acquisition of a bicycle. And boy, did I have one heckuva bike. My beautiful, gleaming candy apple green and chrome Schwinn Stingray had a long, white vinyl “banana” seat and high rise, swept back butterfly handle bars and ... well, more about my sweet, youthful ride in just a bit.

Now, my two older brothers naturally had cooler and way more twitchin’ rides than my mere pedal-powered Stingray. Though he was an electronics engineer/computing pioneer by trade, our father also had an amazing way with anything powered by a gasoline engine or electric motor. He and my older brothers would build mini-bikes using old Briggs & Stratton lawn mower engines with pull-cord starters. One year, Dad even built a ride-able hovercraft – yes, hovercraft – in our garage using yet another lawnmower engine, marine-grade plywood, canvas, aluminum and homemade propeller. It was for a Junior High science project for one of my brothers. I’m pretty sure he got an “A.”

(I can say without hesitation that having a father who could design and build any electronic circuitry, weld any two pieces of metal together, make any part on his own private machine shop, rebuild any engine and fabricate pretty much anything necessary from metal, cloth, wood, leather, cement or plastic came in handy whenever a science project was due. Build a hover car? No problem. Demonstrate that sound cannot travel in a complete vacuum? Piece o’ cake. Build a photovoltaic power generator? When’s that bad boy due? But more on that topic another time.)

Not to be outdone in the vehicle department, Dad was always building or restoring some sort of vehicle of his own, too. I lost count of how many Frankenstein automobiles he created from various donor vehicles, their components cobbled together into a one-of-a-kind, high-performance, hill-climbing, mud-loving truck/Jeep/4X4 creation.

At one time, we even had a single engine, high-wing Piper Cub airplane in our driveway that dad took apart down to the bare fuselage frame and put back together wings, flaps, ailerons, rudder, propeller and all. To say the least, our house (or at least our garage, driveway and Dad’s workshop) was a pretty cool place to call home.

And yet, no matter what sort of vehicle my dad or brothers were building or piloting, as the youngest of the males in our household, I was still more than happy to swing an adolescent leg over the banana seat on my beloved Stingray and pedal off to adventure at any opportunity.

Memories of that bike came cruising back last week when I read about the death of the bike’s creator, Al Fritz, who died last Tuesday at the age of 88. First sold in 1963 for a list price of just $49.50, the bike quickly earned the title of “America’s most popular bike” according to an L.A. Times story about the passing of Mr. Fritz. As the article explained, Mr. Fritz was a Chicago-based Schwinn manager who listened with interest to reports from bicycle salesmen who said “something goofy was happening in Southern California” with kids customizing their short-frame bikes to look like Harley-Davidson motorcycles and hot rods. Fritz flew to California and immediately saw the potential to design a different kind of bike. That bike turned out to be the Stingray – of which there were 60 different variations during its run as the most successful bike ever made.

I customized my own Stingray with a smooth, extra wide “cheater slick” rear tire (like the rear tires on a dragster or funny car) which was ideal for laying skid marks on the smooth cement sidewalks of Two-Strike park. My friends and I were always holding competitions to see who could put down the longest black rubber streak on the sidewalk.

For added thrills (and sometimes spills), my friends and I would scatter sand from nearby playground areas across the cement to create our own skid pad. Then I’d take a starting position from fifty or so yards away, rise up off the seat and piston my legs as fast and furiously as possible to build up speed, then stomp down on the coaster brakes to lock up the back wheel and hold on for dear life as the bike’s rear end fishtailed to a stop.

Try doing THAT with a stupid ol’ airplane. I’ll see you ‘round town.

Cycles of Life

So how did I find myself before the sun came up last Saturday morning, sitting on a hard, painfully narrow bicycle seat, waiting with my wife and thousands of other cyclists for the start of a 50-plus mile “fun ride” through the Santa Inez Valley, in 38-degree, fog-laden air with nothing more than a micro-thin layer of stretchy polyester fabric between the near-freezing morning air and my pasty white, goose-bumpy skin? Glad you asked.

It began with the first bike I can remember owning – a beautiful, candy apple metal-flake green Schwinn Stingray with a white faux leather banana seat and sissy bar in the back and often-waxed, chrome “ape hanger” handle bars up front. My radical, 60s-vintage ride had a smaller front wheel to make it look more dragster-like and big, fat, “cheater slick” tire on the rear wheel. My other grade school biker buds and I would ride our bikes as fast as we could down the street, then stand hard on the pedals to lock up the coaster brake and see who could leave the longest skid mark.

Granted, riding a bike in the Crescenta Valley is no easy task at any age. Our unavoidable hillsides quickly build up one’s leg muscles and fondness for a good set of brakes. Nevertheless, my childhood home was within a few pedal strokes of Two-Strike Park with its racetrack-like layout of smooth, mostly flat concrete sidewalks, quick turns and endless loops of bike-riding fun. When someone (I won’t say who and you can’t make me) would scoop piles of sand from the swing set area up onto the sidewalk, the resulting skid pad effect made for hours and hours of thrills, spills and skinned up appendages. Good times, indeed – and we didn’t even have to wear helmets in those wild frontier days. Imagine that. 

Until I learned that it would ultimately loosen my spokes, I would clothespin stiff playing cards to the forks of my Stingray to get that cool “revving motor” noise. The faster I rode, the louder and more motor-like the cards slapping against the spokes would sound. I was a Harley rider wannabe even then, I guess. And as it so happened, from my early teenage years until well into middle age, I temporarily traded my love of bikes for motorcycles of all different kinds, including torquey off-road 4-strokers, snarly 2-stroke motocross-racers and eventually a massive, rumbling V-twin cruiser that I rode like Dennis Hopper for many years.

Then, some ten years ago, a good friend from church introduced me to the wonderful world of road biking and I was hopelessly hooked on pedal power once again.

There are some things you have to get used to when taking up the sport of road biking; like the seemingly silly and oh-so-stretchy clothing that serious cyclists wear. Or the “ram’s horns” handlebars and bent over, low-center-of-gravity position you assume in order to achieve optimal wind-resistance. Or feeling like a kid learning to ride all over again as you learn to use the bizarre clipless pedals (or “scary pedals” as I heard one cyclist call them) that lock your feet to the pedal and make you fall over at stop lights. I did say this was great fun, right?

It’s all been more than worth it, however, as my wife and I have enjoyed unforgettable rides together from Azusa to Seal Beach and back, or on a deserted stretch of blacktop skirting Crowley Lake in the Sierras where it’s hard to tell if it’s the altitude or the views that so quickly take your breath away. Or on the annual Solvang Prelude ride (our third time riding this 50-plus-mile event) last weekend.

Yes, it was freezing cold. Yes, it was one of our most exhausting rides ever. And yes, it was as much fun as sticking playing cards in your spokes or laying a big honkin’ skid mark down the middle of Harmony Place.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

Note: This is a post of my column first published yesterday, 11.10.11, in the Crescenta Valley Weekly newspaper (cvweekly.com).

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