Steel Horse rides at night, racing alongside L.A. traffic on track bikes.
Every Monday night, this group of UCLA students and alumni gathers in front of the Bruin Bear, helmeted and hungry, to bike to a favorite eatery in the county and back. Some bikes have new parts built for speed, some are tricked out with eye-blearingly fluorescent deep-v rims. Others rest on worn, reliable wheels, as their owners chat and wait for everyone to arrive.
The titular crew shrined at steelhorsela.blogspot.com set out for Koreatown this past Monday, on an easier 15-20 mph ride to “I Heart Boba.”
Zachary Scott, a third-year Design | Media Arts student, began the Steel Horse blog a year ago, and now it clocks 1200 hits a month. Scott started riding to get to his dream job in Web design for a shoe company in Chinatown.
“When I started working there last year I didn’t have a way to get there so I started biking,” Scott said. “I did it twice one week and I was just like, “˜Man, I don’t think I can do this. This is crazy.'”
Scott ended up working there full-time the whole summer, with a 30-mile trip there and back, five times a week.
“Working that far away and really liking my job is what sparked the excessive bike riding,” he said. “It is hard to start. I guess I’m kind of crazy. I just started biking to class and my other job in Santa Monica, and then you just kind of branch out farther and farther.”
Biking in Los Angeles does seem to require a certain disregard for safety, especially considering that most of the members of Steel Horse ride fixed gear, which means their bikes come with just a single gear, or speed. Modern road bikes can shift between up to 21 gears, making riding on various terrain less physically taxing. Fixed gears boast the beauty of simplicity. To ride fast, pedal fast, and to slow down, pedal slowly, but there is no coasting option and generally, no brake.
Crystal Lie, a third-year English student and regular at SHLA rides, explains that in Los Angeles, unlike San Francisco, drivers don’t act with the possibility of bikers in mind.
“Sometimes I go out on the street and I think, “˜I’m gonna die today. I’m going to get hit by a car, and I’m going to die.’ But you just kind of put it behind you. You know, this is the risk that I’m taking.”
“Bike lanes are either ineffective, improperly maintained or nonexistent,” says Joseph Guisti, a fourth-year sociology student who came into UCLA hoping to start a ride of his own until he discovered Steel Horse.
“We have one bike lane in Westwood Village, and it disappears after one block; it’s like 210 feet long. L.A. is like that: Cars don’t know that bikes are supposed to be in the road.”
Such a risk would have to come with pretty sweet benefits.
“I definitely fell prey to wanting to know about this thing that cool people in New York do ““ these messengers that weave through New York in traffic on bikes that you can’t stop without doing some magic trick with (their) legs.”
Lie, nicknamed the First Lady of the Horse, enjoys the exercise aspect of biking. “I’ve always been self-conscious about being too thin, but ever since I started riding a bike, I’m “˜athletic.’ I can do 100 miles on a bike, and that’s saying something about my physical capacities.”
Scott, Lie and Guisti all agree that biking exposes them to aspects of Los Angeles that driving ignores. Steel Horse members willing to go on a 100 mile ride around Los Angeles, called the Century, were able to witness the watery bleed from one town to another, as people lounging in the wind and warm sun are replaced by people being pursued by police in broad daylight.
“I don’t feel like I knew L.A. until I started riding with Steel Horse,” Guisti said. “We have been yelled at by gang members from their cars in South Central; we have gotten almost run off the road. We’ve seen some beautiful sunsets; we went up to Griffith Park in the middle of the night. I’ve come to an understanding of every neighborhood in L.A. We also tried lots of different foods. We’re a very culinary ride.”
“Say if you’re driving a car from here to downtown,” Scott said. “You get there and you’re like, “˜I’m here, there’s nowhere to park,’ and then you get frustrated. You’re just thinking about what you’re doing and not about where you are, or L.A. or what’s going on around you.”
Surrounded by cars that seem huge and unmanuverable in comparison, Steel Horse moves like a bag of marbles, each person rolling independently but locking elbow-to-elbow, three deep in the lane on turns and at stops. On the way back from Koreatown, lamp lights yellow and bloom on the backs of the guys up front, then streak away behind.
Guisti and Scott, along with a few others, purposefully ride at the front and back of the group, occasionally calling warnings like “car in the back” or “clear” at crossroads.
“I hated Los Angeles, but when I started biking, it completely changes your sense of distance,” Lie said. “And when you’re on a bike, you don’t feel like you’re wasting time getting from point a to point b.”
From a distance Steel Horse can only be seen by its riders’ blinking red bike lights. Like a bite-sized family of fireflies, they flicker in and out, sometimes muted by the bulk of cars, before they blink out going around a turn, having left all the cars behind.
“That feeling of exhaustion that you get after a long ride, that’s one of the best feelings I’ve ever had,” Lie said. “Your body is exhausted of all its fuel and you feel reset.”