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By Johnny, July 14, 2010 9:18 am

In my last post, I described my hostel experience up to the point where I was getting ready to go in and sleep. Apparently while I was out using the Internet, I had 2 roommates show up and was already sleeping. I quickly and quietly made my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth and prepare for bed. I purposely had my iPhone charged up and ready for me to drown out any noises from the night. The helped all but the 1 hour that I had it set to stop. I kept on hearing all sorts of noise coming from the street. From emergency sirens, cars honking and revving away, people yelling in the streets, and the heat in the room, I had a very restless night.

So when 6AM rolled around, I quickly hopped out of my bed, got cleaned up, and gathered all my stuff and bolted out of my room. Everyone was still asleep.

It was refreshing walking through the streets of NYC with a few people around. I walked the 1.2 mile to my destination in Chinatown. I eventually found my tour bus and had some breakfast Chinese food style (bbq pork bao and fresh squeezed soy bean milk). Lucky for me, I was assigned a seat right up front with the tour guide.

We left Chinatown with a partial full bus towards New Jersey to pick up the rest of the people at 8:05AM. Our tour guide was very energetic and knew what to point out to us as we pass it. Strangely enough, I’ve seen more sports stadium in one day than I ever want to. I must digress, our first stop for the day was in Philadelphia, PA. There we had the opportunity to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. The line to go into to see the bell was way too long for the 30 minute allotted time the tour guide gave us. Instead we got to peak in from the side window.

The courtyard was teeming with tourists given the fact that it was 4th of July weekend. I got to go into the Old Courthouse and walked by the 1st Library that Benjamin Franklin founded. The cobblestone streets gave it a touch of historical reference.

We eventually made it over to Washington D.C. and was greeted by the MLB’s Washington National’s ball park and the view of Capital building. Our tour guided scheduled a boat tour of the Ptomac River. The captain of the boat gave us brief facts about Washington D.C. as we cruised through the warm and windy harbor. Highlights included Reagan Airport, the Washington monument, and the Pentagon.

One hour later, we boarded our bus again and made it to the Smithsonian Airspace Museum. The tour guide said the place was only 2 stories tall. It was a huge 2 story. I didn’t get to see everything that wanted to or dive deeper on some of the exhibits. I was actually late to get back to the bus and had to jog towards the Capital reflection lake where the rest of the group was.

We took a brief ride over to the next stop; the White House. No, we didn’t go in to see. Instead we hung outside the front for a glimpse of our nation’s capital. Throughout Washington D.C. (as well as everywhere else) they were preparing for the 4th of July celebration. At the same location we saw the Nation’s Christmas tree. Again, Washington’s Monument was prevalent throughout our tour around the area.

Our next stop was Jefferson’s Monument. This was an impressive building for the author of the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson was my favorite President when I was learning history back in grade school. The power of his written words moved the creation of our great nation.

As we made our way towards the Lincoln Monument, something unfortunate happened. We got into a car accident. I was prepping post cards and looking at my iPhone at the moment. I look up to see a SUV pull right in front of our path. The bus driver swerved left but it was too late and we smacked right into the SUV. Luckily for the sheer size of the bus, nobody was seriously injured. One lady was complaining about back pains but other than that we were all fine. It took about 2 hours to clear up the mess. By the time we got to the Lincoln Monument, it was dusk and there was an especially large population of students from schools scattered throughout the steps up to the monument. This was the most impressive monument I’ve seen.

Ironically enough we never stopped to see the Washington Monument. Like I said before, it was prevalent throughout our stay at Washington D.C. so we weren’t missing out too much. Our tour guide said there’s usually a line in the morning to go up the monument. The elevator only fits 7 passenger at a time since it narrows out at the top. He also pointed out the two shade of color. The reason is that when they first built this monument, the Civil War broke out. So they ran out of funds since it all went into the war. When the war ended the completed the monument. Unfortunately, they couldn’t find the right material after the war. That is why you see 2 different material or shading of the monument when you’re up close.

Our day concluded about 10PM when we reached our hotel outside of Washington D.C. I ended my day with a meal in my room and just passed out on my bed. We were told that the wake up call was at 5:30AM. One day down and 2 to go!

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By Johnny, July 2, 2010 8:22 pm

So I’m in New York City, it’ s 10:30PM EST and I’m blogging from the lounge area of the hostel I am staying at. After a grueling week of training, I can finally take the next few days to relax. My first experience of living in a hostel is somewhat interesting. I’ve been told to be very careful and watch my back. Folks also told me they got scabies staying over a 1 star hostel in Europe. Obviously, anxiety would be a perfect description of what I am feeling right now.

I check in here at 3:30PM. After multiple attempts to open my door since the card reader did not seem to want to work, I finally got into my room. The bed that was suppose to be mine was already occupied so I took the only available bed which was a creaky top bunk. The bed is smaller than a twin size and feels very unstable. There are lockers in the room which I brought a padlock to lock up my valuables. I spent some time to plan out my route for tomorrow’s bus tour departure. This was capped of with a brief walking tour in the city. Didn’t go anywhere in particular but got a baguette for dinner. I come back to an empty room and jumped into the shower. During this time I hear one of my roommate come back. He’s from Austria and is on his way to Florida and then eventually to California.

He tells me he’s going to be taking a nap and then go out to explore the city later. I climbed up to my bunk directly above his and was on my computer. Another couple comes in and they introduce themselves to me. Forgot where they were from but they took a quick power nap as I dozed away as well.

I wake up to the Austrian leaving and then the couple leaving as well to explore the night of New York City. I made it down and now I’m here blogging. People have been generally nice. Did I mention that I’m in my pajamas?

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By Johnny, June 11, 2010 12:14 am

Here’s a video of the ride. I can’t wait to take part in this! If you haven’t done so, click on the link to the right to help fight arthritis and guarantee me a spot on the ride. >>>

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By Johnny, May 9, 2010 11:25 pm

Believe it or not I participated in my first Critical Mass ride last month on April 30th. I’ve been wanting to take part of this phenomenon every last Friday of the month. So at the end of last month, I was hell bent on making sure it was going to happen.

Initially my sister’s fiancé was going to join but he could not make it. I convinced another co-worker of mine to join. He hasn’t been on a bike for 3 years. I even offered to take his bike in for repairs since I couldn’t figure out how to mount his rear wheels with disc brakes. Here’s a photo of my rig hauling in his.

Luckily he was able to get his ride back on Friday to join me. I was planning on going with or without him. We hopped on the Red line down to Vermont & Wilshire station. From there we got on our bikes and pedaled towards Wilshire & Western. I had a few friends who was meeting for drinks before the ride. Funny thing is the only way these “friends” correspond with me is only through Twitter. I wasn’t able to get an address or even their real phone numbers for that matter. So my co-worker and I made our way to Wilshire / Western where a huge crowd was gathering.

We waited for about 15 minutes at the location while countless numbers of cyclists kept on piling into the northeast corner of the intersection. You can feel the electricity of the crowd who grew more anxious as the minutes ticked down to the 7:30PM departure time. Like clockwork, 7:30 came and the crowd of hundreds of cyclists overtook the intersection and started down the South on Western. That was the last point of reference that I could remember on the ride until we reached about Chinatown later in the evening. I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of bicycles that was on the streets. It kept me from thinking or wondering where the heck I was. I knew in order not to get lost, I had to keep up with the “pack”. I also kept on thinking how drivers were perceiving us. We got lots of supporting honks and woohoo early on the ride but towards the end, I thought there were honks of disdain (it could just be me worrying about what others perceived). I also kept a conscious effort of not being at the end of the pack or at the side. I made sure my buddy knew the same rules of survival.

The route that was taken took us through parts of Los Angeles neighborhoods that I definitely would never find myself riding at that time of night by myself. We were flying through the infamous Skid Row where transients were hooting and hollering at us. We eventually made it through one of those iconic bridges that you see in such films like “Training Day”. Amazingly enough, I bumped into @danceralamode right before the bridge. We chatted while we climbed pass the fixie kids who were struggling up the bridge. We even saw a wedding photo shoot in progress on the bridge. Of all the nights and all the bridges, their photo shoot was interrupted by a Critical Mass ride. The descend down the bridge was brisk and we found ourselves in the city of Boyle Heights. That’s where the events of the night took a negative turn.

Let’s just say a motorist and some cyclists got acquainted. I didn’t get any details of what happened but I made sure I was not anywhere near. Around that time, I run into @jeremy310 and lost @danceralamode in the shuffle. We reconnected just in time before the mass made their way down the street and in a park. From there I lost all my twitter pals and my co-worker. After a few calls I reconnected with my co-worker. We held our position at the park for about 30 minutes before the ride started up again. And just like that, the events from about an hour ago was a thing of the past. The swarm made their way through USC medical center and eventually through Union Station and into Chinatown like I mentioned earlier.

You could tell that some folks were getting tired. The crowd started to thin out as I presumed some people dropped out to rest or go on their own merry way home. We darted through Chinatown into downtown LA. Eventually we made it into Echo Park onto Sunset. On Sunset, we encountered furious head-wind and a tedious uphill climb into Hollywood. From there the group was thinning out. Only the few fixie riders kept up while others slowly paced themselves through the street. Even though I was starved, I kept my pace with the head of the pack. We finally reached Sunset and Western where the ride ended. From there I reconnected with @danceralamode. I waited for my co-worker but got a call from him that he was about 2-3 miles behind and was going to jump on the train home. I completely understood. Being on his first ride in years and have him ride 20+ miles in a night is too much to ask for. We bid farewell.

After a few back-and-forth cellphone conversations, @danceralamode got a hold of her friend. As it turns out, it was @GraphikDeziner who I’ve been following on Twitter but finally got to finally meet her in person for the first time that night. She had a friend join her and the 4 of us made our way to Dennys for some after-ride-grubbing while the remaining massers started on the People’s Ride. I enjoyed the company and meal while I kept an eye on the time to make sure I don’t miss the last train home. We eventually went our separate ways. I was lucky to catch the last Gold Line train home and strolled home with 39 miles of riding that day. I forgot to mentioned I had to rode back from Montrose into work that morning after a doctor’s appointment so I was beat!

It is so refreshing to have these adventures in my life. I wouldn’t want to trade this for anything.

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By Johnny, May 5, 2010 12:11 am

I unofficially kicked off my fundraising campaign for the California Coast Classic ride. I decided to look through my Gmail contacts and come up with the names of friends who maybe able to help. After 125 emails later, not even one donated to the cause. I did get an email from Tammy who said she will be donating pretty soon.

Hopefully my second group of people, co-workers, will fill this void. The good part about these folks is that our company has 100% match after $25 donation. I’m hoping to see if I can at least raise a few hundreds with these folks. My next approach is to do a letter writing campaign to the businesses that I frequent and see if they can contribute. Other ideas that is in the works is a fundraising party in which Ron has graciously offered to brew some beer for. I was also offered a fundraising ride with the help of The Flying Pigeon LA guys. I’m also thinking about jumping in the Facebook world and get contributions from people I haven’t talked to on a regular basis. Yes I’m that desperate to be thinking about breaking my silence and joining the Facebook masses.

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By Johnny, April 16, 2010 4:41 pm

One of the items on my bucket list is to ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles on a bicycle. I was planning on participating on the ever-popular AIDS/Lifecycle ride but that normally takes place earlier in the year. This pretty much gives me 2 month’s time to raise $3,000. Yup. Not gonna happen. So instead I found another ride for the Arthritis Foundation called the California Coast Classic. This will start and end at the same location and I also have to raise $3,000 to participate. Fortunately, the ride will take place from September 25th to October 2nd. This will give me plenty time to fundraise. I’ve included a donation progress meter to the right of this post to track my progress. >>>>>>>>>

Please help me reach my goal by donating or if you like, join me on this great adventure! If I know you personally, I’ll be asking you soon. The next task is to learn more about the organization so I can sound half-way knowledgable about who I’m helping here. Big plans are yet to come for this so I’ll keep ya’ll posted here.

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By Johnny, March 10, 2010 9:16 am

The other day when I was searching the web I stumbled upon this page: http://www.freecycle.org/. I suppose I was directed here due to the fact that I may have been looking for something bicycle related but I forget what was the beginning but the ending was a great discovery. Apparently Freecycle is an organized group of people who are giving and getting stuff from other people. The idea is to reuse items and keep them out of our landfills.

I then attempted to join one of these groups. I searched for a Freecycle group near my neighborhood and immediately found a Yahoo! Group for the city I’m living in and adjacent city. I signed up with this group just to see what was happening. Besides getting inundated with emails after emails explaining rules and what not to post, I finally got to see the message board. What I saw was listings of people making “OFFER” for stuff that they don’t need and are willing to give it away or people requesting goods in a form of a “WANTED” post or a note that what they had offered had been “TAKEN”.

As an experiment, I wanted to participate in this community. I had a used paella pan that was given to me but never used. I think my girlfriend thought we would be making paella but that never happened. It just became a nuisance moving in and out of the oven whenever we wanted to bake. I was ready to just donate it somewhere but never found the time. So this was a perfect item to offer to the mass population of Freecyclers. My first post was immediately denied. Apparently you had to put your location in the subject head. I reposted and didn’t check my account for a few hours after I had place the post. When I got back, my in-box had 16 messages all asking about the pan! I was shocked that it worked and that people really WANT a paella pan. I decided to give the pan out to the first to respond (response time 15 minute). Unfortunately, that person said she couldn’t pick up the pan until Monday. Since I was making the rules in giving my stuff away, I wanted it to be picked up that afternoon so I chose between 2 requester who said they can pick it up that day. The one I ended up with gave me a time frame which was very helpful.

Some people gave me very specific reasons why they needed one. Others were questioning what it looked like and how big it was. When I read all these messages, I was seeing very interesting behaviors. It felt good giving my paella pan away that day. The smile on the person’s face and gratefulness was awesome. You experience something similar to when you are volunteering for charity. Freecycle just gave me another option to do with stuff I don’t want. So if you have a closet full of crap that you don’t want but still works, why not Freecycle it? With for over 4,000 groups and 7 million members, you’re bound to find someone who might want it.

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By Johnny, February 25, 2010 8:13 pm

So I attempted to start this post on February 8th but failed to continue putting some words around this. That was a few days after I bought an iPhone. I suppose posting back then would be a bit premature since I didn’t really had the opportunity to use this thing out in the wild. But now it’s been 3 weeks and this thing does rock.

Let’s put this in the context of a car-free-bicycling-riding bachelor. The app that I use most frequently is the Maps application. Wherever I am, I’ve been able to find my way back home or to my destination by pulling up directions on the Maps app. I use this thing religiously to find my way on the Metro, in a car, or on a ride out.

I made it a point to use my Google Voice number when I bought an iPhone. Having this number allows me filter my calls based on a schedule during the week or weekends. During the week at 9am – 6:30pm it will ring my work cell and work phone. From 6:30pm – 9am it will ring my iPhone. Then during the weekends, it will ring my iPhone only. If you tried to visit Google Voice from an iPhone it transforms the site to a web application where you can save to your iPhone dock. The web app let’s you text and call anybody in your contacts. You can have your text sent to your Gmail account as well so you can respond as an email. Once a text is forwarded from Google Voice to your phone, you can simply reply to the unique number. Get this, it will text the originator of the text with your Google Voice number even though you’re texting to this other number. What this means is you don’t need to maintain a conversation within the Google Voice app. You can start it there and continue by other means.

I use the Weather Channel app which gives me an expanded weather report compared to the default Weather app that came with the iPhone. I check this app every morning so I know what to expect.

Other apps I use frequently are Pandora for music discoveries, Yelp for reviews, IMDB for the times I need to know entertainment trivia, NPR News for news programs, Twitterrific to stay in touch 140 characters at a time, Flickr for access to my photos at all time, ESPN for news on my favorite sports teams, Mint to help keep track of my finances, and Words with Friends for ongoing games with friends and family.

It’s my complete all-in-one lifestyle device. I can’t believe I lived so long without one. Alright enough gushing but here’s a video I took with the phone which outlines why it is impossible to swallow cinnamon powder.

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By Johnny, January 25, 2010 10:05 am

If you met me about 3 years ago I would have told you my goal at that point in time was to save up enough money to buy my own house. I accomplished that late 2008. The next step would have been to upgrade my car to a fancy European sports car and replace my motorcycle with an updated version. Flash-forward to present day and my priorities in life has changed. Instead of keeping up with “the Jones”, I do not own a motorcycle and as of January 19th, do not own a car in Los Angeles! After having my car posted on several online sites for about 2 months, it finally got a response when I dropped the price down to $4500. Although I won’t say how much I got for the car, I was thoroughly happy to see it off with the new owners. I told people I felt like getting a 3,000 lb gorilla off my back. It even felt better to make the call to my insurance agent to cancel my auto insurance the next day.

Ironically enough the week I sell my car would have been the week that I would have needed it the most. We endured 7 straight days of rain in Southern California and I got to ride out in it for 3 of the 7 days. I lucked out 2 of those 3 days and successfully avoided rain. But on the last day, I was finally doused. Even though it would have been comfortable just to hop in the car and drive back and forth to work without getting wet, I still enjoyed riding in the rain. It’s just a matter of being prepared and ready for that situation.

Now that I moved forward with my life without a car, I feel a bit anxious. After months of rarely using it, this is completely different from before because I just lost the option to use my car now. I really should think of it as I’ve gained the freedom to not be tied to auto repairs, payments to the insurance company, and visits to gas stations. I’ve also gained free time to enjoy my books and podcast if I decide to take public transportation. I am no longer burdened with the stress of driving or having to pay what I call the “car tax”. All these things outweighs the fact that I don’t have a car.

Let’s see where this journey will take me. Wish me luck!

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By Johnny, January 11, 2010 3:43 pm

Great video featuring a Critical Mass-like ride through LA. I think bicycling is getting it’s mainstream recognition now! Hopefully this video will get more people to ride.