A Rose Bowl Ride Primer (Part 1)
- By Banner Moffat
I originally wrote this Primer years ago for friends who were thinking of giving the Rose Bowl Ride a try. Some of them went on to become reliable Rose Bowl regulars. So if you are new to the ride or thinking about doing it, maybe this will help "bring you up to speed":
The Ride
The Rose Bowl ride has been going on for decades. The ride occurs during spring, summer and fall every Tuesday and Thursday at 6 PM with as many as 100 - 200 riders attending. That makes it an amazingly persistent biking institution, considering that there is no single organizer.
Most people park in lot K to the SW corner of the loop around the stadium and golf course, and it stages at the street just to the east of the parking lot. The "official" (to the extent anything about this ride is official) start/finish is at a sycamore tree about 2/3rds of the way along the west side of the loop. The pack goes deceivingly slow from the staging spot to the start line and the speed picks up soon after crossing the line. On the next to last lap you can usually recognize which sycamore tree it is because there are people hanging around waiting to see who will win the final sprint.
The Course
The first NW corner is the slowest and tightest and sometimes has a car going the other way at the stop sign making it unwise to go wide. One time a rider piled into a police car windshield at this corner and smashed it so much that the car had to be towed away. Not a good day at the Bowl! The north end of the loop is narrow so you should be on the lookout for on-coming cars. Always stay inside the yellow lines! After the club house the road gets narrow again and the small hill usually slows down and consolidates the pack so, again, stay inside the yellow lines! The south end of the loop is where there are most likely to be cars turning (or just plain stopped with wide eyed drivers frozen at the wheel wondering what the hell they are supposed to do when passed on all sides by hundreds of shouting bikers).
Etiquette
There is an unspoken etiquette to pack riding that some riders are better about than others. If there is anything worth warning the pack about, conscientious riders wave an arm at it or shout "Left side!" or "Right side!", and sometimes the whole pack slows down for no visible reason and it is good to warn others by shouting "Slowing!" It may seem silly shouting out all the time, but if you wake up one rider from an oxygen deprived inattention in time to avoid a crash, it is worth it. You never know how out of it the guy behind you is.
Sometimes riders try to get out of the wind by squeezing in front of you or beside you and if this was a race, you might not allow your competitors to do it. This is not a race! It's just a training ride. It is not a good place to be super aggressive. If someone wants "in" and is going fast enough to merge, make room for them. Likewise if someone wants "out" and is boxed in by the pack, things will go smoother if you just make room for him to slide out.
Sometimes, especially if you are a beginner in the pack, you may get yelled at from time to time for misbehaving (like swerving, getting too close, crossing the yellow line, failing to close a gap) but don't take it personally. Some people are not as nice about it as they should be, yet self-coaching within the pack is one of the things that makes it continue to work. Actually there needs to be even more self-coaching within the pack in order to avoid confrontations with the police, with pedestrians and with vehicles.
Safety of the Ride
It would be nice if we were the only ones there or if we had a whole lane to ourselves, but we have to share the road with walkers, slow bikers, children learning how to ride, roller bladers, dogs, on-coming cars, slow cars going our way and cars overtaking us. The pack ride exists because the police let it exist, and it isn't smart to risk changing their mind. Sometimes the pack mindlessly forces you over the yellow line but don't stay there, even if it means slowing down to find a spot to move into. Sometimes drivers turn in front of the pack not realizing how fast we are going. Don't piss off the drivers even if they piss you off. Remain civil so that they are not motivated to complain to the police and so the police won't decide to shut us down.
The main safety precaution is to keep a good look out, stay alert and if you see something, warn the riders behind you.
"right side!" can help warn them as well as the rest of the pack, and the ones who know us scoot out of the way like scolded children. They have right of way, however, so be nice and stay completely outside the white line on the inside. That is not our territory. Give children as wide a berth as possible.
Another thing to look out for is balls going out into the street; soccer balls on the south end and golf balls on the north end. At its worst, a soccer ball can bounce around inside the pack like a high speed pinball and you can hardly maneuver because of all the riders around you. I've been told to aim for the ball because it won't be there by the time you get to it, but I don't know.
Avoiding Crashes
No matter how fantastic you are at handling a bike, when you are boxed in and the riders in front of you go down, so will you. Happily, there are ways to minimize the risk, and foremost is stay alert:
1) Concentrate! The Rose Bowl Ride is no place for daydreaming. A good percentage of crashes are due to inattention and some are due to fooling around with friends. The Rose Bowl is no place to get casual in your riding and sometimes just taking a hand off the handlebar puts you at risk.
2) Guard the territory in front of and especially on either side of your front wheel like it was your daughter's virginity. Anytime anyone gets too close, slow down, move over or do whatever is necessary to open up the space. Any rear wheel within 2 feet of your front wheel deserves close attention. A rear wheel closer than 12 inches to your front wheel should set off warning bells.
3) Don't try to fit into spots that are too tight.
5) Look further ahead in the pack. Don't just focus on the bikes immediately in front of you. The more you see what's happening out in front (cars, roller bladers, crashes), the more time you will have to safely react.
6) Communicate with other riders around you. If you have to switch "lanes", let the rider behind you know with a flick of your fingers, flick of the elbow, or announcement, "coming over". Tell people you are slowing down or if there is something ahead that might force you to maneuver. Being vocal lets riders in front of you know you are there.
7) Make all lane or speed changes in the pack as gradually as possible. This is the single safest thing you can do for your fellow riders. It will mainly keep other riders from crashing because of you, but it can also keep you from getting rundown. Avoid hard braking, if possible.
8) Wear a helmet and have health insurance; it's best to be prepared.
Pack crashes can be spectacular as they spread out sideways and back like shock waves from and explosion involving more and more riders. In time, you learn to judge the rider in front of you either by how he rides or by reputation and if he seems erratic or exhausted, stay away from him. Crashes tend to happen more in the last 2 laps because of fatigue and because of the jockeying that goes on leading up to the final sprint, so if you want to improve your odds, you could skip one or both of those laps.
There are some riders who jockey for sprint position as if it was life or death, and they are idiots. We are there for fun, and it is not worth risking others or worth terrorizing the pedestrians just so you might have a good sprint.
Although the Pasadena ambulance seems to frequently hang out at the Rose Bowl on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, don't be put off. Crashes don't happen that often and most of the time there are no serious injuries.
In Part 2 of this Primer I cover Drafting, Pulling, Getting Dropped, Corners, Break-Aways, The Sprint and The Reason Why.