It’s Not About the Beer….

Okay, you know that that’s as much a lie as “It’s not about the bike.” It was last Saturday’s Flying Pigeon LA Brewery Ride, and you’re damn right it was all about the beer–and all about the bike.

Gina and I had taken Metro over to Chinatown for the Chinese New Year festivities, and as the parade wound down we realized we had enough time to hop the Gold Line over to Pigeonville, beg a couple of bikes off Josef (who has rental bikes if you don’t bring your own), and join the planned expedition to the Eagle Rock Brewery.

While I impeded Josef’s efforts to organize the ragtag rabble of brewhounds that drew slowly up from all points, the sun dropped behind Elysian Park and the hot day cooled to a tolerable temperature for a lazy bike ride through Northeast LA. Gina and I mounted up a couple of spare Batavus “paper clip bikes,” Josef hopped on his bakfiets, the rest of us clambered onto whatever had brought them to the Pigeon’s door, and we wobbled westward on a backstreet till we got to…the burger joint where a gigantic bag of french fires and onion rings waited to be deposited in the cargo box!

From there we had a leisurely ramble up Cypress, following the only bike path in the near vicinity and enjoying the greetings of neighborhood folks, who all seemed to know Josef. Hillside houses gave way to strip malls which gave way to stucco or cinderblock light industrial buildings. Soon after we squeezed under the freeway while the car traffic on San Fernando roared past our elbows–the only noisy part of the journey–we came to the most modestly self-effacing brewery I’ve ever visited. (Asked Gina to take the pix with her iPhone.)

Well, Eagle Rock Brewery can afford to be self-effacing, as they make a whole line of damn fine brews, and if they were as famous as they deserve to be, they’d never get any work done!

We crowded in, ate fries and onion rings on their counter, sucked down brews, made friends, and forgave enemies…and “a good time was had by all.”

And only one of us fell down when we finally got back on the bikes. (No, it wasn’t me!)

It was evening as we rode back, a sweet quiet twilight on back roads, and full night before we left the Pigeon.

The Pigeon puts these rides on regularly, as well as the famous Get Sum Dim Sum and Spoke(n) Art rides. This was the first one I’d been on, and I’m sorry I waited so long. Don’t you make the same mistake!

Read about them all right here on the Pigeon website.

After Josef closed up the shop, Gina and I strolled to the Gold Line station, accompanied by one of our new friends. It was a great end to our New Year’s outing. Gung hei fat choy!