Mar 08 '10 - 473 W - Vote Good + 1 :: Bad - 5 Pilgrim on a biking mission
Published March 4, 2010 by LA Times
Hector Tobar
Jose Guzman fell in love with bicycles thanks to God.
His first long bike trip was a few hundred miles through the dry mountains of Jalisco in central Mexico, in a long line with a few hundred other pedaling Catholic pilgrims. Later, he turned his passion for biking into a small delivery business, stacking 200 pounds of fresh chicken over his back wheel every day in suburban Mexico City.
In Los Angeles, Guzman pedals everywhere -- from his apartment in Pico-Union to the Inland Empire, Sylmar, Harbor City and other places, often hitching a ride part of the way on a Metro bus or subway line.
Guzman is a day laborer and soccer referee for hire. He's crossed the city on borrowed bikes and on bikes he's put together himself after salvaging frames and rusted wheels from the trash.
Once he owned a rebuilt bike with a pink frame, and when a girl at MacArthur Park yelled out, "Mommy, that man is riding a girl's bike," he answered back: "Señorita, it doesn't matter what it looks like, as long as the wheels turn and it gets me where I'm going."
Now Guzman has a new set of biking friends. Every week he visits a workshop in downtown Los Angeles, picking up bike repair and riding tips from Arlen Jones and Ramon Martinez, "bicycle cooks" and volunteers with the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition.
"In L.A. we have thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people on bikes that mainstream cyclists never see," Martinez told me. He called them "invisible cyclists" but then corrected himself because really, if you pay attention, you'll almost always see them on the streets.
I've seen the cyclists in the garment district, Koreatown and Pasadena, often in the uniforms of cooks or kitchen workers. They don't wear spandex and they don't bike to lower their cholesterol or to reduce their "carbon footprint."
They don't bike because it's a cool lifestyle choice. Mostly they bike out of necessity.
"My bike is my salvation," Guzman told me. "I see it as part of me. It's my vehicle. I carry bags, backpacks, groceries on it. Everything."
At the small work space on South Main Street, Guzman and a handful of other day laborers get lessons from some young but seasoned mechanics who are also passionate biking activists.
The two groups of men fix brakes together, take apart gear assemblies and push pedals with their hands until the spinning freewheels produce their normal, soothing clicks.
Original Article:
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/mar/04/local/la-me-tobar5-2010mar05
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