Whittier Narrows Picnic Ride - Saturday, June 13
67 views
Skip to first unread message
The Passage Announcements
Jun 8, 2026, 10:14:38 PMJun 8
to The Passage Announcements
Whittier Narrows Picnic Ride
It's a bike ride. And a picnic!
Saturday, June 13, 2026
Departing South Pasadena A Line Station at 10:30am
Full details at bottom.
-
How much ride is enough ride for a ride? It’s a question I’ve given a lot of thought over the years. While the answer I’ve come up with has been rather of a shifting target, depending on a variety of factors (weather, mood, fitness, how the last ride went, etc.), the answer is generally something along the lines of “a little more than what seems reasonable.” Reasonable is nice, but one kind of wants to push beyond “nice.”
Of course, a ride can consist of different things. How much of what exactly?
If you will permit me to get mildly analytical here (because what screams “picnic!” more than a little analysis?), we can evaluate most rides on the axes of efficiency, exploration, and sociability. More of each isn’t necessarily better, since there are different reasons for riding, and each axis can tend to cancel out the others. It is more about priorities than absolutes.
It's a bike ride. And a picnic!
Saturday, June 13, 2026
Departing South Pasadena A Line Station at 10:30am
Full details at bottom.
-
How much ride is enough ride for a ride? It’s a question I’ve given a lot of thought over the years. While the answer I’ve come up with has been rather of a shifting target, depending on a variety of factors (weather, mood, fitness, how the last ride went, etc.), the answer is generally something along the lines of “a little more than what seems reasonable.” Reasonable is nice, but one kind of wants to push beyond “nice.”
Of course, a ride can consist of different things. How much of what exactly?
If you will permit me to get mildly analytical here (because what screams “picnic!” more than a little analysis?), we can evaluate most rides on the axes of efficiency, exploration, and sociability. More of each isn’t necessarily better, since there are different reasons for riding, and each axis can tend to cancel out the others. It is more about priorities than absolutes.
A commuter likely wants to maximize efficiency to the exclusion of exploration and sociability. A racer in training, conversely, likely wants more difficulty — i.e. a sort of anti-efficiency [and, indeed, if I were going to actually graph these things, the efficiency axis would be inverted: “maximum” efficiency would be at zero] — while still not prioritizing exploration or sociability. On the other other hand, a classic Midnight Ridazz second Friday ride went all-in on sociability: it was a kind of party on wheels.
Around Passage-land here, we have generally had our own particular set of goals. Exploration has been given emphasis, natch, the rides being largely an opportunity to stage encounters with the city — sometimes consciously woven together as narrative and sometimes left more abstractly phenomenological. Dovetailing with exploration has been our slight obsession with “inconvenience” (another inversion of efficiency). Going the easy way often leads to overly familiar routes, falling back on easy answers and ideas; friction introduces opportunities for reorientation.
Important in the context of this ride announcement, however, is that sociability has mostly been left as a tertiary concern. Social interaction was the inevitable by-product of a group of people getting together to ride bikes, but it wasn’t the thing itself. Oh, sure, we’ve had bowling parties and dance parties and traffic median tea parties, but these were more the exception than the rule.
So then this ride represents another one of those exceptions. And, in determining its composition, I again had to ask how much ride is enough? And maybe we keep things "reasonable" this time? So I have come to another particular balance of those three axes. Sociability has been cranked up. To increase accessibility, difficulty and inconvenience have been toned down. Those were honestly the main things I kept in mind.
But, me being me, I couldn’t help but throw in as many sites and sights as possible. So, for a relatively short, relatively easy route, there are quite a few interesting things to see along the way.
To sum up: less distance, less speed, no hills, healthy dose of “the city” [in all its glory] to behold, and a picnic.
Around Passage-land here, we have generally had our own particular set of goals. Exploration has been given emphasis, natch, the rides being largely an opportunity to stage encounters with the city — sometimes consciously woven together as narrative and sometimes left more abstractly phenomenological. Dovetailing with exploration has been our slight obsession with “inconvenience” (another inversion of efficiency). Going the easy way often leads to overly familiar routes, falling back on easy answers and ideas; friction introduces opportunities for reorientation.
Important in the context of this ride announcement, however, is that sociability has mostly been left as a tertiary concern. Social interaction was the inevitable by-product of a group of people getting together to ride bikes, but it wasn’t the thing itself. Oh, sure, we’ve had bowling parties and dance parties and traffic median tea parties, but these were more the exception than the rule.
So then this ride represents another one of those exceptions. And, in determining its composition, I again had to ask how much ride is enough? And maybe we keep things "reasonable" this time? So I have come to another particular balance of those three axes. Sociability has been cranked up. To increase accessibility, difficulty and inconvenience have been toned down. Those were honestly the main things I kept in mind.
But, me being me, I couldn’t help but throw in as many sites and sights as possible. So, for a relatively short, relatively easy route, there are quite a few interesting things to see along the way.
To sum up: less distance, less speed, no hills, healthy dose of “the city” [in all its glory] to behold, and a picnic.
Sounds like plenty of ride to me. Nice!
-
The details:
- This will be a slower-paced ride intended to be friendly for more casual riders. Maybe not beginners, small children, BMX or cruisers, but anyone who rides at least a little should be a-ok. Invite your ride-curious friends!
- This is coupled with a shorter distance, just shy of 20 miles.
- The ride is flat/downhill as much as realistically possible. There will be a few mild rolling streets towards the end (to avoid the larger, lower-lying roads), but they are very easy.
- Again, the ride will depart from the South Pasadena A Line Station (meet by the sculpture SE of the station) at 10:30am. Which means, if you want to do the ride, you should get there BY/BEFORE 10:30am. That is the departure time, not the meet time.
- The ride will end at Atlantic E Line Station. Easy Metro rail trip back to start (with a same-platform transfer downtown).
- Picnic spot will be on a concrete slab, in the shade, overlooking a dry creek bed. Picturesque! Bring blankets/seating as you want/need.
- We will swing by Banh Mi Che Cali before the picnic stop to pick up foods. Or you can obviously bring your own.
- Other things to bring include: water, hat, sunscreen, spare tubes/patch kits/etc. (saying that mostly for folks who are not as regular riders; always a good idea to bring repair supplies for your bike on a ride).
- A couple folks have asked about non-riders meeting us at the stop and, unfortunately, that is not something I have made easy. The picnic location is probably the most inconvenient place we are going on the whole ride.
-
The details:
- This will be a slower-paced ride intended to be friendly for more casual riders. Maybe not beginners, small children, BMX or cruisers, but anyone who rides at least a little should be a-ok. Invite your ride-curious friends!
- This is coupled with a shorter distance, just shy of 20 miles.
- The ride is flat/downhill as much as realistically possible. There will be a few mild rolling streets towards the end (to avoid the larger, lower-lying roads), but they are very easy.
- Again, the ride will depart from the South Pasadena A Line Station (meet by the sculpture SE of the station) at 10:30am. Which means, if you want to do the ride, you should get there BY/BEFORE 10:30am. That is the departure time, not the meet time.
- The ride will end at Atlantic E Line Station. Easy Metro rail trip back to start (with a same-platform transfer downtown).
- Picnic spot will be on a concrete slab, in the shade, overlooking a dry creek bed. Picturesque! Bring blankets/seating as you want/need.
- We will swing by Banh Mi Che Cali before the picnic stop to pick up foods. Or you can obviously bring your own.
- Other things to bring include: water, hat, sunscreen, spare tubes/patch kits/etc. (saying that mostly for folks who are not as regular riders; always a good idea to bring repair supplies for your bike on a ride).
- A couple folks have asked about non-riders meeting us at the stop and, unfortunately, that is not something I have made easy. The picnic location is probably the most inconvenient place we are going on the whole ride.
- Indeed, getting to the stop will require passing through a pretty sandy creek bed. Folks with clipless shoes may want to take that into consideration. Your options if that is a problem are, I suppose, either bringing adtl footwear for those ~45 seconds of sand or there is an alternate route to the stop that avoids sand but requires walking down a little embankment.
- Note: we will all have to walk up that embankment after the picnic. I don’t actually think it is that tough, but if anyone wants a hand with their bike, I and/or others will gladly lend such a hand. Teamwork... dream work... and so forth.
- I am making this all sound much more difficult than it will be. Just trying to be a little more transparent than usual.
- Some things we will encounter along the way:
- Note: we will all have to walk up that embankment after the picnic. I don’t actually think it is that tough, but if anyone wants a hand with their bike, I and/or others will gladly lend such a hand. Teamwork... dream work... and so forth.
- I am making this all sound much more difficult than it will be. Just trying to be a little more transparent than usual.
- Some things we will encounter along the way:
• Dam [which will soon be closed for ~5 years for construction]
• A big blue whale
• Trees growing out of the middle of the road
• Historic Mission
• Historic "beach"
• Gunfire [heard from a safe distance]
• All the "typical" alleys and overpasses and such
• Surely, other stuff I am forgetting and/or have not anticipated
Reply all
Reply to author
Forward
0 new messages