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If you were at this most recent CicLAvia, you might have spotted Richie Trimble on his freakishly tall—or as he calls it his Stoopid Tall—bike. And then you might have wondered what it's like being up so high or how a bike that's taller than a semi manages to squeeze under an overpass.
His video offers answers: towering 14.5 feet above looks like a dizzying experience and he just barely managed to squeeze under the 405 freeway. Trimble described the experience to L.A. Streetsblog, which crowned him "King of CicLAvia" (h/t Laughing Squid):
I could see the top of the cars going by and I had never seen that before. And everyone is cheering for me to touch the bridge. I reach up and high five the bridge. As I go under, I drag my hand along the top and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, I’m probably the only person to have touched this besides the workers that built the overpass.’ And that was pretty chilling, but then I realize that the street I was on was at an incline and the bridge above me was banking, the gap was closing in on me. And all I could think was, ‘Holy shit! What am I going to do if I can’t make it out? How do I wedge myself up against this and still make it out? What do I do?’ I could feel the crowd below me, they all knew what was coming. All eyes on me and this bridge closing down on me. It got to the point where my body, my back was parallel to the ground and I looked at my hand and I had about two inches clearance above my knuckles and then I came out from under the bridge and the whole crowd ROARED! A deafening scream of ‘Holy shit, you made it!’ And I swear, those smiles must have lasted the whole ride.
Here's the full video of his ride through CicLAvia (warning: it might give you sweaty palms):
