I was dreading and simultaneously looking forward to Saturday. Saturday, you see, was to be the first full day I would be without a car in the Santa Clarita Valley, a place built for the personal automobile.

I was dreading it because I knew getting around the SCV without a personal vehicle would be more difficult.

But I was also excited about the challenge, which promised rich rewards: personal fitness, money savings, and guilt-free movement to and fro.

Can I get it done though? Can I exist in Santa Clarita sans a car, a condition I have not had to endure since I was a pimply-faced 16 year old at Hart High when gas cost only $0.89 per gallon? Let’s see.

The Rules

I’ve created a list of rules for myself that I plan to follow over the course of the next 30 days. They are as follows:

• No personal vehicle usage: This one goes without saying, but it’s important to state it up-front because even though I am officially car-free, my household isn’t. My wife still has a car, but I am forbidding myself from using it for any personal trip to an SCV destination, barring emergencies. Besides, most of the time she’s rolling in the Civic and won’t let me have it.
•  Mobility Options: To travel from Point A to Point B in the SCV, I can use one or more of the following options:
  • Walking: Highly overrated, slow, and inefficient, plus one gets really hot walking in broad daylight in Santa Clarita’s dreadful summers. Nevertheless, a cheap, easy, and very green option
  • Bicycling:Obviously, my preferred option, and the one I’ve been committed to since March when I started biking to work. This mobility option is not only fun, but it gets me in shape and makes my legs look sexy
  • Santa Clarita Transit: The City spends tens of millions on Santa Clarita Transit, but it only costs me a buck to get a ride to just about anywhere in town. Better still, I can combine my bicycle with the bus to create what the military would call a “mobility multiplier.” Bonus: You meet interesting people on the bus, as you shall soon find out.
  • Hitching Rides: This is a tricky option. My overall goal is not only to not use a personal vehicle, but also to not generate any additional personal vehicle trips by others. How this breaks down will be difficult, but if I’m at a place with a friend and he offers a ride home to me, I may take it, depending on how far his final destination is compared with my final destination.
  • Out of town: While I’m comfortable taking the Metrolink train to just about anywhere, and they let bikes on board, the sad fact of the matter is that Metrolink doesn’t go everywhere I need to go. So I will allow myself to use a personal vehicle if I have to leave town to a point not served by rail. Usually, this means the west side of Los Angeles, a place I visit about twice a month. While Santa Clarita Transit does have commuter bus service to the west side, it’s weekend schedule (when I go) is very restricted.

With my rules set and my leased car returned to the dealership, I was ready.

It’s going to be hot. It’s going to be sweaty. I’m going to be hot, sweaty, and yucky. So be it, Game on!

Saturday 5:05 PM

It was a hot Saturday afternoon at home in Newhall when I got a call from my two brothers. I had just finished swimming and was pondering the evening ahead.

Brother #1: “Hey man, want to watch the fight tonight? It’s going to be a big one.” Saturday night was the big UFC Mixed-Martial artist fight, broadcast live on PayPer View from Mandalay Bay.

Me: “Yeah sure, sounds great. Are you having it at your house?”

Brother #1: “No, there were too many people and I don’t have HD. We’re watching it at Wings ‘n Things near Castaic, it’s on Commerce Center drive.”

Me: *Gulp* “Okay, what time does it start?”

Brother #2: “7 pm, and be sure to come becasue we reserved the table!”

Me: “Okay, I’ll be there!”

Excited about this first mobility test, I hopped on the PC to find out where this Wings ‘n Things was and to study my options.

Bad news: Google maps said Wings ‘n Things is 8.9 miles from my house, and the route the software had chosen for me included about 6 miles on Interstate 5. Six miles on I-5 at 20mph on my bike? I don’t think so.

Even if I changed the routing to allow me to travel on surface streets, my options didn’t look to good. Whichever way I cut it, I was facing an 11 mile ride on such SCV superhighways as Newhall Ranch Road, Valencia Blvd, Highway 126, and more. These are not bicycle-friendly roads in the City, and I hadn’t even considered how cycling-unfriendly the unincorporated County territory was, but all this didn’t deter me.

The Bus!

I realized quickly that for me to get to Wings ‘n Things by 7pm, I had better skedaddle. Life without a personal vehicle in the SCV is a time-consuming affair, but the way I figure it, I either pay to transport myself with time or money. Having used money for decades, I’ve decided now that my time was worth it.

I thought about just taking the bus to my final destination and walking or riding to the restaurant. I checked my SCT timetable and realized I’d have to transfer once at the McBean Transfer station and that my total trip time would be about and hour and a half to get from Newhall to Castaic. That just won’t work; I require beer, sustenance and camraderie, and I can’t be late to the fight.

So, with an eye towards the Saturday schedule of the #1/2 route (Travels from Canyon Country to Castaic/Val Verde) at the McBean Transfer station, I left Newhall on my bike at 5:40pm, travelling on Orchard Village, the South Fork Trail, and finally the streets of Valencia until I reached the McBean Transfer station.

6:02 pm

Some 4.8 miles and 22 minutes later, I pulled up at the McBean Transfer station all hot and sticky but thrilled. I had made it in time to board the #2 bus outbound to Val Verde, which was to leave the station at 6:15 pm.

I loaded my bike on the bus quickly (it was early by the way),  boarded, sat down and took a long swig on my water bottle. It must have been about 100 degrees outside, but the inside of this comfortable Gillig Phantom bus was a cool 75.

Two minutes later, the bus driver’s radio crackled.

“Hey, just an FYI, that elderly woman who sings and curses is going to board your bus. She’s done shopping and is on her way home.”

My bus driver grimaced. Both he and the other driver apparently knew whoever this woman was.

As I impatiently waited for the bus to get underway (it was by now 50 minutes until the fight started), I looked around the bus to see who my fellow travellers were.

There were at least six young Latinos, plus a Latino man in his 20s or 30s who looked like he came straight out of some 1990s gangster film. He looked imiposing in his wife-beater shirt, Virgin Mary and Mexican tattoos, Pancho Villa-esque mustache and hardened look.

Then she came.

Smelling of sweat,  pork and some other unsavory aromas, a large, round elderly black woman with a pink summer dress and a sweaty head scarf waddled up the stairs on to the bus. I imagined that she must live in Val Verde and just finished browsing the mall.

She seemed friendly at first, looking to the driver then me, then all the passengers and asked each of us, in rapid succession,  if we wanted any peaches.

No one took her up on the offer.

After she sat, we finally departed at 6:15 on the button. The second leg of my car-free trip began.

On the Bus

Fortunately, my bus ride seemed faster than it was. I suppose that’s due to the fact that few people were on the route waiting to be picked up.

But then the old black woman started singing about Jesus.

“Jesus wants to help out, tell him what you want. Jesus wants to help out, tell ‘im what you want. Call ‘em up and tell ‘em what you want…”

over and over and over again she sang the chorus to this heretofore unknown Gospel medley, all the way from McBean & Creekside to Highway 126, when the driver, out of frustration, slapped the plastic dividing panel between him and the passengers and said, quite to the point said, “Ma’am, please stop singing that.” To which the elderly black woman replied:

“Whatsa’ mattah? You don’t believe in Jesus? Well fuck you then. I’ll believe in Jesus all I want.”

She then broke out into rants about Mexicans, blacks, and “whitey.”

It was all I could do not to bust up laughing at the old crazy woman. Of course I felt bad for her at the same time, but she seemed to be getting along just fine without my pity.

Destination: County Territory & Highway 126

I considered taking the bus trip all the way out to Val Verde then swinging back around on Commerce, but by now it was around 6:35, so I decided to get off at the stop at Highway 126 and Commerce Center drive. As I exited, the elderly black woman said Jesus told her that I should wear a baseball helmet, not a bicycle helmet. I said thanks, departed the bus, unloaded my bike, and gave a thumbs-up to the driver.

Once I had my bike on the ground, I examined the bus stop. It certainly wasn’t bicycling, let alone, pedestrian friendly. I was standing in some loose gravel, broken bottles all around. An open condom wrapper laid near an over-flowing trash can, and the two dilapidated bus benches were covered in spider webs, gum, and sticky material. Just a scant few feet to my left cars blew by at around 60mph, beyond them lay the beautiful hills behind Magic Mountain.

If this was the bus stop used by workers in the Commerce Center, I immediately felt bad for them.

But there wasn’t much time left. So I hopped on my bike and pedaled up Commerce Center drive, a massive six lane roadway with no sidewalk and no bike lane. I felt naked and exposed, unsafe on this massive roadway, but since this was a Saturday, only a few cars passed by.

Finally, Wings ‘n Things

At 6:46 precisely, I rolled onto an ocean-sized parking lot in front of Wings ‘n Things.  I had never visited this shopping center before, yet it was instantly recognizable to me. Not only was there an ocean of parking spaces, but there were year old trees all around, zero shade, and, most importantly to me, zero places to lock my bike.

“Thanks County of LA for not requiring the developer to at least put in one decent bike rack”, I muttered as I locked my bike to a tree.

This shopping center (surely named Canyons Plaza, Hasley Hills Square, Castaic Village, Rancho Del Valle Marketplace or some other such name) was surrounded on all sides by massive, window-less concrete buildings, themselves surrounded by acres of parking lots. On the hill above the center were some standard SCV homes built on what probably used to be a nice looking ridgeline.

The shopping center itself was strangely vacant; commercial real estate signs, rather than business names, dotted the windows as far as I could see.

My trip complete, I went into Wings ‘n Things, drank some beer, enjoyed the food, and cheered during the fight. All in all, the food was decent and the sports bar atmosphere was great. From there, I hitched a ride with my brother to BJ’s (his final destination), then rode home from there at midnight on the South Fork.

By the Numbers:

So for those of you keeping track, my first day without a car was time-consuming but interesting. I’ll break this trip down in comparison to what it would have cost me with my personal vehicle.

Sure it took much more time, but I spent less money, got a good workout, and got to see how the other half of the SCV lives and what they’re greeted with when they take public transit. That’s a priceless education right there.

Be sure to tune in next Friday for another Living Car Free in the SCV Adventure. Hint: I’ll be biking to various AT&T stores to see if I can score an iPhone.

High temps, old west costumes, Mexican vaqueros, and three fiddling sisters all rolled into town today for the City of Santa Clarita’s Cowboy Festival at Melody Ranch in Placerita Canyon.

Hundreds of people were walking the dirt streets of Melody Ranch -the setting for several motion pictures and television series about the old west- by noon. Temperatures were in the 90s and the dusty street sometimes kicked sand up in people’s eyes, but that didn’t matter, it was still a lot of fun.

It was my first time attending the event since way back in the 1990s, and I had forgotten how cool it was. You don’t even have to be a died-in-the-wool cowboy to appreciate this celebration of western culture, art, and skills.

I stopped in on a few music events. One woman had traveled all the way from Denver to sing songs of the west while strumming her banjo inside a music hall that looked straight out of the 1800s.

Down the street, three young men crooned “Don’t Fence Me In” with banjos, fiddles and guitars as the crowd bobbed their heads, sang along and fanned themselves.

And in the biggest venue at the show under a large white tent, three sisters named the Quebe sisters thrilled the audience with their fiddle playing. Most of the songs were about lost love, old time religion -that sort of thing- but they also played some wicked instrumental fiddle music (think Devil Went Down to Geogria.)

It was obvious many participants at the festival had planned for a long time on what to wear. I especially enjoyed seeing how some of the women dressed. If those costumes were an accurate representation of how women of high-society dressed back in the day, men I think we are missing out today! Some of the women dressed in old-time clothes were simply stunning.

As for the men- well, I’m not convinced they were playing dress-up at all. Whether it was the old man who’s face had endured 10,000 hot sunny days on a ranch somewhere or the gigantic cowboy wearing shitkickers and real round spikey things (to hit the horse with I think), these men looked and acted the part. Some had big handlebar mustaches, others had hands so weathered one wondered how they could be so dexterous when handling a lasso. These were the kind of salt-of-the-earth men you’d see in an advertisement for Ford trucks, men who hold contempt for girly-men like me who sit behind computers all day.

One cowboy stood at least 7′7 feet tall, and I was quite shocked. “They must grow ‘em big down on the ranch,” I thought, then realized he was on stilts.

My favorite part of today’s performances was Benito “Benny” Martinez and his trick pony. Martinez and his group talked a bit about the history of the Mexican Cowboys or Vaqueros, and it was great to see an element of Mexican culture that is so similar yet distinct from our’s. Then Benny and his horse did several tricks. Benny spun a lasso around the calm horse, made the horse lie down, rear up, and even do sort of a two step with Martinez as he walked around.

This being an event in the SCV, one can’t escape the scores and scores and scores of vendors at the festival, but people seemed to enjoy the selection of fine western wear and lots and lots and lots of ten gallon hats.

Overall, it was a great time, and I encourage you to go tomorrow. I hear there’s three brothers who are going to play and are absolutely awesome with the fiddle.

[Show as slideshow]

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For the last five years, columnist Willy Gutman has taken The Signal’s readers to places few of us have or ever will visit. Mixing commentary with reporting, Gutman has brought the stories of drug-infested and corrupt Central American towns right to Santa Clarita’s doorstep. He’s challenged popular beliefs about the United States, religion, morals, and the nature of the world. He’s opined on the conflict between Israelis and Arabs, presidential elections, and other topics. He’s mixed in tales from his own life, which began in the frightening years just before World War II, and has spanned seven decades, multiple continents and scores of jobs.

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