War-walking and Midnight Riding

Got a new macbook last weekend. Decided not to fork out big bucks for top-shelf machines anymore. I always end up unloading them a few years later for pennies on the dollar, and the base models have enough kick to do the tasks I give them.

I love the portability of this thing though. I never thought I'd be a laptop guy, and it's true, my fingers are rather more clumsy on this little keyboard than they are in my online bay at work, but at least I can be out, instead of cultivating the "edit-bay suntan."

So, my new obsession is something known as "war-driving," I guess. Part of my motivation for getting the laptop was knowing that they came with Airport wireless network gear. But as it turns out, there are very few places where you can pick up free wi-fi (the public library, a block from my apartment, happens to be one of them, which is great when they are open). Never one to be defeated so easily, I began reading up on ways to gain entry to password-protected wireless networks. I've heard so many stories of people who do not subscribe to hi-speed internet being able to log on with their Airport-enabled Macs, but I guess they live near unprotected networks... all of my neighbors seem to be a bit more savvy - or they hired the Best Buy "Geek Squad" to configure their service.

Well, like most other things that you are not supposed to do with your computer (such as illegal downloading, duplication of copyrighted media, etc), it seems that where there is a will, there is a 16 year-old Norwegian kid with a way. So I got my hands on a freeware program that scans for wireless networks and reports back on whether they are protected or not. For the time being, it works great for finding hotspots where I can jump on, but as yet, it is useless to me for password lock-picking. Am I painting an unethical portrait of myself? Does this make you uncomfortable, reader? When I was information-gathering, I hit up a programmer who is a classmate of mine in Japanese. The topic got him all red in the face and he told me he couldn't help me. "For ethical reasons, or technical ones?" I asked him. "Both," he replied.

I can't really explain the draw for wanting to do something you are not supposed to be doing. I think it's a basic character trait. I guess everyone has that line drawn nearer or further down-field. I don't feel like such a rotten human for wanting to surf the internet for free, I just don't feel like forking out the cash anymore, and I want to know how this stuff works. I think that's the driving motivation for me more than anything else. Anyway, the "sport" of cruising around, scanning for open networks is referred to as "wardriving," but since I am not so dedicated that I want to go burning gas all over the city and mapping hotspots to GPS data as the real nerds do, I call my modest habit "war-walking." It consists of walking out of my building, powering up my laptop and starting a scan, stopping about three doors down once I've found an open network, and sitting on the curb to surf away, while neighbors come and go, giving me funny looks. I'm actually semi-ashamed of being so cheap.

The other nocturnal weirdness I got into recently was participating in Midnight Ridazz, a bike collective not unlike Critical Mass, that meets up a few times a month for night rides throughout the city. Anyone can join, and any "member" can organize a ride. I first became aware of them driving back from a Friday night Japanese tutoring session in Little Tokyo, when I was intercepted by mobs of bikers huffing up Vermont. I tried to shout an inquiry out the window at them, but I think they assumed I was fucking with them, and I was ignored. Someone told me the name of the group later and I found them on the internet and decided to join an upcoming ride.


The ride I joined was called "Noche de los Biciclistas Muertos," and was a Dia de los Muertos-themed ride with riders painting their faces like skulls and mounting skeletons on their handlebars. It was a lot of fun, bringing back a lot of my enthusiasm for street riding. I had not been on my bike since I was a fulltime student at UCLA, when it was my main transportation, but cruising deserted streets at night is a very liberating feeling. The ride was about 22 miles I hear, and the route took us past a couple of graveyards. We stopped on the Whittier Blvd bridge for a moment to listen to tunes that someone was pumping out of a trailer-carted stereo system (Oingo-Boingo Dead Man's Party, anyone?) and someone set off some fireworks. It was an oddly beautiful scene: the downtown skyline at night, lights glinting off the LA River, 800-900 bikers hovering above the river on the bridge, fireworks popping over our heads. I was a bit out of shape ( embarrassingly apparent when I was gettin' smoked by cute girls in ponytails passing me on the uphills ), but the cool night air and the scenery made my post-ride butt pains and leg aches worth it. I love the kind of anarchic spirit of events like that. We met at Griffith Park, right near my apartment, and there were so many riders it took a good 20 minutes (!) just for all of us to make the left hand turn out onto Los Feliz Blvd. It's not so much that I get a kick out of inconveniencing drivers, but there's just a wild spirit to it that's made even better by all the customized bikes and zany outfits. There's so many people, most couldn't possibly know each other, but everyone has the same idea of weird good fun.

In a very short time it seems, the idea of Midnight Ridazz has grown from a few die-hard bike enthusiasts to rides that draw over 1000 people. Maybe it is like anything else in LA - it's something hot with a short lifespan. I often think that people here will get in line wherever there's already people standing (think Pink's Hotdogs). I'm not even sure how often I plan to return to it. But it's interesting how quickly Midnight Ridazz has spawned offshoot and copycat groups. Hell, I don't know, maybe they are an offshoot of something else. It's just something that seems to have caught on. An interesting little item for the metrobloggers, like me. I guess.

Until I get Photoshop running on the Macbook, I can't pst any images to the web. So, for now, go to the Midnight Ridazz site for images of the Noche de los Biciclistas Muertos. They have video too.