• BMC SLX01 Race Master carbon-aluminum frameset
• Torelli Bormio Ultra-Lite wheels with ceramic bearings
• Full SRAM Force  gruppo: 50-34 compact crank mated to an 11-25 cassette
• 3T stem and Ergonova Pro handlebars
• BMC carbon “Streampost” under a Selle Italia Prolink Light Gel Flow saddle
• Vittoria Diamante Pro tires
• Speedplay Zero pedals
• Garmin Edge 500 ANT+ compatible GPS cycle computer

I was a little hasty when I referred to the Race Master as BMC’s merciless dominatrix. There is love and fury here, to be sure, but this is about commitment rather than subjugation. A full ride report is forthcoming and there’s still some build work to be completed—note the uncut steerer tube. My bars were dropped at the suggestion of ex-pro (Paris-Roubaix!) BMC rep Soren. More on him later, and thanks for bib shorts!

After much deliberation, she is called Nahual.

Bikini season looms in El Segundo, CA.

The SLC is half the weight of my current bike, 15 flyweight pounds to the GT’s 29.5, a change I’m struggling to adequately quantify. The frame alone weighs 950 grams—if you had a seal, he could balance it on his nose. The demo came equipped with the 2010 Ultegra group, Mavic Ksyrium Elite wheels, Conti tires and a Fizik Aliante Gamma saddle. Transitioning overnight from a 44-32-22 MTB triple crank to a 53-39 standard double is bewildering to say the least. The math refuses to line up, and I found myself glancing past my thigh at the cassette to figure out what gear I was in, or what gear I should be in. The big ring can be a bitch to turn over. Getting caught unawares in high gear at a green light would delight the Marquis de Sade, and despite my fitness—and fastidiously avoiding the granny gear on my GT—I nearly ran out of gears on the climbs.

I still crested Sepulveda maybe 10 minutes faster than usual, and I haven’t done any climbing in months. The return was terrifying. Thirty pounds of bike is effectively ballast, helping you maintain your line, especially in a wind. Fifteen pounds of sylphlike carbon perched atop a few centimeters of rubber is a different story. There was a venomous slanting headwind pushing me all over the road on the descent, like you might flick a spinning top. Sepulveda is a wide boulevard with gentle curves and few lights—an amateur could sprint downhill to 50+ MPH with a few extra breaths. I could smell my brakes. I need to work on my bike handling skills.

The Ultegra group is snappy and fun to use. There’s a little play in the levers but shifting is crisp and clean, on par with SRAM Force and out-performing the 2009 Dura-Ace I’d tested elsewhere. Shimano, however, is dead last in ergonomics. The hoods feel cramped and thin. Despite the Hellraiser-inspired design of Campagnolo’s Ergopower levers (who molds grips that looks like exposed muscle?), they are vastly more comfortable. Braking is smooth but a little soft on the OEM Ultegra pads. That dinner plate of a crank is light and absolutely rigid—and one of the few Shimano styling cues I actually like. Fizik Aliante saddle? Next.

I got off the hill without dying and took the long way ’round to Marina Del Rey and the Ballona Creek bike path, where I knew I’d have a tailwind and prepared to open it up. Turned east onto the path and started dumping watts into the bike as hard as I could. Sprinted to 32 MPH in the flats, a fit of anaerobic pedal mashing in 53/12 (the highest gear, or “Cavendish ratio”) not unlike hammering the circle button to behead a cyclops in God of War. I passed beneath Lincoln Boulevard, assuming I’d be able to maintain a strong 23-25 MPH pace through to Culver City, when the route was blocked by caution tape and a police car. The cop informed me that a body had been found in the creek.

I responded in the stupidest manner possible, considering what I’d been told: Are you serious? What was the cop going to say? Nah man, we just string this crime scene tape up to fuck with cyclists. Now turn around.

The Pro Machine frameset itself is just fucking ice cream, 100% sculpted carbon art down to the dropouts, looking like something JPL might dream up to ferry terraformers around Europa. It’s fun to read the frame before you ride it. The decals said it features nanocarbon transmolecules or something, and integrated… skeletons. The net-net of all this beautiful architecture is a buoyant, responsive all-rounder of a frame that tracks fabulously and hums over LA’s wasted roads. By the end of my 2-hour training session I was rolling hands-free, tucking into the drops and leaning into turns far deeper than was ever possible on that anchor I’ve ridden off and on (lately, on) since 2005. Confidence restored! The Pro Machine is BMC’s magic carpet. I’ll be demoing the SLX01 Race Master, the merciless dominatrix of the BMC line, next weekend.

Hat tip to Banning’s Bikes in Fullerton for supplying the demo and being friendly, helpful and attitude-free.

The vista was beautiful to the point of distraction, and therefore hazardous. It’s unwise to gaze at the sea while biking along Pacific Coast Highway, especially when the shoulder is crowded with surfer-mobiles and surfboards and surfers jutting into traffic, and most of the drivers are just as distracted by the spectacle as you. I pulled off the road at Castellammare to absorb the view.

Further south I rode past a Korean surfer girl with long wet hair, head tossed back, climbing out of her wetsuit like a throwback to a 1980s Juicy Fruit commercial. Some women are so beautiful it would be profane to look away. I sucked in my gut and pedaled for another 25 miles and laughed out loud, so delighted was I by this waking dream.

At 8:30am Los Angeles’ mother-market opens to the rank and file, a five-block cruciform of fruit, vegetables, flowers and the occasional half-primal of grass-fed bison direct from the soil to your reusable bag. Citrus, dates and avocados arrive from San Diego County. Staples like onions, garlic, lettuce, tomatoes and sweet corn are trucked over the Grapevine from the Central Valley. Tehachapi’s Weiser Farms delivers potatoes, crinkly spinach and enough polychromatic carrots to fill a 64-count Crayola box. From the micro-climes of the Central Coast come berries and Coleman Farm’s eclectic greens like amaranth, nettle and lamb’s quarter.

I have oysters at two bucks a slurp from Carlsbad Aqua Farm. The Luna tastes like cucumber and melon, brine and snow. It’s so cold. Sensory mechanisms decouple, buffers overflow and a feral smile opens my face. It’s only 9am and I’m not prepared. When I manage a glance at the man next to me, his head is thrown back and his eyes are closed. There’s a spent oyster shell in his hand. No cup of coffee can do this.

By 10:30am the market is packed. Cars stack up five deep outside public lots that were full an hour ago. Shoppers browse for organic Fujis from Ha’s Apple Farm, Schaner’s coop-fresh eggs (in shades of speckled blue and rose!) and artichokes the size of medieval truncheons. For DIY brunch I collect a loaf of bread from sourdough evangelist Bezian Bakery, a wedge of raw-milk gouda from Winchester Cheese Company and a ripe tomato. At 11 the throngs are peaking so I shelter in place under the City of Santa Monica tent at the intersection of 2nd and Arizona. My Leatherman yields a crude but savory tomato-and-cheese sandwich. I make a mental note to bring mustard.

For most Southern Californians seasons exist only on the Weather Channel, but at the market our tilting planet wields supreme influence. Lovers of food grown in the ground in rhythm with nature anticipate joy, then sorrow, as items come and go. Winter brings hardy squash, blood oranges and Hachiya persimmons oozing honeyed syrup. Fava beans are huge in spring, heaped unprocessed atop vendors’ tables still in their woolen pods. Summer is for stone fruit and the heirloom tomato—too dense, variegated globes, their ravishing sweetness fixed by the sun and best appreciated with nothing more than olive oil and a drift of salt. Finally, after the first autumn storms strike the Western Sierra, mushroom people emerge with wild porcini, I presume in briefcases handcuffed to their wrists. Any bolete that smells like leaf matter after rain and tastes like peat crossed with dry-aged beef is bound to inspire a certain cock-eyed adulation, and passerby approach David West’s mushroom stand just to sniff in tribute.

At 1:30pm the Wednesday Santa Monica Farmers Market, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2011, shuts down. The streets open to traffic and the urban drone returns. The chefs have been behind prep lines since mid-morning, while the foodies and hippies and retirees have melted back into the city. The farmers crave only sleep. I keep an ice chest in the trunk of my car. It’s great for camping, the rare bass fishing excursion out of Port Hueneme, and market Wednesdays. I drive home and process the day’s take.