PJR | A Love Letter To Cycling

🐼 Panda

I met Panda, as most people did: while riding a bicycle. I learned of his passing the same way.

John “Panda” Hermoso was an amazing, charismatic, and loving human. This story is about his love for cycling and the lives he impacted through the sport.

To many people’s surprise, Los Angeles is home to an incredibly vibrant cycling culture. Any day of the week, you’ll find pelotons racing circuit laps around LAX or the Rose Bowl, group rides climbing the hills of Griffith, Hollywood, and Malibu, or hundreds of people boisterously riding through the streets of downtown at midnight, soaking in each others’ two-wheeled company, on their way to the next 🔥 taco stand.

During a routine Tuesday ride (the one where we race laps around LAX), a friend turned to me and asked, “Are you going to Ponies tomorrow?”

“What’s Ponies?” - I replied.

“Oh, it’s great - it’s an early east side ride in Griffith. Show up at the pony stables at 6:30; be ready to climb”.

I had to have this conversation five times before my pony curiosity peaked, and I made the trek across Los Angeles at 5:45 in the morning to meet at these so-called “pony stables.” In retrospect, this sounds much more like a drug deal than a bike ride.

Luckily, my friends weren’t lying to me. When I arrived at 4400 Crystal Springs Drive, I was happily surprised to find an alarming number of cycles crowded into a parking lot in Griffith park. Also, to my surprise, there were actual pony stables.

I circled the lot, looking for my few friends that were there. Before I could get to them, a large man at the group’s center hailed everyone’s attention.

“Alright! If you haven’t been here before, welcome to Ponies; thanks for coming out. Standard route this week. We’ve got some fog, so the roads could be wet. Please be careful around the turns. See y’all at the top!”

With that, the group simultaneously snapped their cycling cleats into place and pushed off, riding north on Crystal Spring Drive.

The ride circles the east edge of Griffith park before turning onto Mt Hollywood, a beat-up service road closed to cars that takes you through the park’s hills. The first portion of the ride is a race to the summit. At the top of the climb, everyone regroups before leisurely riding through the rest of the park, finishing at the Observatory.

The competition and community from the ride were infectious. After just one go-around, “Ponies” was my new favorite group ride. The ride finishes at Maru coffee. After stampeding down Hillhurst, tens of cyclists descend on the small coffee shop, forming a line down the street, destroying the hopes of other patrons’ “quick coffee run.”

During coffee, I sought out the apparent ride leader: the man who warned everyone of the wet roads before we started. A large, jovial man, too full of life to be held by a carbon fiber frame (a custom titanium frame would be required). This was Panda. I thanked him for leading such a fun ride. He warmly welcomed me to the community and expressed hope that he would see me again at future rides.

After an amazing intro, I frequently returned to Ponies. Each week I would meet new people and have the chance to chat with Panda. I learned all the fantastic quirks of Ponies: who the fastest riders were, who would smoke J’s at the top of the hill as a reward for gassing themselves on the climb, and who crawled out of bed just for the community and coffee.

After a few months, Panda and I realized that we lived just a few blocks from each other. The obvious next step was to commute to Ponies together. We rode together for the first time on a dark, foggy morning. With a rollout time of 5:45, the sun was never up when we left, and we would encounter no more than a handful of cars on the 10-mile ride to Griffith.

It’s a wild experience getting to know someone while riding through LA’s dark, foggy streets, dimly lit by street lamps and bike headlights. I learned that Panda worked at Golden Road (one of my favorite breweries) and that he loved bike components and custom Titanium bike builds. I learned about his favorite routes, the hilarious and traumatic bike accidents he’d had, and all the poorly made components he’d broken under the weight of his powerful legs.

Our relationship started to grow. I joined Panda for his Saturday joy rides, where he would lead a group of cycles on a new east-side route every week. My favorite ride was when we rode on the restricted gravel paths of Griffith before the park rangers showed up to kick us out.

Panda started helping me research and build a custom Titanium bike. He advised me on the best frame builders to work with and the custom components he trusted most. During this time, I also learned that his goal was to become a certified titanium technician within the next few years, and he had already started his mentee ship (Surprisingly, titanium welding and fabrication is a highly skilled and challenging position. Very few people are respected within the titanium industry, and poor craftsmanship leads to broken bikes and broken bodies).

Ponies, and my relationship with Panda, became routine. I considered him a friend and always looked forward to spending time with him.

Sunday, May 1st, 2022. I rode up to the Beverly Hills sign on Santa Monica Blvd. to meet for a Sunday group ride. A large crew had come out, including a few riders I hadn’t met before. After intros and some light conversation, one of the riders spoke up:

“Did y’all hear about the accident on the east side yesterday? I didn’t know him… John, went by Panda?”

“What? What happened?” - I hadn’t heard anything and was shocked to hear Panda’s name (even though cycling accidents are, unfortunately, common).

“The rider died. I don’t know how; I just saw the reports”.

I didn’t believe him. That couldn’t be true. I had just watched Panda’s Instagram story from his ride yesterday, thinking: “Man, I wish I had gone out with them yesterday. It looks like it was a great ride.”

I fell to the ground, shocked. I felt sick to my stomach. I made eye contact with another friend: he silently confirmed it was true. I couldn’t believe it.

The feeling of processing a death in real time is indescribable. It’s like being violently thrust into an unimaginable new reality and then immediately forced to reconcile this new world with the previous one.

I didn’t know any details of the accident. All I knew was that it was true: Panda was gone.

I didn’t know Panda for very long: it had been ten months since I first met him at Ponies. I didn’t spend time with him off the bike, and our chosen LA families outside of cycling didn’t overlap. Even though this is all true, I felt a tremendous loss when Panda passed. This is a testament to his life; I was among hundreds of cyclists impacted by his charisma and love for cycling.

There was a memorial ride for him the Wednesday after the accident. I have never been a part of such a large group ride.

Hundreds of cyclists met at 4400 Crystal Springs to ride in Panda’s memory. The train of riders was so long you couldn’t see it end to end.

Everyone was there because of the impact Panda made on their lives. His love for cycling and community was larger than life, and he was the center of east side cycling culture.

I attempted to visually capture the impact Panda had on cycling in LA. This image represents a social graph of 1/100th of his community, collected from his Strava connections. I would have captured more, but there were so many images that my computer crashed when I tried to render his entire community.

My grandmother is a cyclist too. She led a community in the Bay Area for decades before she was too old to ride. She is now a crass, old, British terminator (after having most of her body replaced with Titanium parts).

I called her a few weeks after Panda’s passing to catch up with her. I was hesitant to tell her about the accident, thinking it would highlight the dangers of cycling and worry her. I inevitably told her what had happened; I will never forget how she responded.

“Oh, Scotty, I am so sorry to hear that. He sounds like an amazing man, and I am very sorry for your loss. But, don’t let this stop you from cycling. Life’s not worth living if you’re constantly afraid of the worst-case scenario. All our times will come, and you might as well rush toward it, doing what you love.”

I like to think Panda would say the same thing.

🐼 A LOVE LETTER TO CYCLING

Remembering Panda Through the Words of my Grandmother

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🐼 Panda

Ride in Peace 🐼 💜 ♾️