Overnight on the Sunset Limited: My Time at the LA invitational

Words and photos by Henley Phillips

There’s a many-tentacled business tucked on the corner of Euclid Avenue and Mission Street in San Marino, California. It’s a bike shop, but #itsnotabikeshop. There’s a variety of cacti and succulents for sale in a little greenhouse at the side of the establishment, so is it a plant store or a nursery? Though it’s not a bike shop, there’s an outdoor repair space where two mechanics wrench on bicycles surrounded by green, yellow, blue, and red tool caddies.

• 
• 

Sean Talkington, one of the founders of this confounding front, is a co-creator of the apparel company Ringtail and an original founder of the Team Dream Bicycling Team. Perhaps strangest of all for a place that’s not a bike shop, their in-house brand currently offers two bike models: the Beach Club Discless Road and the Gravioli, monikers that nicely explain themselves. And what’s up with the euroVACAY brand? Welcome to The Cub House.

• 
• 
• 

With so much going on and such a wide-ranging mix of retail disciplines, I’ve been intrigued by The Cub House for a couple of years now. Is it really not a bike shop? Maybe it’s a boutique cycling brand? I’d seen photos of classic cars adorned with vintage Kleins and Pinarellos on roof racks, so at some point, I thought it was a collector’s club of some sort. I needed to know more, so a few weeks ago, I boarded a train with my bike and headed to The Cub House for its sixth annual Los Angeles Invitational. The Invitational began as a swap meet at their original location, morphed into a bike show, expanded to include a car show in 2018, and finally, in 2022, a mixed-terrain bike ride was added on Saturday. It’s now a weekend-long event of riding and hanging in support of the Lowelifes Respectable Citizens Club and the LA Bike Academy.

Amtrak to Los Angeles

Riding Amtrak is a crapshoot. It is the box of chocolates. With some luck, your assigned train car could be relatively peaceful, the only sounds coming from the rhythmic tick tick tick of metal on metal. A snore here or there, perhaps. If you’re unlucky, it can be a restless night full of YouTube videos blaring at full volume, the sounds of diagnosable snoring conditions, and countless conversations on speakerphone. I caught the Sunset Limited on its way through Tucson, and by the time it arrived, having left the Mississippi River at New Orleans that morning, the crew, passengers, and train itself were tired.

• 
• 

I boarded. Two seats to myself. Alright, maybe this won’t be so bad. Thirty minutes out of the station, we’re stopped on the tracks that parallel Interstate 10 to Phoenix. The conductor comes on the loudspeaker,

“Folks, this is the conductor from up front. I need everyone to please return to their seats. It looks like we’ve got a stranger on board. Please return to your seats immediately. We’ll get this figured out.”

Tension. Everyone around me straightens up. Amtrak staff walk up and down the aisles peering into seats. Fifteen minutes pass. The conductor again:

“Alright, folks, that was a near miss. Maricopa up next, folks. Maricopa.”

We’re stopped again in another 20 minutes. Afternoon thunderstorms have knocked out some of the track signals, so it’s not safe to proceed. It doesn’t take long for the family in front of me to come apart a little. It looks to be elderly parents traveling with a young couple and their four children. Phones are produced for entertainment, and some of the family are watching their shows at full volume with no headphones. It’s a mess of cartoons, foreign language news, anime, and that strange genre of videos where people watch other people play video games. My eyes burn with sleepiness. I’m starting to feel annoyed, so I decide to use the restroom, brush my teeth, and get ready for some semblance of sleep.

As I mentioned, the train itself was in rough shape when it arrived in Tucson, and the bathroom is, of course, the epitome of this. When I walk in, the floor is littered with toilet paper bits and what I assume is a puddle of water and pee. There’s a chunk of crap lingering inside the toilet bowl, and it looks as though it’s been there since at least Houston. I brush and floss in the farthest corner of the little stall, and when I go to rinse my mouth, the water pressure is so unnecessarily strong that it sprays back into my face, shirt, and shorts. Damn it. I just want to go to sleep.

I do eventually find some rest in the observation car away from the noise of my assigned seat. I wake in Yuma, Arizona, then again somewhere around the Salton Sea, and finally at sunrise just outside of L.A. But, we’re not moving. We stopped a total of six times in the night for various reasons. The conductor chimes in:

“Good morning, folks, this is the conductor from up front. It looks like we’ve got a red light here and….”

The explanation doesn’t make sense to me, and the train is already four hours late. What’s another 10 minutes? Half an hour goes by, and out of boredom, I go down to the snack bar to get coffee. It’s terrible, as expected, but I sip on it to pass the time. We’re moving again in another 20 minutes, and the city is starting to come into focus. Thank goodness. The conductor once more:

“Alrighty folks, it looks like we’ve got another red light, and they’re not saying how long this one’ll take.”

I say to myself, “Holy shi–”

“Nevermind, folks. We’ve got the green. Welcome to Los Angeles.”

The Scoops

For this year’s event, riders could choose between the Single (25 miles), Double (40 miles), or Triple Scoop (55 miles), ranging from 2,500 to 7,500 feet of elevation gain. Around 300 riders registered for the event, and we rolled out Saturday morning for the hills and mountains north of the city with an escort down Mission Street from the shop’s patina-white Volkswagen.

• 
• 

• 
• 
• 

I had spent the previous week in Mexico City with some digestive challenges, so despite my better judgment and not having pedaled a bike in two weeks, I opted for three scoops. The route took us north out of town up the Arroyo Seco, passed the Rose Bowl Stadium, and up the Cherry Canyon Motorway into our first climb of the day. Short and steep, our mass of hundreds thinned into smaller groups as we gained elevation on the city still topped in a thin marine layer from the morning. From an elevation profile perspective, the Three Scoops resembled a sort of stair stepper, with one building on the other. Before descending the Catalina Verdugo Trail, I noted the Verdugo Mountains and Mount Lukens as the two bigger steps to come later in the day.

The name “motorway” rightly conjures up a traffic frenzy, but instead, they’re usually gated, peaceful fire roads perfect for pedaling or hiking into the hills for an escape from the city. The Verdugo Motorway runs along the ridgeline of its namesake range, and over seven miles and 2,000 feet of elevation gain, the Scoops wound its way in and out of saddles, around minor peaks, and finally spit us out on a fast descent into the first aid station of the day.

• 
• 
• 

Modelos. Hard Topo Chicos. Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Pocari Sweat. PB and Js. Melting chocolate chip cookies and shots of something. The Crust Bikes aid station had it all. From here, the Two Scoopers took a more direct route back to The Cub House, while the Three Scoopers readied for the final and biggest climb of the day up to Mount Lukens, 3,300 feet of climbing over a paltry 5.6 miles. I downed a bag of Flamin’ Hots, a cold Taco Bell burrito from the day before, and headed out for the last scoop.

• 
• 

I kinda struggled for the rest of the day, but the route was magnificent and served as a good distraction. In contrast to the enormous metropolitan area just over the hills, the chaparral scrub, spring blooms, and an “out-there” feeling made the ride feel even more special. Cities bounded by these kinds of riding opportunities, where you can pedal away from your house or a coffee shop, are some of my favorite places to visit, and they do a wonderful job of balancing out the urban pulse. Back at The Cub House, I picked up my finisher patch, downed a can of Coke, and claimed my slices from the Pizzanista across the street.

The Show

Cars (and their shows) aren’t something I know much about, and as much as I love riding bikes, I also don’t really know enough to spend a day at a bike show nerding out on models and makes and all the things that make show people tick. However, I appreciate old things and admire the care and dedication people have to restore them. Whether it be bikes, cars, or grandfather clocks, old things conjure up feelings, and I think that’s what a show is all about—the connection over a patient craft.

The Sunday show and swap meet felt like the perfect reflection of the dizzying array of disciplines that make The Cub House special. Roads were blocked off, parking lots taken over by piles of bike parts in the swap meet, and cars lined Mission Street in front of the shop. The cars were set up in natural groupings with the camper van/adventure truck crew in one section, the classic BMWs and European models in another, Toyota pickup trucks, and perhaps my favorite, a collection of more contemporary models of Subaru Bajas and a lone Honda CRV with its matching RC car.

• 
• 

As the day grew warmer, I stopped in at the Tacos Arabes food truck for a pineapple and passion fruit agua fresca. There was also fresh ceviche on offer, caffeine from Pink Coffee, and Patty Baby was jam-packed flipping burgers all day long with a line that never stopped. For the show side of things, votes were cast throughout the day with colorful little dots placed on tags for the best bicycle, the best car, and the best combination of the two. I only managed to get a photo of the bike show finalists and was pleased to see the variety that made the top three.

The End

I’d loitered long enough and decided to take one last pass through the bike shop before heading to catch my evening train. And yes, it is a bike shop after all. It’s also a plant shop, a clothing brand, a bike company, a community-building corner variety store, and an expression of the individual interests of all the people involved.

Inside the shop, atop a glass case of components, I thumbed through a copy of “Nothing Special,” a coffee table book of sorts with film photos and an introduction written by Sean. In it, he recounts the shop’s inspiration from a trip to Italy 10 years prior and shares how this whole experiment started and why it continues. There were times when his car sat filled with inventory, nothing moving, and no one interested in what they were doing. Then they would unexpectedly sell out of everything in one fell swoop. It’s been trial and error, and at the heart of it all, it’s still just a handful of people dedicated to the craft, who don’t take themselves too seriously.

• 
• 

• 
• 
• 

I bought a shirt, and well, it’s a shirt. Made in the USA, yes, but it’s nothing special. Their kit and bikes are works of art, but it’s just more stuff. Nothing special. What they do on the outside, however—the community rides, the time and energy to put on events like the L.A. Invitational, raising money for community organizations, the sincerity I felt from everyone I talked to at the shop, the creativity and commitment to their craft—is indeed something special.

It won’t be on an Amtrak, but I’ll be back again next year.

Related Content

Make sure to dig into these related articles for more info...

Please keep the conversation civil, constructive, and inclusive, or your comment will be removed.