These Guys May Be Cruising for a Bruising
Life in the fast lane has its highs and its lows, Bob Pereyra has learned.
The highs include screaming around steep mountain curves in Agoura at 70 m.p.h. and watching the astonished expressions of motorists going the other way as they pass in a blur.
The lows are that Pereyra is only an inch off the pavement when he does this. And that what he does is illegal.
Pereyra is part of a group of self-styled “dry-land lugers” who build and race 7-foot skateboards down the Santa Monica Mountains’ steepest and most winding roadways. On their backs.
“It’s like the luge event in the Olympics, except ours run on wheels,” Pereyra, 25, said. “You control it by tilting your body. You stick out your feet and drag your tennis shoes to stop it.”
County Ordinance
Authorities who patrol the mountain roads say they wish Pereyra and about 20 other daredevils would do just that: Stop it.
A Los Angeles County ordinance prohibits riding a skateboard faster than 10 m.p.h. on any county street. It also bans skateboarders from traveling on a road with a grade steeper than 3%, according to Deputy Gary Stephens of the Sheriff’s Department’s legal staff.
“It’s a threat to others, even if they can control those things themselves,” Municipal Court Commissioner Robert McIntosh said. His Calabasas and Malibu courts handle traffic violations in the mountainous area. “They could well cause someone to go off the side of a canyon road trying to avoid them.”
Pereyra, a Northridge resident, said he and his friends have never caused a wreck or been in one in the five years they have raced on San Fernando Valley roadways such as Mulholland Highway and Kanan Road, and on some of the steep routes in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Chance of Injury
“You can be going 60 m.p.h. and stop in 20 feet, faster than any car,” said racer Ken Kinnee, 26, of Agoura. “We’re faster than motorcycles on the curves because of the low center of gravity. When they crash, they die. We can crash every day and not get hurt.”
Pereyra, Kinnee and Pereyra’s brother, Greg, 20, also of Northridge, have formed a team and recruited sponsors to pay for competition costs and for the leather suits and motorcycle helmets they wear.
Sponsors include an athletic shoe company that gives them their “brake” shoes, a skateboard-wheel company and a scrap-metal company that provides the aluminum 2-by-4s used to build the six-wheel racers.
The three have sold about 15 similar boards to people who have seen them race and decided to try it. The purchasers have become the group’s racing rivals. Their next race is scheduled this weekend above Glendora.
Kinnee said they usually practice on weekdays when a 2.3-mile section of Mulholland Highway, located above Agoura’s Rock Store snack bar, a well-known motorcyclist hangout, is sparsely traveled. A pace truck trails the racers in case of an accident and lookouts watch for traffic below, but it is impossible to stop cars or trucks from coming up the hill; the racers are careful to keep in the right lane.
Kinnee said he and other members of Pereyra’s team are sharpening their skills for the 1992 Winter Olympics, when they hope to qualify for the U.S. ice luge squad, although none of them have yet tried the sport.
Bob Pereyra is the only racer to run afoul of the law, according to the group. He was ticketed about two years ago for exceeding the 10 m.p.h. skateboard speed limit when a California Highway Patrol officer clocked him zipping down Kanan Road at 65 m.p.h. Pereyra said he also received a speeding ticket for exceeding a 35 m.p.h. limit for regular motor vehicles on a mountain road in Ventura County.
“It seems to me to be a very unsafe practice,” said Officer Jim Young, a spokesman for the CHP’s West Valley station. “If there is a collision with a motor vehicle on one of those blind curves, you know who’s going to get the worst of it.”
The street-level racers caused double takes during a practice run down Mulholland recently.
“It’s just another California fad,” said Matt Kelch, an airline pilot from Thousand Oaks who followed the racers on his motorcycle. “I don’t know how you’d stop if a car came at you. Dragging your Reeboks is not gonna do it.”
Tourist Elizabeth Mitchell, visiting from Duncannon, Pa., whipped out her camera to record the scene.
“What are those things?” she asked. “People back home will say this is fitting for California.”
