This story is silly and semi-stupid but true, and I feel like relating it. So.

I live in Long Beach, you may have noted, and it’s maybe 20 degrees cooler here than it is in the Inland Empire most summer days. (I remind myself of that, whenever I start to mewl about “it’s kinda hahhht today!”)

Still, and yet, it was a bit too warm at 11 a.m. Friday to do my jogwalk. Even in Long Beach. I mean, I’m old, and I’m a hypochondriac, and 35-40 minutes with no shade … maybe not a great idea.

So I went for a bike ride, instead. On the Huffy beach cruiser we bought a few weeks ago from a guy on Craigslist for a too-good-to-be-true price.

Thing about bike-riding is … you can create your own cooling breeze. And just push along.

Until your Chinese-made bike … breaks, that is.

I reached the farthest point of my ride, out there at the end of the walkway that encloses the little harbor across from the Queen Mary … when the pedal on the right side of the bike … fell off. Splat. Yielded to my anything-but-powerful pushing … and hit the ground. Bang. Imagine my surprise.

I managed to stop the bike by pushing backward on the one remaining pedal, and walked back to fetch the one that had fallen off … and I realized quickly I couldn’t actually “fix” it. It would slide back into the hole in the “crank” (as the churning device that leads to the pedals is known) … but it would be loose. I was missing a part, or if it were supposed to screw into the crank, well, that wasn’t happening.

For about four miles, I was OK. The pedal was loose, wobbly, but hanging in there, and I decided to do an extra 15 minutes or so and ride to the end of The Peninsula — where Ocean Blvd. comes to a dead end, by the jetty that separates LB from OC.

And then the pedal began falling off. More and more often. Which would have been little more than a major annoyance … until I caught up to the Street-Sweeping Crew.

Everyone who lives in Long Beach — at least the parts anywhere near the water — already has a healthy fear of the street-sweeper. It comes one day a week, and you can’t have your car parked on that side of the street without getting a serious ticket. Like, $40. Maybe more. It can ruin your day, and Long Beach people in Belmont Shore and Naples and Downtown spend a lot of time and energy worrying about being parked away from the street-sweeper dragnet. “Is this our day? Will I be here those hours that the sweeper comes?” Etc.

So, I’m coming back from the far end of The Peninsula, and the pedal begins falling off … just as I catch up to the two street-sweeping machines working the north (bay) side of the street.

The guys driving these machines seem crazy. Over the top. They’re doing 15-20 mph, and they’re being fairly wild about it. Careening around corners, the big (10 feet high, at least), loud machine swaying as they turn … and now I’ve caught up to them.

I get past them … and my pedal falls off. I stop the bike, get off it, go back, pick up the pedal, jam it back into the hole in the crank, and start off again. At first I think I will outpace the street-sweepers, even at this ragged rate.

Then I realize I’m wrong. Each time the pedal falls off, the big machines get closer.

Two blocks behind. Then one block. Then right behind me. These monsters were chasing me … and I could not escape! If only my machine would cooperate, I could get out of the way, but … it keeps breaking! And those are maniacs, driving the street-sweepers. It’s like they’re being paid by the mile.

I’m getting close to the Leeway Club (near the playground), about to get off Ocean Blvd. and escape the roaring machines … when the pedal falls out … again.

This time, there would be no escape.

I had just put down the kickstand and turned to go back the 10 yards and fetch the pedal … when the street-sweepers … so close together they almost looked like one huge machine — swept over the spot where my pedal had fallen … and sucked the thing up!

Was I going to be next? I was directly in their path. And they had been chasing me for five minutes now, for more than a mile!

So, I grabbed my cheesy bike and dragged it toward the curb … I wasn’t even off the street … when the street-sweepers roared past in a cloud of blown sand and grit … swerving only slightly to avoid running me over (and perhaps sucking me into their insatiable innards, just like my pedal).

It was crazy. What started as frustration turned to alarm (if not quite fear, no).

I managed to prod a one-pedal bike the final mile of my route (in part by using my right foot to briefly push the stub of the crank, when it was at the top of the rotation). But even doing these gymnastics, I thought of little else than the Demon Street-Sweepers who had sucked up my pedal — and almost me.

Later, I thought of that Hitchcock scene in, what, “North by Northwest,” where Cary Grant  is in a field of some sort and a plane is chasing him and he realizes he isn’t going to get away … and that was me.

Of course, if I had been riding something other than a “new” Chinese beach cruiser that we paid $85 for … maybe the pedal wouldn’t have fallen off barely 15 miles into its working life. (Anyone else old enough to remember when “Made in Japan” connoted shoddy merchandise, prone to breakage? That’s where China’s economy is, now. It’s what Japan was 50 years ago.)

I did work up a decent sweat. Some of it might even have had something to do with exercise.