John’s Ramblings

We had a vague goal of going to the beach, renting bicycles, and cruising the Strand during our visit to my parents in Los Angeles. That was the entire concept.

Sunday and Monday were rather cool, gloomy, and windy. Not characteristic SoCal bike-along-the-beach ambience, if you catch my drift. Tuesday’s forecast was promising, and the amazing weather-person on channel 9 came through with a crystal-clear day, the sun rising as prominent as said weathercaster’s silicone-enhanced chest (ok, I actually had to watch the weather 2 times because the first time through, I couldn’t remember a thing she said).

We drove west, south, and west from our temporary HQ in Burbank, and ended up in a parking garage near Pier Avenue in Hermosa Beach. My rough concept at this point was getting us close to the middle of the Strand (which runs roughly from Redondo Beach to Venice Beach), and figure out something from there. Once parked, we walked out of said garage ($1.00 an hour), turned toward the water, walked 1/2 block, and found a bicycle shop renting all manner of two-wheeled devices. Talk about dumb luck!

We were offered a variety of vehicles by the friendly guys in this shop, tandems, multispeeds, or our choice which was single-speed cruisers with “coaster” (pedal backwards to stop- sorta) brakes. They happily added a basket to the front of Terri’s machine to hold her newly acquired Kipling handbag (when in L.A., one MUST shop!). After a 22 second inservice on bike lock operation, we were pedaling these low-tech bikes down the Strand, choosing North as our direction on a whim.

It was before noon on a weekday, so traffic on the strand was low. The weather couldn’t have been better, with a gentle (2-3 mph at most) breeze coming from the south. We did maybe 8 miles in an hour’s worth of cruising, but it was very cool. One could get used to pedaling up and down the beach, with the only obstacles you encounter wearing bikinis.

We saw a few surfers in the water as we got close to Santa Monica, but I never saw anyone actually catch one of the few waves that were present. We did see a few pelicans fishing close to shore, and saw them do their dive-bombing maneuver.

This is nowhere near the kind of cycling we do around home, but it was a total kick. We felt a little time-constrained because we wanted to spend time with my folks, so I’m sure if we come back down with more time to burn, we’ll spend more than an hour doing the beach-cruiser thing.

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