Monday, February 22, 2010

Ridin' 'round the city

Big plans to ride 60+ miles around L.A. Original plan was to take Metrolinke out and meet up at the Metro station at Wilshire/Vermont. Well, laziness prevailed so I drove and picked up Andy. Made it out lickety-split and found great parking - always the key to any adventure in L.A. Headed out from Koreatown, where the signs are all in Korean but the pedestrians are all Mexican.
down vermont

Down Vermont through the not so nice parts of town. Amazing was having all the kids out waving and cheering for you as you ride the street. Kids and the crazies talking to themselves at the bus stops. They cheered also.

So 20 or so miles into I get that not so fresh feeling in my left knee. Damn, IT band pain. Week before was 40 miles no problem-o, but now, maybe not stretching enough pre-ride, faster pace, not resting during the ride causes it to REALLY start hurting.

Head to Lynwood and the LA River Trail, which we hop on for another 10 miles or so. BRUTAL headwind the whole way. Great to see a lot of folks using the trail on bikes, on foot and surprisingly on horse!
rural living

Make a right and head into Wilmington, the industrial underbelly of the Southland. Nice neighborhood right in the middle of it.
stitch

bikes are fun!

Left that area and headed to the wooded glens of Palos Verdes and Rolling Hills Estates. I was surprised as it was definitely an older money/smaller house sort of place than I was expecting. Nice ride through there, although going up Palos Verdes Drive North about did me in with my stupid knee :-(


Dropped down to Redondo Beach then on to Hermosa for a lunch break. Good snack stop there (pretty good beach pizza) and split the group as I just couldn't pedal any more. Sucked as I knew I didn't have that far to go to get back. Oh well. Rode over to the Redondo metro stop, then trained back to downtown.
bikes only

And what do you know, my car was still there!

Thanks to Seth, Rick, Ron for putting it together. John, James and Andy for coming out and going for a ride!


More pics!



Ricks' take on the day.


Basic map of my portion.

4 comments:

Allie Cat said...

Metrolink to downtown LA isn't THAT hard. ;)

cyclotourist said...

Nope, not at all. Pretty darn easy, actually. But that meant giving up an hour and a half of sleepy-time!

Allie Cat said...

I'll tell you what I tell my wife when she won't get out of bed to catch a train- you can sleep on the train.

(Seriously though, I understand that motivation. Also, really nice pictures. Looks like a fun ride.)

cyclotourist said...

Oh, I can never sleep on the train. Too much people watching to do!