April 21 - Southern California

Saturday was very nice, the rain had cleared the smog from LA and the city looked as good as it gets. It was cool but not cold. I rode from Santa Monica to Newport Beach about 50 miles. Today’s challenge was to navigate without a cue sheet and with only a AAA map of an area that I didn’t know. I got on a Bike Trail in Venice that went along the beach and seemed to have a great number of recreational cyclists. None seemed especially fast as in 6 miles I was never passed, but for the most part the riding was fun. The bike path went onto a beach road and after a few miles into a parking structure (only in LA). The bike path ended at Palos Verdes and I had to climb a few hills to get over to the area around Long Beach. After getting a few directions, I discovered that even cyclists who looked like they might be serious riders were likely to have never gone more than 5 miles from their home. This meant that information about the local area was good, but information about how to get to a distant point was very spotty. Conclusion: ask directions to a nearby location that you think should be on your route and not about how to get to the end of a longer ride.

While climbing the hills in Palos Verdes I rode for a while with Mark, the only rider I rode with on the entire trip from Berkeley. Mark was a triathlete out for a hilly ride. He got me through Palos Verdes on some nice roads and pointed me in the right direction at the top of the climb. I am not so sure how much he competed, as he thought that my 50 mile ride was ‘ambitious’, but he was good company. The ports around Long Beach are the pits. Fortunately, it being Saturday, the truck traffic was minimal but the yahoos in pickups and SUVs were a little frightening at times.

Once through Long Beach I got onto hwy 1 and headed south to Newport Beach. There are some nice bikeways along the 15 miles of beach, but hwy 1 also has a great bike lane. It is so much better than the sections of hwy 1 we ride on in Northern California or the 50 miles north of Santa Monica. I rode on the bike paths until I had had my fill of dog walkers, rollerbladers with ipods so loud that I could hear their music as I passed them, and skateboarders. When I ventured on to the hwy 1 bike lane, I found that there were a great number of cyclists who rode fancy bikes and wore great clothes, but didn’t have the ability to justify their investments. It was very Southern Californian. Since my ride goes through no large cities I hope that this is the last I see of the Southern Californian ethic.