Back on the road

Hello again readers. We hit the road again after our little break in Los Angeles for the past 4 days. I must say, even though it was nice to have shelter for the past few evenings, I am pretty stoked to be out of LA. I will admit that I had a better time there than any other trip I have taken to LA, but I still really hate that city. Basically the only times that were good were when I was with someone that had a car. That city is just straight up unenjoyable without an automobile. I even tried biking around and I had to bike at least 14 miles to do anything. Pretty ridiculous. However, it was really nice to see andre, Paul, mike and Jason Harbert who I had not seen in a really long time. I even ran in to krissy piper at a taco restaraunt and officially met her after awkwardly sort of knowing eachother for years haha. Sorry to anyone out there that I missed, I felt completely trapped whenever I didn't have a car, so anyone who didn't live in silver lake or Beverly hills / Hollywood was out of luck haha. Also, thanks again to andre and Jason for letting me crash on their couches. Oh yeah, and it was also nice to see Alison Brady at her art show. Brooklyn raise up.

So yeah, now let's get back to the point of this blog which is the bike trip. We managed to ride 70 miles today from silver lake LA to Dana point which is just south of laguna beach. Today's ride was quite interesting. The first 30 miles of the ride was just getting out of LA. Give me a fucking break LA. 30 miles? We weren't even like the furthest we could have been either. 30 miles... Just to leave LA. not to mention all 30 miles were ugly as shit. LA isn't really a pretty city in the first place, but our route today was a tour of all of the ugliest parts! We went through down town, south central (which I couldn't stop thinking of don't be a menace the entire time) then we hit up Compton haha. We were riding on some bike path through south central through some park and got mean mugged pretty hard by some rough looking dudes at one point. I must say as a dude with a fully loaded touring bike wearing a half spandex outfit I wasn't feeling very in place. Not to mention we had to stop at some point to consult the iPhone for directions which made me feel even more cozy haha. Once we got to Compton though we were mostly on some bike path going behind houses where we were pretty much out of sight. I must say that was about the sketchiest looking bike path I have ever seen and the backs of the houses in Compton were pretty raw.

Once we finally got out of Compton we hit up some bike trail that followed the Los Angeles river. Let me tell you, that is the ugliest damn river I have ever seen. It is made of Fucking concrete and is filled with garbage. What an eye sore. Very fitting for LA. but yeah, for this portion of the ride we were going head on against some brutalizing winds which slowed us down to about 9 or 10 mph all the way to the coast at long beach.

Long beach was about halfwy through our ride and the scenery popped a 180 for the rest of the day. The last 35 / 40 miles were through orange county where we were blasting through the most yuppie ass shit I have ever seen. We strolled through long beach first on a bike path that was in the middle of the beach. Though we were now in a better situation or riding with the wind, this beach trail was basically a sand storm. We were getting peltted with sand pretty much the entire time and I was riding with my eyes barely open for a lot of it.

After long beach we hit Huntington beach where the sand continue to blast us. Zach was wearing short sleaves and said the shit was pretty painful on his arms. I just kept getting sand in my ear. Huntington was even more yuppie than long beach.

Then we hit Newport beach. Even more yuppie. Zach had his first tech problem where his rear deraellier would stay in his highest gear. We stopped and adjusted it pretty quickly now that I am some what of a broken Deraellier expert.

Lastly we rode through laguna beach which was the yuppiest of them all. That shit was like a really huge organic foods store mixed with the upper east side of new York. I couldn't resist screaming orcish at all the beautiful people on the side walk. Also, the people in laguna beach drive the worst out of any place we have been thus far. Today was the first day I thought I was going to get hit by an SUV.

I enjoyed today's ride quite a bit I must say. Riding through the shitty parts of LA was interesting and yelling at pedestrians in yuppie land was fun. Also, the wind ended up pushing us for a large portion of the ride making it easy to sustain a nice 22 mph pace.

Tomorrow we are biking through camp pendleton. I am curious to see what goes on in there. We will possibly go all the way to San Diego... Or we might split the ride up in to 2 half days since Lenora won't be there until Saturday night. We shall see!