(Written from Sky and Brian's apartment in Ocean Beach, San Diego)
Miles biked: 88.1 (1,882.9 overall)
Time on bike: 7 hours, 57 seconds
Maximum speed: 30.8 mph
Roads taken: Los Angeles: Pico Boulevard, Gateway Boulevard, Ocean Park Boulevard, bike path along Pacific Ocean, Washington Boulevard, Admirality Way, Fiji Way, bike path, Harbor Drive, Torrence Boulevard, Western Avenue. 223rd Street, Wardlow Road, bike path along Los Angeles River ... Long Beach: Bayshore, E. 2nd Street ... Pacific Coast Highway, El Camino Real, San Clemente: Ave Pico, Boca de la Playa, Calle de las Bolas, Ave Florencia, Ave Pelayo, Calle Puente, Ave Palizada, Calle Seville, Ola Vista, Ave Calafia, Ave del Presidente.
Places stopped: Huntington Beach (to finally rest after 55 miles and eat a Power Bar/blood-red orange lunch), 7-Eleven in San Clemente (to get Gatorades and ice-cream bar), San Clemente State Park (for the night).
I woke up Wednesday morning well aware of the task ahead of me: navigating my way out of Los Angeles. From my bus rides, I knew how huge the city was and that it wouldn't be a breeze to "get out of town."
The first part of the journey wasn't bad. After 4 miles of biking in traffic got me down to the Santa Monica beach, I enjoyed about 15 miles of pleasant riding on a bike path along the beach. A few people joined up with me as I pedaled.
First an older man from Ireland rode alongside me for a few miles, asking several questions about the trip and helping to pass the time. A little later, a pair of locals rode up beside me and provided company as I headed through Hermosa Beach and toward Redondo Beach.
The only negative thing about riding with them is that I missed my turn. They knew the area really well and said they could offer me a different route, but I didn't want to get off the route the map outlined -- I had too many turns to make, too many miles to bike. So I backtracked about a mile to Torrence Boulevard, where I began a more unpleasant part of my day on the road.
For over 10 miles, I rode on busy city streets through Redondo Beach, Torrence and Carson. Luckily, I was used to such things -- it might have been a little more scary had I done this at the beginning of the trip. All I cared about was staying on track.
I almost got lost upon reaching the Los Angeles River. I had to get on a bike path on the east side of the river after crossing a bridge onto Wardlow Road, but I didn't see a way to reach the path. After riding through a neighborhood, I finally made it to the path -- but it was on top of a hill in front of me. So I had to walk my bike through dirt for about a quarter mile before reaching a ramp that led up to the path.
Like the path along the creek in L.A. the day before, the path beside the Los Angeles River is not what you imagine when you hear of a "bike path along a river." The river was disgusting and reeked. It was filled with trash and maybe ankle-deep, for the most part. There was nothing nice to look at.
So I simply pedaled along, heading into Long Beach.
And Long Beach actually looked like a pretty nice place, with -- you guessed it -- a "long beach" and a nice harbor. Droves of people milled about in the midday sun; sand volleyball games were played on the beach; kids screamed and played at an amusement park.
It was a nice city, with plenty of things in a small, contained space (yes, that's an L.A. joke).
Of course, I got lost in it, however. I was supposed to follow a bike path all the way through the city, but somehow I wound up biking a circle by the harbor and then trying to figure out how far, exactly, I was on my maps. That's one of the only issues with my maps -- on the "detail" maps, there are no mileage markers so I never know exactly how far I need to go on a certain road or bike path.
But a man helped get me back on track, and I rode along another nice path out of the city and toward Seal Beach. That is where I finally joined up with the Pacific Coast Highway, officially marking my exit from the four Los Angeles "detail" maps that had dominated my morning.
I'd been riding for more than 40 miles.
I reached Huntington Beach, the "surf capital of the world," and finally allowed myself to take a breather after 55 miles of reading. I exhaled, ate a Power Bar and a blood-red orange and talked briefly with a biker who was quite cynical of the area containing Huntington Beach, Newport Beach and Laguna Beach.
The guy said that if I'd come two weeks later, I'd be "dead" because of the crazy drivers in the area. I thought he might have been exaggerating just a bit, but I was thankful, I guess, that I'd made it two weeks before things got chaotic.
He did have a point, however. The stretch from Huntington Beach through Laguna Beach was crazy, as I biked along the PCH amid lots of traffic. Between the cities, I was treated to small shoulders. But when I biked through them, I had no shoulder to work with and had to watch out for car doors opening from the cars parked on the right side.
There was no way to avoid the traffic. I just had to establish my space in the road, letting cars know that I was there and that they better avoid me unless that wanted some legal trouble (or something like that).
As I was cruising through the high-traffic zones, the scenery was often amazing. And it's no wonder, really -- I was in "The O.C." zone.
I had looked forward to biking through Newport Beach, where the TV show takes place. I wanted to see the huge, amazing houses that are on the show.
Sure enough, there were hundreds of tile-topped houses sitting atop hills along the coast by Newport Beach as well as Laguna Beach. Not a bad place to live, I thought, or to film a TV show.
I got to San Clemente around 4, having already biked about 80 miles, but when I stopped for a snack I realized that I couldn't go farther than nearby San Clemente State Park for the night. The next hiker/biker site was some 30 miles down the PCH, and I couldn't even get there at that point because my route would take me through the military's Camp Pendleton, which -- according to my map -- closes at 3:30 p.m. on weekdays.
So I slowly cruised through several side streets in the nice town of San Clemente and stopped at the state park for my final night of camping.
And it was a beautiful park. I walked down to the beach, which sat just on the other side of a railroad track on which a train passed. I watched a couple surfers take some of the large waves into shore. It was peaceful and beautiful.
Then I walked back to camp and made beans and rice for dinner. It was fun to have a backwoods meal during my final night on the road.
After eating and cleaning up, I walked back toward the beach and enjoyed the end of the sunset.
Then I headed back to the tent and got to bed early.
It was probably a good decision -- I had a little bit of riding to do before reaching my final destination.
No comments:
Post a Comment