A ride all over the LA region. I have to attend a meeting in the Midwest so I arrange to land in LAX and take several days there to tour around before locking my bike at the airport, leaving for a week, returning, finding my bike just where I left it (locked under a CCTV camera), having another ride then packing and departing. I lost a lot of the pictures from that trip. People that don’t live in LA probably think it is a bad place to cycle but they are completely wrong about that.
I land early morning and after the obligatory 2-1/2 hours in the immigration queue (how come it only happens in the USA) and after I assemble my bike it is still many hours before I can go to my Airbnb so I take off down the coast a bit past Redondo Beach and back.
The downtown area is easy to ride in with wide streets and even some bike paths. After this I head out through Hollywood, Beverly Hills, over the 405 then south. Navigation is not hard here.
Last night online I read about Skid Row so went back into the city to see it. There is a homeless population of up to 10,000 people here. It is claimed that some cities give their homeless folk free bus tickets to LA.
Back to the coast and I’m heading north.
Malibu up ahead.
The amount of sand along the coast is amazing. Machines sift it at night no doubt removing cigarette butts and other “trash” as it is called here.
Today I head across to Santa Monica then south along the beaches. There is quite a scene along here.
The Ballona Creek bike path has become one of my favoured ways of getting around.
From this path there is often access to other paths and to shopping centres.
Even big scary roads like Sepulveda are usually quite ridable. When not then it is really obvious and you just get off. Bikes are not permitted on some big highways.
Back at LAX to depart I go to the Qantas sales desk to buy a carton and get a “what’s that?” look. So I come back a few hours later with this and am told it MUST be in a carton. In his effort to convince me the supervisor boasted that only yesterday a passenger abandoned his bike due to the inflexibility of Qantas on this point. I lost the photo but to solve the impasse I just bought more small boxes and returned with a mega-carton. I reported the guy to Qantas back in Australia. Normally Qantas is helpful with bikes.
