Marina Del Rey to Watts Towers

 We rode with the LA County Bike Coalition and other LA bike clubs on a Funday (fun and Sunday...get it?) ride. We left the AV at 6AM and drove to Marina Del Rey. There were 3 routes and we thought we wanted to ride the 37 mile, non hilly route. We talked to the ride coordinator and he said he "hoped" to do the first 11 miles in under two hours. Well that's just a little too slow for us so we joined the longer, hilly and faster group (about 50 riders). We left at 8:30, first riding on a the Ballona Creek bike path. We were soon in Baldwin Hills. There is a reason it's called Baldwin Hills.  Short but intense hills. We made it up the first three but we walked the last part of the last hill as did about half the group. We then rode through South Central on our way to Watts. One bike club was predominately African American and the leader gave running commentary about riding in the the "hood". While is was all good-natured, we have lived in So Cal most of our lives and have never been to the Watts Towers. Kind of a sad commentary on us and how LA is still segregated. Our group split up on the way back and we rode with about 10 others. The pace was pretty fast for us but we kept up. Got to rest at the many lights, but we were riding at 17-19 mph most of the time. We headed toward downtown and then turned up MLK Blvd and made our way back to the beach. Total miles: 42. It was a beautiful day and even hot as we ended our ride. Hey it's February in LA!

25 miles on the new wheel

It was a little cold but we rode this weekend to test the new rim. Worked great! Very smooth and quiet. I was worried that I would not get the disc brake adjusted correctly, but all was well.

We also met with Doug (and Jan), our riding buddy this weekend. He's in for the next trip! Starting with us in SF, he will  ride down to LA and then he and Jan are off to another vacation. He was previewing the elevation profile through Big Sur. Some big climbs again await us. Guess that's why we are going to spin classes and yoga again. Have to get into shape!

New Rear Wheel

A Christmas present to ourselves...a new rear wheel! This will be the third rear rim for our bike. First one bent when we must have run over something. I noticed cracks at the spokes the last time I changed a tire on the second one. This time we got a Phil Wood, 48 spoke, tandem hub with a Chukker Velocity rim from Peter White Cycles. It's soooo pretty and hopefully bullet proof.  Have to start riding more for we are planning this summer's trip. San Francisco to San Diego which will be the last leg of our Pacific Coast tour. We have already done the Santa Barbra to Oceanside part. That was our first tour and we did it by credit card (no camping and eating out every meal). Not possible since we don't have credit cards anymore and we like the camping with other cyclists too much. SF to SB would be just too short and we did not ride to the Mexican boarder last time. This time we will. 

Warm Showers Guests

 We have now hosted our fourth set of  Warm Shower's guests and it's just early spring. With the new Sierra Cascades ACA route, I think we will be seeing more and more bike travelers riding through the AV.

Geoffrey & Olivia

A Century! That's 100 miles.

Ev and I finally rode in a century (and finished it).

We rode the Lighthouse Century starting in San Luis Obisbo in an up and back route to Piedras Blancas Lighthouse. We have not been riding a lot and we could have opted for the Metric Century (66 miles). We had to decide at 36 miles but felt good enough to keep going. It was unseasonably hot and the last 20 miles were pretty tough. There were many tandems which was nice to see.

We stayed at the Bridge Creek Inn, a great two room bed and breakfast located in the Edna Valley.

I would like to do a couple more next year. Maybe Solvang or Palm Springs.

Photo of the week

Rob submitted one of our photos to Adventure Cycling's photo of the week and they chose it! Check it out: photo

So as this is a photo of the of the week our photo is now not the first one you see when you open the page. You can hit previous photo and eventually see ours.

Pictures of our trip

It has taken a while, but here are some photos of our trip. There are a lot of them! We did lose most of our photos from Vancouver and the days following. We tried three different recovery programs but we now know that we should have bought a new SD card as soon as we realized the ones were lost.

There were so many memorable moments on the ride, but it seems that the ones we talk about the most are the whales at San Juan Island, the kayaking (also on San Juan), and our stay at Heceta Head Lighthouse.

It has been rough getting back to reality ( & work). We have not ridden much since the trip. We are signed up for a century ride in late September, so we better get riding.