Archive for the ‘Bicycles’ Category
Venice Beach Bike Path
Leave a CommentToday my daughter and I drove down to Venice Beach, CA to bike on our favorite bike path.
Beach parking at Venice or Santa Monica can be expensive. The price changes according to season. In the summer, it can be as high as $14, but if you get there before 9:00 am, it is half price. Today we got there at 8:55 and paid $6.00. We like to park at Venice Blvd., leave the bikes in the car, and go eat breakfast at the Sidewalk Cafe. Then we walk across the beach to the water and sit contemplating the waves for a bit before we get the bikes out. Today the surf was pretty rough.
The boardwalk between Venice Blvd. and Rose Avenue is basically street carnival all day. Hucksters are selling jewelry, bikinis, suntan lotion, paintings, tattoos, sunglasses, hemp products, medical marijuana, doodads, t-shirts, toys, refrigerator magnets, dolls, fortunes, CDs, and anything else imaginable. Street musicians and other performers play for tips. Tourists from all over the world stroll back and forth. On this day, there were lots of French for some reason. On other days, there were lots of Germans. I don’t have any pictures of the boardwalk at the moment, in part because for all these street characters, this is their gig, and if you take a picture they want a tip. That is perfectly legitimate, in my view, but I wasn’t in the mood for all of that interaction and negotiation.
I love the boardwalk, though. It is cheap, sassy, desperate, and real.
Today we went north, toward Santa Monica. We like to stop at a particular life guard station and roll the bikes to the beach, where we take a breather and contemplate the waves a bit more. Here are the bikes, with my lovely daughter on a rock in the back:
Here’s a shot of the life guard station, with the bike in the front. Note my new white and silver Bell Triton helmet. My daughter was wiser in her choice of helmets from the beginning, selecting a white Giro (on the red bike).
The bike path is great, except that, as noted in a previous post, it is full of non-bikers. Pedestrians cross the path without looking either way. People allow tiny little girls to sit on the path and play. Groups of friends stand in the middle of the path to converse, blocking traffic either way. Folks, there are bicyclists going 20-30 miles per hour both ways, and this is what the path is for. The speeding bicyclists are in the right, and if you get hurt, it’s your fault.
We discovered today that it is easy to stop at both Mitsuwa (Japanese grocery items) on Centinella and Trader Joe’s on Sepulveda on the way back to the freeway. This satisfies nearly all of our grocery needs and makes a biking trip to Venice Beach existentially efficient!
Puddingstone Reservoir
This morning I drove out to the Frank G. Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas, CA to try out a bike route I had found online. I had gotten the impression from the site (Bike Paths of Los Angeles) that there was a path completely around the reservoir. Actually, you have to go in and out of the park to go completely around, and much of the way you are quite far from the lake. When I ended up at the fairgrounds, I thought I had gone completely wrong, but in fact I was on track. I turned around and headed back for the park. Next time I will pay a bit more attention to the map before starting out.
To get there, I took the 10 freeway west and got off at Via Verde, just at the top of Kellogg Hill. I took Via Verde away from the Forest Lawn cemetery. There is a Park and Ride lot just before the entrance to the 57 freeway. It is best to park there to avoid paying $8.00 to enter the park. They don’t charge bicyclists or pedestrians an entrance fee.
The park is full of roads and paths, with lots of picnic tables and other amenities. I biked along Via Verde, exited the park at Fairplex, and as noted above ended up at the fairgrounds, all without seeing the lake. I turned back, and as I re-entered the park a couple of women taking breaks from their touring bikes commented on my Dahon folder, so I stopped and asked how to get to the lake. As directed, I went back up the hill, coasted downhill at great speed, and turned right at the bottom. I soon found the lake. Here are a couple of pictures:
Another shot:
Bonelli Park is good place for biking, and there were lots of bicyclists. There are some hills that were a bit tough for my seven speed. I got half way up the worst one in first gear and then I had to walk. That might have been because I could be in better shape. I find that biking once a week is not enough to improve endurance significantly. I probably need to supplement my weekend activity with some time on the stationary bicycle.
The Dahon Speed D7 folding bike is working out very well. I don’t have to worry about putting a rack on my car, and I don’t have to struggle to put a full-size bike in the back of an SUV. It fits in the trunk of my 2003 Civic. People in full biking regalia on bigger, more expensive bikes with more gears routinely fly by me, but that’s fine with me. I am having a fine time.
I did recently buy a new helmet, however. When I first started, I bought a black Bell Triton Fusion, which was comfortable and fit well. It was fine when the weather was cool, but black is the wrong color to wear in the heat. It leads to baked head syndrome. So I bought another Bell Triton, in white and silver. It makes a big difference. Now I have a cool-weather helmet and a hot-weather one.
Biking is a great pastime. You get out in the world, exploring, meeting people, and getting exercise. As Bill and Ted would say, it is “most excellent!”
Los Angeles River Bike Path
I have been trying to go biking at least once every weekend. Venice Beach is the best experience so far, but parking is expensive ($14 on the weekend in the summer!). Today I tried the bike path the runs along the L.A. River. I started from the John Ferraro Athletic Field located near the L.A. Zoo. Going north on the 5 freeway, get off at Zoo Drive, but instead of turning right to go to the zoo, turn left. There is a free parking lot right across from the gate to the bike path.
The Los Angeles river is a concrete flood control channel for its entire length, at least the part you can see from the bike path. However, water is flowing in the middle of the channel, and there are willows and other water-loving plants in and around the water. There are lots of waterbirds too–ducks, cranes, herons, swans, and many others. I have heard that much of the water in the river is recycled waste water, but this doesn’t seem to bother the birds. Here is a picture:
I headed south toward Atwater Village. For the most part the path is flat and in good condition. At one point it goes up a bridge over a road, and there are a couple of places it goes under roads. For most of the way the river is on one side and the freeway on the other. The river is pleasant, the freeway not so much. There is noise, and car exhaust, but even so, I enjoyed the ride. Here are some pictures from near the southern end of the path:
And another:
Note the power lines, which are above the path most of the way.
There were numerous other bikers, although the path was not crowded. I got there about 10:00 am. I think that it would have been better earlier. Not a bad ride at all. It’s cheaper and more convenient than Venice Beach or Santa Monica. I’ll probably try it again, but I will try Puddingstone Reservoir first.
Folding Bicycles
This post probably won’t have anything to do with rhetoric, teaching or music, unless I find some torturous route to relevance, but it is what I am thinking about this morning.
Due to the need for an enhanced exercise regimen, and some changes in my personal life, I recently acquired a couple of folding bicycles (see pictures near the end of this post). I used to ride quite a bit when I was younger. I had an old Schwinn ten-speed that I rode to high school. I had that painted and fixed up and I rode it later when I was teaching at Cal State L.A. Then I got serious about biking for a while and I got a 12-speed Nishiki that I used for transportation. After a while I decided that the frame on the Nishiki was a little big for me, and I traded it to my brother for his Peugeot. However, the Peugeot sat unused for quite a while, and I finally got rid of it. I hadn’t had a bike for years when I got the folders.
Using bikes for transportation in the L.A. area is nerve-wracking. Even if you plan your route well, you are going to deal with traffic and parked cars. You have to be ever vigilant against the motorist who is going to open the driver-side door of a parked car right in front of you. If this happens just as a supermarket truck is passing you, as happened to me, you are in deep trouble. The truck missed me by an inch or so. I stopped riding in traffic.
Once I took the Nishiki on a bicycle wine tasting tour with a friend from high school. We started from Santa Rosa, north on Old Redwood Highway, which had been the main road before U.S. Route 101 went in. There was almost no traffic on the road, so the ride was peaceful, yet exhilarating, at least at first. I forget the first winery we stopped at, but it had a beautiful approach, a long driveway lined with trees. We were the only tasters there, and we were greeted by a young woman of blond, ethereal beauty. Smitten, I bought two bottles of Gewurztraminer, forgetting for the moment that we were on bicycles. I had panniers (saddle bags) on the rear rack of the bike, so a bottle went on either side. Now I had to carry the wine all the way to Healdsburg and back, about 30 miles round trip. It was idiotic.
My friend wanted to see a former girlfriend in Healdsburg, so that was our destination. He had done theater work at Santa Rosa Junior College, so later that evening we were to see a production of Dracula. All in all a full day.
When we got to Healdsburg, it turned out that the girlfriend was off on a camping trip with another guy. This disturbed my friend more than I had anticipated, and he simply jumped on his bike and began pedaling furiously on the way back to Santa Rosa. I followed, but although Old Redwood Highway was free of traffic, it was full of potholes and thorns. My 100 lb. pressure clincher tires were easy to roll, but they weren’t very thorn proof and I soon had a flat. I stopped to change the tire, but my friend, absorbed in his emotions, pedaled off out of sight. By the time he returned, I had changed the tire, but about half way back, I had another flat. This time I didn’t have a spare tube or any more patches, so it was time to walk the bike.
We made it to the play, which was horrible, and the next morning we made repairs. Biking is great fun if you learn from your mistakes. Don’t buy wine at the beginning of the trip. Call ahead to see if your girlfriend still loves you. And if there are likely to be thorns, use tougher tires. I think these days you can get bike tires that contain Kevlar.
Nothing could be done about the laughable production of Dracula.
So why folding bikes? A folding bike can fit into the trunk of a Honda Civic, or the back seat, without disassembly. You can drive to the lovely bike path and enjoy biking without sharing the road with trucks. You can put the bike in a bag and take it on the bus. You can store the bike in a closet, or under the stairs. There are many advantages.
Folding bikes generally have small wheels, either 16 or 20 inches, tall seat posts and tall handlebar posts. Everything is instantly adjustable. Once you figure it out and practice a bit, you can fold or unfold the bike in about 15 seconds. The high end models are very light. Those under $400 or so are generally heavier, but still under 30 lbs. When I started investigating such bikes, among the cheapest were bikes like the Citizen Tokyo for $164. People seem to like those bikes, but they also seem to want to upgrade them. Bromptons are popular, but are custom-made and most cost more than $1,000. Bike Friday makes some models that fit into an airline suitcase that can be converted into a bike trailer. Downtube is another popular bike, with a lower price.
However, the biggest company making folding bikes, and the brand you are most likely to see in a local bike shop, is Dahon. Dahon has many different models with different configurations of equipment. After much investigation, I decided on a Dahon Speed D7, for $389. Then, because my daughter wanted to go biking with me and the reach to the handlebars on the Speed D7 was a bit too far for her, I bought her a Dahon Eco 3 for $339. Here are the two bikes unfolded:
Two Dahon folding bikes
Here’s a picture with the Speed D7 folded:
One bike folded
Dahon makes a bag to put the bikes in when you want to take them in a building or a bus, or store them in the back seat of a car. Here’s the Dahon Speed D7 in a bag:
One bike in a bag
The bag is fairly easy to carry on your shoulder. It is large, and a little heavy, but it looks like a large duffel bad. Most people would not see it as a bicycle.
We have taken these bikes riding at Venice Beach and at Griffith Park. They are great fun. The Venice bike path has signs painted on the path every 50 yards or so that say “Bikes Only.” Of course there are roller bladers, joggers, pedestrians, baby strollers, dog walkers, and spaced out cellphone talkers as well, along with serious cyclists on high-performance racing bikes whizzing by. It’s a zoo. I didn’t see any other folding bikes, but we fit right in. One day we went from Venice almost to Malibu.
The folders are odd-looking bikes, but that is part of the fun. We are still finding new ways to use them. Being out on a bike does tend to get you out of your daily routines. Yesterday in Griffith Park we met a woman who was handing out flyers for her garden club show, so we stopped and bought a geranium. I’d actually never been to a garden show before.
