Monday, October 5, 2009

Still seeking a Western passage to the Pacific ocean

I couldn't make it to my bike club's ride yesterday due to the city being bisected in two for a triathlon. I lived on the other side of the dividing line and couldn't get across. Of course, I didn't know about this ahead of time, and there was no signage, so I kept trying, and spent 90 min on the road there and back trying to get to the ride. I couldn't even get parked at the beach to take my own ride on this side of the line, everything there was blocked too.

So instead, I just went home went biking on my own. I biked west, trying to find a nicer route to the ocean than the one I did a couple of weeks ago.

I found some nice streets, and long, direct ones too, but no luck yet on finding a route consistently pleasant enough that I'd want to take it very often. In fact, I only made it about halfway there and then turned around. I need to find nicer ways to get around some geographical obstacles. I'm sure I will, but it seems to be more of a challenge in the east-west direction than the north-south.

I biked through parts of Century City and Beverly Hills though in my efforts, and these are very nice neighborhoods. The major obstacle that got in my way was Fox Studios- I had known it was in the way from looking at the map ahead of time, but holy smokes, that's a big campus they have there, it stretches all the way between Olympic and Pico Boulevards, and then a country club across the street from it also blocks a huge chunk of land, Pico Boulevard is the only way to get through. Needs a bike tunnel underneath.

Here are a couple of photos from my ride. This one is on Little Santa Monica Boulevard, which parallels the real thing in some places (on the other side of that decorative barrier), for local access. That white blob on the hills in the far distance, just right of the middle of the photo, is the Hollywood sign.

The one below is of Palm Drive in Beverly Hills. Wonder where they got that name! If you squint, I think you can see Jed Clampett... I just love these palm lined streets, they are so different from what I'm used to. The residential areas of West Los Angeles are just beautiful.

3 comments:

  1. Wow! Its nice to be rich and famous! You get to live there... -Eric

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  2. So where is all the smog???? Looks like you've been having beautiful blue skies more often than here in southern Ontario.

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  3. Not much smog here! The air is as clear as Ottawa's (which is to say, not perfect but not bad). Some days are a bit hazier than others (in terms of how many distant sets of mountains one can see) but that seems to be mostly an air moisture thing.

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