I took my first real ride on my Downtube Mini folding bike over the weekend. I mentioned earlier that I had brought the folding bike with me to Los Angeles, since I wouldn’t have a car while I was here.
Someone at work had mentioned that San Vincente Boulevard was a nice road to take to the beach, so I thought that would be a nice way to test out the new bike and to see some of the sights. The route I ended up taking is highlighted in purple (UCLA is in the upper right corner; Santa Monica pier is in the lower left corner).
The first task was to find San Vincente Boulevard. So I started at UCLA, headed South on Westwood Boulevard, and followed the Bike Path signs west on Wilshire Boulevard. The first ten minutes of my trip went fine.
However, my first mistake was to ride in traffic along Wilshire Boulevard. I am not a bike rider, but I knew that it is best to ride in the right-most lane. And after all, I was following the Bike Route signs. So all was fine, until I discovered suddenly that my lane, and the one to my left, turn into feeder lanes for the 405 San Diego Freeway.
Luckily, the Downtube Mini has a sharp turning radius, and after a bit of dodge and weave, I managed to get out of that situation.
Once I got west of the 405, I turned right onto San Vincente Boulevard. This was a much nicer road — with a real bike lane, lots of nice houses, and being generally a pleasant place to ride a bike, as the following pictures show.
My second mistake was to not apply sunscreen. There is quite a bit of sun in L.A., especially at the beach. So about six miles into the trip, which put me near where San Vincente hits Ocean Avenue, I was starting to feel the heat. However, all discomfort was forgotten once I saw the view:
Note that in the second beach picture, the pier in the distance is Santa Monica Pier.
Also note that these pictures were taken from Ocean Avenue, which is on top of a small cliff, above the Pacific Coast Highway and above the beach.
However, when you have a folding bike (which weighs 24.5 pounds), cliffs are not a problem. No, I did not fall off the cliff, for once, but I did find some stairs going down the cliff. This picture is looking back after I carried my bike down the stairs and crossed the bridge over the Pacific Coast Highway:
However, by this time I realized my third mistake. On my next trip I will leave my backpack containing my laptop computer and some textbooks in my room. Evidently these sorts of things aren’t really needed at the beach.
The fourth mistake dawned soon after — riding a bike a long distance in the sun makes one thirsty and hungry.
Nevertheless, I rode my bike along the beach until I got to the Santa Monica Pier. There were the usual things one finds on a pier — people fishing, people walking, people selling trinkets, people playing musical instruments — though this was the first time I have seen a 9-story ferris wheel on a pier before:
My return trip was similar to my outbound trip, except that I rode back to San Vincente along Ocean Avenue instead of along the beach, so that I would not have to carry my bike, backpack, laptop, and books back up those stairs.
The round-trip was about 15 miles.