Today we head into Los Angeles, an absolutely enormous metropolitan area with eight separate cities around it! You can imagine how the thought of this makes the touring cyclist a bit anxious!
Early in the morning we said goodbye to Mike and made our breakfast at the beach. Everything was wet and sandy but we packed up anyway. We headed down the road towards Malibu. Traffic was fairly heavy but we had a shoulder so all was well. In Malibu, people started parking on the shoulder…forcing us out into the high speed traffic to get around the cars. We saw many fancy homes up on the hillside but didn’t really have time to admire them as we were concentrating hard on the road. This situation got worse and worse as we went through downtown Malibu, where the state park lots are empty (they charge for parking) and the shoulder full of cars!
This continued all the way into LA until we finally made it to the city bike path. Adam heard later the Caltrans, the cyclists and the Malibu residents are at odds over how to deal with the cyclist. Malibu residents apparently actually don’t want cyclists in the community and oppose the creation of a bike lane! Despite the conditions, we actually saw other cyclists doing training rides in the area.
Once we got onto the bike path, we had lunch in the gorgeous sun and dried out all our gear (not a nice thing to do in a hotel room when it’s covered with sand). We followed the bike path through Santa Monica and Venice beach, apparently posh areas of LA, although on a Monday morning they seemed to be populated mainly with transients and us. Adam took lots of pictures. The bike path on the beach was peaceful and the scenery very beautiful. There are very few tourists at this time of year despite the gorgeous weather (by Canadian standards at least)!
We cycled past the runway of LAX, watching the planes take off overhead and turn up towards our hotel for the night. The bike path completely disappeared (despite this being on the LA bike map as a route) and we found ourselves riding on the sidewalk. This is legal in LA as long as you don’t impede pedestrians, and seemingly the only way to survive riding away from the beach as people drive fast here.
We stopped at Whole Foods for their well labelled hot bar and headed to the hotel. There is something to be said about finishing a day’s ride at a nice hotel!
Trip Around The World 
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