Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.

[bagoh20]

I want to start a topic on Cycling In the L.A. area.

1st:  It's tough to beat the beach path from Malibu through Venice Beach, past LAX, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach ending just past Redondo Beach.  Great scenery, lots of people watching and many are worth watching. Lots to stop and look at or explore.  Crowded so not a good workout at least not on weekends, but a one of a kind route for what it has to see as urban routes go.  This is a good bar hopping route if you're into that.  I quit drinking but we used to do that in groups on weekends and it was a blast and no hangover....usually.  Lots of hot bodies to check out all over.  I haven't quit that yet.

[bagoh20]

I commute to work and back from Westchester around LAX through Hawthorne to Gardena.  14 miles one way - about 1 hour.  Nice ride if you go the right way.  Some bike path but mostly regular streets.

[wanderingwheel]

I don't know, I'm having a hard time coming up with smething nice to say about riding in LA.  Once you get to the fringes it's great, but downtown LA is just ugly city riding.  You're right, the bike paths can be useful if you're going slow, and the "scenery" is hard to beat, but it's also an awful lot of people crowded into the small area of the bike paths.

Sean

[bagoh20]

Agreed.  One good thing is the weather is always good.

Tomorrow I'm planning on biking from LAX (My home) to Sylmar (32 miles), go hang gliding, camp out and return the next day.  I will travel some bike path, a lot of residential streets and some canyon roads.  Basically through Culver City, Beverly Hills, over the mountains and across the San Fernando Valley.

Right now bike paths are very limited in the city of LA.  There are plans for improvements in the near future.  That's kinda the reason I started this thread hoping others would inform about good routes since if we had more infrastructure it would be just a question of when not how to get around.  

If I accomplish my task this week I'll report.  This is much more ambitious than I'm used too, so we'll see if I make it.

[wanderingwheel]

That ride sounds good right up to the San Fernando Valley.  Unfortunately, I can't think of any good alternatives.  I assume you've seen the site http://www.bicyclela.org/, great resource for all of Southern California, not just LA.  

I've never been a big fan of bike paths, they rarely go where I want to, and there are often slow, crowded, and have dangerous street crossings.

Sean

[whittierider]

The beach paths are just about worthless for practical transportation, but that's not the case at all with the trails that follow the rivers.  With those, you do have to be careful about the few pedestrians you'll find near parks, but otherwise they're "bike bahns" and there's no speed limit, either practical or legal.

On the 37-mile-long trail we live near, with the wind that comes off the ocean, I can sometimes average nearly 25mph in the 18 miles from the beach to home, going 27-29 much of the way and slowing a little for certain underpasses and the tunnels with blind entrances and exits.

The best we ever did was a day with a whale of a tail wind.  It was the last time our younger son rode the tandem with me before getting too tall to fit on it.  We did five miles in nine minutes, averaging 33mph, going 35 most of that time and slowing a bit for underpasses.  We saw only two pedestrians in that distance, men who were going the oposite direction and facing us.  Their jaws just dropped.  I don't think they had ever seen a bike go that fast, especially without going downhill.  I wish our sons still fit on the tandem.  Now that they're so much faster, it would be all the more fun.

[bagoh20]

Couldn't even attempt my trip today, life got in the way.  Maybe next week.  Only 32 miles but the mountains make it a challenge for me.  I'm recovering from about 5 years of a battle with cancer.  Chemo and eventually a liver transplant 2 years ago.  I'm cured now, but still out of shape.  Lost a lot of muscle, but it's coming back, and I'm really enjoying the biking.  It's the only exercise that doesn't bore me to death.

Thanks for the link Sean , I didn't have that.

Anybody know how often wheel and crank bearings need repacked?

This message was edited by bagoh20 on 10-9-08 @ 12:12 PM

[whittierider]

Anybody know how often wheel and crank bearings need repacked?

I just had to replace the freehub body on my Ultegra rear hub because it was skipping under load.  You have to remove the axle to change the freehub body, and when I opened up the hub after a couple of 5,000-mile years, the grease in it was still soft and clean and transparent yellow.  The bearings themselves could have gone many times as long without maintenance.  That depends heavily on having it adjusted correctly and having good dust seals though.  Cup-and-cone bearings usually get adjusted much too tight.  There should be some play in them that just barely goes away when the skewer is squeezed down.  With good dust seals and the right adjustment and repacking every 20,000 miles, they will last your lifetime.

The old, repackable-style bottom brackets (crank bearings, as you call it) usually seemed to last 10,000 or 15,000 miles, maybe a little more or less, depending on how hard you ride and how much play you're willing to put up with.  You should probably re-pack them every few thousand miles.

The sealed-bearing BBs with square-taper or billet spindles generally don't last that long.  Our 135-pound son with 15,000 miles on one of his bikes with the Isis-type BB is already on his fourth one.

The external-bearing-type however lasts much longer than any of its predecessors, because putting the bearings outside the BB shell gives room for more and bigger ball bearings, and reduces the load from the side-to-side torque.  The cranksets that have the spindle as an integral part of the right crank arm uses this kind of bearings.  I have a Truvativ crank with the GXP BB with over 15,000 miles on it, and the bearings feel perfectly new.  I should mention that contrary to popular belief, this type does not widen the pedal stance at all.  On my triple crankset, the bearings are farther out than the tiny chainring, almost in the plane of the middle ring.  The chainrings still nearly touch the chainstay.

This message was edited by whittierider on 10-9-08 @ 1:33 PM

[Westinghouse]

I know the places near LA you are writing about. Of course, I went through there while doing the PCBR, and stayed at a hostel in Venice Beach for a while. I thought it was great, especially after just having done the route all that way. There are some hot bodies in that part of the world, women that is. After cycling out of Venice I met a woman from Australia. We cycled a while together. It turned out her father was the Australian ambassabor to the United States. There was a guy juggling chain saws at Venice Beach. I cycled through there more than once, and on the second trip I also ran acrss some people who were looking for trouble. You can meet all kinds on a cycling tour.

[bagoh20]

Got my LA tour in today.  LAX to Beverly Hills to Mulholland Drive (top of the mountain ridge) through UCLA then Santa Monica through Venice Beach, Marina Del Rey and back home.  40 miles, under 4 hours.  Not hard, but my longest ride so far.  It's a start.

[bobbirob22]

this is a reply to wanderingwheel and his link. i looked at the webpage and there is one part in particular about getting a license for your bike,, is that mandatory or is it just an option for the state of california?

ROBERT JENKINS

[whittierider]

License not required in CA.  I got a license fo a bike years ago because I thought it would improve the chances of getting it back if it were stolen, but now I don't think that's true.

[bobbirob22]

thanks for answering that question for me whittierider. i plan on biking to california in the future ,after i get used to biking again, so right now im trying to find out as much imformation about california as i can.

ROBERT JENKINS

[centrider]

Well, bobbirob22 I live in Long Beach, south of LA and have two riding clubs, both in Orange County just so of LB with which I ride regularly.  So at that most of my riding is in Orange County a much more bike friendly area.

Concerning riding the river trails:  I ride both the San Gabriel River which is just W of LB, and the Santa Ana RT, which is about 20 miles down Pacific Coast Hwy.  While one writer pointed out how much fun it is going up river with the breeze at your back, it can get rough if a Santa Ana wind is blowing down river.  River trail riding is fun but there's the odd walker and worse, new riders on bikes which suddenly have a flat, or the rider who neglects to prepare for the 20 mile ride, prepared to do only the 20 down (or up) and lacks the training to make the round trip ride.

But the real riding goes on on the streets of Tustin, Irvine, Lake Forest, Santiago Cyn, Weir Cyn. Yorba Linda and more.

So, bobb, come join the fun.  Temp. now is in the 50's, chilly for many but manageable.

[whittierider]

Uh, just to avoid possible confusion (or add to it?) for people who come and visit So. Cal., the San Gabriel River trail is on the east edge of Long Beach, and the Santa Ana River trail comes out to Pacific Coast Hwy about 12 miles down (southeast) from the San Gabriel River trail.  The L.A. River trail runs down the west edge of Long Beach, coming out to the ocean about six miles west of where the San Gabriel River trail comes out.  Long Beach's coast although definitely not straight (especially with the shipping terminals), goes basically east and west, so you'll get pretty wet if you go south from Long Beach.