Rollin'

Jeff and I have been talking for some time about riding the Strand in its entirety. The Strand is the bike / ped path along the beach in the South Bay. It winds it's way from Rat Beach in Torrance up through the beach cities, through Venice and Santa Monica, and just into Malibu. Sure, it sounds scenic and leisurely, but all that beauty comes at a price. The path is more than twenty miles long. One way. And while it's not much in the way of up and down, peddling my 30 pound American steel single-speed cruiser is akin to riding uphill constantly. But I admit, the pain was part of the attraction for me. It might not be EPIC like traversing the Grand Canyon, it still made for a pretty great and joint-inflaming June morning.

the route

Matt swung by my apartment and I drove us down to Torrance to meet up with Jeff. We started peddling around 7 or so and rode for the better part of the next 5 hours. I was feeling pretty good at the halfway point, but sore butt, thighs, and knees increased exponentially after the turn.

the takeoff

halfway there

not quite as energetic after the second half

We all made it back with varying degrees of discomfort, but no major issues. Jeff finished it pretty easy what with all his "gears" and all, but he did ride the hills up to his house after so that upped his degree of difficulty.

finished

sweet relief

Easily my favorite part was that the cafe at the end was serving root beer floats that day. All in all it wasn't too awful. I'll probably do it again sometime this summer. But I'll have to figure out a better video setup than what I had this time. Maybe work on that DIY isolation system.

Strand Bike Ride from Ryan Tuttle on Vimeo.

A few more pics.