Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Biking to Naples and Other Bike Adventures








Naples

I biked from my place to Long Beach, Naples, Seal Beach, and back. It was a 70 mile round trip that took me 5 hours total time including breaks and my bike travel photography sessions. I took the Los Angeles River Trail down to Long Beach. I biked to Belmont Shores and then to Naples.

Naples is like a Californian version of Venice, Italy. There are homes along the canals, and you can even ride on gondolas. I think it's a great place to walk and see the nice homes there. I might come back here with Sarah and ride around here. I think it's quite lovely.

After that, I biked to Seal Beach. I took the San Gabriel River Trail up. I got another freakin' flat tire as I started biking back home. I tried to pump my rear tire up, but my mini-pump sucks. I can only put in about 20 psi instead of the 120 psi needed. I just tried to be careful biking home. Somehow, I was still able to average over 20 mph going back up. I was passing everyone left and right even on my low pressure tires. I took a bunch of drinks and powerbars so I had enough energy to get back home.

I need to get CO2 inflators so that I can pump air in my tires quickly. I also should get slime self-sealing bike tubes so that the tubes seals themselves up when I get a flat.

The beginning of the L.A. River Trail is terrible. It starts in the City of Vernon which is not a good area. This is mostly a warehouse district. There are terrible roads filled with glass. There are cars and semi-trucks that almost hit me as they pass really close by. The City needs to make the bike paths better by extending it all the way up the river instead of stopping the project right in the middle of this terrible place.


La Tuna Canyon Revisited

I went back to La Tuna Canyon. In my previous post, I wrote that I got 3 flat tires each time I tried to bike there. On my last ride there, I was able to successfully conquer that road without any flats! Yaay! Well, I did get a slow leak after I did the L.A. Triathlon, but I did not get any flats on the ride. The horse mom and colt in La Tuna Canyon where I fixed my flat seemed happy to see me as well.

I biked 50 miles in less than 3 hours when I went there and back. Unfortunately, one of my extra Gatorade bottles fell out of my bike jersey back pocket when I was in aero tuck position going fast downhill. All these cars kept running over my Gatorade bottle! Dang it! I was thirsty, but I wanted to save that bottle for my ride back.

YNC Cycling

I went cycling with YNC Cycling again this past weekend. We had even more riders show up. This time I didn't get any flats, but another rider did. We rode about 50 miles as a group. I rode over 70, because I bike to the rides and back home.

Correy took videos of the cyclists for church. Joel was preparing for the Nautica Malibu Triathlon the next day. His wife, Christina, came to run in a race in Pasadena. Phil, George, Thomas, John, David Park, Joshua, Yun Hui, and Ken Chong were also there to ride. We had another great ride riding to Duarte from the Rose Bowl. We biked all around the San Gabriel Valley area. We also had a bike clinic at Performance Cyclery in Pasadena. One of the employees gave us a clinic on bike maintenance. I can't wait for our next ride. I'm pumped up for the ride down to San Diego. We'll be meeting in Long Beach and riding down to San Diego for a 100+ mile ride. I'm going to be biking to the starting point in Long Beach so that will add another 30+ miles to the ride.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

bummer about the gatorade bottles. Love the pics. Looked like a fun ride...

Keep on biking!
:-D)

Billy said...

Wow! I am so impressed with your drive!

David Kim said...

Lois,

Yeah, biking by the beach is always fun.

David Kim said...

Abbagirl,

It's easy to keep at something you enjoy doing. In my case, I love driving my bike.