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My Tour of LA

biketour.jpg
had a pretty tiring weekend touring Southern California/LA. On Saturday, Jes and I went to Snow Summit for a half-day trip. The snow was nice and we finished by 1:00 to get a $15 voucher for our next trip. We got back to Irvine by 3 and packed up for the Bike Tour. With the bikes on our car, we drove up to the LA Convention Center to pick up our bibs. We were so late and I had to make a quick dash to the expo in heels. We later went to dinner in Beverly Hills. The place was called Mastro’s and was next door to Spago…your typical LA scene. The restaurant was voted “The Best Steakhouse in LA” so it was worth checking out. We even saw Warren Beatty as we waited for our table. The ambience was upscale casual and the dining room/bar was pretty boisterous. Overall, it was a cool experience but I probably won’t be going back any time soon. We didn’t get back to our motel room in the USC area until midnight where we stayed overnight with my cousin and his wife.
With only 4 hours of sleep, Sunday started really early. We woke up at 4:45 am and the LA Bike Tour started at 5:45 am. Supposedly there were 17,000 riders this year! It’s no wonder why there were so many crashes. With lots of amateur riders weaving and cutting people off, I felt so lucky to not take part of any of the crashes. We rode through Crenshaw, Wilshire District, K-town, and parts of South Central. The 22-mile route was cool and very reminiscent of my LA Marathon experience in 2003. I was just glad to be on a bike this time. On our way back to Cerritos, Pish and Debbie followed our Acura CL with two bikes on top with their CL with 2 bikes on top. It must have been a funny thing to see on the road. The Acura LA Bike Tour should have given us some discount for the free advertisement today. When we got back to Cerritos, we took a nice 4-hour death nap before dinner…a good end to our Super Southern California Weekend.

Poor Conditions, Great Trip

Jes and I went to Snow Valley today with Jimmy and had a great time. Jimmy picked us up in his new Subie WRX (a very cool car) at 6-ish. We got there early enough to get a good parking spot and the mountain was slick and scratchy. After lunch, it got softer and more powdery. Although the conditions were not ideal (falling down wasn’t very pleasant), we still had a great time. Jes took his leisurely pace and my new skis were pretty fast. Jimmy hardly fell and got better and better as the day went on. The mountain is pretty small but it’s only 70 miles from home! That meant we were back this afternoon with enough time to take a long 4-hour nap before dinner. Oh yeah, I also had my first taste of McDonald’s in over a year. My half of the Big Mac, fries, and Coke was bliss.

mmm…hawaiian cow

Happy Birthday Jes!! We had a birthday dinner at Parker Ranch Grill where the steaks are supposed to taste different because the cows are fed Hawaiian grass. It tasted pretty good to me!