Long Beach, CA Ride Sun April 3rd from El Dorado Park

sounds good to me. i'll meet ya there.

only the ones without motors. and those will still go 20...

the time doesn't matter much to me, i'll see what we can do.

did the pre-ride today with Jeff (culvercityclassic) and bimoped. aleman had a flat or something so he couldn't make it.

the ride today sucked because of the 20-30mph headwind the whole way there, Jeff's motor had stuff clanking around in it and didn't want to do more than 20mph, which didn't matter much since bimoped's barbie dream car toy motor...errr... i mean, his friction drive, wouldn't go much faster than that anyways.

the way home was much better. especially since fighting the wind and loping along ate up all my gas, so Jeff had to push me for a coupla miles till we found a station. then i had to use his high quality homelite oil in my bike and smoke and stink all the way back. (thanks Jeff)

the way back was pretty cool, though. his bike seemed to run ok, so we did a relaxing 30mph all the way.

so, the tentative plan so far is this:

we can meet at El Dorado Park, coming in off Studebaker, just North of Willow, and South of Spring St.

there's a turn in at the Tennis Center, on Google Maps it looks like it's called E. Barrios St.

i think it's the only turn in between Spring and Willow. it'll take you passed the skatepark and near some baseball fields where there's free parking.

so we can meet up there, starting at 10am, hang around awhile, then take off riding at noon. this'll give people a chance to take some pictures, BS, and look over the bikes or whatever. or just show up at noon for the ride.

we'll go south on studebaker to a right on 2nd/Westminster which will take us to PCH.

then a left on PCH for a nice 15 or so mile cruise to Huntington Beach.

there's a Dog Beach as you enter HB with 2 parking lots. i figure we can pull into the second one and wait for any stragglers or break downs to catch up

this is also a good place to regroup for the ride through Huntington Beach, as traffic, meaning auto, pedestrian and bicycles can get pretty congested, especially if it's a nice day. we can take the lane as a large group and freak everyone out all the way to Baech Blvd.

we can pull into a beach parking lot there, and i'm pretty sure if we pedal in there'll be no hassles. we asked a parking lot guy on magnolia if he cared, and he said "they look like bicycles to me" so i don't think they'd try to make us pay. if they do, we'll just turn around and 2-smoke him out of his booth... and if they're cool about it, we might be able to do some drag racing in that nice long parking lot.

the route back is the same thing, only, y'know, backwards.

we can re-group at the Bolsa Chica Ecological Reserve to have a smoke, whatever.

as far as food and beverages go, we checked out taco surf and it looks like a logistical problem. not enough bike parking (essentially none at all. there wasn't any room for the cars that were there.)

Super Mex is a good option, they've got great food, beer, and it's pretty cheap, as well as having a nice big lot. there's also a liquor store and a few other joints to eat if you're not down with super mex and you want a crappy 5 dollar foot long.

i'll leave it up to the group to decide if you want to eat on the way in or the way back.

it's about a 30 mile ride, and it's not set in stone. i think i'm gonna take a few trips around there and see if i can find some other diversions.

i'll get a ride map going as soon as i figure out how.

if anyone's got any other suggestions, ride-wise, drink-wise, or whatever, feel free to chime in.

yup. everyone's welcome.

i think it's gonna be in the 80's, too, so it's gonna be a crowded day at the beach!

make sure you guys have helmets, other than that, as long as we don't stray into Newport we should be fine. i've never had a HB or LB cop mess with me.