it's 530am and hollywood smells like pot

i’m not judging. i’m just making an observation like the guy in “dazed and confused”. unlike said character, i doubt this will result in a fight. but i rode through hollywood between 5-6am the last three days in a row and right there at cahuenga and franklin it smells like pot.

but not just like “oh, someone is smoking pot.” like “i’m riding through resin over here!”

don’t know if there is a pot factory in the area or if the pot-ster bunny lives right there by the 101 or what but holy smokes…

i met a nice fellow riding down chandler in the valley on thursday when i decided that if i was gonna do it right i’d have to take a different route every night. chandler is wide and flat and the stop lights are really far apart so you can kill yourself in between. troy (that’s the fellow’s name) was in front of me and kept up a pretty good pace and even though i wanted to pass him and i think i could have i didn’t try.

i waited until we got squeezed out by a stop light and then asked him about his full carbon fuji. we rode together for about 3 miles and then i skipped town over to riverside and swooped myself around to silverlake.

speaking of silverlake, riding past the lake at night is dreamy. it’s nice and quiet and since it’s a big watering hole people are always out running and stuff  (it makes it seem like a nice sweet home alabama community but i’ve heard some truly sucky stories about after dark nonsense) but they were smart and made a running trail right next to the water so there are never any silly joggers to dodge in the street. the road is sooper old and made of concrete and it’s all beat up but it’s alright by me cuz it makes it so you have to swerve around like a mad man to not get your ass and balls handed to your throat.

once you clear the lake there is a dog park right at the edge of a sooper dooper steep hill that curves around almost 90 degrees and then mellows out and i’ve been lucky enough to never have any cars behind me so i feel free to take the fastest line (which is not the bike lane) and just zip like lightning until it straightens out and then in the mellow decline that follows i just pedal as hard as i can and most every time i’ve done it so far i can easily keep up with traffic all the way to sunset where i inevitably hit a stop light…whomp whomp.

ps  dear city of los angeles DOT (department of transportation), bevery blvd sucks. the far right lane (both eastbound and west) is a mess. it’s so bad the cars don’t even drive on it. which is nice cuz it’s like having a white trash double-wide bike lane but i end up with chipped teeth and shaken baby syndrome by the time i hit the golf course near rossmore.

chirp,

hillary