My iPod takes bad photos

i like venice.  This is the back side of brans house as we stole brett’s bike.

i finally saw some of the canals!

i found this on my bike the other morning.  there were about 20 other notes around the yard.

I found it pretty funny.   Some puppy in my building is VERY unhappy with my bike parking.

So the eye is healing super duper fast.  I MIGHT consider getting wolverine claws, since it is now clear that i am super human. My bike was fixed on Monday morning, and I have been continuing to commute in to work on my bike.  The teeth have been a painful battle with my insurance company, and have finally started to ache the way the dentist told me they would.  Hopefully that will all get sorted out next week and i can hurry up and get my root canal and gold tooth.  :)

tuesday & wednesday.   Today there is even less purple, almost no scabs and very little yellow.  It’s amazing.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY:  BIKE LIGHTS & HELMETS ARE A MUST.  BE CAREFUL OUT THERE.

unsure i’m going to edit this to include a photo of the damages.

who cares, i’m not impressing anybody.

i know it hasn’t happened yet, but i wanted to talk about all the awesome things i’ve gotten for my birthday already.  Now.. to be fair….. the cell phone and one of the swim caps i bought for myself….. (because my old ones broke) …… but i justified it by calling them birthday presents.

yes,  i bought bike shorts & soap with my parent’s gift card, and i couldn’t be happier about it.

Doc.  Bronner’s soap rocks

it smells like a peppermint patty and i am tempted to eat it…….. maybe i’m taking this intern diet too far

here some pictures from the botanical gardens.  Desert plants are fascinating.  They almost look like germs under a microscope or scenes from underwater.

Here is the route.  dL & nick met me at the La Brea Tar pits.  I took a flight over my handle bars in Silver Lake (my own stupid fault) but other than that everything was great.  And i made it back alright too.  On the way back i couldn’t make it up the hill i fell on coming down, so maybe i was justified?  It’s only about 17 or 18 miles each way.  So it’s not as epic of a ride as you would think…

The route could use some improvement.

Pumpkins.  Take a guess as who the artist was for each.

So as my first totally free day with a bike i decided to take total advantage of it.

see there is this kind of annoying “river bed” that snakes by the edge of Griffith park and separates Glendale from the west. It’s a little weird but i figured out how to get into Silver Lake, without too much effort.

Silver Lake is pretty hip.  I couldn’t really tell if it was swanky or shady.  It’s a mishmash of homes that all might need a new paint job, with over grown gardens and a decent amount of trees.  It’s hilly, and i once had to turn around and give up on a hill.  There are small cafes and stores all over the place next to car washes and mechanic shops.
IT HAD CHARACTER.

i think i might move there.  But i would have to get a lot better at cycling up hills.

So after i got tired of riding around silver lake, i went back to the bike trail that lines Griffith park to go see if there was a entrance point north of Los Feliz road (there is but it says no bicycles?).  So i went all the way up to DreamWorks.  Up there I saw blue & white herons in the middle of the river bed.

Some woman gave me these as i was stopping to rest before turning around and heading back

She said that LA is weird.  Everyone’s friendly but it’s hard to make friends.  Seems pretty true to me.

So i went all the way back to Los Feliz Blvd and then back north again to my house.

Google won’t cooperate in letting me plot my route but I’m guessing at least 24 miles.