Ok, I admit it, after pushing so many days on the road, I'm rather enjoying being settled in the city, with clean sheets on a nice cushy couch. Had no idea when I got here how long this LA stop would be, looks like it'll be a couple of days. for anyone looking for ride report, then, there really is none here. this is a stationary day. well, for the bike anyway.
Friday morning I woke to get an oil change on the bike. There's a dealer in Hollywood (Honda of Hollywood is the offical name, though in the anonymous book they're listed as BMW of Hollywood, that's not on their signs or anything) not far from where I'm staying, so it was a pretty easy thing. I've never had a dealer do anything this simple on the bike, but even though I did bring my filter wrench and the other required tools, it just didn't seem right making a mess here, dealing with buying and getting rid of a drip tray, etc. So, off I went. Unlike Bob's in my area, the dealer here is a multi-line dealership, selling and servicing not only BMW's but also Honda's, Suzuki, not sure what else. Meaning, they were very busy even when I arrived at opening. But, the service staff was most kind -- gave me the first available tech to do the change, since I'd come from so far away. Even so that meant that I was hanging out there for a while, which wasn't a terrible thing. Spent the time chatting with a couple of other guys who had brought their bikes in for service. About the trip, their bikes, zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance (neither was a DIY type of guy. One seemed to have no inclination ever to be, the other did, but didn't know how to go about gaining the knowledge and comfort with doing even the simplest tasks.) Oh, and did I mention, one also had an R12c. He was in getting the tail-light, signal stalk mess we all seem to have fixed. Has a naked ivory model, looks good except for the lights issue. Originally an AZ bike, which explains it, though has chrome issues even worse than mine. (btw, not a chromeheads.org member, but i gave the site info and maybe he'll register). interestingly, it turned out all three of us were from Long Island, which seemed another odd coincidence given where we sat.
Note to Bob's -- after they finish servicing your bike, they give it a nice wash! After so many miles on the dusty roads, my bike sure looks good again. As importantly, when the poked around to check it out, saw nothing else needing attention at this point, which is reassuring.
ok, after the service, I rode out to another part of town to have lunch with a colleague from work. Nice chance to experience traffic on LA freeways again, oh joy.
Moving on. My friend had told me when I arrived she had plans with some folks for a hike around malibu over the weekend, which I thought would be a nice way to stretch the legs and get some exercise after all that time on the bike. I guess I momentarily forgot who I was dealing with. One crazy endurance runner, and as it turns out, a bunch from her running group. So, this hike of their turned out to be about 15 miles including some really steep up & downs - google something called the bulldog, which we ascended. and, just to make it interesting, we left around 8pm after a quick dinner (bagel crust pizza in venice. interesting concept. if they only had better mozzarella, it would have been really yummy, even so was very good. but I digress) let me say that again, we left around 8pm. which means it was around 2:30 am when we finished back at the car. oh, one bonus for me was that the park we were hiking in was once owned by one of the studios, and was in fact where the exterior scenes of MASH were filmed. So if you want to see what we were hiking, look at the opening credits, when there's that ridgeline, we hiked up to, across, and down it, basically) They left an ambulance and truck and some other bits from the show on site for the tourists, which i appreciated. in the near dark we were in already by the time we got there I don't think the pix i tried to take will come thru, but we'll see when i try to load later. i haven't done much or any real hiking for many years, and even at my most active phase in college never did something like this. (but for them, it's training for 24 hr or longer races where they have to run on trails at night). the good thin is that my body seems to have endured without major pain. then again, the pair who were leading, and could clearly have pushed much harder and faster, were being kind and taking it easy the whole way, for which my body and I are most grateful) after that, so around 330 am, we stopped at an all night place called Norm's (wonder if uncle norman ever ate there when he was living here. it seemed to date from at least that far back). steak & eggs & pancakes and hash browns for me, hit the spot. back to the apt after, a quick shower and into the embrace of my sheets and couch for some well-deserved sleep.
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