By Sanne
We left Nicole's house on a grey, rainy morning. Then a few miles down the road the sky seemed to be clearing up a little and we silently rejoiced. Then all the skies opened up and it started raining like there was no tomorrow... We were on the freeway and the rain was so heavy that the water couldn't drain off fast enough which resulted in us riding in water several inches deep...on a freeway. This was fairly unpleasant riding conditions and it was one of those times where you just think to yourself: Why oh why am I on a motorbike when I could be sitting in the warm, DRY confines of a car?! It sucked, no doubt about it. And this was our second-last day on the bikes on the entire TRIP! Surely if there was a God, he would have granted us some nice weather to finish on, but evidently there is no God or if there is he is relentless!
We eventually made it to the coast and the Pacific Coast Highway and started heading south. By then we were pretty much drenched and the rain barely stopped. Under normal circumstances we would have probably called it a day and found shelter in a motel but we really didn't have any time up our sleeves as we had to be in LA to clean the bikes before shipping them. Despite the weather we did however still manage to get some good views of the rugged coast and the road, all the while thinking how great a road this would be to ride...in the summer! We had decided to stay in the the same town that we stayed in on the way up, San Simeon and the closer we got the heavier the rain came down. By now we were already riding in the dark and the last 10 km's before town we were being blasted by the rain so much that it felt like the whole Pacific Ocean was coming in upon us. We could barely see a thing; the only thing we had to guide us in the right direction was the tail lights on the cars in front of us, and even they were hard to make out because of the heavy downpour, however the cars were soon pulling over on the side of the road because it really was that impossible to see anything to drive safely. It was by far the most rain we had experienced on the entire trip...and all that on the second last day! We arrived at the same hotel we had stayed at before, drenched and in need of a hot shower and dry clothes.
The next morning we set off for Los Angeles and the weather gods seemed to be more forgiving than the previous day so we rode most of the stretch without rain. We stopped in at Solvang, a small Danish city founded in 1911 by Danish settlers who wanted to establish a Danish colony far from the midwestern winters. It was funny enough to see a Danish-looking town with its very specific architecture and all , buuuut I really was there for one reason and one reason only: liquorice! As I am a liquorice addict and seeing as the only good liquorice in my opinion can be obtained in Denmark or Holland I have been severely starved of my vice for a long time. And whenever a shop calls themselves Danish it is usually very far removed from anything actually Danish. So I was skeptical when I walked into the candy store "Ingeborg's". However, to my surprise it was almost exactly like stepping into a candy store in Denmark. Except the prices were highly inflated and so I had to limit what I could purchase and bought only a few items which I carefully selected as this was my Xmas present!
Then it was on to LA and then the fun started; riding down the road I all of a sudden feel my rear tyre wobbling and getting out of shape and I quickly pull over and realize my tyre is completely flat. Great! The 2nd puncture on the ENTIRE trip and I get it on the last day of the trip! It was already late in the day and we still had about 100 km's to go so we (and when I say we I mean Mark - come one, I give credit when credit's due!) quickly replaced the tube with a new one and jumped on the bikes again. Our plan was to follow the PCH all the way down past Malibu but a few km's down the road we were met with a Road Closed sign. Awesome! Now we had to backtrack quite a way out to the freeway which was heaving with traffic and of course it was already dark by now. We stayed on the freeway for a while, then got off it and onto a road that took us over the Santa Monica Mountains. It was a great, windy road and would have been even better in daylight so we could have actually seen something, but it was small and barely any cars on it and we were much happier just being away from the freeway. Then, as we are descending down the mountain towards Malibu incident 2 happens: my rear brake is gone. Like, completely gone, nothing. This had happened once before, a week prior in Death Valley but we had somehow got it working again. Now here we were on a mountain top outside LA in complete darkness and with no back brakes. I had to ride with just my front brake to the bottom of the hill where oddly my back brakes returned. Hmm... Christine at her best! We are still no wiser as to why it did that; could have something to do with the cylinder...? Anyway, we were now officially in Malibu back on the PCH and we rode along the coast through the beach suburbs of Santa Monica and Venice; our old friend the rain had by now returned, just to make sure our very last km's on the bikes were nice and memorable! We passed LAX and arrived at Adam's place in El Segundo sometime in the evening. Adam was yet another ADV Rider who had been so kind to host us. This was to be our first time sleeping in a garage! Because living costs are so expensive in LA a lot of people live in garages converted into apartments. Adam's place was cozy and had everything we needed and he even gave up his bed for us and went to spend the night at his girlfriend's.
The next morning was cleaning the bikes time! Before we got started though we decided that we would go for a 'short' ride up to Malibu and back, seeing as we had come in late the previous night and not seen a thing. On the map it really didn't look that far from where we were so we figured we could go for a quick blast up there and come back in a couple of hours and then start cleaning the bikes. Well, it might not have looked that far on the map but we clearly hadn't taken into account how spread out LA is and how much traffic is on the road... It took us two damn hours just to get to Malibu! At least the weather was nice.
On the way there we stopped in at Deus Ex Machina in Venice Beach. We had been to the Deus showroom in Bali and had met the owner and they had been really good to us, sending a guy out to find a battery for my bike which took him several hours and they only charged us for the cost of the battery (our post about that here: http://handfulofthrottle.blogspot.com/2011/10/deus-ex-machina.html) So we were really looking forward to checking out their showroom in Venice Beach. Well...was that a disappointment. Deus Ex Machina, Venice Beach is surely where hipsters must come to die. It was not so much a motorcycle store as an allround hipster scene. The store was full of pretentious hipster douchebags who all looked like they had never been atop a motorbike before. But you could kind of understand their confusion - it didn't look anything like a motorcycle store. There was maybe three bikes in there, only one of them for sale, the rest of the store was apparel, and I'm not talking motorcycle apparel here, just hipster fashion, oh and not to forget - skin care products for men! I mean, seriously? I have yet to meet a straight man who cares about toners and moisturizers let alone someone who would buy them at a motorcycle shop. It was a confusing place, half store-half cafe and all these self-proclaimed cool kids (who again I'm sure do not ride motorbikes) hanging out, drinking mocha-frappe-latte's while updating their Instagram with an impossibly cool photo of said latte, hashtagging like crazy. I was half surprised not to see anyone typing away on an old-fashioned type-writer (they all had mac's) but there was definitely no shortage of hipster beards. I'm pretty confident to say that we were the only motorbikers in the store and yet not a single person approached us to ask if we needed anything or even acknowledged our presence. Our un-hipsterism must have been an offense to them and a stain on their uber-cool space. Or maybe they took one look at Mark and decided that he was probably not going to buy any skincare products. I have never in my life felt quite so snubbed before and this by people 10 years my junior. Anyway, we both found it kind of hilarious the whole pretentiousness, and we departed the store, sorry space, and vowed to never, ever step foot inside that horrible place again.
Once in Malibu we rode up the mountain road we had come down on the previous night but we really didn't have the time to spend around here as we had to get the bikes to the shipping warehouse on the Friday and this was Wednesday and we had a big job ahead of us to clean the bikes. It also would have been cool to ride further along the coast in Malibu but as it was we turned around and rode back to El Segundo, stopping on the way to take photos of the coast line and Malibu beach houses (although the real nice ones are mostly hidden away so no celebrity spotting!) We didn't get back to El Segundo until mid-afternoon so we got stuck into hosing the bikes down and cleaning them. We did that for a few hours until it got dark and Adam came home. Adam then took us out for dinner at a local restaurant Rock & Brews which is owned by the guys from KISS. It was a pretty cool place which lots of nice beers and thankfully they had veggie food!
The next day we spent ALL day cleaning the bikes religiously. The reason for our obsessive cleaning is that when shipping the bikes back to Australia, they have to be immaculately clean, like new. The Australian quarantine is very strict and if they find a bit of dirt left on the bikes they will steam clean them and charge $175 per bike for doing it! So we worked very very hard to clean them the best we could, taking many parts off in order to get to hard to reach areas. We think we did a pretty good job, I seriously hope we did anyway! Time will tell... Friday morning we finished off the cleaning and borrowed Adam's pick-up truck to take them to Schumacher Cargo's warehouse. There we said goodbye to the babies and were given a little tour around the warehouse which was full of bikes and cars - lots of them expensive and vintage - Elvis' old limousine was even in there. This made us feel a bit more reassured that it was a well-established company to go with, unlike the arseholes we chose to ship with in London! It was kind of sad and weird saying goodbye to the bikes but it didn't really feel like it was the end of the trip (even though it is). I guess since we'll still be using the bikes for transport when we get home and still will be travelling a little bit on them in Australia, it's not really the end...right...??? Or maybe I'm just delusional and don't want to think about going back to "reality". God, don't you just hate that word??? Reality. Pfft! Give me illusion any day I say!
Since the bikes were now at the warehouse and we had spent all our time in LA cleaning, we really hadn't seen any of the city yet (apart from hipster central Douche Deus). So Adam was so kind to say that of course we could use his car to drive around the city as he was usually using his bike everywhere he went. So on the Saturday we drove up to Venice Beach, parked up and walked along the famous promenade along the beach all the way to Santa Monica pier. We sat and watched the skaters, surfers and freaks and weirdos (of which there are a-plenty here!) Venice Beach seems to be a melting pot of freaky people which makes it a great spot for people watching. We even saw a bearded lady there and a werewolf...and I'm not even joking!
From the 90-year-old bodybuilder pumping iron at Muscle Beach to the eclectic street vendors where you can fish for a bag of weed, this place is really something else! Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area. We walked back along the canals set a few blocks away from the beach.
Next stop was Beverly Hills where we definitely felt out of place! Driving up Rodeo Drive in Adam's old beat-up truck with rust holes we were definitely the Beverly Hillbillies alright. All the cars around us were either Lamborghini's, Ferrari's or some other fancy car costing a fortune. Very flash area indeed. Then we went to Hollywood and cruised down Sunset Boulevard, past famous bars such as The Viper Room (where River Phoenix OD'd), Whiskey a Go Go and The Rainbow (where apparently Lemmy from Motorhead is a regular at the Keno machine!) Unfortunately we didn't have the time to say hello to Lemmy, maybe another time. We did the touristy thing of checking out the stars on Hollywood Boulevard and saw Alan from The Hangover posing with a baby. Kind of weird.
We then drove up to Mulholland Drive to get a view of the city. By now it was already dark so couldn't get a good photo of the Hollywood sign but we did get a good photo of LA by night. We then drove west on Mulholland all the time wishing we were on our bikes as this road is very windy - perfect for a motorbike! Oh well, next time... We took a wrong turn somewhere on Mulholland and realized after a while that we were in fact heading north, not west. We eventually made it back on the right track but now we found ourselves on the dreaded 405 Freeway which even though it being a Saturday night was as busy as was it peak hour.
The next day we said goodbye to Adam, our brilliant host, and left for San Diego. We weren't too sad to see the back of LA. It is a complete clauster f**k. Too many people, too big a city and it takes forever to get anywhere. The City of Angels...well, I didn't find it to be that exactly.
We left Nicole's house on a grey, rainy morning. Then a few miles down the road the sky seemed to be clearing up a little and we silently rejoiced. Then all the skies opened up and it started raining like there was no tomorrow... We were on the freeway and the rain was so heavy that the water couldn't drain off fast enough which resulted in us riding in water several inches deep...on a freeway. This was fairly unpleasant riding conditions and it was one of those times where you just think to yourself: Why oh why am I on a motorbike when I could be sitting in the warm, DRY confines of a car?! It sucked, no doubt about it. And this was our second-last day on the bikes on the entire TRIP! Surely if there was a God, he would have granted us some nice weather to finish on, but evidently there is no God or if there is he is relentless!
We eventually made it to the coast and the Pacific Coast Highway and started heading south. By then we were pretty much drenched and the rain barely stopped. Under normal circumstances we would have probably called it a day and found shelter in a motel but we really didn't have any time up our sleeves as we had to be in LA to clean the bikes before shipping them. Despite the weather we did however still manage to get some good views of the rugged coast and the road, all the while thinking how great a road this would be to ride...in the summer! We had decided to stay in the the same town that we stayed in on the way up, San Simeon and the closer we got the heavier the rain came down. By now we were already riding in the dark and the last 10 km's before town we were being blasted by the rain so much that it felt like the whole Pacific Ocean was coming in upon us. We could barely see a thing; the only thing we had to guide us in the right direction was the tail lights on the cars in front of us, and even they were hard to make out because of the heavy downpour, however the cars were soon pulling over on the side of the road because it really was that impossible to see anything to drive safely. It was by far the most rain we had experienced on the entire trip...and all that on the second last day! We arrived at the same hotel we had stayed at before, drenched and in need of a hot shower and dry clothes.
The next morning we set off for Los Angeles and the weather gods seemed to be more forgiving than the previous day so we rode most of the stretch without rain. We stopped in at Solvang, a small Danish city founded in 1911 by Danish settlers who wanted to establish a Danish colony far from the midwestern winters. It was funny enough to see a Danish-looking town with its very specific architecture and all , buuuut I really was there for one reason and one reason only: liquorice! As I am a liquorice addict and seeing as the only good liquorice in my opinion can be obtained in Denmark or Holland I have been severely starved of my vice for a long time. And whenever a shop calls themselves Danish it is usually very far removed from anything actually Danish. So I was skeptical when I walked into the candy store "Ingeborg's". However, to my surprise it was almost exactly like stepping into a candy store in Denmark. Except the prices were highly inflated and so I had to limit what I could purchase and bought only a few items which I carefully selected as this was my Xmas present!
Then it was on to LA and then the fun started; riding down the road I all of a sudden feel my rear tyre wobbling and getting out of shape and I quickly pull over and realize my tyre is completely flat. Great! The 2nd puncture on the ENTIRE trip and I get it on the last day of the trip! It was already late in the day and we still had about 100 km's to go so we (and when I say we I mean Mark - come one, I give credit when credit's due!) quickly replaced the tube with a new one and jumped on the bikes again. Our plan was to follow the PCH all the way down past Malibu but a few km's down the road we were met with a Road Closed sign. Awesome! Now we had to backtrack quite a way out to the freeway which was heaving with traffic and of course it was already dark by now. We stayed on the freeway for a while, then got off it and onto a road that took us over the Santa Monica Mountains. It was a great, windy road and would have been even better in daylight so we could have actually seen something, but it was small and barely any cars on it and we were much happier just being away from the freeway. Then, as we are descending down the mountain towards Malibu incident 2 happens: my rear brake is gone. Like, completely gone, nothing. This had happened once before, a week prior in Death Valley but we had somehow got it working again. Now here we were on a mountain top outside LA in complete darkness and with no back brakes. I had to ride with just my front brake to the bottom of the hill where oddly my back brakes returned. Hmm... Christine at her best! We are still no wiser as to why it did that; could have something to do with the cylinder...? Anyway, we were now officially in Malibu back on the PCH and we rode along the coast through the beach suburbs of Santa Monica and Venice; our old friend the rain had by now returned, just to make sure our very last km's on the bikes were nice and memorable! We passed LAX and arrived at Adam's place in El Segundo sometime in the evening. Adam was yet another ADV Rider who had been so kind to host us. This was to be our first time sleeping in a garage! Because living costs are so expensive in LA a lot of people live in garages converted into apartments. Adam's place was cozy and had everything we needed and he even gave up his bed for us and went to spend the night at his girlfriend's.
The next morning was cleaning the bikes time! Before we got started though we decided that we would go for a 'short' ride up to Malibu and back, seeing as we had come in late the previous night and not seen a thing. On the map it really didn't look that far from where we were so we figured we could go for a quick blast up there and come back in a couple of hours and then start cleaning the bikes. Well, it might not have looked that far on the map but we clearly hadn't taken into account how spread out LA is and how much traffic is on the road... It took us two damn hours just to get to Malibu! At least the weather was nice.
On the way there we stopped in at Deus Ex Machina in Venice Beach. We had been to the Deus showroom in Bali and had met the owner and they had been really good to us, sending a guy out to find a battery for my bike which took him several hours and they only charged us for the cost of the battery (our post about that here: http://handfulofthrottle.blogspot.com/2011/10/deus-ex-machina.html) So we were really looking forward to checking out their showroom in Venice Beach. Well...was that a disappointment. Deus Ex Machina, Venice Beach is surely where hipsters must come to die. It was not so much a motorcycle store as an allround hipster scene. The store was full of pretentious hipster douchebags who all looked like they had never been atop a motorbike before. But you could kind of understand their confusion - it didn't look anything like a motorcycle store. There was maybe three bikes in there, only one of them for sale, the rest of the store was apparel, and I'm not talking motorcycle apparel here, just hipster fashion, oh and not to forget - skin care products for men! I mean, seriously? I have yet to meet a straight man who cares about toners and moisturizers let alone someone who would buy them at a motorcycle shop. It was a confusing place, half store-half cafe and all these self-proclaimed cool kids (who again I'm sure do not ride motorbikes) hanging out, drinking mocha-frappe-latte's while updating their Instagram with an impossibly cool photo of said latte, hashtagging like crazy. I was half surprised not to see anyone typing away on an old-fashioned type-writer (they all had mac's) but there was definitely no shortage of hipster beards. I'm pretty confident to say that we were the only motorbikers in the store and yet not a single person approached us to ask if we needed anything or even acknowledged our presence. Our un-hipsterism must have been an offense to them and a stain on their uber-cool space. Or maybe they took one look at Mark and decided that he was probably not going to buy any skincare products. I have never in my life felt quite so snubbed before and this by people 10 years my junior. Anyway, we both found it kind of hilarious the whole pretentiousness, and we departed the store, sorry space, and vowed to never, ever step foot inside that horrible place again.
Once in Malibu we rode up the mountain road we had come down on the previous night but we really didn't have the time to spend around here as we had to get the bikes to the shipping warehouse on the Friday and this was Wednesday and we had a big job ahead of us to clean the bikes. It also would have been cool to ride further along the coast in Malibu but as it was we turned around and rode back to El Segundo, stopping on the way to take photos of the coast line and Malibu beach houses (although the real nice ones are mostly hidden away so no celebrity spotting!) We didn't get back to El Segundo until mid-afternoon so we got stuck into hosing the bikes down and cleaning them. We did that for a few hours until it got dark and Adam came home. Adam then took us out for dinner at a local restaurant Rock & Brews which is owned by the guys from KISS. It was a pretty cool place which lots of nice beers and thankfully they had veggie food!
The next day we spent ALL day cleaning the bikes religiously. The reason for our obsessive cleaning is that when shipping the bikes back to Australia, they have to be immaculately clean, like new. The Australian quarantine is very strict and if they find a bit of dirt left on the bikes they will steam clean them and charge $175 per bike for doing it! So we worked very very hard to clean them the best we could, taking many parts off in order to get to hard to reach areas. We think we did a pretty good job, I seriously hope we did anyway! Time will tell... Friday morning we finished off the cleaning and borrowed Adam's pick-up truck to take them to Schumacher Cargo's warehouse. There we said goodbye to the babies and were given a little tour around the warehouse which was full of bikes and cars - lots of them expensive and vintage - Elvis' old limousine was even in there. This made us feel a bit more reassured that it was a well-established company to go with, unlike the arseholes we chose to ship with in London! It was kind of sad and weird saying goodbye to the bikes but it didn't really feel like it was the end of the trip (even though it is). I guess since we'll still be using the bikes for transport when we get home and still will be travelling a little bit on them in Australia, it's not really the end...right...??? Or maybe I'm just delusional and don't want to think about going back to "reality". God, don't you just hate that word??? Reality. Pfft! Give me illusion any day I say!
Since the bikes were now at the warehouse and we had spent all our time in LA cleaning, we really hadn't seen any of the city yet (apart from hipster central Douche Deus). So Adam was so kind to say that of course we could use his car to drive around the city as he was usually using his bike everywhere he went. So on the Saturday we drove up to Venice Beach, parked up and walked along the famous promenade along the beach all the way to Santa Monica pier. We sat and watched the skaters, surfers and freaks and weirdos (of which there are a-plenty here!) Venice Beach seems to be a melting pot of freaky people which makes it a great spot for people watching. We even saw a bearded lady there and a werewolf...and I'm not even joking!
From the 90-year-old bodybuilder pumping iron at Muscle Beach to the eclectic street vendors where you can fish for a bag of weed, this place is really something else! Definitely worth a visit if you're in the area. We walked back along the canals set a few blocks away from the beach.
Next stop was Beverly Hills where we definitely felt out of place! Driving up Rodeo Drive in Adam's old beat-up truck with rust holes we were definitely the Beverly Hillbillies alright. All the cars around us were either Lamborghini's, Ferrari's or some other fancy car costing a fortune. Very flash area indeed. Then we went to Hollywood and cruised down Sunset Boulevard, past famous bars such as The Viper Room (where River Phoenix OD'd), Whiskey a Go Go and The Rainbow (where apparently Lemmy from Motorhead is a regular at the Keno machine!) Unfortunately we didn't have the time to say hello to Lemmy, maybe another time. We did the touristy thing of checking out the stars on Hollywood Boulevard and saw Alan from The Hangover posing with a baby. Kind of weird.
We then drove up to Mulholland Drive to get a view of the city. By now it was already dark so couldn't get a good photo of the Hollywood sign but we did get a good photo of LA by night. We then drove west on Mulholland all the time wishing we were on our bikes as this road is very windy - perfect for a motorbike! Oh well, next time... We took a wrong turn somewhere on Mulholland and realized after a while that we were in fact heading north, not west. We eventually made it back on the right track but now we found ourselves on the dreaded 405 Freeway which even though it being a Saturday night was as busy as was it peak hour.
The next day we said goodbye to Adam, our brilliant host, and left for San Diego. We weren't too sad to see the back of LA. It is a complete clauster f**k. Too many people, too big a city and it takes forever to get anywhere. The City of Angels...well, I didn't find it to be that exactly.
The Pacific Coast Highway
The rain clouds were chasing us all day
Ecstatic joy that I found actual Danish liqourice
Loser, I know...
Puncture with impeccable timing!
The road over the Santa Monica Mountains leading down to Malibu
Malibu
Adam's garage in El Segundo
Busy at work!
Bye bye babies!
Venice Beach
Lots of surfers in the line-up!
Venice pier
Skaters at Venice Beach
I want his shoes
The "Green" Doctors
Baywatch anyone?
Mark at Santa Monica pier
Selfie time!
Route 66 ends here
Mark refused to pose as Mitch so you only get the car
I on the other hand posed as Pamela (except I'm missing my swimsuit and two other biiig assets!)
The Venice canals
Rodeo Drive, baby!
Julia Roberts fans might recognize the Beverly Wilshire Hotel from Pretty Woman
Street in Hollywood
Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard
The Chinese Theatre, Hollywood
It's Alan!
LA seen from Mulholland Drive
Saying goodbye to our great host Adam!
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