USA - Day 1 - LAX - Studio City

This is the route we biked today

Our plane landed yesterday at 19:20 local time and afterwards we had to go through immigration. There was quite a big queue but luckily we were early so all in all it didn’t take too long. The most nerve racking part was getting our bagage as we had two large cardboard bike boxes, one checked big cardboard box and one checked hand luggage cardboard box and we were eager to see the state of these boxes!

While going down the eacalator I already saw the big cardboard box on the conveyer and it looked ok! I found the hand luggage box on another spot on the conveyor and that was ok as well. Afterwards we went to get the oversized luggage and our bikes looked ok as well! On closer inspection we noticed that Bart’s box had a hole on the side so we hoped nothing was missing.

Now that we had all our luggage the next part was getting to the hotel. We searched for a hotel shuttle but we couldn’t find it. So we decided to look for an Uber and that’s when we noticed that there was a bus that takes you to the place where taxis can pick you up. So we decided to put all our luggage on the next bus and nobody complained 👍

We ordered an Uber XL and while waiting we were convinced that all our luggage would never fit. The driver arrived and he folded down seats and everything fit perfectly! We were at the hotel at 21:00. So all in all we got to the hotel pretty fast.

We got up at 06:00 (jetlag…) and took a shower and started building our bikes. We were lucky to find a dumpster behind the hotel for cardboard boxes so we cut our boxes up and dumped them there. At 10:15 we checked out.

We cycled in the direction of the Santa Monica pier, stopped at the REI (outdoor supply shop) and got bear mace and a bear proof sack and some other stuff. Afterwards we had lunch at a cafe at the beach.

I knew from my last visit that there are a lot of homeless people and people that seem to be out of it but it still was insane to see all of them at the side of the streets. After the beach we cycled along the beach towards our first and only climb of the day.

It was seriously hot while climbing up and there was not a lot of shade. I felt pretty quickly that I wasn’t feeling good but did my best to carry on while frequently stopping. When we were almost at the top i had to sit down and eat something. I also put a tab of carbohydrates in my water. After this I started feeling a lot better.

At the top we saw an old missile launching site and decided to climb up. In the end it wasn’t that special but the view was kinda nice. Afterwards we continued and had quite a long section of normal road (Mullholland drive) which was quite busy and not that fun. Luckily roads are quite wide in the USA so we had enough room to cycle at the side of the road most of the time.

We were out of water (we underestimated the heat and only took 2 liter each) so as soon as we saw something to drink we stopped and got some cokes. Cool thing is that you can go for a free refill anytime. While drinking we did some research and found a hotel nearby.

As it was a motel and we had ground floor rooms we could easily put our bikes in the room.

Today was quite a lot heavier than I thought due to the heat and me bonking (having no energy ). I think the reason was because we skipped breakfast (only had a couple of bars) and the jetlag. Tomorrow we’re going to try to get the our first campsite of the trip, so we’ll need to stock up on food. Hopefully the jetlag improves and this time I won’t skip breakfast 😁