CicLAvia - The Other Ride Through Paradise

It's happening three times a year now.

 (We started here, in Culver City on this street lined with gorgeous Chinese Elms)

And it's one of the best ideas ever.

Borrowed from Ciclovia, which originated in Bogota, Colombia,

It's a day when streets are closed to auto traffic and everyone else

comes out to ride - large and small, the regular folks, and the strange and wonderful.

The bikini clad, the Hawaiian shirted, the sports jacketed, the ladies dressed like Minnie Mouse.

Those bare chested and braving sunburn....if I hadn't been so busy gripping my handlebars and keeping up  with everyone else, I could have shown you all of them.  (I was apparently not so very creative, some people had I-pads taped to their handlebars and were photographing EVERYTHING!)

There were many opportunities for breaks along the route.  Especially here at Abbott Kinney, GQ's "coolest street in America".......in 2012......

The Paradis crowd did not take on the entire route which extended 15 miles from Downtown

but we definitely chose the very best part of it

the one that ended

at

the beach!  I think you might have done the same.  No?  

(The organizer's figure about 150,000 people turned up for this event.  Cool, huh?)