Ciclavia 12/7/14 - South LA

Today I spent a lot of time in areas of LA I had never been before. This was because today was the first Ciclavia event in the South LA area. The route ran mostly along Martin Luther King Blvd with a little segment on Central. At only 6 miles, the route was a little short, but was incredibly flat, had relatively few street crossings and you couldn't have really asked for better weather. I was a bit unsure about it since I needed to take the Red Line to the Expo or Blue Line, but decided to take the Expo Line since it seemed relatively empty. Despite all the public transporting of myself around LA I've done, I hadn't been on the Expo Line before, so that was another bit of newness in addition to biking through the USC campus. SO MUCH NEWNESS!

Anyway, I actually had a super awesome day. I arrived fairly early and biked down from the USC area to the Central end where I met up with a friend. The rest of the afternoon was spent casually biking up and down safely closed streets, talking and stopping to look at interesting things along the way. In all, I ended up covering about 20 miles (we went back and forth a couple times.) I don't think nearly as many people showed up to this Ciclavia as some of the past events, but there was something about that that made the event feel more like what I imagine it would be like if we had Ciclavias all the time. In some ways it was less crazy than some of the others and the streets felt more sparse, but there was still enough interesting things to see, new places to visit and a lot of random things happening & people around that it still felt special and fun. We hopped on the Expo line at Crenshaw a little before the event ended (which was it's own adventure due to massive construction) & I didn't run into any problems getting on the trains home.

OK! And of course, the photos!

riding the fairly empty Expo line.... (except this was
really on my way back)

USC

parrots!!!

Christmas attire & decor, like these snow people, was quite popular this time around!

randomly came across this ceremony along Central...

Unicycles!

pine trees planted along MLK

more randomness! This time a carnival parade

elaborate low rider bikes

Jazz Park where we were lured in by the soothing
 music of this group playing Brazilian music

so many types of bikes!

"LOOK" said everyone (best illustrated on the left by the boy)

Thanks for letting us visit South LA! ....until the next Ciclavia!

more south LA Ciclavia Photos