July 14th. Marathon Biking.

In what I thought might be a spasm of lunacy, but which turned out to be a surprisingly enjoyable outing, I biked to meet Laureen at a celebration of Woody Guthrie's Centennial in Echo Park. I wasn't quite sure what that event would be, but decided I would seize the opportunity for another long distance bike ride.  This time, going solo, I did a bit more route research.  With ith the aid of Google as well as an account of a bike ride in the other direction, and came up with a route that was both doable and pleasurable.
I'm becoming oddly familiar with the bike lane on Venice Boulevard--in all the years of driving that route, I have to admit that I never looked with envy at the few cyclists peddling along, but now, biking seems the eminently preferable mode --and quite easy to negotiate.  Turning left at Hauser, I jogged my way towards  4th street, a route we'd used when I biked to the Philharmonic in April. Heading north and east, many of the streets I was instructed to turn on began with the letter C--Catalina, Corinth, Council, Coronado, etc.  This alliterative confusion led to much checking of my instructions--but wonder of wonders, the ride was surprisingly simple.  Not short--it took over two hours--door to park (google had estimated 1 hour and 42 minutes, but I am obviously slower than the google-bike-time-keeper.  Laureen had arrived just moments before at  El Centro del Pueblo (lots of freeway traffic).   The Centennial Celebrations had begun, but the crowd was thin, and the sun very hot, so after a quick stroll around, we headed for lunch at Masa around the corner on Sunset.  Laureen had been here before--it was big, air-conditioned, and relaxed--it was about 1:30--breakfast, brunch and lunch were all possibilities.  We opted for lunch--the Manchego salad--greens with manchego, dates, apples and caramelized walnuts.  Hard to go wrong there.  The specialty of the house is Chicago Deep Dish pizza, but we stuck with a classic "bistro" pizza, the thin crusted cerro gordo with roasted shallots and roasted garlic.  I always think I'll be ravenous after a long bike ride, but I think I ate a relatively normal amount (there was even pizza left over for Laureen to take home).
It was still to hot for us to properly appreciate the festivities in the park (I suspect things didn't really get going until much later in the day), and after a bit of wandering on Sunset, we found our way to Xoia the Vietnamese restaurant across the street.  There looked to many delicious things on the menu (which had a bit of a Mexican influence as well).  I would have been happy to try a lemon grass carnitas banh mi, but alas I can't eat two lunches in a row.  Instead we enjoyed the  air-conditioning along with a Vietnamese iced coffee for me, and a mint-limeade soda for Laureen before I headed west for a surprisingly enjoyable bike ride home.