FIRE!

I live about 7 miles from downtown Los Angeles, which means I can’t simply walk out my front door and go for a leisurely bike ride. All of my rides involve either fighting a couple miles of cars and traffic lights so I can get to some open roads, or packing up my bike and driving to a path someplace. I grew up in a small town in New Jersey, where as a kid I could ride my bike almost 10 miles before hitting my first traffic light. Trying to ride a bike in Los Angeles certainly takes some getting used to.

The one saving grace is that I do live close to Griffith Park which is a decent place to do short rides and get some hill training in. There is still a fair amount of traffic, but at least you get some sense of leaving the city a bit. I drive home through Griffith Park every day on my way home from work, so it’s pretty convenient to stop and go for a short ride.

Unfortunately, if you’ve seen the News recently you may know that Griffith Park was hit with two major fires over the past couple of months. Many of the roads through the park are closed completely; they aren’t even allowing bicycle traffic. Not that it would be a very nice ride these days- the ground is so dry that when the wind picks up, the mountain turns into a dust storm (see photo). This puts a major downer on my evening rides. I can still go along the L.A. River trail, but it runs right along the 5 freeway and frankly it just isn’t that pleasant. So for now I’m stuck fighting the traffic lights near home.

Hopefully all the cute woodland creatures will be returning to Griffith soon, and with them all of us cyclists.