Day 5
29.94 miles
Mom pulls a pair of pliers out of her purse to help her clasp her Fitbit to her wrist.
Can’t reach it otherwise, she says.
We draw a giant heart on the beach and write VD in the middle and make our bikes kiss each other because it’s Victory Day and because we are like fifteen-year-olds who think VD is really funny. We make mom take pictures until she thinks it’s too ridiculous and leaves to start her own day.
Ramshackle houses built of thousands of knick-knacks create classic beach houses as we ride by. Places oozing of relaxation and quiet fun with the windows open so you can smell the ocean while you read your book. Big placards made of drift wood on the sides of baby blue homes that read BEACH HOUSE in case you couldn’t figure that out on your own. Others, literal castles with stately wooden doors that don’t belong on the beach but must be fun to own anyway. I could see sitting up there in a turret, sunbathing and people-watching and drinking lemonade and writing a book. And no one would notice you.
Gum dots the sidewalk, black and flat from years of shoes and bikes and skateboards and roller-blades smooshing it around. Gum stains like rain drops everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.
We hit the Los Angeles County line and took photos with the dark smog just behind the Welcome To sign. Giant concrete buildings puking plumes of something awful out over the city and up-up-up to be pushed by the wind to some other Unsuspecting Land. And we were in Long Beach. And everything was dirty and smelled like sadness and dark thoughts. Jennie puts a handkerchief over her mouth and nose to try to keep out some of the film from the air from coating her lungs.
We veered onto the bike path and it wasn’t long until we were riding alongside the L.A. Aqueduct. No one was recreating here. An abandoned strip of concrete stretching away, dotted only by forgotten plants and forgotten people, their shopping carts filled with everything important in their lives. Sitting and smoking and watching us go.
There was water in the aqueduct. Sometimes a lot, sometimes a little. Giant, smelly swaths of mud. Overturned shopping carts poking their red upper halves out of the filth, a perch for the herons. Ducks in the trash, squawking and flapping around.
Go to the ocean instead, I said to them. It’s not far. You’re almost there.
But we do see swallows. Finally. And it makes us smile.
And we see men on the other side, down below, riding horses and it looks so strange to me and I wonder how the horses feel about that.
And after a while we were finally at the ocean again. Redondo Beach. And it was clean and lovely.
We made it.
And we saw Mom in a parking lot and tossed our bikes on the back of the car and drove down the street to a good spot to take VD photos.
We posed and grinned and high-fived and hugged and walked down to see the ocean again until we got cold and we went ahead and got back in the car.
We visited Jennie’s grandparents’ old house, with lemon trees and friendly streets and she took some photos and reminisced.
And then we went to the hotel but it reeked of cigarettes and it made me grumpy and I kept saying I hate everyone, so Jennie sweet-talked a manager into getting us a better room. And then she got some Doritos and wine and cut the top off a paper cup to make a bowl. She smashed the rest of the avocados around in the bowl and Mom laid out a towel on a foot stool and we all sat on the floor and had a VD picnic.
And we were proud of ourselves.
And that was that.