not my best idea

Well- today, I talked Kraig into going for a bike ride with me along the beach between Venice Beach and Santa Monica Pier. I thought it would be a fun way to spend a while at the beach. Well, once we finally got there- we discovered that there were what felt like to be 35 mph winds! So, unfortunately, we had to save the frisbee for another day. Well, we still rented our bikes and set out for the bike trail. It runs along the ocean- maybe 100 yards from the water. It was so hard! At times, I could not even peddle hard enough to make any headway into the wind. Going from Venice Beach to Santa Monica was into the wind- and it was brutal! We got sand everywhere- including inside of our socks.

When we started- I picked out this bike that had upturned/old-school styled handlebars and it took soom getting used to. I thought for sure that I was going to fall down. And well... I eventually did fall off the bike. Here's a tip- if you see sand on pavement, don't assume that it is just a thin layer. I tried to ride through this sand and it ended up being like 4 inches deep, so it spun my wheel right around and I fell down. Suprisingly though- I did not even hurt myself! After I fell, Kraig said- 'I was thinking about warning you not to ride through the sand, but then I thought.. no, she is not that stupid." So I told him, "How long have you known me? Of course I am that stupid!" Oh well. The way back to Venice Beach was much easier, because the wind helped push us along.

However, one thing the beach has a lot of... is sand. When there are strong winds, guess what gets blown around? Sand. It kept blasting us in the faces. At times, it was like a 1000 little needles hitting you! Somehow through this 2 hour trip, we actually had so much fun. I think kraig just liked watching how pathetic I was when I was battling the wind! We also found these big chairs in Santa Monica to sit in that had organ pipes or something on them to makes sound.. so of course... photo op! (I will have to post those later).

There were a couple of other cool things that we saw... we saw this really drunk homeless guy. He could not even walk straight on the pavement so when he headed through the sand to get to the bathroom, we knew that it was gonna be a pretty good show... and it was! Also, in Venice Beach, they have this man-made canal. Lots of cute ducks hang around it. Let us tell you.. those ducks are definitely locals.. they walk wherever and whenever they want. At this one point they just walked nice and slow across a busy road like they owned the place. Now, kids- the ducks did not even look both ways before crossing the street- but you should! The ducks were so funny.

Then for dinner we ate at Fuddruckers in downtown Burbank. They have them spread out all around the country but we ate there in honor of kraig's sister! All in all, it was a pretty fun day.