LA, Gary the duck, and on to Mexico!

(This is Megs)

We made it into LA yesterday, and as soon as we got in we decided to get some beers and sit on the beach in Venice. I've been there once before when I was 16, and only for a day, but it was just as crazy as I rememered it. My favorite was the guy we saw taking his pet parrot out for a ride on his bike. It was freaking huge too. We made it across LA to Ashira's house (the Aglago Co-op) and we've been totally taken care of since the second we walked through the door. This place is really really awesome. They have a duck, Gary, who lives in the front yard with their pet chicken Goldie. Gary is a wayward duck, and came to their house as a foster duck originally. He cracks me up. He likes to nibble on people's fingers and quack around the front yard. Last night we ate some delicious dinner, drank some beers, and watched some impromptu tango dancing.

Oh, also if you want to get an address to send us anything down the line (letters, care packages, cookies...) send me an email (megsheehan@gmail.com) and I'll let you know where to send stuff.


(and now me- Stewy)

Yeah, so the ride down from San Fran, went really well. (thanks for the 3 Amigos burrito Fergus- yer too much.) We have been doing more miles per day as the terrain has been more accommodating, with smaller rolling hills and turning rather flat into LA. Rolling into Santa Cruz, my cycle-computer rolled over 1,000 miles, in just over 96 hours of riding time. Then I somehow erased everything on it... so now we're doing math to figure total distance. At this point in LA we're at 1,430 miles in around 138 hours total riding time. So those are the stats so far... cool.

As suspected the weather has been much better coming into Southern California, really starting to feel like summer. We spent a night in Big Sur, and hiked up the Big Sur River Gourge in the morning (check out our Flickr account for pics). We saw a 1 bedroom apartment for rent in Malibu, for only $3,200 month, so I dropped of a credit application, but I might need a co-signer (Dad). Venice beach was pretty cool, some really crazy folks out there-here. Aglago house has been really great to us, thanks to Ashira and the 11 other kids who live here! We've been treated like kings, dinner and a few beers, a warm place to sleep and then breakfast-blueberry pancakes!!

So hopefully we'll be in San Diego on Friday, although it's starting to look like we might not leave here today. We need to get to Camp Pendleton between 9am-3pm, and we are still about 60 miles north of there, and we're having a good time here.... might end up in LA another day, we'll see. Thanks for checking on us, we'll be sending out some post cards soon, so keep an eye open for those.

Happy May-Day! And an early Cinco de Mayo!

---

---