LA bike rental and good road rides

[badhat]

gonna be in LA this weekend for a wedding

would love suggestions for a place to rent a decent roadbike for a reasonable amount, and some good routes of the 60-80 mile variety.

or even some shorter scenic stuff. will probably only have time for a short fri. afternoon ride and a long saturday morning ride

wedding is in Santa Monica, but i'm staying at the hilton embassy suites which i think is near LAX, so either area, i guess.

thanks in advance for suggestions

 

[CDAKIAHONDA]

Hopefully some locals send you some ideas, but I was just down there visiting last month. I had a bike, but try

www.helenscycles.com/index.htm

Seemed like a pretty good LBS. It seems everybody meets at the bottom of San Vicente Blvd on Sat mornings (where it meets Pacific Ave). Lots of runners, cyclists, skaters, you name it. There is a pretty good trail that follows the beach from Santa Monica, up Washington in Venice/Marina Del Rey and then back to the beach all the way to Redondo Beach area. Watch out when you reach the end of the Marina in MDR because you can miss the trailhead pretty easy at the end of a cul d'sac like turnaround (just past a Police or Sherriff's dept). A hundred yards or so from there you can either head left to Culver City (along a concrete canal), or right toward the beach and a pretty ride to the trail end. I headed up a residential hill at the trail end, and ended up cruising up to Palos Verdes and down to Point Vicente Park. I hit Hwy 1 for a short time to Palos Verdes Blvd and then over and down to the Park.
Venice Blvd has a bike lane that will take you to the Sony Studios complex, and The Culver Studios if you like that sort of thing, but the road is bad, and lots of traffic, I did that though, and then picked up the trail along the concrete canal back to MDR.

 

[CDAKIAHONDA]

I was just down ther visiting too, I had a bike, but try:

www.helenscycles.com/index.htm

Seemed like a good LBS. Seems everyone meets at the bottom of San Vicente Blvd where it meets Pacific on Sat and Sun mornings. Lots of cyclists, runners, skaters, you name it.
There is a beach trail from Santa Monica all the way to the Redondo Beach area. You follow the trail through Venice to Marina Del Rey where you head up Washington. When you go through the Marina, watch out at the end of the cul de Sac like turnaround because you can miss the trailhead pretty easy. About a hundred yards or so you can take a left along a concrete canal into Culver City or right to a pretty beach ride through Manhatten Beach down to the Redondo Beach area. I headed up a residential hill at the trail end, ended up on Pacific Coast for a short downhill to Palos Verdes Blvd. I took that up and over to San Vicente Park. To add mileage I went along the concrete canal on the way back, it takes you to Culver City, up to the Sony Studios and the Culver Sudios. You can climb up to the ball fields in the Park off Dequesne ( I can't remember the spelling? "Ducane") and hopefully the kids are on the adventure course there, pretty cool.