Long Beach Bike Adventure

So I'm doing this a little backwards, while I originally intended to post an entry from our camping trip to Malibu beach last weekend, I decided to first post about an adventure to long beach today. The next entry should be about last weekends trip. In other words... I like to make things confusing for people. 

My good buddy Matt and I met up this afternoon with the intention of tooling around on our bikes and shooting photos in and around downtown Long Beach. We met up at his apartment, and decided that before heading out on our photo adventure we would grab some food. We ended up meeting with his girlfriend at this awesome Vegan/Vegetarian Restaurant called Zephyr. They just so happened to have one of my favorite root beers which I promptly ordered along with a fat vegan burrito. I must say overall that meal was incredibly delicious.

Maine Root - They make awesome bottled beverages, check them out! 

Following this awesome meal, Matt and I headed over to the beach, parked the car and headed out for adventure. After cruising around for a while we came across a bumpin ice cream truck. This thing was wacky, it was playing a swung version of the small small world song with random Kyle Brown-esque spring noises thrown in. After checking this out we went in search of some older, dilapidated buildings. Interesting textures were the name of the game in this photo hunt. After a little while we came across an alleyway with these fenced in windows. I was immediately drawn to their symmetry, but there was one in particular which was decorated in a very festive fashion which I had to snap.

After we took a few shots in the alley we hoped back on our bikes and headed back toward a building we had seen earlier in the day called "Acres of Books." The concept of a giant building filled with books sounded like a fistful of awesome... but it was closed. So we shot the outside of the building instead.

The building itself was actually really cool. The whole thing was covered in painted bricks and boarded up windows and doors. For a photo nerd who loves textures it was alot of fun.

This is Matt and his blue machine outside of "acres of books". That bike rides like a freaking dream. I don't know what he did to it to make it ride so smooth (my bet is he used walrus snot as lube and just wont admit it) but damn is it fun.

So after we finished up around here we headed back to the car and drove back to Matt's place. I dropped him off and started back home. The sun was just starting to set and there was an awesome amount of dark cloud cover in the eastern sky, something that doesn't happen often around here. About 5 minutes away from my house, i noticed that there was an abnormal amount of steam coming out of the front of my car. I pulled off onto a side street and figured out that i was leaking coolant. I wasnt far from home so I filled up my coolant tank with a jug of cold water i bought at a nearby gas station. Before heading home however I realized there was a bush of flowers just beyond my car and the sun was hitting them just right. So while I waited for my car to cool further I snapped a few more shots.

I'm Happy to say that my car stayed cool long enough with the water to get me back home. Now I'm gonna hit the hay. Thanks for reading!

P.S. Matt has a great blog himself called Lifeswake, check it out!