Beach Cruisin'

Duncan is my partner in crime when it comes to the "moving to the beach" mindset. Here is the deal, Ashley moved to L.A. first and initially lived in Westwood which is an area, largely comprised of college students, adjacent to UCLA. She chose this area for an obvious reason: it was a 15 minute walk from her front door to the inside of our hospital unit. She and her roommates (also nurses) lived there for two months while they adjusted to life on the west coast (it was summer and they were sub-leasing from some students) and then they decided to move to an area that was a bit further from campus (and therefore a bit less hectic) called Brentwood. When Kayla and I were doing our remote apartment search (me from NY and her from North Dakota) it seemed obvious to look for an apartment as close to Ashely as possible since A) we didn't know anyone else and B) we heard traffic was horrendous. These both proved to be valid points and I believe we chose wisely given the situation we were in. As you may remember, Duncan showed up in L.A. about a month after I did. He is not a nurse so he was not tied to UCLA, however he did not know anyone aside from Ashley so he chose an apartment half-way between hers and his job office. So the moral of that story is that we all now live in West L.A. which is great for getting to work and planning stuff at each other's apartments (like dinner) but it also means that we don't have a home base when we want to do stuff outside of West L.A. - like go out in Hollywood or spend a day at the beach. As I mentioned before, I am quickly becoming obsessed with two particular beach communities (they are right next to each other) called Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach (the star is my current apartment):
Over Memorial Day weekend Duncan and I went over to the Hermosa/Manhattan Beach area to check out a local arts and crafts fair called 'Fiesta Hermosa'. Our plan was to park somewhere in Playa Del Rey (it is a bit difficult to skirt the Marina on bikes or we would have just left straight from our apartments) and then ride down to Hermosa and back. We were all parked and ready to go when we discovered that Duncan's bike had a flat tire... time for plan B. We called Jeff (who lives in Hermosa) to see if we could park at his house (parking was insane because of Fiesta Hermosa) and he not only said "sure!" but suggested that we take his two beach cruisers so we could still get some biking in. Awesome. The day turned out better than we could have planned, we walked Sierra around the festival (Jeff was working so she was home alone) and then rode the beach cruisers along the water all the way up to the southern end of the marina and back. This gave us ample time (at beach cruisin' speed) to oogle the beach houses, have a few drinks at a beach front bar and just generally decide that you are only young and living in L.A. once and so it would be a shame not to live at the beach ;)