I don’t know where this really came from, but out of nowhere I’ve gotten a bug in my bottom bracket to do a July 4 ride of Washington Boulevard the 27.65 miles from its beginnings in Whittier to its finish at the Venice Beach Pier… something obviously never done by bicycle ever in the history of Los Angeles — and certainly not on Independence Day.

Of course that doesn’t include the 16-plus miles that it will take to get to Whittier, nor the similar miles to get from the ocean back home, bringing it all in at around 60 miles for the trip — and they ain’t the most picturesque miles, either… certainly not the grossly industrio-desolatorum some of the environs found from Whittier to downtown. Bleak is almost a compliment around there.

The good aspects: Given the holiday, traffic should be light and there shouldn’t be that much gun-firing-into-the-air thing so early in the day, though I will be traversing Vernon so that could go either way.

Thus, unless I get an attack of the sanities it’s all gonna begin when I depart at the crackadawn Friday heading east on Sunset Boulevard. And on the faaaaaaaar off chance anyone reading and able and in the pioneering spirit to join me for this urban excursion, by all means the more the merrier.

Where’d those chirping crickets come from?