View from Villa Brasil

Opposite there is a laundrette and a local cafe, with wi-fi ..... and the large, 22oz chai is pretty good too.

Villa Brasil Motel is a brightly decorated, little motel on Washington Blvd, Culver City. Easy to get to, with off street parking, close to freeways (what isn't in LA?), and not expensive. For this trip I had secured the upstairs apartment, with a full kitchen and plenty of room with 3 beds for a couple of riders, or even a family of four. Certainly plenty of room for just me and my Cervelo R3. My flight arrived at 6.00am on Monday and before I knew it, I had cleared customs, picked up the car hire shuttle and was driving the streets of LA.

The Marina Del Rey Store, on Lincoln.


First up I had some chores ...... visit Helen's Cycles in Marina Del Rey for CO2 cartridges, gel & electrolyte; locate an extension cable at Radio Shack next door for my car GPS (smartie me brought one with him, sharing the bike's North American chip was easy); buy some fruit & Clif Bars at Vons Supermarket; and finally, buy a wi-fi HOTSPOT. My first choice was T-Mobile, next to Radio Shack, but they did not open until 10.00am. AT&T was open, but their portable wi-fi had upgraded to 4G and as yet didn't have a monthly plan, so I went to Good Buys and discovered a tiny Virgin 3G device, with one month's unlimited data (all up $200), and with help (an extra $10) from customer service I soon walked out, fully up and running ......

My Virgin Hotspot charging

 ..... and it still wasn't check in time at Villa Brasil (noon), so I went up Venice Blvd to Rite Aid Pharmacy. I had to get the low down on Old Spice at the request of the Walshes, but whoa, I found that was way too complicated (more on that later), so I parked in front of the cafe opposite the motel (the one in the photo above) and tested out my new hotspot by calling Paul, the saw engineer at CTD, using Skype.

Waiting online with Virgin 3G and a 22oz Chai

..... my week in LA turned out to be full of driving, Skyping and visits to CTD ..... I am surprised that I managed to do so much riding.

EXIT ONLY