Bike riders who aren't from Los Angeles seem to take perverse pleasure in carping about the city's lack of good bike routes. Too much traffic, too much crime, too trendy, too flashy, yada, yada, yada.

Well, those people are wrong! Yes, we do have too much traffic and there is and always has been a fair amount of crime associated with the City of Angeles. And yes, those who've "got it" do tend to flaunt it (if you haven't seen a Rolls Royce per day, you ain't in L.A). But those attributes are precisely the reason for so many interesting bike rides in this town.

I decided to make an L.A. bike ride on the Sunday after the death of George Harrison. It would be an 11 mile ride both to honor the "Quiet Beatle" and to give me a semi-valid excuse to torture myself with a tough ride up Blue Jay Way. That's the Los Angeles street that inspired a George Harrison song of the same name. According to Beatles lore, Harrison, who spent a few days in the house while visiting L.A., wrote the song after his publicist became lost in the fog trying to find the house one night.

I've been up Blue Jay Way on a bike a few times before, although I'm not sure why - it must be the masochist in me. The street sits astride a ridge above a welter of narrow avenues that climb high into the Hollywood Hills - part of the Santa Monica mountains that bisect the city- north of famed Sunset Boulevard. The summit of Blue Jay Way would be both the halfway point of the ride, and the literal high point.

It's also near the western end of the Sunset Strip, that even more famous portion of the boulevard that exploded into international consciousness in the 1960s, when the Strip became home to a booming, psychedelic club scene. Old fart that I am, I can remember - barely - listening to groups like the Doors and the Byrds perform on the Strip in the late 60s.

The entire looping bike route would take me from my house and back again, not only into the Santa Monicas, but through a good cross-section of the city, showcasing some of L.A's cultural and historic sites. Crime I could do without, but I wasn't adverse to riding in traffic, looking at architectural eye candy, or indulging in a bit of shamelss people watching as part of the riding experience.

For someone not from the area, the eastern end of the Strip would be an esthetically pleasing place to start the ride, since Sunset runs through the area Harrison and his band mates might have enjoyed while cruising - behind tinted limousine windows - so long ago. In fact, Harrison might very well have traveled down Sunset from the famous Capitol Records building a few miles away, in the heart of Hollywood. Like the Beatles, anyone cruising the Strip would ride past some of the Strip's famed landmarks, including the Whiskey a GoGo, eye-popping, "R" rated billboards (this is where the entertainment industry advertises to itself), hip shops, and trendy restaurants with sidewalk seating, where the "beautiful people" like to see and be seen by each other. Of course, there's also the Rocky and Bullwinkle Emporium (opened after the demise of the Beatles) and the nearby BullWinkle and Rocky statue.

However, since I live only a few miles south of Sunset, in the flatlands, I started the ride from my home, heading for the western edge of the Strip first.

I live in a little neighborhood known as South Carthay, just east of West Los Angeles, near the intersection of Olympic and La Cienega Boulevards. Many of the homes in South Carthay, built in the 1930s, favor an architectural style known as Spanish Colonial Revival - mostly one story homes with a distinct Mediterranean influence - arches turrets and colorful tile. Rumor has it the builder hired out-of-work set builders from the nearby MGM movie studio. It's a great place to start a bike ride. It's the kind of neighborhood that people don't like to leave - several residents have been around for more than 50 years.

The weather seemed to match the dour mood of the Harrison song, because that Sunday was an overcast day in L.A., with rain threatening to let loose by late afternoon. After tucking my Showers Pass rain jacket into a jersey pocket, I rolled into the street on my skinny tires, and the going was easy at first. I crossed Olympic Boulevard, named in 1928 in honor of the Olympic Games, which L.A. had hoped to host. The Gamers were held in here in 1932. After Olympic I stayed mostly on quiet residential streets, until I turned left onto Beverly Boulevard. Traffic was heavier here, as I crossed La Cienega Boulevard and rode west into a concrete canyon between the Beverly Center, a massive shopping mall on my left that includes the Hard Rock Cafe, and the equally imposing Sofitel Hotel on my right. Despite its outward bulk, the Sofitel bills itself as a "4 diamond French hotel with the warmth and elegance of a small French chateau."

I hung a right on San Vicente Boulevard, which took me past the other massive piece of architecture in the neighborhood, the Pacific Design Center, more affectionately known as the "Blue Whale," a gigantic building of blue glass in the city of West Hollywood. The Whale serves as a center of the wholesale interior design industry.

I crossed Santa Monica Boulevard, in the heart of West Hollywood; once past the local post office the road became distinctly vertical and I dropped down a few gears. A few concentrated minutes of uphill pedaling past a mixed area of old homes and newer two story business buildings brought me to the Strip, at the base of the Whiskey a GoGo (where I saw Van Morrison perform in the late 60s). I turned left and pedaled west. My in-traffic bike riding skills were immediately put to the test because the drivers of the SUVs and Roll Royces, who seem to populate the strip in inordinate numbers, were like me eying the beautiful people, the billboards and the hip shops, and they all seemed to have a cell phone in one hand and a cup of Starbucks or Jamba Juice in the other. Luckily for me, traffic was so jammed that my main worry came from someone in a parked car opening the driver's door on me.

I watched for those errant car doors for a few somewhat uphill blocks, to the end of the Strip, where I turned right onto Doheny Dr. I immediately began a fantastically steep climb into the Santa Monica mountains. (Those who have studied U.S. history might remember the Teapot Dome Scandal, involving Edward Doheny, who made a fortune in the oil industry, and after whom several streets and landmarks in L.A. are named.)

How steep is Doheny? Perhaps a good 10%. I've had plenty of practice on Fargo Street, near downtown L.A., which is famous among local riders for its 33% grade. Let's just say that, while it's no Fargo St., there is no way I'm ever going to make the climb up Doheny Drive - much less Blue Jay Way - on a bike with road gears. So, for this trip, I was on my low-geared hardtail mountain bike, which I'd fitted with some very narrow tires, better suited for the road.

As soon as I started up Doheny Dr., which sits in a narrow canyon like the crease between closely cupped hands, I shifted into my middle chainring. If I wasn't breathing so hard, I'd have better appreciated the urban scenery, which included many beautiful homes. There aren't any predominant architectural themes here, except perhaps for "huge" and "expensive." I'd have paid more attention to the trees, too. Many of them had turned colors with the coming of fall (such as it is in L.A). Sycamores with their massive leaves were yellow, and the liquid ambers, a type of maple also known as a sweet gum, shimmered with bright red leaves; it's the one tree that I think comes closest to giving L.A. a true touch of autumn ambiance.

Doheny Drive has had its share of colorful locals, too. The house at 1654, for example, was reputedly operated as a brothel by Hollywood madam Alex Adams before she was arrested in 1988. Shannon Doherty, who played the resident vixen in the "Beverly Hills 901022 " t.v. show, was accused by her landlord of trashing the same house.

Perhaps a quarter mile up the hill from Sunset Blvd, Doheny Road made a sharp right and then, a few yards farther, another 90 degree turn, this time to the left. The slope didn't ease off as I huffed and puffed my way past a series of streets with avian-themed names - Mockingbird Place, Flicker Way (with the beautiful Flicker House on the corner), Warbler Place, and Warbler Way. Working my way up the steep grade, I hardly felt feel free as a bird.

Doheny Dr. itself dead-ends some distance up the hill past the next stop sign, in a newer development of large, lovely but mostly architecturally uninteresting homes, and perhaps half a dozen more streets branch off the upper portion of Doheny into other airy, dead-end realms. But for me, the route to Blue Jay Way departed from Doheny with a right turn onto Oriole Way at a stop sign. No longer in the canyon that holds Doheny Drive, I was traversing across the rump of a steep ridge. If anything, Oriole (which is the street where Madonna supposedly once lived), was steeper than Doheny. After about 75 yards or so I turned left onto Thrasher Avenue - aptly named, because by by now I was feeling thrashed.

No less steep than Oriole, Thrasher quickly brought me to Blue Jay Way, which makes a direct assault up the ridge leading to the summit of the street. The street sign has reputedly been stolen so many times that "Blue Jay Way" has been painted on the curb to guide visitors and police cars and fire trucks. The day I was there, the sign was still in place. Beginning my ride up it, Blue Jay Way looked, felt, and probably did average 12-15%. (Note: it's actually well over 16%, now that I've gone back with an inclinometer.) I kept thinking it would top off around the next bend. Instead, it snaked annoyingly around one gentle bend after another. It did take me past the house on Blue Jay Way that Harrison stayed in. However, it has been renovated over the years and - old fart that I am - I'm no longer quite sure which house Harrison stayed in. Wherever it was, I was too cooked to care.

As soon as I'd started up the hill, I was down in my smallest chainring, almost in my lowest gear. Suddenly I remembered the last time I'd I'd fought my way up the hill. I rememberd telling myself not to forget that I was never going to ride up Blue Jay Way again. I was also beginning to remember how long Blue Jay Way was. It's slightly more than a half mile of unrelenting uphill. I added considerably more distance to the street by tacking back and forth across the steep slope. Usually I can get into a rhythm on a steep hill, with my breathing and pedaling acting in concert, the endorphins flowing freely. But this time it just seemed like a painfully long ride and I felt like a fool on the hill.

But somewhere near the top my ragged breathing and straining muscles had finally come together. I was within sight of the end of the long and winding road, at the base of two huge, modern, multistory, ugly houses, each with balconies that offered mind blowing views of the city, far, far below. The fog was on L.A., but at least I hadn't lost my way.

From my position at the top of the street, I could see here, there and everywhere, although thickening clouds made the view more than a little murky. West Hollywood was directly below me, and the view stretched south to the Miracle Mile district along Wilshire Boulevard, out to the Baldwin Hills (home of the first modern Olympic Village, and now filled with upscale homes and many more challenging streets to ride up). The view took me out past Inglewood and LAX to the Palos Verdes Peninsula and the city of Long Beach. Looking left, I took in Hollywood itself as well as downtown L.A. The mountains to the east where out there somewhere, were lost in the clouds. To the right, I could see down into West Los Angeles, Santa Monica and the Pacific Ocean.

I was about 1,200 feet above sea level on the top of Blue Jay Way, and I'd started about 100 feet at my home, so in about four and a half miles I'd come up about 1100 feet. All but about two hundred feet of that climb had come in the last mile and a half.

I leaned over my handlebars for a few moments to recover. "Thanks, George," I said to myself. I put on my jacket, not because it was raining, but because I needed to block the wind from my sweat-drenched torso on the long ride down to the flatlands. It was time let gravity do its thing and begin the trip home. I dropped half a mile in a straight line in a matter of seconds. Reaching Thrasher again, I turned left, and began a nice descent off the ridge into the next canyon east.

From here it was serious downhill again, first turning right from Thrasher, where the street ended, onto Rising Glen Road, then merging into Sunset Plaza Drive. Had I gone left, Sunset Plaza would have taken me even higher than Blue Jay Way, albeit the route would have been less steep. And instead of dead-ending like Blue Jay Way, Sunset Plaza offers a route to the northern reaches of the Santa Monica mountains.

But I turned south, which soon brought me back to Sunset Boulevard, a bit east of where I'd first joined the Strip on my way to Doheny Dr. The intersection here is part of a two-block array of the hip sidewalk cafes, hair salons and boutiques. I will admit to shamelessly looking, behind my cool bike shades, at some of the startlingly beautiful people, while I waited for the long stoplight to change.

Turning left, I headed east up the Strip, which was ablaze with architectural if not autumn color. I passed the House of Blues, and ten story tall murals on the sides of office buildings, was well as the Argyle Hotel, which is a 13-story Art Deco tower decorated in gold with mythological creatures, Adam and Eve, zeppelins, and airplanes. Next to the Argyle was an incongruous and almost invisible little park that is dedicated to the memory of an old time western star, William S. Hart. I rode past the Chateau Marmont, where John Belushi overdosed. I stopped to admire the aforementioned Rocky and Bullwinkle statue, and I peeked into the Rocky and Bullwinkle Emporium (I was there the day the Emporium opened, coincidentally on my bike; Jay Ward, the creator of Rocky and Bullwinkle, greeted me at the front counter).

I crossed another intersection, with Laurel Canyon Boulevard on the left, and Crescent Heights Boulevard on the right. A jazzy mall, with a multi-screen movie house and a Starbucks (watch out for SUVs), sat on the northeast corner of Sunset.

A couple of blocks farther on, the Directors Guild building marked the end of the Strip, and I turned right for another good downhill ride, along Fairfax Boulevard. Maybe I was going too fast, but I didn't see much in the way of eye candy on this part of the ride. The road eventually leveled out around Santa Monica Blvd., and I was soon riding through the Fairfax District, which is famous for it's Jewish population, many from Eastern Europe and Russia. In fact, once I had passed trendy Melrose Boulevard, it looked like I indeed was in eastern Europe, with open air markets, lots of restaurants with European sounding names, and babushka-adorned old women. It's also home to the Out-of-the-Closet thrift store (which helps raise funds to fight AIDS), and a deli, Cantors, well known and well liked all over the city for its corned beef, knishes, matzo ball soup, and grumpy waitresses.

Beyond Beverly Blvd. I passed the CBS network's Television City complex. Just beyond was the Farmers Market, on the corner of Fairfax and Third, L.A.'s oldest outdoor market and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the city. Although most of the food stands, souvenir shops and open air markets are privately owned and one of a kind, there is that ubiquitous Starbucks.

Picking up speed on the ever-so-slight downhill, I rocketed past Samy's, one of the premier camera stores in L.A., and then I passed the western edge of Park La Brea Towers, the largest apartment complex in the U.S., developed by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company before World War II. There are eighteen colorful 13-story tower apartment towers, plus hundreds of town homes and more than 10,00 residents on 176 green acres.

Then I reached the old May Company department store building, now part of the L.A. county art museum, with its "streamline Moderne" architecture, complete with a cylindrical gold tower, at the corner of Fairfax and Wilshire Boulevards. The Peterson Automotive Museum was across the street from the May Company. Its incredible collection of cars includes the Batmobile. The La Brea Tar Pits were just east, on Wilshire, where prehistoric saber tooth tigers (and at least one human) have been excavated. Beyond Wilshire I passed Tom Bergin's Irish Pub, then reached a narrowing section of Fairfax, with another Starbucks - watch out for those damn SUVs - and a small collection of restaurants and businesses run by Ethiopians.

At Whitworth, a block before Pico Boulevard, I turned right and in a few blocks crossed Crescents Heights Boulevard, to reenter South Carthay. Less than a minute later, fully sated for the moment with Los Angeles, I glided to a stop in front of my home.

For the exact route, click here: Route Sheet (coming soon!)