LA Harbor Promenade Waterfront Views

A Chilly Afternoon and Brisk Walk

Today @afturner had to make a showing at an art exhibit where she had some work on display. After a bit, I decided to take a break and head down to the harbor for a walk. It was a cool day, and as you know by now, that is my favorite walking weather.

It was pretty quiet today along the promenade. I haven't been down here for a while, actually. I used to come down here all the time when I lived a bit closer. In fact, we used to live walking distance to the LA Harbor, but now we are a couple of miles down the road. We are still walking distance to the water, but actually we're next to the beach rather than the harbor.

It was a relatively quiet day today. There weren't that many people around, which is my favorite! Even the water was quite calm. A lot of people that I know (including Amanda) can't stand to be alone for even 5 minutes. Me, on the other hand, I love solitude. It's weird, I don't really feel alone with myself if that makes sense. I always feel a bit of a presence. Maybe God? Maybe I'm mentally ill? Who knows.

This is near where the USS Iowa is permanently parked, and where the cruise ships come in and out. I used to come down here all the time years ago, and watch all of the people go by in the ships wishing that I was on board. We'd wave at them, and they would wave back. I'd think to myself, "Man... That looks like a blast!"

Years later we finally got on one, and really enjoyed it. Now I've been on 4 or 5, I believe.

I hadn't seen this doggy before. It seems to be a fairly new edition to the Fire Boat building along the promenade. That being said, it's very possible that it's been here for years, and I am just incredibly unobservant. This is definitely one of my greatest faults. If you want to hide something from me, the best place to put it would be in front of me.

So a couple of weeks ago we went on a cruise out of here. We had this great idea, since we live so close. Since a friend of ours was going on the cruise with us, we decided that he should park at my house, then we'd all drive down to the ship where I would drop everyone off. Then I would drive home, grab a scooter, and come back. This seemed like an awesome idea, since it would make it so that we didn't have to pay for parking.

So that's what we did! It worked out great on the way there. The scooter was a bit slow, but no big deal. However, when I got there, I had to drive around for an extra 5 minutes trying to find a valid spot to park the scooter. It will not allow you to park just anywhere, and keeps charging until you find a valid spot. This was a bit annoying, but understandable. The big surprise was that it charged me $10 for that super short trip. Wow! It felt like a bit of a rip-off. I thought it would be not much more expensive to get an uber.

On the way back, I did the opposite to get the car, and things did not go as smoothly. I got on a scooter that had a full battery and rode about halfway home where it just died. I tried to get off of it and park it, but it forced me to walk to scooter to a valid spot, which was 1/2 a mile away. I was pretty pissed because on top of the fact that it was raining, the damn thing charged me the entire time I was walking it to a parking spot.

Finally I got to a parking spot where there was another scooter waiting. I closed out the first one, and grabbed a new one. The new one got me home, but was moving extremely slowly. I also had to search around for a parking spot for about 4 minutes or so. To add insult to injury, the full charge to go a total of 1.5 miles was 15 dollars. And a lot of that I had to walk!

I knew that this was coming eventually, but what a shame. This is the water fountain at the end of the promenade. This used to have a water show ever 15 minutes or so, with music.

However, people kept bringing their entire families here to swim in the nasty water, and homeless people were using it as a bath. Now I don't even think they do the show anymore, and have completely surrounded the fountain with a tall fence. I am hoping that this is just a temporary thing, but I've seen the fence for quite some time now whenever I drive by.

Still, it is a nice and peaceful place to take an afternoon walk and most of the time there aren't too many people. That is, unless a ship is coming in, or about to leave - or there is some event happening. The events are actually pretty fun, though. Sometimes when there is an event happening it can get so packed that you can hardly walk!

Thanks for stopping by! I also wanted to drop a note to everyone who is stressed out about the current crypto market situation. We've been through this 100 times, folks. It's always something. A wise man once said to me, "Take profits in the greed, and buy in the fear" but of course I didn't take that advice many times. The other piece of advice, which is a big one, don't invest more than you can afford to lose in crypto. If you keep the right attitude about it, you'll never get stressed about it.