Slowdown  L.A. Time 

Where do you slow your life down best during a major city visit?

“ Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly” (Mae West)

My agenda in Los Angeles on our roadtrip was simple: ignore the glitzy tourist checklist and spend three days doing only what I genuinely enjoy. I wanted to feel again the unrushed rhythm inning by inning attending a live Los Angeles Dodgers game. I desired to hear once more the tranquil sound of waves gently lapping the Pacific shoreline at Redondo Beach. I yearned to browse a well known bookstore in Pasadena and let my curiosity find literary treasures at economical prices. I also hoped to avoid congested Los Angeles freeways as much as possible to notice interesting sites in neighborhoods along the way.

So my experiment to slow down my experience of this city seemingly in perpetual motion seem to work well during two leisurely sightseeing days First the Dodger game Wednesday night became a true test overcoming my habitual patience as I settled into a low scoring affair between the Cleveland Guardians and the hometown Dodgers. Although the Guardians surprisingly defeated the defending World Series champions, I felt contented to just sit, watch and wait for the next play to happen regardless of the outcome.

Meanwhile, as the Dodgers game definitely had slowed my mind, the Redondo Beach shoreline the next morning softened my normally ambitious will even further. For it seemed Ruth and I had found a perfect spot for a picnic lunch on a cliffside park overlooking the shoreline as the vast aqua expanse of the Pacific diverted my awareness of the busy traffic happening around us. Afterward we just ambled aimlessly along the boardwalk and throughout the famed Redondo pier without worrying about time or distance elapsed. 

A final piece of the puzzle to complete this unforced Los Angeles visit happened on late Thursday afternoon with an hourlong visit to Vroman’s bookstore. On this occasion slowing down for me enhanced opportunities to find something practical to buy. Thus I found myself feeling free to wander through each bookshelf without looking for a specific title in mind. No rush to buy. I’d just flip a few pages of titles that caught my eye and fortunately I found three bargain novel classics with just my curiosity leading the way.

Bustling Los Angeles will always represent a challenge to me from a tourist perspective. For there’s  really too many choices  of activities to do on a given day. But that was not the point of this particular visit. Three days in L.A. was not about how much I saw, but how I chose to move through it at a slower pace. I’ve earned this privilege to take my time in my retirement and I definitely plan on pursuing it to the max wherever I go in the future.