Beach Bound

I've been living in L.A. for nearly 7 weeks and have yet to go to the beach. Even though I have lived here before, the New Yorker in me imagined life in L.A. would include lots of riding my bike by the beach, playing in the sand, watching the sunset over the Pacific. It's not that, at least not now. (I still feel like it could be if I lived in a different neighborhood.) But real life gets in the way. Even here I have to do things like work, shop for groceries, sit in traffic, do laundry and pick up dry cleaning. Still, I'd like to go to the beach.