Beverly Hills is a city within a city, an enclave of palm-lined streets, mansions and luxury shops surrounded by Los Angeles, and this finish lies just south of it, between Beverly Hills, Century City and Culver City. The towers of Century City, built on the old backlot of 20th Century Fox, rise to the north, and the studios of Culver City, where MGM once made its musicals, are a short ride south.
Rodeo Drive, a few blocks away, is the most famous shopping street in the city, with designer boutiques and luxury cars. The Beverly Hills Hotel, the pink palace on Sunset Boulevard, has been a haunt of Hollywood stars since the 1910s. Greystone Mansion, a huge Tudor-style house built for an oil heir, is now a public park with gardens and views over the city.
Coming back from Death Valley, the lowest, hottest place in North America, the final stretch crosses the desert and the mountains on the interstates and arrives in the LA basin through the endless suburbs. The traffic in this part of the city is heavy at all hours, and the boulevards are lined with traffic lights. Lane splitting is legal in California, but do it carefully.
Two days ago the loudest thing around you was the wind across the salt flats; now it is a leaf blower, a siren and a Lamborghini downshifting at a red light. Give yourself a moment before you take off the helmet. Then go and eat: within a mile of here you can have Persian kebabs, kosher delis, Ethiopian stews or a forty-dollar salad, which is the real reward of finishing in Los Angeles.