We are spending a week in a beach house in Long Beach. The California version of the LBC. And it does, in fact, have a long beach, and the sand begins at our door, and the ocean, tamed by a breakwater, begins about 100 yards from there …

And the very popular biking/jogging/rolling path is about 25 yards from the umbrella, under which we often loll.

We enjoy some light reading, and some lighter conversation, but just watching the beach cruisers go past, on the concrete path, is a source of significant entertainment.

For example:

–The sloggers. People after my own heart. They jog past on the concrete at a steady but very slow pace, and we can hear them before we see them because of the pish-pish-pish they make — from their shoes scraping along. These hardy souls, who cannot be bothered to lift their feet high enough to keep from scuffing … comprise about 10 percent of all the customers on the path. Oh, and they all appear to be suffering.

–The real joggers/runners. Stringy, sinewy, they motor along at maybe 10 miles per hour. I couldn’t move like that when I was young. I wonder what it must be like to be inside a body that can move that fast under such bright (and warm) sun.

–The cyclists. We must have seen every sort of bike, aside perhaps from a unicycle — and one kid seemed intent on going long distance on the back wheel of his two-wheeler, making it a unicycle, for all practical purposes.

We have seen the high-performance bikes, ridden by the guys with Tour de France style outfits, blow past. We have seen big tricycles, many ridden by oldsters. We have seen tandem bikes. We have seen parents towing trailers with small children inside.

Most bikes, however, are beach cruisers — simple two-wheelers with big tires and one gear and nothing more high-tech than a basket and a little bell to alert slower traffic.

–Those nasty little Chinese scooters with the handles remain popular. Razors, they are called. They seem to convey little or no mechanical advantage. But kids still are riding them. Teens, mostly.

–The four-seat rentals with the roof (see photo, above). Everyone can pedal; usually only one or two people do.

–We have seen the exotic. Motorized skateboards. Skateboards four or five feet long. Those three-wheelers propelled by riders standing on a platform and wrenching the vehicle left then right. Old-fashioned roller skates — the sort with wheels in four corners of the shoe. In-line skates, not as fashionable, but still out there.

–We have seen the weird. Homeless guys pushing along their belongings in a shopping cart. A guy holding a boom box on his shoulder and swinging a cane. A guy yoked to an empty wagon. Someone suggested it was for making deliveries. But then he came back heading the other direction and the wagon was still empty.

So many of them are out there that you might reasonably expect a crash of three. But the walkers/joggers/runners have their own lane, on the edge of the ribbon of cement,  and the wheeled vehicles have wider lanes, one in each direction.

Ultimately, all the movers and rollers on the path make you want to get up and do something. Join them, somehow or other. Even if by walking. May do that, yet.