Several rental stands along the trail offer bicycles, rollerskates, and rollerblades. A few have three-wheel recumbent bikes. If you’ve got a little leg strength, recumbent bikes are a lot of fun. Most of the shop owners will let you try out the bike before you rent it, so feel free to experiment.

We traveled most of the trail with a manual wheelchair and a skateboard. (Skateboards aren’t exactly permitted everywhere, but we figured it’s not 30-something women who get ticketed.) For the most part, the trip was smooth sailing, although we encountered a few obstacles:

• Stairs between the Manhattan Beach section of the trail and Hermosa Beach. If you are traveling down the coast from Manhattan Beach, the stairs are on the ocean side and a residential street is directly ahead. Go straight onto the street and look for the alley between the tenth and eleventh houses. The alley is steep and cluttered with planter boxes. If you are traveling up the coast from Hermosa Beach, turn around when you reach the stairs, go back ten houses, and look for the alley.

• Narrow sidewalk in Redondo Beach. Just south of Hermosa Beach, the trail detours to a commercial street with fast-moving traffic. The sidewalk is very narrow—too narrow for most electric and some manual chairs—and the bike lane on the street feels pretty scary because of the traffic. You might prefer to go a few blocks inland to a friendlier street, then rejoin the trail at the Redondo Pier.