🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏

Kelley Point ride and a Zoobomb

ride to Kelley Point Park
Zoobomb 8/28/05

I had my fair share of bike fun on Sunday.

It started with a fantastic ride out to Kelley Point Park (tip of the Columbia and Willamette Rivers). Kelley Point is a great destination because there is either bike lane or bike path the entire way. Not to mention it’s got great beaches, huge, grassy meadows, and lots of good picnic spots. Highlights of the ride were picking blackberries on the beach and coming across a brush fire on the bike path near the water treatment plant (just north of Columbia Blvd).

See more of my Kelley Point ride photos.

I then switched gears from family jaunt to mini-bike mayhem on my first ever Zoobomb. Like everyone else, I’ve been reading and hearing about this for months now and I finally got a chance to give it a try. I dusted off a 16″ wheeled bike I’m saving for Eleni and MAX’d down to Rocco’s Pizza to check out the scene. I saw some of the usual suspects including Rev Phil, Dingo the Clown and Yuffie (a guy in a Border Collie costume).

Even though I cut out before the serious partying and festivities began, I managed to partake in the night’s first bomb. I raced down the hill against some serious mini-bike talent, in total darkness, and with sharp, wet turns thrown in for good measure. I came very close to wiping out when I locked my coaster brake around a gnarly, wet turn at 30 or so mph…but somehow managed to stay upright. I was disappointed to lose about 4 places in that turn, but for my first run ever, I was glad to make it down in a respectable time.

The MAX ride back up the hill was an event in itself, as we all packed into the train like sardines. Thanks to the very cool MAX driver for putting up with us!

See more of my Zoobomb photos.

A little side story is that when I got down to PGE Park hoping to catch the MAX back to NoPo I missed the last one by just a few minutes! There was no way I could ride a 16″ bike 5 miles through the city and back up the hill to my house! Luckily I met a nice kid from North Carolina who took pity on me and paid for a taxi to drop me off at home.

The kindness of a stranger capped a great day of bike fun. I slept well (considering I’ve got an 11 day old baby at home!).

New pavement markings for bike boulevards

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward

bikeblvdFirst we told you about the new “sharrows” coming soon to select Portland streets…now I’ve just got word from the city that “700 or so” additional pavement markings will be installed on bicycle boulevards starting next week. Bicycle boulevards are designated, low-traffic bike routes without bike lanes, such as SE Ankeny, SE Salmon, NE Tillamook and others.

Here’s the scoop from city of Portland Bicycle Coordinator, Roger Geller:

“The circles will be white with a cut-out bike that will show the pavement. They’ll be 1-foot in diameter. Where we wish to show a change in direction we’ll include the arrow to point people the way to go. We’ll be installing about 700 or so of these on existing bike boulevards, every 600-800 feet in each direction of travel (so they’ll actually appear every 300 feet or so). We hope to begin installing them in the next week or so.”