🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏
On Saturday morning, over 50 people showed up to Alpenrose Velodrome, but they weren’t there to race or to spectate. And instead of energy gels and sports drinks, they fueled up with precision made pancakes from the skilled hands of Chris King, owner of Chris King Components.
It was the annual track clean-up and repair day and the volunteers needed the carbs to tackle all the scraping, painting, cement patching, and sweeping it takes to get the velodrome ready for the busy track season ahead.
Over 20 years ago, 40 year-old Northeast Portland resident Gary Sansom was a top BMX racer. Like many guys his age (including me), he grew up wanting to be a BMX superstar. Eventually (also like many of us) he grew up, got a “real job”, and got on with his life…but his love for BMX never really went away.
A few years ago, while working at a dot-com in downtown Portland he realized it would cost $100 to park his car. Gary thought, “screw that, I’m going to ride my bike.” He hopped onto eBay to find a bike and instead found an obsession of collecting BMX bikes.
Portland’s bike-loving Congressman, Earl Blumenauer, appeared on the hit Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report” last week.
Blumenauer was part of the popular “Better Know a District” segment where Stephen Colbert profiles districts and the member of Congress who represents them.
Colbert introduced Blumenauer to a nationwide audience as “Democrat and bicycling enthusiast,” and then went on to tell Blumenauer that his “obsession with bicycling borders on the interesting.”