[Editor’s note: I did a “How was your weekend?” post a few weeks ago and had a good response so I thought I’d try it again. Since I can’t make it to all the great events and I don’t yet have a staff of reporters, I’m hoping all of you can share your weekend bike experiences. If the response is good I’ll do this every Monday.]
Car Free Days]
There was a bunch of fun bike stuff happening this weekend. I made it out to Car Free Days on Friday (report) and Saturday (photos) but that’s about it.
Did anyone do the family ride with the Portland Wheelmen out at Sauvie Island? Or how about Ben’s “Avoid the Lloyd” bike move?
I regrettably missed a cool volunteer opportunity with the Community Cycling Center and the Village Bicycle Project. They were loading up hundreds of bikes to ship to Africa (which I reported about back in August).
And how about you eager ‘cross racers…how did the season’s opening race out in Hood River go?
Thanks for sharing your weekend bike adventures, feel free to link to your photos, websites or blog posts.
For the first time, I rode the loop from dowtown to Sellwood bridge and back. Great way to explore the South Waterfront project in detail. There were so many bikes on the Esplanade that I think I got a good idea of what a peloton feels like. Also stopped by Tanner Springs park for the first time, not sure what my opinion of it is yet. Back to work…
Rode with Portland Velo on Saturday. I can’t say enough great things about the group. Challenging hills, groovy pacelines, attentive ride leaders, nice people all around. Makes for a good Saturday, before having to do chores!
Peach of a Century out of Salem. Aside from the emasculating wind, it was a beautiful day for a ride with around 700 riders participating. Great rest stop support (even with the foul Heed sport drink), and lots of friendly and happy riders. A good day. A good ride.
Rode with Portland Velo on Saturday – a fabulous fast hilly ride followed by coffee and pastries and socializing with a great group – what could be better? Followed up by setting a personal best on the Peach of a Century, even with the headwind, thanks to some stellar paceline partners. As always, the SBC put on a great ride with excellent rest stop snacks (trail mix with chocolate and dried bananas, yay!) and volunteer support (although I agree that Heed is foul). From now on my weekends will have less riding and more gardening, so it was a great way to start winding down my season.
A huge group of Portlanders (Sprockettes and Zoobombers) invaded Vancouver, BC this weekend for Velomutation. There were tons of events, and the highlight was the amazing performance put on by the B:C:Clettes and The Brakes- Vancouver’s own bike dance teams originally inspired by The Sprockettes. We (the Sprockettes) also performed and then did a collaborative dance with the B:C:Clettes. It ruled!
Unfortunately, I picked up a hellacious cold on Wednesday that lasted through the weekend – and missed out on the entire car-free days. (I stopped by there and Saturday Market for about 20 minutes on Saturday – and went back to sleep when I got home)
I *did* get out on Sunday afternoon briefly to spin about 10 miles and see how I was feeling (and that wiped me out) and checked out the Three Bridges project. The site is still blocked off with “Do Not Enter” signs, but some family cyclists and joggers were using it. The bridges are complete, pavement is poured and set, benches and safety rails are mounted. The ADA access ramp on the east side looks like it’s awaiting a final pour, and the final lanscaping has yet to be completed, but that looks like it. It’s going to be beautiful when it opens October 19th.
Great weather this weekend, made Car Free Days delightful. I was around Friday to volunteer – witnessing (from afar) the donut eating contest. Great fun! On Saturday I stopped in to lead the new monthly Small Museums tours. The theme was old-town history and we stopped in the NIkkei Legacy Center & Oregon Maritime Museum. A few photos of the latter here: http://thehatmuseum.com/ . Back on Ankeny, I enjoyed sitting out in the sun and seeing the giant 20 foot man get built – though missed the puppet show later.
By the way.. contact me if you are interested in joining in on future Small Museum tours by bike or watch the Shift listserve.
bikebat@gmail.com
oops, wrong photo link. Here’s the correct one: http://flickr.com/photos/redbat/sets/72157594299539919/
The Hat Museum is a future destination for the tour!
My husband and I did the Peach on Sunday as well. I’m sure most of you remember our experience on the Portland Century. On this ride, we came well-prepared, and had a fabulous time. The Salem Bike Club put on a great event. I’d recommend this ride to anyone. The route was amazing, well-supported & clean rest-stops, and the Dan Henry markings were easy to follow. I agree with Scott that the wind was definitely a challenge, but aside from that, the weather couldn’t have been better. We had a great time, and are proud to say that we did our first metric century! I plan to put this on my list of event rides to do on an annual basis.
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Karli, I am so glad to hear that you had a good time. I was hoping that your PDX century nightmare hadn’t turned you off on organized rides – you should add all the SBC rides to your calendar – that club puts on great rides.
Thanks, Cecil. I was really impressed with the SBC. They seem to have these events down to a science. The way it should be. I’m looking into doing the Monster Cookie Metric Century in April. Anyone done this ride? –Karli
I went on Ben’s Avoid the Lloyd Bike Move. Not only did we avoid the Lloyd Center…we moved a Chinchilla! It sat in a little crate in Tom’s front basket. Our arrival was met with many stares, hoots and visits from his new neighbors. They’ll forever know him as they guy who arrived with all of those crazy overloaded bikes. I’ll forever remember the Chinchilla.
CFD: all three days were fun, Saturday was totally amazing considering how little money was spent. The bands Eclectic Bastards and Johnny Punchclock were a great complement to each other, later they discussed having shows together. Underscore Orkestra, surprisingly, brought their whole setup, and while the trapeze (!!!) didn’t get set up, they did have bike acrobatics and lots of interesting stunts. I think they captivated the crowd much more than the feature band / art exhibit 20 Foot Man, which was of course huge, industrial, scary, and loud. John worked heroically to feed all these performers (there were about 28 of them) since we were paying them with food / beer.
Ben’s Bike Move: the chinchilla was terrified, there were just enough movers, the stuff reached the destination effectively, and the grilled food later was spectacular. We avoided the Lloyed and had a very nice ride mostly on residential streets.
Karli, I have done Monster Cookie a number of times – if you do all 3 of SBC’s rides (Cookie, Watermelon, Peach) you get a “Road Animal” award – this year it was a nifty H2O bottle cage. Monster Cookie is a lot of fun – it’s the one route, a metric century, and it is very family friendly. No hills to speak of. Given it’s timing – the last Sunday in April – it is often wet, but this year it was sunny and (eventually) warm.
I lead the Portland Wheelmen’s Family Ride around Sauvie Island. We had a beautiful ride. Had about 13 people most of which had never been riding out there. We saw lots of pumpkins to choose from for Halloween!
Cyclocross rawks!
Here’s a little half-assed video of the B Men and Single Speeders from Hood River, for your entertainment:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTqpPUopv9A
ventured to canadia for velumutation. lost my voice. bitched about high prices of alcohol. came in dfl on the main alleycat. woo. still recovering from the 4+hour nonstop minibikederby in simon’s apartment.
goodtimes.