It’s not very often that the venerable New York Times (third largest circulation newspaper in the U.S.) features Portland. And it’s even more rare that they ride bikes when they get here.
Portland is featured in the “36 Hours in…” segment of their Travel section. In their day-and-a-half here they manage to do (and recommend) 12 different activities. Among them was a lycra-clad bike ride along the Esplanade. Here’s the excerpt:
“Stash your stuff, don your Spandex and rent a bicycle at Waterfront Bicycle Rental…If you’re feeling mellow, ride the three-mile loop that goes north to Tom McCall Waterfront Park, across the river to the Vera Katz East Bank Esplanade, and back across on the Hawthorne Bridge. For a tougher workout, stay on the East Bank Esplanade and continue south on the Springwater Corridor for an 18-mile ride through the city’s semirural outskirts. The trail terminates at the town of Boring.”
Read the full story: “36 Hours in Portland, Oregon” by David Laskin.
I’ve rented bikes in a lot of cities but renting from Waterfront Bikes was the best experience ever. We’ll be renting some kids’ bikes there when relatives visit this summer. Very highly recommended.
Where is this downtown “overflow[ing]… with spritely neighborhoods…”? ;P
Seriously, nice tat they covered Portland, and even better that they biked while here, but if they did it because Portland’s so well-known as a bike-friendly place (at least in comparison to other US cities), wouldn’t it have made more sense to use on-street infrastructure? This article may very well confuse people into thinking “bike friendly” means there’s just a couple of separate places geared towards recreational rides inside the city limits. While we’re no “Platinum” yet, as the saying seems to be among so many of us here these days, it’d be a damned shame if a paper with as wide an audience as the NYT confused their readers through such limited use of the term.
And yeah, I understand the point of the article, the time limitations, the fact that the piece is mostly fluff and aims to frame all the non-consumptive moments of their excursion as peaceful Pacific Northwest recreation. I only raise the point because the bike bit doesn’t do things justice…probably a bit foolish of me in hind-sight, but…blah blah blah. 🙂
They write an article like this about Portland every 6 months or so… what’s most interesting in this case is that it was their most emailed article all weekend…
Time to hunker down, folks!
I don’t understand why it costs as much to rent a bike as it does to rent a car. And why do you need spandex to ride one?