Pedalpalooza Day 11: Rides and Reports

(Sorry this is a bit late in getting posted).

Here’s your Pedalpalooza menu for today:

METRO-WIDE KAITEN-ZUSHI RIDE

    NW Naito Parkway at Couch (Japanese American Historical Plaza, Waterfront Park)
    1:00pm, Leaving promptly!
    An eating ride so big, one municipality could not contain it. Featuring multi-modal option (MAX express to Hillsboro). We’ll ride locally, but nosh globally.

    Visit kaiten-zushi joints (where the sushi rolls around the place and you grab what you want to eat) in Washington, Multnomah, and Clackamas counties. Bonus: Will include ambassadorial visit to ZooBomb Century.

    Not for the faint of spoke or xenophobic of stomach. BYO hashi & cash.

UNICYCLE RIDE

    SW Salmon and Naito Pkwy (Salmon Street Springs at the Waterfront)
    1:00pm
    Break out of your two-wheeled rut! Learn how to ride a unicycle, teach someone else how to do it, or just strut your stuff. Lessons will last from 1:00 to 2:00; then we’ll ride around downtown and frolic in the outdoor fountains. (If you want to do the ride, you will need basic unicycling skills, which generally take about a week to learn. Email me about private lessons.)

    Bring a swimsuit, a towel and a unicycle if you have one! This is gonna be great!

CHOCOLATE IS MY FRIEND RIDE

    608 SW Alder (Moonstruck Chocolates)
    2:00pm
    Today we bike for chocolate! Yum. There will be 3-4 scrumptious stops, surely enough chocolate to stop the cravings for awhile. Bring cash.

NORTH PORTLAND TRAILS RIDE

    Portsmouth & Willamette
    2:00pm
    This ride will tour the marvelous trail network in North Portland. With 15 miles of trails it’s possible to get in a great ride with hardly any cars to be encountered. We’ll take a relaxed pace tour of the Peninsula Crossing, Columbia Slough, Marine Drive, and Portland Road off-street paths. Great fun. After, we’ll find a good place to have a beer.

ALE DRINKERS RIDE

    NE 33rd and Killingsworth (Concordia Ale House)
    3:00pm
    Moderate pace bike ride for those who appreciate a good ale after a good ride. We’ll meet outside Concordia Ale House and enjoy a moderate paced ride to Blue Lake via the Marine Drive bike path. After a stop at Blue Lake, we will return to Concordia Ale House for a well deserved Ale. In honor of smart riding, “helmets are required”.
Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Jonathan Maus (Publisher/Editor)

Founder of BikePortland (in 2005). Father of three. North Portlander. Basketball lover. Car owner and driver. If you have questions or feedback about this site or my work, feel free to contact me at @jonathan_maus on Twitter, via email at maus.jonathan@gmail.com, or phone/text at 503-706-8804. Also, if you read and appreciate this site, please become a supporter.

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Adams Carroll (News Intern)

Reports!


Sushi Ride:
It was absolutely epic. From 1:00pm Sunday to 2:00am monday we rode into three counties and had many keen adventures.
Photos from the ride


Ale Drinkers Ride:
9 riders plus three additional folks who joined us for the Ale drinking.
Highlights-Really great people, terrific weather, and having the bike path to ourselves!
low point-absolutely none.


Name of Ride: Unicycle Ride
Leader: Izarra Varela
Cohauler: Ben Salzberg

Date: 17 June, 2007
Start time: 1 pm

Duration: Approximately 3 hours
Distance: A mile or so, I guess … how long is a full Esplanade lap, from the Hawthorne Bridge to the Steel bridge and back?
Number of riders: 21. 12 were learners and 9 people were skilled enough to do the ride. What a great turnout!

SYNOPSIS of ride:

We met at Salmon Street Springs and I helped a few people experience being on a unicycle for the first time. Some folks really showed promise by the end of the lesson!

We collectively decided not to do a fountain ride because it was too cold, and decided instead to ride the esplanade loop. So, at about 2:15, we set off for a ride, stopping to do tricks and goof around a bit as the spirit moved us. I think everybody enjoyed the ride; there\’s even talk of doing it again later this summer.

HIGH points:

– Seeing progress in people\’s unicycling abilities after only an hour. Amazing!
– Meeting the legendary Unicycle Bastards, at last.
– Learning how to ride stairs
– Mingling with people who were downtown for the Pride Parade
– Taking a goofy group photo on a wobbly pier.

LOW points:

This ride took a bit of planning. Ben and I transported three unicycles on two bikes, and scrambled a bit to have enough locks and cables to secure them all if there weren\’t enough riders. Luckily, Ben volunteered to stay with our stuff while I lead the ride, so it worked out okay. Also, it was too cold to do a fountain ride, which leads me to the last section….

Would you do it again? If so, What would you change?

June is too early in the year for fountain rides, naked rides and sexy-cyclist rides. It\’s just too cold. I\’ll bet ridership would double for this event — and other events like it — if it were hosted in July or August. If I lead a fountain ride again, it probably won\’t be for Pedalpalooza (unless the festival were to come later in the summer).

Thanks to those who made it!! And a big thanks to Ben, who stayed put and watched our stuff while we did the ride.


JayS.
JayS.
16 years ago

My family and I went on the Kids trailer park ride. I think there were about twenty folks total. We met at Wilshire Park then went to Fernhill park for a quick jaunt on the merry go round. Then off to Woodlawn and I think everyone split after a nice stop at Penninsula Park. We had a nice time meeting some new friends as well as running into old friends. I was hoping we would see a couple utility bikes decked out for the kids but alas none.

Adams Carroll (News Intern)

More Reports:

North Portland Trails Ride (by Roger Geller)

Great ride yesterday. Tour was approximately 19 miles round trip and almost 16 miles of it was on the North Portland trails system: a mostly undiscovered gem in Portland\’s bikeway network. We had 30 riders at the start, but some dropped due to fatigue, hangover, and who knows what else. We had a relaxed pace ride, doing the round trip in a little less than 3 hours. Hey, it was advertised as \”no-sweat\”.

High points: the trails themselves; seeing a fair number of other cyclists out enjoying them; polite motorists: we literally walked across Denver Avenue north of the Slough and motorists just stopped for us–that also happened at signalized intersections on the grid and crossing Portland Rd; seeing an osprey overhead; going to the endpoint of the Northern Slough Trail near Kelly Point Park.


Chocolate is my Friend RidePHOTO GALLERY

Leader: Margarete Beeson
Date: 06-17-07
Start time: 2:00pm
Duration: 5:30pm
Approx. Distance: 5 miles
Number of riders: 24
Synopsis of ride:

What a pleasure filled afternoon riding bicycles and eating various types of chocolates. Whether \’twas nibbled, slurped, munched, licked, gobbled, or shared, all was savored and none wasted on our Ride for Chocolate.

Stops included:
Moonstruck Chocolates, SW Portland: a variety of chocolate truffles!
Cacao, 414 13th Ave SW: Drinking Chocolate!
Russell Street BBQ, Russell/MLK NE: Deep fryed Chocolate Pie (YEAH!)
Pix Patiserie, N Portland: Chocolate Stout Floats, and much much more!
The Penguin House: Chocolate Mole Black Bean Soup (By Chef Deepak)

High points: Cacao\’s Spicey Chocolate drink (not your average hot chocolate an ancient, heady, and deliciously thick concoction, yum). Also Deepak\’s
homeade Chocolate Mole, which was a good dinner after so much dessert.

Low points: Service at Russell Street BBQ was quite rude, telling us not to consume their pie in front of their shop.

Would you do it again? If so, What would you change?
Yes! I would not have it on a Sunday, many chocolate shops are closed on Sunday.

Low points: none.

Lessons learned: people prefer chocolate to power bars; the access from Kenton to the Columbia Slough Trail needs dramatic improvements!!!

In sum: It was a good day to ride!

Adams Carroll (News Intern)

Official report from Trailer Kids Park Tour by Patrick Bardel:

RIDE REPORT:
Father\’s Day Trailer Kids Park Tour, Sunday June 17th, with
Patrick Bardel leading the adults, & Aurelia Bardel leading the kids.

The ride started at Wilshire Park and proceeded to a total of four parks:
Fernhill, Woodlawn,& Peninsula. Because of the cool, cloudy day motivation
for long legs to the next park was low, the entire ride clicked in at just
over four miles spending most of the three hours playing at the parks.
Nineteen people participated in the ride mostly towing all brands of
trailers, one Burley Piccolo, and one kid on their own bike. One family of
three we recruited on the spot for the ride at Wilshire Park. The high
point was the \”Spanking Machine\” at Woodlawn Park. This ingenious device
appears as a simple spring-loaded teeter totter but with the aid of an
adult standing in the middle and advancing the rhythm and amplitude of the
oscillation, it is possible to bounce the kids up and \”spank\” up to SIX
kids at a time! Quite an astounding device especially considering all the
kids had to give it a try. The low point of the ride was the cool weather
which sent a chill through the adults making us forget to remind the kids
the promise of an ice cream stop. Three riders were provided with
reflective vests and were tasked with cross-traffic road blocking duty (or
\”corking\”). I found that the vests impressed auto drivers to react with
their breaks sooner and although we corked all secondary roads and
routinely stopped traffic, conflicts were absent. This was the 7th annual
TKPT and I see no reason to not continue it. Next year I will bring a
effective pump, a map with parks on it, and more reflective vests.