(Photo © J. Maus)
I know many of you are out riding this weekend; it’s sunny and warmer than it has been in a long time.
I didn’t make it up to the hill for the opening night of Mini Bike Winter last night, but I won’t miss the Ben Hurt chariot races today. I can’t wait to see what my girls think of all the crazy freak bikes (and the people riding them!).
And tomorrow, the girls and I will be down on the Esplanade (at SE Water and Main) taking part in more Mini Bike Winter action and watching Juli and the Sprockettes perform.
For all the Mini Bike Winter action, check out the official schedule.
What are your plans for the weekend? Did anyone take part in or watch the Badass Challenge last night? Who won?
Use the comments below to share your links, reports, and weekend biking adventures…
the flu has taken control of my week/weekend
Loaded Littleman (my four year old) in the Bakfeits this morning for a ride down the west side of the river. Beautiful day but Sellwood bridge is a bit scary on such a large bike. Found a pair of children\’s binoculars and a dead bird. Tomorrow we will check out the model railway show at the Expo center…….cool!
Sunday morning hill sprints!
I thought, \”Weekend Open Thread: Share Your Biking Fun\”, would be a good place to post a comment thanking J. Maus, the Editor of BikePortland.org, for continuing to allow me to post comments. With that, my thanks to those who suffer through my polemic; and endure my occasionally contrary nature.
Cycling is poetically beautiful. I hope everyone gets a safe, good ride in this weekend. Regardless of my views, I still hope the rubber-side stays down for us all.
I got my hardtail up and running and journeyed out to Scapoose to taste the trails. It was great, I ended up spending waaaayyy more time there than I thought I would.
Thanks to the PUMPsters that went out early and cleared off some of the blowdown. There is a heckava lot of it!
Tomorrow is riding out to Sauvies Island for some LSD (the legal yet sorta tedious kind).
Summit of Mt Tabor on the single speed while my 4 year old son \”helped\” on the tag along bike. Meanwhile, my wife dragged the kiddie trailer with the other little guy up the very same hill… but she had gears. 🙂 This followed by playing around the beautiful huge trees up there. That green space is one of the many reasons I love Portland.
I piloted the boy through some fun singletrack for the return off the hill. He was totally groovin\’ on that.
The kids loved it and I got to suffer. A Perfect day.
I rode by the chariot racers on my way to St Johns and was tempted to turn around to join the fun. Homework called my name instead. It was indeed a perfect day to explore my neighborhood just a little more. Looking foward to tomorrow\’s ride…the possibilities are endless of where to go.
First of all, I\’m from Fisher\’s Landing in Vancouver, just to put my ride in perspective.
I took a nice ride first to downtown this Friday. I stopped at the sales office for Cyan PDX.
I then headed though the south waterfront on my first trip to the Sellwood bridge. I can definitely see how much bicycle/pedestrian facilities could be improved my a new bridge.
I also enjoyed taking the Springwater and Eastbank Esplanade back up to the Rose Quarter during rush hour. I also ended showing up in the frame of a KOIN news reporter talking about unruly youth on the MAX, right before hoping on, whatelse, the rush-hour red-line MAX on my way home.
The weather really was perfect. And there were only two less-than-polite people throughout my entire trip. One guy shouted out of a truck on MacAdam to me a couple of stories below him something to the effect that bikes are not the best form of transportation. Except he said it in two words. Fun times.
I stared at my 2006 New Belgium Cruiser in my living room and thumbed through my NAHBS program. That occured often during the day , I then continued on what I have been doing for the past 2 days going through old paperwork and subsequently burning/recycling said paperwork. I thought about Austin Miller , I thought about my kids and how much I love them and how lucky I am.I thought about Austin\’s family and felt deflated. Be kind to each other people. Be kind.
I rode a 200K loop out of Newberg through 3 mid-valley prairies (French, Red, and Howell) with some friends – it was 34 degrees when we started at 8AM, 52 degrees at the 113K (70 mile) point at abut 2:30 PM, and then the temps started to drop again – it was around 40 when we finished up in Newberg at 7:20 PM. Came home and ate the world\’s largest burrito (I basically took the contents of my refrigerator, threw it all in a pan, heated it up and wrapped it all in tortilla). Yum!
I hope to take advantage of this glorious weather and get some more riding in tomorrow and Monday.
Holy cow, a 200K! Great work Cecil 🙂 I\’ve had my eyes on a ~60 mile trip out to the Gorge and back for a few years but I\’ve never had just the right opportunity for it. I\’ve been happy the past few weeks (and I guess yesterday in particular, so this is apropos to the thread!) to get back to my 12 mile round trip to work and back a few times a week, after being sick for a month.
I put a new seat, wheels, rear cassette, and chain on my stolen bike that Officer Pickett recovered for me not too long ago. I need to replace a few more items, like pedals, and accessories, a better lock and it\’ll be back to riding condition. I can\’t wait. Thanks again Officer Pickett!
The #1 Badass this year for the BadAss Challenge (a 5 mile uphill race starting at the ZooBomb Pyle and ending at the top of washington park, all uphill, done on 16inch childrens bikes) was Scott, who also won last year. However, I was the First (and only) 12inch bike to make it to the top. yes, from the Pyle. it\’s the type of race that leaves you gasping and puking. pure badassness.
Saturday I rode with a couple of friends beginning at Butteville at 10 AM and riding a 34 mile loop through St Paul, St Louis, Gervais, and Donald.
Sunday I rode with a group of 6 on a little more aggressively paced 44 mile loop beginning near Hillsboro Stadium and making our way through Verboort, Thatcher, Greenville, Roy, North Plains and back to the stadium.
It\’s been a great weekend so far!
Being Cecil\’s friend, I rode the 200k as well. My second time on this route, and it is a fabulously scenic route, without the fog!
Then rode into town to meet Cecil and Beth, and generally loafed around N Portland, riding and stopping at coffee shops.
Tried the touch-up paint on the Gitane I\’m getting back into riding condition. Not a bad match.
i biked with trailer and poster to PIFF for a short about Ben Linder\’s work in Nicaragua that Green Empowerment is involved with. after the film shorts, headed on the packed (PACKED) esplanade to sample a taste of Mini Bike Winter. saw Bonnie and Tomas not once but twice: once at Mini Bike Winter and again in St. John\’s. now going to enjoy the evening biking weather and catch up with some friends visiting from Seattle. love this town!
Went on my first ECT and Beavetron bike ride. 9 riders ventured from the \’Tron transit center along the Fanno Creek trail to Tigard (or was it Tualatin…it\’s all looks the same), enjoyed some overfilling greasy \”Mexican\” food and then rode back to the TC.
We headed down to the Esplanade at about 2:15pm hoping to see some MBW action. It was deserted! Where\’d y\’all go??! Was it over that quickly?!
So instead, we biked out to Gresham on the lovely Springwater. On a bicycle, there\’s no such thing as a disappointing time! 🙂 Still, wished we\’d caught the Mini-Bike Olympics 🙁 But such kickass weather!
Stripes, Mini-Bike Winter Olympics indeed happened today. You just have to remember: In Zoobomb nothing actually starts on time. The only \”real time\” that applies is \”Last Train\” on a Sunday night.
And oh boy, was the Olympics fun!
rode out to te end o\’ the road past Lake Vancouver — Frenchman\’s Bar, i think it\’s called — and kept right on going: over the barricade, skirting around places where the river has eaten away at the old roadway, over another gate into the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge and along a dirt road, over another gate & on in to Ridgefield. This last part \’tween the gates was not strictly legal, but no waterfowl was disturbed in the making of this bike ride, so i didn\’t feel too bad about poaching it.
Back to PDX thru the suburban McMansionland of Clark County. I must say this is more scenic than the Sauvies Island loop, with better river views.
Sat = cycling around NE NE PDX finding cool sites for my super-secret (heh) upcoming group ride. It will be: awesome! (if it ever gets past the planning stages)
Sun = combining all the sites from all my various preparatory rides onto one master map.
Mon (the weekend ain\’t over for those of us with Pres Day off!) = riding the route start to finish for the first time. Wish me luck!
Also, what is the name of the cool cool retro bike that sounds like Belligerante but isn\’t (it also isn\’t a casino in Vegas, for those of us who started out with \”hmm, I think it was…Bellagio?\”)?
Is it Botticelli? If it is, do I win a prize?
I had a great time with Minibike Winter. There were a number of folks from out of town to help us celebrate, and the weather couldn\’t have been less winter-like (which isn\’t necessarily a bad thing). Friday night with the Badass Challenge and more, Saturday with the Chariot Wars and bangin\’ party, and Sunday evening with all the events on the hill; MBW kicked my arse all over town.
Cherry Pie! Great race, great weather, crappy legs!
Had a blast planting trees on Sat while dreaming of cycling on Sunday.
Cleaned my bike with loving care on Sunday- especially the chain. Rode to NE to help a friend finish up her bikey film, then rode together down to the waterfront to watch the Minibike Olympics and the Sprockettes.
Ate some awesome tacos.
Rode back to catch the tall bikes and minibikes launching into the Willamette in the buff.
Rode west to catch the max to Beaverton, just in time to see the sunset on the other side.
Cut metal on a new luggage rack/Tailbox mount for the Stratus. Watched the race from Daytona, I still have a lot of friends in Sprint Cup racing, but when I was making friends there it was still called the Winston Cup. Yes, I\’m old, and I used to live in the middle of stock car country. PM me from my blog if you want to talk about it.
Twas the first Great Weekend of the Year
I, and the Mrs, and Moo, got it in Gear.
We drove to Johnson Creek Park
Unloaded our Bikes
And pedaled into Sellwood
With nary a Fright.
We continued on to OMSI
All Sunny and breesy
And then reversed course
And got home real easy.
Working this weekend (of course), still I got home in time to bike around town for half an hour, drop some videos off t Mikes Movie Madness. I forget how tall I am sometimes, but seeing my 63cm bike dwarf anothe bike at the bike rack was a reminder.
I like the diversity of bicycles and bicyclists that come out on nice days- cruisers, beaters, mtn bikes, road bikes, commuters. Young folks, old folks (even older than me some of them). All winter long it\’s the hard core; multiple lights and reflective gortex, but yesterday it was jeans and tshirts, skirts and shorts. I just came home and grabbed my bike bag and chnged my shoes- no one likes to bike in steel toes. Not having to \”gear up\” was so nice.
All winter long I kept thinking \”I need to get a helmet\”, but yesterday with the warmth and wind I forgot, even when I rode right by my bike shop… they were closed anyway come to think of it… It will rain again, and I will get around to it, but yesterday was so nice.
If these evening is just as good I think a springwater/esplanade trip may be in order.
Duncan
The mini-bike winter Olympics were a blast!
http://www.crankmychain.com/2008/02/2008-mini-bike-winter-olympics.html
Saturday my Beloved and I worked on designing and building a rear rack for the only bike in my stable that doesn\’t yet have one. Rack design proved to be less straightforward than I had anticipated, but we got the design nailed down, picked up some wood for the platform, and Beloved started brazing it up.
Sunday I rode over to OMSI and met a couple of folks for a ride out to the end of the Springwater and back. The headwind as we headed east was so unrelenting that we gave in at the Gresham city park and took a break for bagels. We had by that time earned the tailwind that blew us all the way back into Portland.
Botecchia?
We worked on various vehicles for an upcoming race event next weekend on Saturday.
We went for a ride on Sunday… I started out the morning with some sniffles, but by about mile 5 I felt pretty good. We did 23.15 miles, with some hills and some flats and generally a nice time. Started out by going up Scholls and down Roy Rogers, then towards Tigard on 99 with a turn-off onto Tualatin Rd to get away from the higher-speed traffic. Went around to Upper Boones, Durham, then down Hall all the way to the Fanno Creek trail. up the FCT to Scholls, then up 121st to home.
Then I did laundry and vacummuing and various other chores, and when I sat down for dinner, I was completely wiped out.
This morning, I feel like crap! My head is stuffed, my sinuses are waging ware, and I\’m tired. What a time to get sick!
After Saturday\’s 200 km, and Sunday\’s lazy North Portland loop, I finished up my weekend with a 75-mile jaunt from Portland to LaCenter by way of Battle Ground, and back from LaCenter to Portland by way of Ridgefield. The first part of my ride was to test part of route for a 180km Dart some friends and I plan to do in March. The second part was just to get home. The best part of the ride was getting to take off my leg warmers and jacket for the first time this year – my knees never knew what hit them. All told, I got in 228 miles over the 3-day weekend. Not bad for mid-February!
60 miles of team pace training out around Forest Grove on Saturday then 30 miles of intensity work on the TT bike out around Sauvie\’s on Sunday.
tried not to move on Monday…
Sunday……house hunting with the wifey and Littleman. Rode from SE (Brooklyn) out to Alberta/Arts district (something about that name that bugs me). I nearly blew a gasket riding the Bakfeits up that hill on 18th to the water towers. Saw two decrepit, oversized and overpriced houses then went for lunch at the Vida Cafe. Still can\’t decide if our server was a guy or a girl. Beautiful day…..wore shorts.
Went for a ride in the Desert but got bogged down in the melting snow and mud!!!
Had a blast!
http://ikes-adventures.blogspot.com/
Made the monday bike ride. cruising down the three bridges at dusk was beautiful- a true portland moment… sigh
Feb 17,
Myself and my 2 sons 8 and 4 rode to Wapato Park (Tacoma, WA). Did several laps, fished, rode to a restaurant, had lunch, returned to park for more riding, playground time, then went home. Great Day!! Boys loved it!! We had so much fun they keep bugging me for the next outting.
I was in LA over the weekend which I did not expect to be bike-related. However I was surprised by the number of bikes and cyclists I saw all over the city! Bikes on the streets, bikes on the light rail, bike parking full all over Old Town Pasadena – who knew LA wanted to be a bike city?? I used to ride there and everyone thought I was nuts. Looks like I\’m not alone. 😉