🚨 Please note: BikePortland is currently on hiatus and only publishing guest articles. Learn more here. Thank you. - Jonathan 🙏
Linda Watts is the marketing manager for BikeTiresDirect.com, the company whose headquarters in Northeast Portland fell victim to a large fire late Saturday night.
BikeTiresDirect is primarily an Internet mail-order business, but they also had a retail store that was frequented by local customers.
An early morning fire has completely gutted a bike shop Northeast Portland.
BikeTiresDirect.com is a mail-order shop and retailer based near the Portland Airport at NE 92nd and Colfax.
Reader Chuck Bridge says he passed by this morning and said, “it looks like the whole warehouse has been gutted.”
Are bikes in your plans for the weekend? If not, you must be crazy because there loads of awesome things going on.
I’m headed out to Fort Stevens State Park with my girls (and my mom!) for the Cycle Oregon Weekend Ride. Lots of families will be there given the great bikeways at that park, it’s sure to be a good time.
Speaking of good times, New Belgium’s Tour de Fat rages on in Seattle this weekend. The Sprockettes are headed up that way in their huge, veggie-oil-powered bus to share their moves with our neighbors to the north.
Tonight is First Friday on Portland’s Central Eastside and art galleries and other venues will open their doors to share a variety of work by local artists.
Among the work on display will be openings of two shows by artists who have been inspired by the bicycle.
The Oregonian is reporting that Oregon state senator Floyd Prozanski is backing off his idea to introduce a law would have made helmets mandatory for adults.
The O’s Michelle Cole says Prozanski felt pressure to pull back due to the negative response he received. She wrote, “Prozanski also got a pounding this week from bloggers…”. Prozanski told Cole that, “Based on the information and reports I’ve gotten in the last day, I’m probably leaning away from a mandatory helmet law.”
The following is an excerpt taken directly from TriMet’s website:
Tips for Bike Commuters During MAX Steel Bridge Service Interruption August 2-24
The Steel Bridge will be closed to cars, buses and MAX trains August 2-24, 2008, as crews connect existing tracks to the new MAX Green Line tracks on 5th and 6th avenues. Shuttle buses will be carrying MAX riders across the river between the Old Town/Chinatown Station and the Rose Quarter/Convention Center stations, via the Burnside Bridge. The lower deck of the Steel Bridge will remain open to bikes and pedestrians.
If you bring your bike on MAX…
Keen Footwear, who moved their headquarters to Portland in 2006 (and didn’t waste any time featuring us in their product catalog), has just announced an expanded line of cycling products.
Keen unveiled an SPD compatible sandal (the “Commuter”) in early 2007 and now plan to offer a more substantial shoe along with a bike-specific pack and socks in Spring of 2009.
This just in from the Portland Police Bureau (emphasis mine):
“At 2:58 pm East Precinct officers were dispatched to the area of SE 147th Av/Stark Street on a bicyclist hit.
Officers arrived and determined that the bicyclist was hit by a vehicle driven by 23-year-old Lance Waddy. Waddy and the bicyclist were both traveling eastbound on SE Stark Street when Waddy struck the bicyclist from behind. The bicyclist, a white male adult, was thrown an estimated 138 feet. He sustained serious non-life threatening head injuries and transported to hospital.
Waddy was cited for Reckless Driving, No Insurance and Driving While Suspended. He was cited at the scene and released.”
A reader (thanks Donna!) sent me a link the other day to a well-written blog post about sharing the road. Opinions on this topic are a dime a dozen, but something caught my eye about this particular article — it was written by the Police Chief of Lincoln, Nebraska (pop. 248,744).
On his Chief’s Corner blog, Chief Tom Casady tackles the contentious issue of road rage, which is making headlines all over country (and world) as more and more cities come to grips with a changing transportation landscape.
Three Portland men who honed their downhill biking skills while “Zoobombing” down the West Hills are taking their sport to the next level.
Team Zoobomb — which consists of Chuck Bridge, Aaron Truman, and Gabriel Tiller — are set to go up against the world’s best “gravity-bikers” at the 2008 Maryhill Festival of Speed held in Goldendale Washington at the end of August. The event will be the World Championships of gravity sports (earning it a live broadcast on ABC Sports).
The members of Team Zoobomb were inspired by what they saw at the event last year, and since then, they’ve been training at Maryhill and other downhill courses in the region.
The trucking company involved in the death of Jane Higdon in Eugene in May of 2006 has agreed to donate $1 million over 20 years to a memorial fund founded in her name.
According to KVAL-TV in Eugene, Ireland Trucking Co. will give the money to the Jane Higdon Memorial Fund and it will be used to promote bicycle safety.
Also reported by KVAL is this interesting fact: