en route to a zombie-infested
Pioneer Square.
(Photos © J. Maus)
Kidical Mass made its return to Portland in fine style on Saturday. The turnout was small (just a handful of families), but the group was fun and friendly. We met up under the colorful fall leaves of the South Park Blocks and mingled a bit before being corralled by ride organizer Katie Proctor.
her son Jasper.
Katie planned the ride to coincide with Thrill Around the World — a mass zombie-fest where hundreds of people don gruesome make-up and dance to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” We rode to the Pioneer Courthouse Square to check out the event and got good seats to watch the dancing.
After barely surviving our run-in with all the creepy zombies (they were everywhere!), we rode back to the Park Blocks for a post-ride treat.
Hope the kids don’t have nightmares.
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The cargo bikes got almost as much attention as the zombies.
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It’s great to know that Kidical Mass in Portland now has a dedicated ride organizer and I’m confident it will grow in the coming months. Katie has fun plans (pie theme next month!) so stay tuned to find out when the ride comes to your neighborhood.
See more photos of the kids, the bikes, and the zombies in the slideshow below:
Thanks for reading.
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Well, damn, I left Portland a few days too early…. 🙁
I hope the kids used hand signals.
Definitely nightmares. Nice pictures.
A ride around town with kids and friends is something new and exciting????? I’m old and we were doing it when I was a kid, we did it with our kids when they were young, nothing new here. What is the big deal here? I think it shows the extent of out PR society, take old ideas, brand it as it were an original idea. People seem to fall for it every time.
Jerry_W,
that’s great you biked to school when you were a kid and your kids were fortunate enough to do it as well. However, the sad fact is that most high schoolers in America do not bike to school. I think this is a very big deal, because it is also symbolic of a larger trend that high-schoolers are not as car-centric as previous generations.
Missed a ton of Zombies in Portland dancing to MJ and pining to see it? Here you go:
http://milagrosboutique.com/2010/10/25/zombies-take-over-portland/
Jonathan, this is the kidical mass story, that’s what I was referring too, going for a group ride in the neighborhood. But yes, I rode a bike to school k through 12, so what, lots of us traveled by bike and bloggers didn’t make it out to be a big deal, it wasn’t a big deal. As I see it it still isn’t a big deal, I don’t understand why it’s played up, nothing better to write about I guess?
Oops… thanks for pointing out my mistake Jerry_W. My comment response above was intended for a different post.
As for your questions… This is being played up because I think more people are likely to try biking with kids if they have a group of friendly and supportive people to try it with. This is simply a fun ride that can help motivate people to bike more. Kidical Mass is also an excellent place to learn from others about which products and bike set-ups work well.