(Photos courtesy Pedal Bike Tours.)
Todd Roll of downtown-based Pedal Bike Tours has had a big spring.
Last month, his company — maybe best known to Portlanders as the one behind downtown’s “America’s Bicycle Capital” mural — expanded to Honolulu. And next month, his first book is coming out from Timber Press: Pedal Portland, a compilation of 25 easy city bike rides informed by his company’s experience renting out bikes and leading local tours.
Roll launched his business five years ago “with four bikes in the back of his brother’s bike shop,” company spokeswoman (and Roll’s wife) Lota LaMontagne wrote in an email. Now it’s got “11 seasonal and six year-round employees, as well as a fleet of 100 bikes in the downtown shop.”
(Image courtesy Timber Press)
I first heard about Pedal Bike Tours’ expansion in late February, when I stopped by their downtown shop to talk about Portland’s boom in car-lite tourism. With both the new shop, called Pedal Hawaii for short, and the new book, Roll and his team are looking to spread some of that happy idea to visitors from around the country.
Pedal Portland, a 224-page paperback that will retail for $16.95, includes rides in all five Portland quadrants plus Beaverton, Vancouver and other nearby areas. The rides range from eight to 12 miles, with optional public transit legs to shorten the trips. Each route description includes a scavenger hunt that can be completed along the way, plus tips on good places to eat, drink or relax.
We’ve got an advance copy of the book and hope to share a full review soon.
As for the Hawaii shop, LaMontagne writes it’s “hoping to bring a bit of Portland’s two-wheeled culture to the island’s own burgeoning bike culture, and more importantly, to some of the 4.5 million annual visitors to this island.”
In addition to bike rentals by the hour, day and week, Pedal Hawaii will offer two family-friendly tours, the nine-mile “Hidden Honolulu” for $69, which currently runs twice a day, and the 13-mile “Explore the North Shore” for $129 including “grinds” (lunch) and a support van.
The new shop is on the ground level of the Queen Kapiolani Hotel in Waikiki, at 150 Kapahulu Ave., Honolulu, HI 96815.
“Considering Honolulu has the 12th highest bicycle commuter rate and the 2nd worst traffic in the country, the island is primed for what we’re doing,” Roll said in a news release.