Family Biking: Join us for the Kidical Mass Pumpkin Farm Ride

Our Family Biking column is sponsored by Clever Cycles.

➤ Read past entries here.

Want to ride to a pumpkin farm with a fun group? Kidical Mass PDX, our local chapter of the grassroots family-friendly group bike ride, is pedaling to the Fall Festival at Liepold Farms in Boring, Oregon on Saturday, October 19th.

It’s a big ride so we’ll collect people both at Cartlandia in Portland and at Main City Park in Gresham. Participants can RSVP and communicate via the Facebook event page or email me (my email address is at the end of this column). Here’s the route on Ride with GPS.

Details below…

Portland Meet-up:
➤ 10:00 a.m. at Cartlandia (Springwater and 82nd)
➤ Meet near the Puddletown Bagels cart
➤ For those driving to the ride, we’ve been invited to park in the back parking lot
➤ 14-mile ride each way

Gresham Meet-up:
➤ 11:30 a.m.
➤ Meet in the Main City Park playground (Springwater & Main Ave, a six-block ride from the Gresham Transit Center MAX stop)
➤ Six-mile ride each way

Liepold Farms:
➤ 1:00 p.m. arrival time
➤ 4:00 p.m. departure time
➤ Upon arrival we’ll check in with the info booth where we can park (in past years, anywhere we want right up front)
➤ $5 admission, includes a hayride
➤ Pumpkins are 40 cents per pound
➤ Additional activities
➤ Bring or purchase food for lunch

The last-half-mile problem
This ride is almost all along Springwater Corridor Trail! However, the last half mile is not on the trail and it’s a bit unpleasant: two-lane country road, slightly uphill, very narrow shoulder, and filled with car traffic to the farm. I plan to recruit a caboose (or a sweep to use bike group lingo) who can attach a bike sign that says something like “Pumpkin Patch Bike Parade” to make us more visible and festive.

How Kidical Mass rolls
➤ Kidical Mass PDX is a ride for kids of all ages and their families.
➤ We stay together as a group and follow all traffic safety laws.
➤ Helmets are required for children and encouraged for adults.
➤ Kids riding their own bikes should be able to ride in a more or less straight line, stop and start as necessary, and follow verbal directions.

Other area pumpkin patches
➤ Bushue’s Family Farm in Boring
➤ Fazio Farms in NE
➤ Kruger’s Farm on Sauvie Island
➤ Portland Nursery on SE Stark during the Apple Tasting Festival
➤ The Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island

I’d love to hear if you have any ideas to make the last-half-mile problem less problematic. All are welcome to come along, but we’ll travel the pace of our slowest rider so zippy riders might not enjoy this parade. Thanks for reading!

Remember, we’re always looking for people to profile. Get in touch at madidotcom [at] gmail [dot] com if it sounds like fun to you.

— Madi Carlson, @familyride on Instagram and Twitter

Browse past Family Biking posts here.

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Madi Carlson

Madi Carlson (@familyride on Twitter) wrote our Family Biking column from February 2018 to November 2019. She’s the author of Urban Cycling: How to Get to Work, Save Money, and Use Your Bike for City Living (Mountaineers Books).

In her former home of Seattle, Madi was the Board President of Familybike Seattle, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting bicycling as a means for moving towards sustainable lifestyles and communities. She founded Critical Lass Seattle, an easy social group ride for new and experienced bicyclists who identify as women and was the Director of Seattle’s Kidical Mass organization, a monthly ride for families. While she primarily bikes for transportation, Madi also likes racing cyclocross, all-women alleycats, and the Disaster Relief Trials. She has been profiled in the Associated Press, Outdoors NW magazine, CoolMom, and ParentMap, and she contributed to Everyday Bicycling by Elly Blue.