Today — the man who just two years ago stood in front of 2,000 Cycle Oregon riders in lycra shorts (after he himself battled the day’s grueling climb) and told them he would “thread the language of bicycles into the federal transportation bill” — got his chance when he submitted The Surface Transportation Authorization Act of 2009 to the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
U.S. Congressman James Oberstar, who is Chairman of that committee and a towering figure in the American bike movement, has presented the proposal along with House colleagues Peter DeFazio, John Mica, and John Duncan.
Travel Portland has announced that they’ll give the City of Portland their top tourism promotion award at their 30th annual Tourism and Hospitality Industry Awards Celebration being held next week at the Oregon Convention Center.
Travel Portland — a private non-profit that works to promote the metro area as a destination — will give the City the “Portland Award” for its work in “creating and sustaining a Platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Community.
According to Travel Portland, the award recognizes the, “top overall contribution to the region’s visitor profile.”
[Thanks to event organizer Matt Picio of Cycle Wild for providing this recap via the Shift list.]
Last night, Tomas Quinones and I held Cycle Wild’s 5th Bike Camping 101 class. We held this class at last year’s Pedalpalooza in Colonel Summers Park, and we returned there for an encore presentation. In
2008, we had about 40 attendees. This year, we started with about 20-25 attendees but were up to 40 by 1/2 hour into the presentation, and topped out at 52 people during the last 20 minutes or so before we opened the floor for questions.
Year: 2005 Brand: Felt Model: F55 Color:Black/Yellow Size:56cm Photo: http://www.wiggle.co.uk/images/felt-f55-08.jpg Stolen in Portland, OR 97201 Stolen:2009-05-28 Stolen From: Bike was stolen from the parking garage of the 200 Market Building (the Black Box) in downtown Portland, located @ 200 SW Market St. Neighborhood: SW Downtown Owner: Kyle Hunter OwnerEmail: heitz1978@gmail.com Reward: 100 Description: Black Felt F55, with yellow grip tape. Full Ultegra 9-speed double, BOA carbon bottle cages, Ridley bars, Bontrager Race X-lite wheels, new Blue Hutchinson tires, Speedplay pedals Police record with: Det. Joe Luiz Police reference#: 09-46908 This registrant has documented proof of ownership of this bike
About 25 riders converged downtown over the lunch hour yesterday for a tour around some public works of art, led by Ben Foote of ON Gallery.
Many of the pieces were funded by the the state’s 1% for Art rule, which requires publicly funded projects to spend 1% of their budget on public art. This includes much of the new construction in the Pearl, as well as transit spending.
[Steve Cardno is the project manager for the London Cycling Network Plus (LCN+) project. After meeting Portland Bureau of Transportation traffic safety specialist Greg Raisman at the recent Velo-City conference, Cardno decided to spend his vacation here to soak up our bike-mosphere. He stopped by our office on Monday for a chat.
I asked him what London is doing to increase bike use, how they are dealing with bike/truck collisions, how their congestion pricing program has impacted biking, and more.]
“I work for the London Borough of Camdem. There are 33 boroughs and Camden is the lead borough for cycling in London. We are project managers for the London Cycling Network Plus (LCN+) project, that is a 900 km bikeway network across greater London. We have been building this project in collaboration with the 33 boroughs and Transport for London (TFL), who are paying for the project, since 2002. The project is due to be completed by the end 2010.”
[Note: Cardno’s work is focused on the network of “borough roads”, which exclude the TFL’s “red routes”. (Red routes are primary, strategic roads that account for 20% of the LCN+.)]
Year: 2005 Brand: EZ Racer Tandem Model: Front wheel ONLY Color:Black rim Size:20″ Sun SL-1 Photo: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/4iHrBoQPPbUj-TVp-KO4ug?feat=directlink Stolen in Portland, OR 97221 Stolen:2009-06-17 Stolen From: Sidewalk just west of SE Water Ave. on Main St. Near Eastside Esplanade Neighborhood: SE Portland, just north of OMSI Owner: Mark Liebe OwnerEmail: mark.liebe@gmail.com Description: ONLY wheel is missing. Front black rimmed tandem wheel with disc brake left behind after ride. Gone on return. Handicapped daughter’s bike. This registrant has documented proof of ownership of this bike
[Thanks to ride leader Jill for reporting on Monday’s Dandy Warhols Ride, via the Shift list. See bottom of post for a video of the ride!]
It took an entire day to recover from the marathon Dandy Warhols ride. What was planned to be about a 2-hour event instead turned into about a 7-hour odyssey when Brent and Zia from the band joined us.
The fun began with a short introduction, then we visited the spot where “Welcome to the Monkey House” was recorded. We stopped by Plan B who graciously showed some of the Warhols videos to set up the rest of the ride, and Brent and Zia gave us the backstory on each.
Then we rode through downtown, seeing sites where the band recorded videos and played their first show, hearing stories from Zia about meeting and collaborating with David Bowie, what a nice guy Tom Petty is, and other tales.
When we pulled up to their current recording studio and practice space, we were surprised by being given a complete tour, including the kitchen with permanently attached, intentionally crooked tables (to match the floor) and the gold record hallway. Zia surprised us again with swag for everyone and by supplying the prizes for the trivia contest, which was held next at Slabtown.
After trivia, Zia and Brent invited us to continue the night at a bar on Albina, so on we went. The night ended with all those heading to southeast riding home together around 2 a.m., stopping briefly to fix Brent’s 40-year-old broken chain. Fortunately not one but TWO ride participants had a chain tool on them.
Everyone had a blast and the band members could not have been friendlier to us.
Thanks to Jeff Bernards for co-organizing and coming up with the great ideas.
[This report provided by Pun-ishment ride leader Matt Picio, via the Shift list.]
About 40 people showed up last evening for the Pun-ishment ride, expecting games, prizes, and bad puns. They got the last one, and a promise of a ride to a secret mystery destination, but the ride ran
late and the mystery destination was changed to Mississippi Avenue rather than riding way out into north Portland.
At that point, the lack of good puns, prizes, games, and the mystery destination made this officially the Unmet Expectations Ride.
Despite all this, the attendees had a lot of fun on the 9.5 mile route, enjoying food at the carts on 12th & Hawthorne along with the folks on the Remedial Ride, pizza and beer at Laurelwood Pizza, and more drinks at Amnesia – proving one of the truisms of Pedalpalooza: that it really doesn’t matter what the ride is about or where it goes so long as everyone has fun and gets a chance to socialize and meet
new people.
It also helps when you stop the entire ride in front of some guy’s house when he’s walking up to it to go home.
I did manage to subject everyone to a reign of bad puns in kingly fashion. I am not the Duke of wit nor the Count of charm – nor the Earl (I don’t wear bowties) (wait a sec – does that mean I was NOT the
man of the blumenaur?)
If that last paragraph nearly caused you to hurl, then you should be glad you missed the ride, but we had loads of fun!
As a follow-up to our story yesterday, about volunteer organizers of the epic Pedalpalooza Kickoff Naked Bike Ride and Party not making enough from the event to cover the bills, comes this update (emphasis mine):
From the entire Pedalpalooza Kickoff Party organizing team, thank you for the monumental response in the way of thanks, offers to volunteer in future, and donations.
We are good financially, so save your donations for the frothy or caffeinating beverage of choice to help you glide through the rest of this delightful festival of bike fun.
