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The Monday Roundup: Surgeon General’s warning, the healthiness of childhood risks & more

Buffered Bike Lane with a bike symbol and arrow pointing forward
hazardous neighborhood

The new message from the Surgeon General, in short.
(Image: Smart Growth America)

Here are the bike-related links from around the world that caught our eyes this week:

Safety labels: Smart Growth America offers our favorite riff on the U.S. Surgeon General’s “call to action” this week that Americans need to walk more.

Healthy risk: It’s dangerous for kids to never do anything dangerous, according to a new meta-analysis. “Risky outdoor play” gives people better health, creativity, social skills and resilience.

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Mayor Hales pedals to work and makes a coffee-shop campaign stop

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hales ride on

Mayor Hales shows off his new helmet Monday morning.
It’s patterned after the Portland flag.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Two weeks after his first bike commute on the job, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales was back in the saddle this morning and ready for coffee with constituents at Ford Food & Drink at Southeast Division and 11th.

The inner-southeast hangout — which is in eyeshot of the new Tilikum Crossing, at once the newest asset to the city’s transport system and a $30 million factor in its transportation funding challenges — shares a building with Nutcase Helmets. The local company’s founder Michael Morrow was on hand to offer Hales a customized model from Nutcase’s new Portlander series.

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Getting things started at Cycle Oregon 28

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colead

For sale at the Cycle Oregon gift shop.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

People from 46 states in America and six countries around the world have made their way to Baker City in Eastern Oregon to embark on the 28th annual Cycle Oregon ride.

There are 2,200 riders here, ranging in age from 8 to 81. Add them to the several hundred staff and volunteers and they constitute one-fourth the size of the total population of this “large” Eastern Oregon city (whose population has hovered around 10,000 for the past 100 years). Cycle Oregon has created a small, completely self-contained city at the Baker Sports Complex. The sprawling base camp is complete with a live entertainment stage, a gift shop, a bike shop, showers, and more. If the mood strikes, you can even do yoga, get an acupuncture treatment, or get a pre-ride massage.

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New Ride Report app gives ordinary Portlanders the power to evaluate streets

ride report map

A map of more stressful and less stressful bike routes,
created by Ride Report beta testers. Knock CEO
William Henderson warns that there’s not enough
data yet to draw conclusions.
(Image: Ride Report)

Everybody who bikes in Portland has opinions about the best and worst streets to bike on. But there’s no clear way to combine those opinions into the sort of information that officials can actually use.

Enter the new mobile app that’s currently available only in Portland: Ride Report.

Launched as an iPhone app this week (with an Android version in the works), Ride Report provides an extremely simple way for users to answer a single question about each bike ride they take: Thumbs up or thumbs down?

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Hoping to be Portland’s mayor, Ted Wheeler seeks a cycling education

Ted Wheeler learns about biking in Portland-1.jpg

Wheeler took a very close look at an idea for an expansive
network of neighborhood greenways in southeast Portland
that was introduced to him by volunteer activist
Terry Dublinski-Milton.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

If you have aspirations to be mayor of Portland, you must know your way around cycling issues.

That fact was cemented yesterday when mayoral candidate Ted Wheeler sat down for a meeting with cycling advocates just one day after he officially announced his campaign. The meeting was organized by his staff several weeks ago as a simple informational session to help the current State Treasurer bone-up on bicycling.

Here’s who Wheeler met with for just over an hour at the central eastside office building of Alta Planning + Design: (Disclaimer: Alta offered to host. Wheeler’s staff asked me who should attend and I gave them a list): Terry Dublinski-Milton from SE Uplift and BikeLoudPDX; Alta Planning’s CEO Mia Birk; Ian Stude, Director, Transportation and Parking Services at Portland State University; and yours truly. (Others invited to the meeting but who were unable to attend were: Alta Planning Principal and Program Specialist Jessica Roberts; Carl Larson from the Bicycle Transportation Alliance; founder of Rosewood Bikes Matt Martin; and citizen activist Lizbon Grav.)

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ODOT campaign says it loud and proud: ‘Every Intersection is a Crosswalk’

Screenshot 2015-09-11 at 8.23.21 AM

(Photo: Peter Koonce via ODOT)

Americans have become sadly accustomed to so-called “safety” campaigns that scold people for being insufficiently cautious while obeying the law.

A more sensible approach, of course, would be to help everyone understand what the law is and (if you have to scold anyone) stick to scolding people who actually break it. That’s why this new campaign from the Oregon Department of Transportation is such great news.

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Weekend Event Guide: Orange Line opening, BMX, cyclocross and more

BMX Museum

Like old-school BMX? Head up to Vancouver for a show and swap.
(Photo © J. Maus/BikePortland)

This menu of delicious rides and events is brought to you by our friends at Hopworks Urban Brewery. Their support makes BikePortland possible.

The day has finally come for the new TriMet MAX Orange Line to open in all of its glory! We’ve been riding the new paths for a while now and many of you have already ridden and/or walked the Tilikum Bridge. But Saturday is the day it opens for real.

Unfortunately I’m leaving town so I’ll miss the all the newness. I’m headed back out to Eastern Oregon (can’t seem to stay away!) for the start of Cycle Oregon. I’ll be riding all next week and reporting from the road. I’ve covered Cycle Oregon many times, but this time you can expect something different. I’m not bringing my usual camera gear so I plan to focus more on the stories and the people than I have in the past. Should be as fun and enlightening as ever.

What are your plans? Whatever you do, we hope you get out on two wheels. Enjoy the weekend!

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