Oregon Trailer
Although it’s been raining hard all day, I couldn’t wait any longer: I had to try out my “new” bike trailer:
There are two things that I’ve always wanted to be able to carry on my bike but have never figured out how to successfully secure on my bike rack: big bulk bags of cat food and large plastic jugs of cat litter. I was easily able to fit both of those into the Burley, plus a pound and half of coffee, a large brick of cheddar, a new carabiner-handle coffee cup to replace the one I left on a cafeteria tray at Pacific University this summer, and a bottle of Simple Green for cleaning my bike chain, with lots of room to spare.
It’s about four miles to New Seasons from the house, and almost entirely flat, which made for a great trial run with the trailer. The steady rain was the only drawback; however, in my experience, biking on wet pavement often feels easier– I have no actual scientific evidence for this, but I think there might be less friction between the tires and the road surface when there’s a coating of oily water on the asphalt.
I could definitely feel the weight of the empty trailer behind me on the way there, but it was a smooth ride. There were a few places where I had to kick it down to the middle gear because of the wind (I’m not sure if it was the extra weight or the added wind resistance of the trailer that made it too hard to stay in the big gear), but once I had momentum, I hardly noticed I was pulling it in most places.
The trickiest part of the ride was figuring out how to lock the whole rig up in front of New Seasons. Because of some mobile carts and permanent pillars near the bike racks at the main entrance, I ended up u-locking my bike parallel to one rack, pivoting the trailer at a right angle to the bike, and cable-locking it through wheel and frame to another rack; I didn’t feel great about this setup, because it made accessing a few nearby racks more difficult for other cyclists. Fortunately, I think the weather today kept demand for bike parking low.
On the way home, I could definitely feel the added weight of the full trailer: it became a bit jerkier, and it was more difficult to start, and especially to stop. Still, given how much I was hauling, it was remarkably easy to maintain a steady pace.
The major sacrifice that comes with pulling the trailer, as far as I can tell, is agility. One of the great things about riding a bike is the ability to weave in and out, fit through tight spaces, hop up on the sidewalk, or even stop and carry your bike over an obstacle if need be. None of these is possible with the trailer. It does, however, add whole new functional dimension to getting around on a bike: now Ben can carry his tools by bike, if he wants to, and I can participate in the community bike moves that are the Portland equivalent of barn raisings.
Stormy Weather
I got downtown during a spell of just-washed sunshine around noon yesterday, but things looked much more ominous in the early evening, as I unlocked my bike to go home. Episodic showers and sun had blown through all day, and now a cluster of menacing clouds darkened rush hour on the west side. By the time I got over the Broadway Bridge, though, I could see much clearer skies to the north, and I figured I had escaped whatever micro-storm was brewing downtown.
The sun was bright as I pedaled under the Fremont Bridge: it poured from the sky and bounced back off the wet asphalt, so blinding I had to pull out my shades. Just as I was downshifting to crank up Interstate, a cloud that must have been hovering in my blind spot opened up, and within seconds my light rain coat was soaked through. Still squinting into the sun, I pedaled harder, worrying a little about my cell phone in its compartment on my shoulder strap, my laptop inside my messenger bag, and my iPod in my pants pocket, with its exposed earbud wires.
Just as I’d resigned myself to being very wet for the next forty-five minutes (I still needed to stop at New Seasons for hippie shampoo), it started to hail. The ice pellets bit into my hands and stung through the thin wet nylon on my forearms, while pinging loudly off my plastic helmet. Perversely, the sun was still blinding, and I was crawling in a low gear up the steep Interstate hill, moving only slightly faster than the foul-tempered quitting time drivers on my left.
The hail turned back into rain at the top of the hill, near the Overlook Park MAX stop, and the rain petered out as I passed the Fat Cobra Adult Video Store. At New Seasons, I locked up out front, then sloshed in through the sliding doors. The second most beautiful thing I saw all day was the free samples of steaming hot coffee they were offering inside: I clutched the warm, tiny cup in my frozen fingers as I stood shivering in the toiletry aisle, cursing the onset of fall.
The first most beautiful thing I saw all day was the rainbow arching across the eastern sky twenty minutes later while straddling my bike in the left turn lane, waiting for the green light onto Portland/Rosa Parks: on to home.
A Two-Line Poem from the Search Engine Terms
navy reserve center swan island
i lost my britches on the railroad
Bang!
Some of you have been clamboring for pictures of bangs. Can’t nobody say that wheeledpower never did nothing for the peoples:
Here It Comes
Here’s the current weather map for Portland:
That big green mass you see, looking like a noxious gas about to smother the city, is Fall. It’s almost here (landfall is estimated at 9:30 am Pacific).
From June until late September, Portland really is the ideal biking city. Not only is the infrastructure in place, but it’s generally sunny and warm, but not too hot, all summer. However, for the other eight months of the year, biking is, often as not, an assertion of principle and bad-assedness rather than a strictly pleasant, enjoyable mode of transportation. Fortunately, the weather blows in and out, so you stand a good chance of getting your ride in between showers, but the bike lanes become significantly clearer at this time of year, as all the fair-weather cyclists start buying Tri-Met passes again.
This is the first Gore-Tex day of the academic year: I’ll be putting on my rain pants, my light rain jacket that balls up into a pouch on its own sleeve for easy storage (anyone remember Popples?), and my Keen rain shoes, which are still in great shape after five months of damp daily wear last winter. Hopefully at least some of my wool socks still make matching pairs.
One of the key considerations at this time of year is breathability: if you wear too much clothing under the raingear while the temperatures are still in the fifties, you’ll be soaked with your own sweat by the time you get downtown, which is worse than getting rained on, because it stinks. It also means that, once you stop sweating and cool off, you can get very chilled very quickly. This year, I might experiment with wearing only my skivvies under the raingear, and bringing a set of warm, dry clothes in my messenger bag, which is waterproof.
I’m also going to have to get my ass in gear to outfit my “new” bike for wet-weather commuting. I still need to put fenders on it (the splashback off the tires is actually much worse that the rain on most days), and I haven’t transferred the mounts for the lights from my old bike yet, either. I don’t have any statistics to back this up, but I always feel least safe biking on rainy days, during daylight. At least at night cars can see your flashing lights, but the wipers don’t clear the very edges of the windshield, which is exactly where I’ll be if a car is about to hit me. When it rains, I like to use my lights even in daylight.
It’s not always super pleasant, but I think biking through the rainy months is the best way to beat any hints of season affective disorder. Even if you don’t get much direct sunlight here in the winter, my experience is that the indirect sunlight and fresh air of bike commuting staves off the depression of the unremitting gloom. I’ve also made it through two winters without getting a cold or the flu, and I attribute that to spending less time cooped up inside with other people’s germs, and also the the curative powers of sweat.
Finally, there are some economic considerations that favor biking through the Dark Times. Have I mentioned that Tri-Met is a buck seventy-five each way now?
Back to School
Today I had one of those Living the Dream moments. Classes started up again this week, and I’m taking a seminar on Shakespeare. The text for the class is the Norton Complete Works of William Shakespeare, a hardbound volume of 3420 pages. It must weigh at least ten pounds, and when I carried it home in my messenger bag on Monday evening (along with several other books), the extra weight gave me serious crotch pain. So this morning, I wrapped it up in a plastic bag and secured it to my bike rack with a bungee cord. Cruising over the Broadway Bridge with my Complete Works lashed to my bike, lesson plans tumbling around in my head like rocks in a polisher, I breathed the damp morning air. Autumn is a new, unfilled notebook: all potential still, with nothing scribbled out or imperfectly erased.
Wardrobe Malfunction
It took me more than a month of riding my “new” bike to discover that one of the bolts attaching the seat to the frame has a jagged spot, which has been systematically ripping a hole in the left ass cheek of every pair of pants I own. I figured it out when I felt an early fall breeze waft through the rear of one of my nicer pairs of teaching pants. When I reached down mid-pedal and surprised myself by touching two inches of exposed butt flesh, I also encountered the rough nut that did the damage. Once I got home, I examined all of the other pairs of pants I’d recently worn on my bike: two pairs of workout pants and another pair of teachin’ britches had two-inch holes in exactly the same spot.
Up until now, I’ve made most of my clothing purchases with bikeability as a top priority. I like being able to jump off my bike and walk right into whatever class or meeting I’m attending. However, I’ve also recently come to terms with the fact that what I wear actually has some bearing on how seriously people take me, and affects my job prospects. It turns out that I am not the Invisible Floating Brain, operating entirely in the Ethereal Realm of Ideas and free from Petty Material Concerns, that I always thought I was. Which sucks. And means that I need to stop showing up for things that matter with chain oil all over me.
To this end, I’ve started wearing grownup earrings, unstained pants, and the occasional Business Casual Jacket to work. I even got a haircut with bangs (the Wandering Hare in St Johns is awesome: Heather was very emotionally supportive while I was having a panic attack over the prospect of a haircut different from the two I’ve alternated between since I was twelve).
As I said, I’ve always tried to bike in the clothes I wear all day– in addition to the convenience, it’s sort of a commuter statement: “See? Getting around by bike is a normal mode of transportation, one that doesn’t require any fancy apparel or expensive layout for gear. Just role up your right pant-leg.” I own one chamois (pronounced “shammy,” the silly padded crotch thing you see on bike shorts), but I only ever wear it for longer, 30+ mile trips, not commuting. However, after laying out money I didn’t have at the last minute to replace my teaching pants before school started, I decided, reluctantly, that I might have to start carrying clothes with me and changing from grungy biking clothes into my bourgeois know-it-all ensemble once I got to school, if only to make my nicer clothes last longer.
I tried it out yesterday, and it was, in fact, kind of a pain in the ass. With a full messenger bag and helmet, plus to two sets of clothes, those bathroom stalls are pretty cramped, especially since one of my lower-order neuroses is a fear of accidentally dipping or dropping my belongings into public toilets (this anxiety stems from lived experience). Plus, the bottom of my messenger bag appears to have been lined with crushed Saltines, because my pants were crumbier when I pulled them out than when I packed them.
Even with the pants and a jacket that looks like it’s made from an airline blanket, I guess I still didn’t manage to project an aura of mature adulthood. A professor told me that with the bangs I look like I’m twelve.
Too bad: I was actually going for more of a Joni Mitchell thing.
Long Time No Write
I won’t bother with excuses. Suffice it to say that a conversation with a Real Artist Friend Who Believes in Craft Not Web Publishing made me doubt whether this blog is a meaningful use of my time and energies. Then I went up to Oly for the weekend, and then my sister was in town touring colleges and I started training for my assistantship…Well, I guess I ended up bothering with excuses afterall.
Just an aside: if you are having doubts about your own web-based creative undertakings, check out this Ze Frank clip, and also this one. If John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats won’t have me, I’m definitely marrying Ze.
I was running late for training this morning, so I was really cranking along Willamette and onto Greeley just as the Swan Island traffic was beginning to get serious. At the top of the hill, I saw a cyclist way ahead of me with a baby trailer hitched to the back of his bike. I was going fast, but this guy must have really been hauling, because I didn’t come close to overtaking him until we’d gone up the ramp onto Interstate. I was being extra careful not to crowd him or approach him without warning, because I thought he had a kid in the trailer, and there was a lot of traffic. However, once I got close enough, I realized that his passenger was a golden retriever, just hanging out inside the trailer cab, completely relaxed while being pedaled along busy truckways.
When I finally get around to picking up my bike trailer from my friend Judy (who’s giving me her old trailer in exchange for some babysitting), maybe I can take Max the Cat for some rides.
