May Is Bike Month
It took me at least five minutes to lock my bike in the prime parking area under the skybridge between Smith and Cramer yesterday morning. This is in part because my old U-lock (thoughtfully abandoned, with keys, by some unknown visitor to our communal apartment in Maine in 2005) has rust in every crevice after nearly three years of winter commuting in Portland. It now requires patience, skill, and liberal application of the fuck-word to get the key to turn the full 180 degrees, especially after a few rainy days. This lends some urgency to my desire to park under the skybridge, one of the few covered set of racks on the end of campus where I spend my days. Unfortunately, competition for these spaces is fierce, especially on days where the hourly weather forecast looks like this:
If you don’t make it to campus before 10 on these days, bring a plastic bag to cover your saddle, because there is no way you’ll find a spot under the skybridge– by then, many of the racks are tripled up.
I rolled in at 9:55 yesterday, with class starting at 10, so I was hurriedly performing the ritual courtship dance with my U-lock while trying to disentangle my break levers from other people’s cables, and endeavoring not to get my pedals caught in their chains. In this midst of my muttering and cursing, I glanced up, and had one of those hallelujah-chorus moments: not twenty feet away, some very attractive gentleman-cyclists were giving away free breakfast for bike commuters. Apparently, May is Bike Month, and these strapping lads in three-quarter-length pants will be providing watery-yet-free coffee and scones-I-can’t-eat-cuz-they-probably-have-animal-in-them every Thursday. I love that love, especially since I always miss out on the monthly breakfast on the bridges because I don’t often go to campus on Fridays.
Better yet, on Wednesdays they’ll be providing free tune-ups on campus. That means I’ll finally be able to shift my front gears again (for the last month, I’ve only been shifting the back, because the chain kept falling off whenever I switched the front gears). This might even be an opportunity to tighten that rear brake cable, so that I can start stopping for trucks again on Greeley.
May is also Defend My Thesis and Get This Shit Done Month. I wish that came with T-shirts.
It Must Be a Movement
This guy was stopped in front of me at a light on Interstate this afternoon:
When I asked if I could take his picture, this Obama enthusiast said I was the second person to ask that day. Damn rival bloggers. This is good news for the Illinois senator: if you’ve got Portland cyclists in your back pocket (as snug as, say, a U-lock?), you’re a movement.
When I Am Old, I Will Ride a Tricycle
Biking south on Broadway today (duh, it’s a one-way street– there’s no other direction to bike on Broadway), a large blue American-made sedan pulled across two lanes of traffic to get to parking spot three feet in front of me. I hit the brakes and hollered, but the car never hesitated, although it did stop right in the middle of the bike lane when the driver realized that the angle wasn’t going to work for parallel parking.
Breathing hard and pulling around the left side of the car, into the car lane, I waved my hands at the driver-side window, yelling, “Watch what you’re doing!” Once I was alongside the vehicle, I saw a tiny, parched old lady behind the wheel. Her wispy hair was dyed brown, with silver roots showing, and she had that funny old-lady lipstick, with all the creases from her wrinkles digging light pink furrows in her otherwise Elmo-red lips. She didn’t even look at me, and never saw me waving.
My first job out of college was working at a nonprofit transportation service for seniors, and in the course of researching all their propaganda I heard a lot of horror stories about old people driving. They scare me under the best of circumstances, and parallel parking across a bike lane in downtown Portland is not the best of circumstances.
I’ve seen a few old people around here riding what are basically giant tricycles– these were also very popular with developmentally disabled adults in Brunswick, Maine. I propose a bicycle life cycle that goes something like this:
tricycle ===> training wheels ===> bmx ===>
fixie ===> road bike ===> recumbent ===> tricycle
I hope I don’t get hit by an aging driver before I’m old enough to ride a trike again.
Wood Cookie
Riding home today, I saw a bumper sticker that said:
My kid wears a wood cookie.
I don’t know what that means.
Update: I figured it out. There’s this thing called Google.
One Good Turn
I didn’t leave downtown until after 10 pm on Thursday evening. The night was clear, though, and there was little traffic, which made for a pleasant ride through downtown, up over the Bridge, and along Interstate. On the stretch of Greeley where the elevation begins, there was an old SUV pulled over onto the bikelane. As I got closer, I saw that it had stopped for another car, an aging Tercel, and that two men were standing outside their cars, talking worriedly. I checked my mirror and entered the deserted right lane of traffic to give them wide berth, but one of them looked over at me and made the international hand gesture for “Do you have a cell phone?” So I stopped.
The younger of the men asked if I knew the number for a tow company. I told him I didn’t have a car. After conferring, they decided to call their insurance company, so I stood there while they used my phone. They clearly weren’t from North Portland– they didn’t know what street they were on, and they gave the operator an address in Southeast. English wasn’t their first language, and I got the sense that the insurance company was giving them a hard time. Finally, however, they managed to set something up with a tow truck. They thanked me, and I pedaled off, liberal naivete intact: I had stopped to help to men on the side of the road late at night, and only good had come of it. The world is an okay place. Most people mean well.
Riding high on my good deed (because, really, it’s arduous to stand around while other people listen to Muzak on your phone), I went up Greeley and over onto Willamette, rounded the quiet curve of Mock’s Crest, and bore left at the University of Portland. After crossing the light at Portsmouth, I was in my homestretch, already thinking about whether Drew might have saved me any leftovers, when I heard the roar of a fast-approached engine behind me. A burly, shiny pickup truck zoomed past me on the left, and as it went by, I heard a chorus of young women shout out the open window at me, “Fuck the environment!”
As they pulled ahead, their high-pitched giggles poured out of the back window, and I saw a glimpse of platinum-blond hair through the tinted glass. Our nation’s future. I blew them a kiss.
Bike Rack Moment of Zen #2
A few weeks ago, my parents and sister came down to visit the Portland State campus. I gave them the full tour, pointing out the good food carts, listing off the best bathrooms, and showing them all of the places I habitually lock my bike, in order of preference. Of course, during the winter, covered bike parking is at a premium at PSU (the single most popular bike-commuting destination in the city). Generally, I favor the racks under the sky bridge between Cramer and Smith– not only does the sky bridge prevent my saddle from acting like a sponge in wet weather, but I trust that the Girl Scouts, UPS recruiters, and Street Roots vendors who peddle their wares in that spot will notice someone skulking around with bolt-cutters.
My second-favorite place to lock up, though, is at the top of the stairs in front of the PSU library. Not only is the area covered, but it’s usually guarded by hipsters with cigarettes, and they tend to scare off the ne’er-do-wells. Those bike racks are also protected by this cheering graffiti gods-eye:
I’m not particularly spiritual (although I like my uplifting neurochemical cocktails as much as the next person), but it can’t hurt.
Bike Rack Moment of Zen #1
Yesterday, as I was locking up my bike next to Powell’s, I saw this stuck to a window:
Thanks to the miracle of the Interweb, I was able to take this picture with my phone and send it to my friend Kyle, who then used his iPhone to email it me. I’m sure there’s a simpler way to do that.
Update: While it’s not necessarily simpler, in that it involves my phone, two websites, and photo-editing software on my laptop, I did figure out a way to get pictures off my phone without having to talk to Kyle.
Short-Shorts
As I was biking home up Greeley today, I found myself tangled up in a crowd of very fit, very young men wearing very little. Hopefully, it was the University of Portland cross-country team; otherwise, I was ogling high school boys in teeny tiny shorts. I was biking uphill, so I wasn’t going too much faster than the fleshy hoard, and every time I stopped at a light, they flooded around me on both sides. It wasn’t until we got to the flat terrain on Willamette that I managed, with some regret, to pull ahead.
Every once in a while, I get a startling reminder that I am incredibly, boringly straight.
