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.

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.

Methods

I’m supposed to be writing the “Methods” chapter of my thesis right now, but the sun is shining through the rain and I’d rather be biking. As a compromise, I’ll write about bikes, pausing only to gaze wistfully out the window.

Title:

The Effect of Winter Cycling on Low-Grade Respiratory Viruses

Hypothesis:

Bicycles have miraculous healing powers.

Methods:

A subject with a minor pulmonary infection biked sixteen miles a day for five days. During the trial period, she supplemented this vigorous physical activity with a range of auditory stimuli, including several National Public Radio podcasts touching on timely political and economic concerns, and a comprehensive review of the entire Mountain Goats independent rock catalogue, inspired by two live shows at one Doug Fir Lounge. The subject also attempted to manage her symptoms with a variety of alcoholic home remedies.

The subject’s health was measured throughout the week, with on-going evaluations of throat pain, in-class coughing, enthusiasm for thesis research, and general disposition toward humanity.

Results:

The subject began exhibiting symptoms of a sore throat on Saturday, February 23. Initially, the subject believed that said sore throat was an unanticipated outcome of the ill-advised ingestion of rosemary oil– earlier in the day, the subject’s sister had paid her $2 to squirt Max the Cat’s foul-tasting anti-lick spray onto her own tongue, which resulted in lingering side effects throughout the day. However, the sore throat persisted, eventually spreading to the subject’s bronchial tubes.

Symptoms persisted throughout the week, with a peak of in-class coughing on Tuesday. On that date, the coughing was disruptive enough that the subject missed several minutes of a presentation on dramatic signifiers in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta because she was doubled over in the hallway, gagging. A lack of enthusiasm for her thesis research intensified throughout the week, abating temporarily during a fascinating interview on Thursday, but returning with renewed force on Friday, when her general disposition toward humanity also plummeted to a record low. While the subject has often exhibited higher-than-average levels of misanthropy, regardless of her health, oxygen deprivation and exhaustion combined with academic stress and a disgust with institutional politics to trigger a truly pathological aversion to the human species on Friday. Rather than doing her work, the subject was forced to bike from downtown Portland to St Johns via Sellwood, grinning into the harsh wind on the Springwater Corridor the whole way south.

Discussion:

Despite lingering symptoms of existential crisis, the subject experienced a remarkable amelioration of physical discomfort in her respiratory system over the course of the week. We can only conclude that it was the 90+ miles of road cycling that led to such a rapid recovery. However, we should note that this outcome may have been bolstered by unseasonably sunny weather in the Pacific Northwest, which resulted in elevated Vitamin D levels and a slight diminution of melancholic tendencies.

Conclusion:

All indications support our hypothesis that cycling has miraculous healing powers. In fact, we would go so far as to endorse cycling as a treatment for a range of medical conditions, including restless leg syndrome, tennis elbow, and watery mouth. At least until a future Democratic president institutes comprehensive healthcare reform, we recommend cycling as the primary medical plan for the nation’s uninsured, along with black coffee (for digestive health) and St John’s Wort (for all mental health conditions).

Post-Deluvian

After two days of biblical rains, during which I stayed snugly ark-bound in my pajamas, we had a summery day: 55 degrees and sunny, despite the flood debris in the bikelanes. Biking over the Broadway Bridge yesterday, I saw what looked like a felled forest floating down the high, soil-steeped waters of the Willamette. That would be the Valley washing out towards the Columbia.

This morning, my entire route was blanketed in fog. I couldn’t see the St Johns Bridge from my kitchen window anymore, and the other bikes on Mocks Crest were just blinking red rear lights. Every once in a while, the condensed fog dripped down the front of my helmet onto the fronts of my churning thighs. On the Broadway Bridge, I smiled when I saw my favorite graffiti (image stolen from this blog [sorry!], because I still don’t have a working camera– the one I see everyday is stenciled on the pavement of the bike/pedestrian path):

What I Did with My Extra Hour Today, Or, Yet Another Reason Why Bikes Are Awesome

I did not make very good use of this beautiful weekend, bikewise– I spent Friday inside reading for classes, and Saturday at Powell’s with my folks. So, in order to get some exercise in before the early sunset this evening, I decided to do something I never, ever even consider: I went running.

Now, I have never been much of a runner. When I was a little fat kid, my dad used to try and pay me to run laps around the “lake” behind our house, and as is often the case for me, sloth trumped greed: I never once made it around the lake. Even in my top physical condition in early high school, when I was playing varsity basketball (in Chile, being 5′10 1/2″ puts you on varsity no matter how badly you suck), I could never run more than two and half miles. I am a natural swimmer, so I have long considered myself Exhibit A for the Aquatic Ape Theory.

The last time I went running was in July, when I was teaching at a live-in program and had few options for burning off three all-you-can-eat buffets a day; even then, I only ran twice, two miles each time. Still, I knew I was in pretty good shape from biking 75-100 miles a week since classes started in mid-September, so I set out this afternoon with the goal of running for 45 minutes, which would be the longest I’d ever run by five minutes.

Long story short, I ended up running for an hour non-stop, the last fifth of a mile of which was uphill. And I could have done more! My breathing returned to normal in 20 seconds! My leg muscles weren’t even sore: the only thing that hurt were my hips and ankles, from the unaccustomed impact and the extra 15 pounds I’m carrying. I gmapped it when I got home, and I ran exactly five miles (okay, nobody said I was running super-fast). That’s a mile and half farther than I’ve ever run in my life.

The point is not that I’m awesome (although I am feeling pretty awesome at the moment). The point is that bike commuting made me, the quintessential sweat-averse, life-of-the-mind chubby girl, capable of running five miles without even putting on sneakers for two months. That’s what I call a solution to the obesity epidemic.

Shadow of Myself

As I was unlocking my bike to go home yesterday afternoon, I had a very pleasant conversation with another cyclist who was doing the same.

“Can you believe this?” he said. “Biking in the sun in November? I grew up here, and I can remember it snowing at this time of year.”

“Well, there is an upside to global warming,” I said.

We’ve had a two weeks now of almost unbroken dry, sunny weather. Sometimes it’s a little chilly and windy, but that’s a small price to pay to have dry socks all day. The return of the sun and the delayed end of daylight savings time this year has led to a not-very-interesting phenomenon that still delights me in the late afternoon along the southernmost stretches of Mock’s Crest: as I bike, I can see my own shadow, cast long and lean along the asphalt to the east of me.

My “new” bike has beautiful lines– the curving handlebars, the oversized wheels, the slender thread of cables. With my helmeted head, low-slung messenger bag, and rolled up pantlegs, we cut an iconic image on the pavement. The sidelong rays of the setting sun capture a perfect profile silhouette, plus a little extra height that makes me look thinner. I can see the fluid circular motion of my pumping legs, the seamless integration of woman and machine (although, if I don’t check my narcissistic self-hypnosis, I’m likely to integrate myself and my machine into the back of the VW bus that’s always parked on that stretch of Willamette).

If identity is performance, that shadow shows me myself playing the role of cyclist in a very satisfying way. One of the fascinating things about bike culture in Portland is the variety of rider identities, and the degree to which we feel compelled to display that identity to each other, and to those Outsiders who don’t ride (I found this blog post on indie-fixie-messenger identity very entertaining, mostly because I’m hopelessly attracted to these guys, as well).

As a former Future World Famous Anthropologist (that’s how I signed yearbooks my senior year of high school), I’ve been developing elaborate theories about the degree to which urbanism makes it impossible for us to actually get to know (and make ourselves known to) most of the people we share space with every day. This means that we often feel compelled to develop elaborate visual cues to communicate whatever we think is most important about ourselves, and the groups to which we feel we belong, to the strangers around us. There’s a touching urgency to create community (and, in this city, an interesting desire to demonstrate political positioning) in that impulse, and also tremendous room for conflict over perceptions of authenticity (i.e. accusations of “poserism,” as one of my high school students used to put it).

Because seemingly endless years of studying post-structuralism have trained me to break down and analyze identity signifiers, I tend to feel reluctant to participate in the fashion indicators of cycling, even as I feel self-conscious satisfaction walking around campus with chain oil on my clothes and my helmet hanging off the strap of my messenger bag. I guess I’ve been in Portland long enough now that I’m starting to buy into the need to signal to strangers.

Ultimately, though, one of the great privileges of being a bike commuter in this town is the easy sense of affiliation with strangers, like that guy I chatted with about the weather yesterday. We went on to discuss the best northbound routes through downtown from PSU, and the perils of kids on skateboards along the Esplanade, before going our separate ways. That community, which is a big part of the “signified” that corresponds to the pleasing signifier of my bike shadow, is real and important. The desire to belong is a basic cross-cultural human need, and I’m happy when I feel like I belong to the fellowship of the chain ring in Portland.

Kegged, Amongst Other Things

Broadway is always a pain in the ass, but at least I got a laugh out of the obstacles blocking my path yesterday: a beer truck had unloaded three kegs onto the middle of the bike lane in front of Mary’s. I guess this bike brakes for beer, whether she likes it or not.

While Monday and Tuesday of this week were stolen days of summer, yesterday was clear, brilliant and chilly. I guess the rules of winter riding in Portland are coming into effect: your choices are warm and wet, or clear and cold. As long as I have my trigger mittens (perfect for operating bike brakes on frigid mornings), I’ll always take clear and cold, even with the brisk north wind that usually comes with it. Yesterday, it was so clear that I could see the peak of Mt. Hood from Mock’s Crest– we hardly ever glimpse the mountains from North Portland.

Although I wrote yesterday’s distressed post about the recent cyclist fatalities just before leaving the house, it only took five minutes of pedaling in that sharp fall air before I felt exhilarated again. The trees line Willamette like blazing torches, and everyone’s out on their bikes on these dry days; we smile at each other, and nod.

Biking is like (or as) a metaphor for life (those of you who know me well are aware that lots of things are metaphors for life): there’s always a certain amount of danger involved in doing the right thing, but the reward is a more meaningful existence. I have never felt as alive on the most epic road trip as I feel on my daily commute by bike. That’s well worth the risk, and worth fighting for today at City Hall.

Bike Trailer Bounty

Today I took two hours out from Richard II to bike with Ben and the Burley to Sauvie Island to get a pumpkin. Yesterday it was pouring, but today it was just a little cloudy, not too chilly, with gold and red leaves suddenly visible again in the indirect sunlight. We went over the St Johns Bridge, up 30, and over the (endlessly under construction) Sauvie Island Bridge. The empty bike trailer slowed me down a little, but not much: if anything, I felt like it gave me greater visibility and wider berth from the fast, heavy traffic through Linnton. Once we crossed onto the island, Kruger’s Farm was just another mile and a quarter up Sauvie Island Road.

At the farm, we locked the bikes and the Burley together on the lawn, and wandered around the busy market. Kids were running around everywhere, begging for pony rides, climbing on hay bales, and loading onto tractor-drawn platforms bound for the pumpkin patch. We’d come for one large pumpkin, but settled for two smaller pumpkins (one orange and round, one green and curvy) and a cabbage the size and weight of a medicine ball (for Andrew to carve). We also ran into our former neighbor, Mike, working his grill, and he gave us some vegetarian lasagna.

Getting onto the island was easy. Getting off of it again, with all that produce, was another story. The cabbage alone weighed 16 pounds (I’m telling you, it’s an enormous cabbage). We had to strap the two pumpkins into the Burley like babies:

I couldn’t bike the damn thing up the steep hill from Kruger’s to the main road, so I had to get off and push.

Once I was on pavement again, it wasn’t so bad, although the two bridges were the only time I’ve ever used the smallest front gear on my “new” bike. It was just a matter of chugging. The Burley is a weird kind of weight, all tugging from behind rather than pushing down on the frame. I think that keeps the bike more efficient, because the tires aren’t so compressed; it definitely saves wear and tear on my ass not to have that weight on my back. Climbing was almost like being on a stationary bike, pedaling and pedaling without too much resistance, but not getting very far very fast. Fortunately, the weather held, and traffic on the St Johns Bridge was light on a Sunday, so no one gave me a hard time for taking the lane.

An idyllic fall afternoon: now back to Dick 2.

Hang Up and Pedal

By the time I got to the Broadway Bridge, I was already in a bad mood. Wind storms have been sweeping up and down the coast, and we caught the blustery weather in Portland today. Fortunately, it wasn’t raining, and the wind was warm, but all the bright yellow leaves that have been clinging precariously to tree limbs along Willamette were being ripped from their twigs, and blowing horizontally into my face. Usually I don’t mind a little wind, but I was biking right into it for most of my ride, and it came in the sort of uneven gusts that make a bike swerve into oncoming traffic. That kind of wind will wreck your time, and I was already pushing my commute pretty damn close, so I just had to lean in and pump.

I crossed the bridge and pulled up behind two other cyclists at the light where the road splits off between Broadway and Lovejoy. When it turned green, I stood up on my pedals ready to go, but the guy in front was very slow to get moving again. After a second, I realized that he was holding a cell phone to his ear. He pedaled across the intersection, and then started coasting down the hill to Broadway and Everett, taking the whole lane and yakking away on his phone. He wasn’t even wearing a helmet! I mean, if you’re going to be on the phone while biking and blocking everyone behind you, at least protect your skull. I was trapped in back with another cyclist while this guy finished his call, put his phone away, and then sprinted through the yellow light at the bottom of the hill. The other rider and I didn’t make it, and had to sit through the red light.

Honestly, people are so fucking stupid. And this after hundreds of people turned out for a city-wide vigil ride for the cyclist who got killed last week. I mean, I get cut off by people turning right across the Broadway bike lane while talking on their phones just about every week, but I sort of expect people who drive downtown to be (situational) idiots. It just goes to show you that being enlightened doesn’t make you smart.

At least I got to bond with the very nice young man who got stuck at the red light with me: he seemed to be a lot less judgemental about the cell phone cyclist that I was. I must be one of those high strung East Coast types.

Red Light

I somehow lost my rear red bike light between Portland and La Grande (or maybe between La Grande and Portland) a few weeks ago, and I’ve been riding with just the white front light ever since. It is now dark when I leave the house on my early mornings, and dark when I leave campus on my late evenings (unfortunately, my early mornings and late evenings are on the same days). This is especially exciting when it rains.

Technically, the law only requires me to have a white light in front and a rear reflector, on the theory that cars approaching me from behind will see my ass winking in their headlights, like the eyes of that sodden possum that’s smeared across the road near my house.

One of my co-workers got hit on his bike on Vancouver last week. Some little old lady took him out at a stop sign in the rain. His bike got fucked, but he says he’s okay, except that his ribs hurt when he sits in front of a computer, lays down, or breathes. Fortunately, it happened right in front of Legacy Emanuel– a doctor was standing on the corner, saw the whole thing go down, and rushed to his aid. Last week was a bad one for Portland cyclists: a 19-year-old girl got killed on 14th and Burnside when a cement truck turned right across her bike lane. The same day, a Ghost Bike appeared at the intersection.

I’m not afraid of death: I’m afraid of how afraid I’m going to be when I realize I’m about to die. Riding my bike home in the damp dark, I can hear the swift-moving vehicles rushing me from behind on Willamette, and sometimes I imagine how it would sound, how it would feel, if one hit me. If it ever happens, I hope I never see it coming.

I should really get a new red light.