My Portland Biking Misadventures

I consider myself a biking advocate.  In my advocacy, I actually participate a bit politically, but mostly, I just try to be an example, and now, I write this blog.

I traveled to Portland this past week on university business; three days sitting (and shivering) in hotel conference rooms followed by visits to Reed College and University of Portland.

Portland is one of America's true success stories regarding biking commuting.  According to Wikipedia, 8% of work commuting takes place by bicycle in Portland.  So, I decide to make my trips to Reed and U of Portland (from the downtown Marriot) via bicycle.  My plan (outside of my work responsibilities) is to make some observations, take some pictures, and write about the differences between my city of Thousand Oaks, CA, and Portland.  My planned route would have taken me 20-25 miles.

I arrive on Sunday, and already excited about the bike trip, take a little look around.  I find a bike rental place near the hotel, but find out they do not open until the time I'm to be at Reed.

I turn to Reddit (on-line community posting original content and interesting articles), which is also by far the biggest source of my fledgling blog traffic, and ask for advice on the page dedicated to Portland.  Two very helpful individuals, finiteautomata and _McAngryPants_ provide me helpful information regarding appropriate places to rent bikes and ride, respectively.

Finiteautomata clearly knows bike rental places, and offers a number places and links to other sites regarding bike rental in Portland.  One of the sites starts with, "Many visitors to Portland do as the Romans do, and rent bicycles to get around".  So much for my idea being original.

One of the suggested places is called Portland Bike Station, which has hours that work for me.  Finiteautomata mentions that the selection is "wonky", however.

Conference wraps up Wednesday afternoon, and I follow advice from _McAngryPants_ (who doesn't seem very angry, actually) and inquire if the Marriot will store a bike overnight.  They answer yes, and armed with that information, I leave the hotel room (feeling pretty dorky).

I find Portland Bike Station easily, and learn immediately what the "wonky" description was about.  The Portland Bike Station bikes look to be all abandoned bikes that have been refurbished and are now available for rent.

They have about four bikes with XL frames, however, and I select a Trek Mountain Bike conversion to street bike.

Portland Bike Station

I ride around a bit, and even cross one of the nearby bridges as I enjoy my biking freedom.  I get off the bike at the other side, and delight in watching the dynamic bike commuting environment.

Hawthorne Bridge

From there, I head back to the hotel, and relish in checking my bike in at the bell station (thanks again,  _McAngryPants_.)

Bell Desk, Downtown Marriot

7:15 AM the next morning, Thursday, I embark on my journey.  I start with a stop at Voodoo Doughnuts Too.  I'm not actually a big doughnut eater, but, my boss had told me that it was part of the Portland experience, so I think it goes nicely with my Portland biking experience.

Blueberry and chocolate doughnuts from Voodoo Doughnuts Too

 From there, I find my way easily to Reed College, although during the ride (caution, foreshadowing ahead) I'm a little uncomfortable navigating with my Droid GPS in my pocket where I cannot see it, and a little uncomfortable riding without tire repair stuff.  I arrive a good half-hour prior to my appointment.

Reed College 

Reed College Bridge

Bike Parking at the cafeteria demonstrated just for fun. My rental bike is at a nearby fence.

Everything goes swimmingly at Reed College, and by 10:30 I'm all wrapped up.  I am cautious about running my Droid out of batteries, (more foreshadowing) however, so I stop at a campus coffee shop, have a smoothie, and charge the Droid a bit.

At about 11:00 AM, I head out to University of Portland.  I find my way relatively easily, working with a scrap of paper that I can pull out of my front pocket and hold in my hand.  I do get disoriented around the Rose Garden, however, and end up on a street called Greeley, a street which  _McAngryPants_ recommended be avoided because of fast truck traffic.  As I ride along Greeley, I never feel unsafe, however, I do wish that I was on a calmer street.

As I close in on University of Portland, it sprinkles a bit, I have a new worry to add to navigation and lack of tire changing, but it quickly subsides and I'm at my destination.

Unscathed at University of Portland

I work as a university planner, and most of favorite campuses are catholic schools.

As with Reed, my visit completes without incident, and I'm soon ready to return after a late lunch and after again charging the Droid, this time to about 75%.

I head out with my scratched out directions hopefully leading me away from the aforementioned Greeley, and onto a calmer bike route.  Very soon, I see a sign for a bike route to downtown, and I already plotting the peaceful conclusion to my story.

I do not go with the sign, however, in what turned out to be a boneheaded decision, as I think it's actually pushing me back onto Greeley and I think Portland's grid of streets and numerical avenues are straightforward enough that I can manage an alternative route.  At this point I'm going north on Interstate, but I think I'm going east and heading towards the street I want to be on, which is called Vancouver.

I ride along way long enough that I should have figured out what was going on, as I do not hit Vancouver and I'm covering a lot of distance.  However, I'm moving easily and suppose that I'm kind of tuned into the rhythm of cycling.

Soon, however, I'm completely jolted back to reality because, I realize I've maneuvered myself onto the on ramp, and even onto the actual 5 Freeway.  Indeed, I'm now breaking a fundamental rule of cycling in SoCal, anyway, which is never ride a bike on the freeway.

So, I ride along a bit, contemplating whether to walk off the side of the freeway to a nearby road or to take the off ramp, and almost immediately the situation goes from bad to worse, as I begin to feel my back tire flatting out.

Now I have no choice but to get off the bike.

Don't fail me now!

I pull out the Droid to figure out where I am, and am quite surprised that after maybe 45 minutes of riding I'm actually over six miles from my hotel, and I'm farther than when I started.

( My ride of disorientation is here, incidentally)

My first thought is to find a bike shop within biking distance, but according to my Droid the closest shop is three miles in the wrong direction.

My second plan is to find a mass transit station, and according to my Droid there is one about a mile away.  I crawl over the barricade pictured above, cut across a grassy clearing, and am on a regular street on my way to a bus station.

I walk the mile to the bus stop, and as bad things always come in threes, I cannot find anything that looks like a bus stop even though my Droid tells me I'm right on top of it. Now I'm only five miles away from downtown, so I decide to just keep walking, as worse case, I can cover the five miles in an hour and a half.  (Incidentally, I know I could have called a cab, but that seemed like it would be cheating.)

Soon, however, I have a brand new worry as I know my Droid's battery is starting to get low.  I figure I need to locate myself on a map (which I did bring, fortunately) for when the Droid's battery does run out.  By this time I'm in a somewhat ramshackle residential neighborhood, and am definitely not in the dynamic community of bikers that I enjoyed so much previously.

So, I'm hunched over my map, and I notice out of my peripheral vision a car drive past me slowly, stop, and back up.  I look over, and just like in the movies, I meet my guardian angel who of course is an older black man driving a polished white Ford Thunderbird from I suppose the mid-80's.  He smiles at me, and asks if I need help.

I manage to resist the urge to shout hallelujah, toss the bike to the ground, and beg on my knees for ride, and merely ask for directions to a bus stop.  He points down the street, and tells me that a bus going directly to downtown is only a half block away.

I thank him profusely, and, this time, find the bus stop easily (at this point I turn off the GPS program from the link above.)

From there, after struggling and needing help from a somewhat annoyed bus driver in securing the bike to the rack, ride to the stop in downtown Portland, and find my way to the Portland Bike Station.  At the Portland Bike Station, they are very graceful, and inform me that they would have sent a car to my rescue.  I talk to them a bit more, and will write more about them and what they are trying to do in a later Blog post.

At the hotel room, I figure out my navigational error, and reflect on the day.

At the beginning of my post, I say I'm a bike advocate (and I am), but even more than that I like to think that I advocate against pervasive thought in today's society that things like biking and strange neighborhoods and being in an unfamiliar city are inherently unsafe and that life should be conducted in the cocoons of cars and gated communities and guarded places of work.

The reality is that I biked and got lost and had to walk my bike a lot further than I would have liked (29 miles between the two), but I never felt even a bit unsafe. In fact, I even did something pretty stupid in not paying attention and ending up on the 5 Freeway, but, I obviously survived.  (Of course, however, I guess there was that guardian angel guy looking out for me.)

Garden Update, 10 September 2011

Cool temperatures here after a brief heatwave.  Looks like an early fall in SoCal, as the plum tree is losing its leaves.

Zucchini is wrapping up, tomatoes and onions still have plenty to produce, I'm hopeful for some beets, and I'm quite disappointed in my cucumbers and pumpkins (especially pumpkins, as the male blossom frat party is the party that never quits).  I get the beginnings of female flowers, but, clearly intimidated by the overwhelming number of male blossoms, they never bloom, whither away, and take their little fruit with them.

I also continue to be plagued by leaf miners.  Bought a miracle organic spray, which wasn't a miracle at all, and worked as well as my previous eradication attempts consisting of trying to ignore the leaf miners to death.

Am going to place a couple of leaves in a plastic bag and see what happens.  Read that after a few days, black bugs come out.  I am not really expecting to solve the issue, but I do want to see the black bugs.

Had a decent harvest today, I tried to be a little artsy with the photo, with little success.

Finally, for posterity, I'm going to rank the success of my growing efforts over the last two years.  My ratings are:

0 - Plant died
1 - Plant grew, maybe a veggie or two
2 - Plant and veggie, but borderline worth the space in the garden.
3 - Good success
4 - Great success

Tomato - 4, always more tomatoes than we can eat.
Zucchini - 4, fortunately I like them.
Broccoli - 4, even after producing, the flowering stalks have served me well in bee attraction.
Kale - 4, although I am not the biggest kale fan.
Potatoes - 4, I need to try mounding
Sweet Peas - 4, and I love seeing them grow up my makeshift trellis.
Onions - 3, onions never grew to full size, although that was probably due to planting them to close together.
Cabbage - 3, see comments for kale.
Pumpkins - 3, last year was actually pretty good.
Yellow Squash - 2, never had a large production.
Peppers - 2, they sure are pretty, though.
Cucumbers - 1, maybe three cucumbers over two years.
Corn - 1, I know I don't have enough square footage to grow corn, but I gave it a try.
Watermelon - 1, although the three little watermelon were actually pretty tasty and kind of fun
Asparagus - 0, although I know it takes years (in year 1)
Beets - Too early to tell, probably planting out of season, but have four or five beet plants growing.

I don't mess with lettuce, as I'm not a big fan, and have avoided carrots and radishes as I don't really like them in my soup creations.

Is it too early to look forward to spring?

My Eight Anecdotes about Bike Commuting

I've commuted by bicycle for 11 years.  I started when we first moved to Thousand Oaks, CA in 2000.

When I commute, I have two options; a 5.0 mile ride via a 50 mph city street with no bike lane, and a 6.6 mile ride on a route that has bike lanes. Lately I've been taking the 5 mile route and riding a mountain bike on the sidewalk.

I typically commute by bike three times per week.  My current pattern is to get a ride in the morning with a coworker who has a bike rack on his car (how lucky!) and bike home, but I have spent many years commuting both ways.

I have also had lapses in my discipline, the biggest lapse being over two years when a regular Tuesday breakfast meeting convinced me that I was just too busy and too important to be messing with the bike.  Fortunately, a family member convinced me to join him in the Solvang Century in March 2008, and I returned to commuting to train for the Century.

Here are my anecdotes regarding commuting:

1) It Feels Lonely because it is Lonely:  I believe that the current percentage of Californians that commute by bicycle make up 3% of the working population (heard this at a Ventura County transportation forum recently).  Moreover, the numbers in that category mostly consist of individuals that have to bike either because of economic necessity or lack of a drivers' license.

2) Even "Enlightened" People Believe that the Road is for Cars (not Bikes):  My university colleagues quite often will look at me with concern, and tell me to "be careful" like I'm getting ready to carry a vial of nitroglycerin across the room.  The message that I receive is that they think that roads are really not for me (and my bike).

3) Driver's Right Turns are Dangerous:  I've been very fortunate over the years.  I've never been hit, and have only fallen three times (because of being clipped in on a road bike).  I've even had relatively few close calls.  My closest encounter was a woman who blew through a stop sign on a right hand turn right into my lane.  I was lucky to be on a two lane road with no one in the inside lane, and was able to swerve over and avoid what would have been a certain t-bone. So, I have been lucky over the years, but I have also been beneficially neurotic.  I carefully observe the drivers in cross traffic to see who is in the right-hand turn lane, and I make sure that I make eye contact with them.  If they do not make eye contact with me, I slow down and slowly approach them until they do.

4) Driver's Right Turns Part B:  I am not proud to say that I have exchanged un-pleasantries with a few drivers over the years.  And almost all of those exchanges resulted from me being in a street that did not have a formal right turn lane, but that had enough room for a driver to scoot around a red-light stopped car and turn right, only to be blocked by yours truly.  The drivers think that I shouldn't be there (even though there's really nowhere to go).  I will say, I have learned, and have recently been more conscience of crossing over and getting in front of the first stopped driver, thus avoiding making another new friend.

5) Road Bikes are Great for Centuries, Not so Much for Commuting:  Thousand Oaks is an affluent community that, for the most part, maintains its roads.  However, I think all cities hate the right hand portion of the streets that has been relegated to bikers, and are determined either to tear them up for utility fixes, block them off for tree-trimming, are just cone them off for no apparent reason.  Consequently, I feel far more comfortable going onto sidewalks, inner traffic lanes, or over construction on either my new mountain bike, or my old MTB hardtail.

6) Panniers vs. Backpack:  I use both, and really don't mind the backpack as it's easier to pack my stuff in the morning.  I use panniers when I'm planning to stop at the grocery store on the way home.

7)  On to the Positive, #1, Bike Commuting is Remarkably Fast:  I can make my little 5 mile commute in under 20 minutes, and can make the longer commute in under 25.  Driving the shorter route takes about 15 minutes.

8) Positive #2, a Little Self-Enlightenment:  Sometimes I sit at red lights and I watch all the drivers go past either going or coming home from work, and I can see in their faces how much they are hurrying, and how focused they are in getting to their destination, and how much just a momentary delay in their traffic pattern would upset them.  It's at those moments that I know that by taking a little extra time on a commute so that I enjoy being outside and enjoy my bicycle is really far more empowering that rushing around in a car.

Goal Update

1) Do not drive to work 3 days per week. 
2) Limit driving on weekends 
3) Eat one meal per week that is homegrown.


On week 4 of my goals (although have been bike commuting for years).  In the warmth and daylight of late August, the goals are remarkably easy, although I also understand that breaking away from automobile dependency, in particular, would seem like an impossible task to most.


Anyway, here's last Saturday's soup.  I follow the tomato basil soup recipe at allrecipes.com, but add zucchini.  

I also played with the video camera function on the phone and am embedding this clip of me arriving home.  I do understand that this is bad for the gate, and, perhaps bad for an unsuspecting cat hanging out on this side of the door, but what can I say?