Tag / biking

by Adron

I’m in The Boston Globe! Bicycling in Portland Gets Props

A few weeks ago I traveled to Boston. Which had nothing to do with me being part of an article in The Boston Globe, but I was there none the less, riding transit and checking out the bike lanes there in that fine city.

When I returned to Portland, a few days later I was riding down the Stark Street green painted bike lane (PDF) on my way to the Portland Chrome Store. While coming down the bike lane Derrick was taking a photograph of me for the write up (which unfortunately didn’t make it into the article). I stopped and we struck up a conversation with the Portland bike infrastructure manager, Derrick and I. After a good conversation Derrick returned to Boston a few days later and then after a week or so, put together this article “A successful model for urban cycling in Portland, Ore“.

by Adron

Portland Streetcar Has a Safety Message

See the video yet? Please be safe around the streetcar tracks! 🙂

Kind of sappy and silly, but seriously everyone needs to bear in mind the streetcar is there. The tracks aren’t coming up and they’re getting more popular again. So be safe and careful to approach the tracks safely.

by Adron

Surly Cross Check

As one may know that reads my blog. I bike, a lot. Even by Portland standards I ride regularly. By the regular lazy American’s standards I probably seem obsessed. Well today I just stepped up the ante again. I purchased a Surly Cross Check from Clever Cycles on Hawthorne here in Portland. Great shop, great service. My Giant will become my “secondary” and “loaner” bike when riding with people in from out of town.

Surly Cross Check in Black

Surly Cross Check in Black

So the Surly Cross Check has some awesome Portland features. What do I mean by Portland Features? Read on and I’ll explain.

1. First off, the bike is a great road bike. With 100% Surly proprietary 4130 CroMoly tubing. TIG welded. Double butted main triangle it’s a brutally strong bike. It’s got more in common with my Redline freestyle bike than my other bikes. But that’s a good thing, ya see, I’m not a soft rider. I ride hard, brutally hard sometimes, and sometimes have a tendency to break really strong bikes. That’s one of the first things I’m stoked about, strength is important.

2. The bike fits (and this is one of those Portland Features) on the bike racks on Trimet Buses really well, and easily comes on and off with a single hand. I don’t have to balance it or hold the bike with both hands, making the movement to hook the front wheel much easier.

3. The bike is much lighter than my current main bike. Making it even easier to mount on a rack on the MAX or mount on the WES racks. Another Portland Feature! This of course also makes it easy to mount up on the racks on the LINK in Seattle and other cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc.

4. The bike rides with much less resistance than my current ride. It also has a multi-positional handelbar setup. The setup includes the Cane Creek 40, Salsa Bell Lap, Tektro Cantilever Brakes connected to Tektro Brak Levers. Topping all this off with Shimano SL-BS77s. This makes riding for hours or days possible, without me ending up a bent mess of a human being!

So I’m setup, ready for a long ride. I think I might pull off one of those tonight. Anybody in Portland up for a few dozen miles?  🙂

Cheers!

by Adron

A Wednesday Day Off

I grabbed my bike and rode down the street to the bus mall. I picked  a random bus, the #44 it happened to be, to board. I rode the bus out to the Willamette Boulevard overlook area.

Waiting with bike at bus mall stop for the #44.

Waiting with bike at bus mall stop for the #44.

While waiting a few buses and the MAX Yellow Line passed by on their way…

MAX Yellow Line Passing while I wait. (Click for full size image)

MAX Yellow Line Passing while I wait. (Click for full size image)

After a pleasant ride up to Mock’s crest, a view from the stop…

Mock's Crest (Click for full size image)

Mock’s Crest (Click for full size image)

Off to more riding about…

by Adron

More Biking Bits…

I know this is the “transit sleuth” blog and I still do a ton of that, but biking is a major proponent of getting rid of a host of problems the United States has created for itself. No city in this country has accomplished as much in resolving those issues with biking than Portland Oregon. Recently Portland has come out as the #1 biking city in the United States (platinum level). I’ve included some choice quotes,

“Two, the town removed on-street auto parking spaces at the request of adjacent businesses at many highly-visible locations in favor of on-street bicycle parking.”

…and there’s more…

“By several measures, bicycle ridership increased significantly in Portland this year. Their 2008 annual counts, based on 68 locations, demonstrated a 28 percent growth in citywide ridership compared to 2007. The 2008 City Auditor’s Office’s annual survey found that eight percent of Portlanders identified the bicycle as their primary commute vehicle and another ten percent identified it as their secondary commute vehicle. Portland’s most compelling statistics are that Portland experienced zero bicycle fatalities in 2008 for the fourth time since 2000 and bicycle crashes dropped eight percent since 2007.”

Unfortunately there are still some fatalities sometimes, but this is evidence that biking does work, and empowers a city to new levels of livability and healthy lives. All very impressive.