Back in the saddle again

The "Bridge Pedal" is an August thing here in Portland.

It's...very Portland.

The idea is that for most of a summer Sunday a whole bunch of the downtown streets are closed to vehicular traffic - including most of Portland's Willamette River bridges - and are turned over to non-motorized (okay, well, non-large-motorized, since there are always some e-bikes and scooters in the peleton...) travelers to explore.

It's a real fucking nuisance if you're trying to drive around it, and I recall that when it began back in the 1990s the usual suspects pissed and moaned loudly about it. But since an overwhelming number of non-assholes enjoyed and still enjoy it, the whiners have learned to deal with it, so the first Sunday in August the bicycle (and scooter and unicycle and whatever...) wheels roll over the bridges.

Oh, and you can walk part of the route, too.

When we first met this was something that my ex and I did together and enjoyed. We were both just recreational cyclists - although Mojo did dream of a bit more glory and actually rode a century, a two-day endurance ride of one hundred miles, although finding the reality less rewarding than the dream - but for this? That was just fine. 

After my hips and knees started to fail, though, I got off the bicycle some time in the late-Oughts and even sold my old Kona "Lava Dome" by the time I started getting parts replaced in the Teens.

So I thought I was long past my bridge-riding days when my domestic world fell apart.

Since then, though...

First, I felt the urge to ride again. Remembered the joy I felt getting in the wind, pushing myself to speeds my legs no longer carry me with my feet on the ground. I missed my ex-riding-buddy, but I realized that I missed the riding itself. A lot.

And while I couldn't do anything about the one, I could the other. So... 

I picked up a second-hand bike at our local repair-and-refurbish collective.

I started riding again, beginning with our North Portland "Sunday Parkways" a week or so ago. 

And enjoyed that so much I decided to sign up to ride this year's bridges.

Top deck of the Marquam Bridge. Always a traffic jam...even with bike traffic.

The day cooperated; sunny but cool and breezy. I chose to put the bike on my car-rack and unload just above the descent from North Portland into Albina and from there downtown...

(which was a very good decision - I would have regretted adding in the extra two-dozen miles or so from there home to St. Johns after the full bridge ride.)

...and by the time I came off the Broadway Bridge I could take off my windbreaker, so the weather was perfect for riding. The startline on Naito Parkway was full, and my experience was that if you faffed around you'd get stuck in traffic, so I sidled as close to the start and...off we went, up the west ramp of the Morrison Bridge. 

This year's route was curious.

In the Olden Times the way this thing worked was that you could just ride a "downtown" loop that took in the central Portland bridges, or, if you were ambitious, a longer course that included the two "outlying" bridges, the Sellwood to the south and my St. Johns Bridge to the north.

The Sellwood is just a mile or so from downtown, but the St. Johns is a slog; probably eight or nine miles along the St. Helens Road - dead flat and through the grimmest parts of Northwest Portland's industrial wastelands, then back through my neighborhood and down through Overlook and Albina.

That seems to have been a deal-killer, so this year we rode this:

Across the Morrison and then down the pretty bike-path "Springwater Corridor" (an old interurban rail line) to the Sellwood. Back up through John's Landing to the Hawthorne Bridge, back across to the east bank to loop back across the Ross Island to the Hawthorne again!

From there over the first of the two "big bridges"; I-5 northbound's Marquam, which looped around the I-405 freeway - going north on the usually-southbound lanes - to the last crossing to the eastside, the Fremont Bridge.

Once back into Northeast Portland the route swung down along the Interstate Avenue right-of-way I'd ridden that morning to get to the start line...only instead of the Broadway it crossed back into downtown on the Steel Bridge and we were done. 

Fremont Bridge (looking west)

The taiko drum corps had their own iaidoka. Who knew?

Mind you, some things had changed since my cycling prime.

 

Back in the day I was a climbing beast. I was always a poor descender; frightened of crashing at speed, riding the brakes in a nervous sweat all the way down anything more than the gentlest of hills.

 

But going up? I was a fucking monster, "dancing on the pedals" and powering up the most awful grades. I vividly recall an afternoon in the Eola Hills with Mojo and two friends. It had been a nice easy ride until we started up the western side of the hills themselves. 

 

The slope got steeper, and steeper, and the others got slower and slower...until I told them I'd meet them at the top. And just rode away from them like they were sitting still.

 

They caught up with me at a little winery near the western crest where I'd been waiting nearly half an hour; watered, rested, and - as soon as the three staggered to a halt - ready to go on again.

 

I was lucky to escape with my life...but, anyway. I was a hell of a hill climber once.

 

This year? 

 

Not even close. The slightest incline had me spinning away in granny gear, passed by ancient gaffers and erratic small children. My days as the Marco Pantani of North Portland are clearly long gone.

 

Oh, well. 

 

I rode slowly back to Overlook Park where I'd left the car. Put the bike back on the backrack and then treated myself to coffee and a pastry. 

 

Fuck, I'd earned it.

 

Did the ride, and my enjoyment of it, make the world a better place?

 

Ohhellno. Don't even get me started on Fatso's idiotic vaccine order from today. We're still in the New Gilded Age with all that implies.

 

But it helped me feel a bit lighter. Like I'd accomplished some small something happy and good and just for my own.

 

And that was enough.