Iron Fist

I am enjoying the lazy days of summer by not doing much of anything, although really I should be out putting some miles on my bike.  Especially if I hope to get in any events this summer.  Maybe this action shot will motivate me.

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I was sitting around the house last night drinking my roommate’s beer when I suddenly had the epiphany that we only have one life to live, and only a finite amount of time upon this earth, and a vanishingly small window of opportunity to ride around naked on our bicycles with literally hundreds of other scantily-clad and like-minded individuals. I also realized that I could put off doing laundry for another day if I went to a clothing optional event.

I don’t know if there’s a World Naked Bike Ride event coming to your part of the world anytime soon, but here in Stumptown it’s Pedalpalooza time and we had ours last night. At around 10 o’clock I left my house and pedaled across town to the dance party at the starting line. I walked around for a while trying to find a few friends who I had heard were going to show up, wondering if I would even recognize any of them naked, and still debating whether or not I was actually going to go through with this. There is strength in numbers though, and something about being around other people going au naturel that gives you the courage to go ahead and disrobe and so, after sending several ridiculous twits, I started taking off my clothes until I was wearing little more than my bike shoes. Oh, and my helmet, because, you know. Safety.

Right before midnight hundreds of cyclists assembled, shivering somewhat but grinning more than anything else, and after hooting and cheering and chanting someone apparently gave the signal because all those naked bodies started moving, and we were off!

Some highlights and observations:

• I ran into a contractor our firm had let go a few months ago and moved away so he wouldn’t notice me, because asking an acquaintance whether or not he’s found new work is awkward if neither of you are wearing pants. Try it some time if you don’t believe me.
• Within the first ten minutes of the ride a fight nearly broke out in front of me when a fully clothed and completely stoned cyclist was roughed up and nearly punched by a naked cyclist, who took issue with the stoned guy’s weaving and near-collisions as we ascended a hill. “Watch out, buddy! Get the fuck off the road if you’re going to keep running into people!” said the naked guy, and the stoned guy brushed it off but sheepishly got off the road. I’m pretty sure the stoned guy was as unemployed as he was oblivious, which is a plus for him because I can’t imagine showing up for work on Monday and having to explain that my black eye was a result of a fierce bitch slapping from a cyclist without any clothes on.
• If you’re going to ride with friends, try to start the ride standing next to them or else wear some really distinctive head gear or something else to make you stand out. If you think, “surely I will recognize my friends when I see them in this crowd,” keep in mind that it’s dark and your friends may not look the way you expect if they are wearing only body paint and tape. Also, naked people start to look the same after a while.
• Bystanders love you if you’re naked, and are extremely likely to flash metal fingers at you or even high five you.
• At one point along NW 23rd I took to the sidewalk to get ahead of the crowd and attempt to catch up with my friends that were somewhere ahead of me. The waitstaff at Papa Haydn’s had gathered on the sidewalk in front of their restaurant to cheer us on and snap pictures. They were so engrossed in watching the hundreds of nude cyclists (and a skateboarder, too) that they didn’t notice me barreling in at ramming speed. I bellowed, “Waitstaff, one side! Naked guy coming through!” You wouldn’t believe the looks yelling something like that will get.
• Drivers really don’t seem to mind waiting at a stop light for minutes on end if it’s because a pack of cyclists in the buff keeps riding by. In fact they will probably lean out of their windows to cheer you on.
• Even if you show up late to one of these rides it’s okay. I passed some cyclists at an intersection on the east side that had evidently just been out for a ride but were hurriedly disrobing. “Yes! Join us! Join us!” I shouted. “There is strength in unity, naked brothers and sisters!” (Hey, I was caught up in the moment.)
• We passed the Silverado on our way through downtown, and the patrons of that club came out to salute us as only they could. Portland Gay Community, thank you for your support!
• Riding your bike at midnight sans trousers or shirt is nowhere near as cold as you think it might be.

No, I didn’t take any pictures, but given the number of camera flashes and people standing along the route with cameras in hand that I saw I’m sure some will show up. Please don’t look too hard for these. I imagine BikePortland.org will have some sort of update on the event at some point, and I’m sure there will be something on YouTube too. Someone blew past me in one of those Dutch cargo bikes with a friend in the front holding a video camera over the side, and I can only imagine how awesome that video is going to be.

Riding around wearing close to nothing with other cyclists is rather liberating, so much so that I think I will spend all of today naked, as well. This may prove troublesome later since I need to go to the grocery store at some point. Whatever.

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I found myself seized by a peculiar sort of madness last week, and signed up for the full 10-bridge version of the annual Providence BridgePedal. Once a year, all the bridges crossing the Willamette River in Portland are closed off to vehicle traffic all morning long, and thousands of cyclists pour across them in all their spandex-and-Lycra clad glory.

I’ve been wanting to go on this ride since I first found out about it, but I usually ended up having to work on Sundays, and last year I was given an invitation to go white water rafting that I just couldn’t pass up. This time, I told myself, this time I’m going to do it! This time these bridges shall be mine!

I tried to coerce my coworkers:

Me: BridePedal next Sunday! Let’s do it!

CW: Uhh…sure. What are you thinking, the 6-bridge version? I think I’m up to that.

Me: I WANT ALL TEN.

CW: That’s 36 miles! C’mon, I work a desk job. I’m not in that kind of shape.

Me: Neither am I, but by God I am going to make all ten of those bridges submit.

I shanghaied my friends:

Me: BridgePedal is coming, Niels. Let’s do it! I need to get one of these in before I die.

Niels: All right, I’m in. What time do we need to be down at the waterfront?

Me: 7:30AM.

Niels: You know I don’t get up before noon on the weekends.

Me: You would if we were going surfing. It’s the BridgePedal. Carpe Diem, sucka!

I ultimately rounded up four friends, who in turn I believe must have each convinced 5,000 other people to go too. Briefly I found myself thrilling about what it would be like if we really got this whole bike-commute movement underway and everybody biked to work every day. This fantasy of a cycling utopia was quickly dispelled once it turned out that even when it’s only bikes on the road, people can still manage to get in to some serious pile-ups. At least one person ate it half-way across the first bridge. Sadly, one member of our group took a nasty spill on a side road a few blocks before the second bridge, and ended up having to bow out and take a bus home.

Right before the rest of us prepared to make our triumphant passage across our third bridge of the morning, I discovered that even cyclists can experience gridlock. I imagine this is what rush hour in Beijing must look like:

It was as we shuffled along through this bottleneck that we decided that we were going to break ranks with the rest of the riders as soon as opportunity presented itself. Out of all those bridges the ones we wanted most to cross were the two that were highest and normally verboten to cyclists because they are major freeways. The others we all had routinely crossed at one time or another anyway. So it was that after the crowd made its slow compacted way over the Ross Island Bridge, we powered ahead and up to the top of the Marquam Bridge. We stopped here to take a breather and replenish out water supply from the rest station.

From here we coasted easily back down into town, building up speed and turning left when everyone else went right, skipping two bridges and rejoining the migration right before they started climbing the span of the Fremont Bridge, where we again stopped to enjoy the view and take a few photos.

Our timing was just about perfect, too: not more than fifteen minutes after we finished crossing this bridge, they began closing it off to cyclists and re-opening it for cross-town traffic. It was at this point that, having conquered six bridges (plus three more that we’d crossed in the past and so felt free to add to our total), we could officially say that we were mostly done, and veered off into Northwest Portland and its rich selection of bars and eateries.

I’ll get that St John’s Bridge some other day. I don’t know if I’ll partake of the BridgePedal next year: it was tons of fun, and truly needs to be experienced at least once, but the fact that there were parts where there were so many cyclists crowded together (and not everyone is a safe rider out there) that you literally end up slowing to a crawl and having to walk is a bit off-putting.

Maybe I’ll just sign up for the 6-bridge ride next year.

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I had intended to make it to the 20-mile marker, get a picture, and then turn around. After passing this one, I probably ended up riding for another two miles before I realized that that was the last milepost I was going to see.

This is near where I turned around. It isn’t super-obvious from the picture but just a little ways past this milepost the paved bike path I’d been following for the last twenty miles gave way to a dirt road. Traveling down a gravel path for another two miles to a destination called Boring didn’t terribly excite me, so after a few hundred yards I looped back to take these photos.

I’m going to guess I made it to twenty-two miles down the Springwater Corridor trail. If you factor in the roughly two miles from my house to the trail-head, plus going the whole way back, I biked around 48-miles yesterday. It’s not much compared to the feats some of you cycling all-stars out there routinely pull off, but it’s the longest contiguous trip I’ve made on my bike, and it felt great. I’m looking forward to some more rides like this — just maybe not today.

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Now that the nightmarish heat of has finally abated, I’m sure everyone is feeling antsy and needs me to tell them what to do again. Why not build a bitchin’ electric monster chopper? Check this out:

A little too involved for you? Not a problem. But you probably still feel like doing something totally sweet having to do with bikes. Here’s a guy who built panniers for his bike out of duct tape:

Get a step-by-step for that here. (Both these finds courtesy of the MAKE blog.)

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