Midsummer Night's Bicycle Tour of Portland
This last Saturday night was the annual Bike Gallery's Midsummer Night's Bike Tour of Portland. It's a 16-mile, fairly easy ride through the night time streets of Southeast Portland, starting and ending at Oaks Amusement Park right off the Sellwood Bridge.
I've ridden it every year since its inauguration four years ago. But, no, I didn't ride it this year. (To make up for it though, I rode 38 miles in the afternoon.) I volunteered as a course marshal, and ended up spending about 3 hours (9:45 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. or so) at the corner of SE 23rd and SE Madison. I was there with an 8th grade math teacher from Lake Oswego.
It was an interesting to be "on the other side" of the ride, watching the headlights (and many with no lights - tsk, tsk...) and the blinking taillights going past as I helped direct the riders through a left turn at the intersection.
I also got to interact with some passers-by curious about why we were standing there, and why these cyclists were going through at this time of the night.
The first group of cyclists came through about 10:40 p.m. These were the hard-core ones with the lightweight rides and full technical apparel -- the ones I was with in past years. As the minutes and hours went by, the composition changed. Towards the end it was mostly recreational riders in t-shirts and shorts, some of them on bikes that could really use some chain lube at a minimum. There were a fair number of kids coming through, too. Regardless, everyone was having fun.
By 11:30 p.m., the last group had gone through. We waited around and another 20 minutes later, a solitary rider, weaving back and forth on the street came through. We speculated he had stopped in at one or more bars on the way to our location.
At around 12:10 p.m., four more cyclists in various constumes came through, showing obvious signs of having stopped at a few watering holes along the way. When told they were now about halfway through the course, after some discussion amongst themselves (probably wisely) decided to turn around and backtrack the course along the Wilamette instead of trying to find their way through the darker roads of residential Southeast Portland.
The whole point of these organized rides, for whatever cause, is to ultimately, have fun.
Mark
I've ridden it every year since its inauguration four years ago. But, no, I didn't ride it this year. (To make up for it though, I rode 38 miles in the afternoon.) I volunteered as a course marshal, and ended up spending about 3 hours (9:45 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. or so) at the corner of SE 23rd and SE Madison. I was there with an 8th grade math teacher from Lake Oswego.
It was an interesting to be "on the other side" of the ride, watching the headlights (and many with no lights - tsk, tsk...) and the blinking taillights going past as I helped direct the riders through a left turn at the intersection.
I also got to interact with some passers-by curious about why we were standing there, and why these cyclists were going through at this time of the night.
The first group of cyclists came through about 10:40 p.m. These were the hard-core ones with the lightweight rides and full technical apparel -- the ones I was with in past years. As the minutes and hours went by, the composition changed. Towards the end it was mostly recreational riders in t-shirts and shorts, some of them on bikes that could really use some chain lube at a minimum. There were a fair number of kids coming through, too. Regardless, everyone was having fun.
By 11:30 p.m., the last group had gone through. We waited around and another 20 minutes later, a solitary rider, weaving back and forth on the street came through. We speculated he had stopped in at one or more bars on the way to our location.
At around 12:10 p.m., four more cyclists in various constumes came through, showing obvious signs of having stopped at a few watering holes along the way. When told they were now about halfway through the course, after some discussion amongst themselves (probably wisely) decided to turn around and backtrack the course along the Wilamette instead of trying to find their way through the darker roads of residential Southeast Portland.
The whole point of these organized rides, for whatever cause, is to ultimately, have fun.
Mark
posted by Mark at 5:15 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home