I have always admired David Byrnes talent and imagination, including the work he has done with the “Talking Heads”. David also takes time to post his own ” musings, reviews, polemics, tour logs, drawings, dreams, etc.” in his blog, the “David Byrnes Journal”

Today, he talked about his love of bicycling. Here are some interesting thoughts:

• I have been riding a bicycle in New York City for almost 30 years! For transport, not for sport
• A ride across town gets the adrenalin going as one heads to work or to the studio in the morning. By the time one arrives for a meeting one is fully awake — blood pumping, on alert — having often just had 3 near-death experiences.
• But, if one pedals at a relaxed pace and stays away from the snarled traffic as much as possible (cars and trucks raise the surrounding temperature) one can arrive more or less dry, but with a healthy glow.
• Now there are markings on some streets indicating imaginary bike lanes (imaginary because the traffic and pedestrians often ignore the markings) but they are there in spirit, at least.
• Bikes as a means of local transport has worked elsewhere; the mayor of Bogota, Enrique Peñalosa, relieved traffic congestion AND made his city more livable by converting streets to bike/pedestrian use and by adding dedicated bus lanes. Of bike lanes he said, “If an eight year old kid can’t ride on it safely then it isn’t a bike lane.”
• After a few years of riding in New York I discovered a folding bike and I began to take it on tour with me every couple of years. I realized I could then explore the city where I’d be performing that evening
• There’s a feeling of freedom that comes with cycling in a big city which is very important, as one can feel trapped by the routine of touring, work, or even travel. Trapped in a neighborhood of hotels and offices, or a neighborhood of tourist attractions, one can escape — quickly and instantly — and ride along the levees in New Orleans (pre-Katrina) or through the back streets of Grenada. (In New Orleans I rode to the Decadence Ball, an outdoor affair that admitted guests on two conditions: if they were in costume or were naked. I guess my helmet and odd fashion sense qualified as a costume.) Even if freedom is an illusion the physical sensation of riding does a pretty good job of making it seem attainable for a moment.

For all the years I have owned and operated a motor vehicle I have never felt the need to get involved in the vanity/specialty license plate thing. But things change. If and when these plates come out, we will be all over it. We will get them for us, we will likely give the kids money to get them for their cars, maybe even offer to pay family and friends to convince them to get them as well.

The Share the Road license plate bill passed the Oregon House on Friday, meaning that SB 789 is off to the Governor’s Desk. This bill creates a new license plate that will be designed to encourage people to share the road. The bill states that each plate will cost $5 per year of registration at the time of purchase. So if you are re-registering your car and buy two plates, it would cost $20 (2 plates for two years.) On your new car if would be $40 extra, 2 plates for four years. You will not have to pay again when you register your car in out years. The bill calls for BTA and Cycle Oregon to help lead the design, funding, and promotion for the plate.

Also, ever hear or say, “Bicyclists don’t pay for roads”? Well , in the Metro area, 85% of the money that goes to new transportation projects (not maintenance) over the next 30 years will come from non-vehicle funding sources – property taxes, urban renewal dollars, system developments charges, etc. These are fees and taxes we all pay, not just drivers. And local governments depend on them to keep modernizing our transportation system.

And, while there are cyclists who do not own cars,  many by their own choice,  most cyclists do own cars out of some necessity, which means that they are drivers too.
I’m just sayin……

The Night Ride
Once known as the Midsummer Night Ride will be held July 7th. Riders will get glowing necklaces and tshirts, Tire Flies, a Disco Dance Party rest stop, a Filmed by Bike bike-in-movie rest stop (with hot popcorn!), and of course donuts at the finish line.
The ride benefits the BTA and runs on volunteer power – so if you can help out, theywould be grateful!
Volunteers get free registration, plus tshirts and donuts! You can check out the volunteer shifts online – almost all of the shifts allow you to ride the course – and you can even sign up to volunteer online.

I-205 Detour ride
On Friday, July 13th, TriMet is hosting a bike ride, a bike giveaway and a party to celebrate the opening of the I-205 bike path detour route. The ride will start near I-205 at 5:30 pm, and will end at the party at Clackamas Town Center. In addition to refreshments, they’ll be giving away a new Trek Lime bike from Bike Gallery, Pink Martini concert tickets, TriMet monthly passes, a Clackamas Town Center gift card, two entries into Cycle Oregon’s 2008 Weekend Ride, bike tune-ups, cycling club memberships, and more!
After the detour opens, if you have questions or concerns about it you can write to Diane Goodwin (GoodwinD@trimet.org) at TriMet, and she will forward them on to the right person.

Our Seventh Pioneer (Spring) ride is in the books. For various reasons our mileage choice for this years was the 45 mile loop. Here’s some thoughts on this years ride:

• Nice that they kept the same starting spot of the Fairgrounds. Though the route change meant leaving via the opposite side, which required a guy to stand guard at the old exit to turn people around. One old guy was quite insistent he knew the way to go and it took a lot of persuasions to turn him around.
• Love registering for this ride, they always seem to give ya stuff. I still use the thin wallet they gave us back in 2003. This years gift: Patch kits. Hey, they do come in handy, though while I do always carry a kit, I prefer to carry a couple of good tubes and use them first. Why sit in a ditch to patch a tube if you don’t have to?
• New this year was the figure 8 loop route. Because of that, also new this year was a lunch, served at the starting point, for the riders as they came in from one of the loops. They served a really great fajita lunch. A beer garden would have been popular, but Honey notes that it wouldn’t be a good idea for either those driving home, or those heading off for another loop on the bike, so then Gatorade it is.
• Great that the loop provided the opportunity to match the mileage & climbing exertion to your goal for the day.
• Loops are good for thinning out the crowd. Theoretically, half the riders will take each loop, therefore reducing the congestion that can sometimes make rides a little more stressful.
• Loops are not so good, since it thins out the crowd. Since you don’t see the other half, the opportunities to see our friends can be limited to the start/finish area. And, empirically, I think that more than half riders left for the 55 mile loop. I am thinking that the 100 milers would choose the longer/hillier loop to do first.
• Like most rides these days, they are no longer giving out the pin on numbers. Evidently the cost was too high. Thats too bad since I have been collecting them in one big stack on my wall. For this ride, they gave us rubber “Livestrong” type wristbands, which we would need for the great lunch. One other thing I like about the numbers is that you can easily identify those bikers that are on your ride, as opposed to the rogue bikers that are just out for a nice ride somewhere. Truthfully, I kind of liked them since they are much easier to deal with than pinning on the numbers, or using temporary paper wristbands, but still…….
• The food at the rest stop was first class. Bagels, goldfish, pretzels, blueberries, bananas, grapes, melons, V8, Oreos, Costco cookies, crackers, and, one the coolest ride foods ever, little boiled baby red potatoes in a zip lock bag that you can put it on your pocket and just pop in your mouth a little farther down the road. Moist, cool, tasty, easy to digest, pure energy. Very nice.they provided very nice maps, with street turns, and elevations. The roads were marked with the usual Dan Henrys. It would have been much nicer if the maps would have had the mileages for the road turns as well. Honey really likes to know how far to the next stop, and I like to be able to coordinate mileage with turns, to ensure that we remain on course, since it is possible to miss a marking, especially with fewer bikes on the road.
• They provided emergency contact phone numbers on the map as well! We have talked about that on several occasions as it seems nobody bothers to include this one very helpful piece of support. Well done PWTC!
• Always good to go by Champoeg Park, we include that as an extra stop. The shade, cool water and clean restrooms are very welcome.
• Perfect day for a ride, with temps in the low 80s and really no wind. The roads of the farmlands surrounding Champoeg and Donald are fairly low traffic, and the farmlands were lush with growth as is typical of Oregon at this time of the year.
• Ended up being 48 miles of quiet, mostly peaceful bike ride with only a few short pitches to raise your heartrate.

Here’s a notice from Brett Kelver, TSP Bicycle Liaison:

There has been a lot of interest expressed by participants in the pedestrian-bicycle workshop about integrating the concept of bike boulevards into the Transportation System Plan (TSP) update. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time at the May 5^th meeting to fully discuss the idea, so we are holding a third bicycle workshop to focus on this issue. Please plan to join us for this special public meeting scheduled for Saturday, June 2, 2007, from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon at Milwaukie City Hall (10722 SE Main Street).

If you are a staff/liaison, your hard copy packet is being mailed/distributed to you today. The electronic packet is available on our web site.

Here is what we hope to achieve at this meeting:

• Develop a shared understanding of the bike boulevard concept.
• Evaluate proposed bike boulevard routes and determine which should be on the TSP Bicycle Master Plan.
• Discuss the priority of bike boulevard routes in the context of the proposed Bicycle Capital Projects list.

Through the TSP update process, the City has been able to hire a consultant specialist to assist with this special Bike Boulevard workshop. Rory Renfro of Alta Planning in Portland will be leading the discussion on June 2nd. Rory and Alta Planning bring considerable expertise in bicycle transportation to the table, and we are excited to have them involved to strengthen this portion of the TSP update.
In addition, there are several useful websites that have information and examples of bike boulevards. If you have not seen some of these already, take a look as part of your preparation for the conversation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_Boulevards
http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/transportation/Bicycling/BB/BicycleBoulevard.html
http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/transportation-division/bike-index.html
http://www.bta4bikes.org/at_work/bikeboulevards.php
http://www.streetfilms.org/archives/portland-or-bicycle-boulevards

As always, please contact Brett Kelver if you have any questions. We will be aiming to have this discussion within a 2-hour timeframe, so please plan to arrive in time to start at 10:00 a.m. on the dot. See you on Saturday, June 2nd at Milwaukie City Hall!

Brett can be contacted at: kelverb@ci.milwaukie.or.us

The PWTC has changed the name of the Spring Century back to the original Pioneer Century to reflect the history of the Champoeg, Canby and Molalla areas.
They have changed the route to include two loops of 55 miles and 45 miles.
The 55 mile loop is in the Molalla, Canby and Scotts Mills area an will be the more challenging of the loops.
The 45 mile loop is in the more rural area of Champoeg and doesn’t appear to have a lot of challenging climbs.
The entire ride promises to be a bit more difficult than the old Spring Century.
Here are the elevations gains.

• 45 mile route: 1327 feet
• 55 mile route: 3087 feet

The ride is on our ride calendar.
I am guessing that even though there appears to be more climbing, that the course no longer climbs Bird Hill. It is a climb you really don’t know is coming until you have turned the corner. It includes a section of fairly steep pitch, and features a false summit. The spring was my first century, and with my old Schwinn super sport, I was able to summit with only one stop during the climb to insure that my heart would not explode. Many more miles later, and with a newer bike, I have been able to nail this climb in the years since. It is encouraging to look back and measure the improvements in your health and performance as your bike mile increase.

To me, one the the hardest things about this century is the two loop format. After you do 45-50 miles, then end up back at the car for one of the rest stops, the temptation to bag your earlier century plans and climb into the car is alluring. Especially if its cold or raining. This is the same formula used by the Watermelon ride. The afternoon headwinds in the valley flat-lands of that ride can make that mid ride bailout a nice option to have. On the other-hand its nice to be able to drop off your warmer clothes or otherwise regroup before heading out for the rest of the ride.

In any case, this has always been one of the best local rides. The route, support, markings, and rest stops are first class. Once again, we will be there!

And, this from Ann Morrow of PWTC

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