Portland – CanooterValve

Showers

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Nov 202012

While I’m by no means a 10-level bike commuting master, riding to work regularly in Portland once the rainy season’s started has taught me a few things about myself and my ability to operate a bicycle at night in the rain. Honestly, it’s not really a terrible exerience. In fact, any parallels I’m drawing here between riding at night in the rain and becoming and/or being attacked by a serial killer are almost entirely exaggerated.

Anyway, I made a mental list of observations on my ride home from work last night.

The grass is always greener. Figuratively, I mean, not because of all the rain (though it is pretty freakin’ green). I mean that on those days I crack and use the car to get to work, I miss the bike horribly. It doesn’t help that I save only ten to fifteen minutes on my 13-mile trip. The only upside is really that I get to listen to NPR on the radio. Conversely, I’d be lying if there weren’t nights, like last night, when a car would be genuinely swell. My car isn’t currently what one could describe as “waterproof,” though, so I guess it makes the bike seem not so bad.
I suck at riding a bike. Particularly one that’s partially submerged. I thought I’d developed decent skills finding paths through fairly ugly rock gardens and stuff on a mountain bike back East, but riding in the dark at night in a downpour with headlights and stuff ricocheting off everything is a whole different sack of rabid ferrets. My route has some of the best urban bike infrastructure ever built, and still, in a strong downpour it’s pretty clear that bike lanes are the part of roads that used to be called “gutters.” The water itself isn’t bad; it’s all the shit under the water. Everything I take pains to avoid riding over in better conditions becomes pretty unavoidable when it’s submerged in three or four inches of black water. My neck was killing me tonight from riding “strong like bull” over a section of submerged chicken nugget-sized stones on asphalt that make holding a line particularly interesting.
I’m prone to whimsy, or maybe just hallucinations. Passing certain backlit porch railings in the rain at night causes me to see weird animations. Like those flip-books, you know? Something fixed in position behind the railings tends to look like it’s moving when glimpsed through the slats of the railings as you pass. In some cases, it’s enough to cause me to unconsciously gear up, a Pavlovian response to “dog running off porch” situations that I must’ve developed at some point.
Rain pants are awesome until they become totally not awesome. Depending on the downpour, after about the first hour, rain pants magically transform from a really great idea into riding inside someone’s skin that’s just slightly larger than you. Try not to remember this the next time you’re wearing rain pants in a downpour for an hour.
It’s all about establishing your humanity. Briefly covering your headlight with your hand is the quickest signal to an oncoming car that you, like any other human, dislike high beams in your face. Seriously. Any action you can do while riding to help establish your humanity helps. Just read a great article that talked about staring right into the goddamn soul of the lady in that SUV who’s about to turn into you as you cross an intersection. Same rules apply at night. Quick cover and release of your headlamp says you are not, in fact, a mere flickering blog of obliteratable light floating in the inky blackness. You are a thinking, feeling human being.

Even in rainpants.

Best Bike City

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May 242012

Having been slow to catch on to the whole 29er thing, many countries in Europe seem to be on high alert these days, determined not to let the next big idea pass them by. I can’t see any other way to explain the appearance of a second faithfully recreated pedal-powered supercar. This time, images of a Ferrari pedal bike are creeping around the Internet, begging the obvious question: when will we see a fake Ducati motorcycle converted to pedal power.

Just a quick public service message, because I’m trying to listen to Pandora while I’m typing this–they just reported record ad sales, you know–and these fucking Miller Lite commercials keep playing, and I just want to say that if anyone out there is ever talking to me in person while drinking a Miller 64, and I slap it the fuck out of your fool hand without breaking eye contact or interrupting the conversation, it’s nothing personal. It’s just that I hate Miller and their pissy low-carb beach beer bullshit.

Anyway, despite an appalling lack of pedal-powered sports cars, Portland was recently awarded “Best Bike City” by Bicycling Magazine, an honor we wrested away from arch-nemesis, Minneapolis.

The thing is, having read Bicycling’s web article, if it’s OK with Minneapolis, I think maybe they should take it back. Here’s an excerpt from Bill Donahue’s article:

Some guy will roll up beside you, probably, on a lime-green-wheeled fixie. Here, now, is a stolid commuter in a yellow rain jacket, with all sorts of earnest straps lashed to her rack, and here is a mangy, helmetless youngster on a homemade tall bike, two normal frames welded together, so that he looms 6 feet above the melee, quietly plucking his nose ring.

There are, inevitably, subtle flickers of intratribal tension there by the bridge—in Portland, a mere raised eyebrow can convey a nuanced diss like, “Shimano 105 derailleurs? Really?” But there is also a deep—and, yes, smug—solidarity. Those of us who ride daily in Portland, we know. We know we are the vanguard of American cycling. No other city in the United States has more cyclists per capita, and no other town has a coffee shop like Fresh Pot, which boasts 25 chairs and parking for 26 bicycles. We have trains of elementary-school bike commuters, and we have Move By Bike, a relocation-company that trundles couches across town on overstacked bike trailers. Even our city’s noncycling Lotharios know it is a deal-killer to ask, at the end of a sprightly first date, ‘Can I throw your bike in my car and give you a lift home?'”

It certainly isn’t a lack of passion that makes the award seem perhaps misplaced–I mean, that guy can write, and I’m being serious. “Here, now, is a stolid commuter in a yellow rain jacket, with all sorts of earnest straps lashed to her rack . . .”? That’s some Herman-Mother-Fuckin-Melville all up in your eyeballs and synapses right there. In their wildest dreams, Charles Baudelaire and Pee Wee Herman, working in tandem, couldn’t have described “straps” as “earnest,” even with William S. Burroughs’ typewriter. But I get it. Sometimes when I ride a bike in Portland, I use this half-ass velcro pant leg strap that’s just so insincere and noncommittal it sort of makes me sick. And I know it sees me eyeing the genuine rawhide, woven hemp and repurposed surgical tubing in the window of one of the three boutique pantleg strap emporiums I pass here on my way to work. We like bicycles a lot here. Sometimes, it’s tough to describe. Bill seems like a nice guy and a gifted writer who’s swinging for the fences with this article. You have to admire that, even if it is the same thing you hear over and over again about Portland.

As a new guy here, the thing I have seen that I hadn’t expected–based on reading so many articles about how smug and self-absorbed everyone is in Portland–are people who aren’t quite so self-conscious about their bike riding. There does appear to be a misconception that everyone who rides a bike to work in Portland does so only after making sure all the neighbors will see. I’m sure there’s smugness afoot in Portland, but it doesn’t seem to be quite as prevalent as the national spotlight suggests. You don’t travel to the Netherlands and run around screaming, “Oh man, you’re all riding bikes–do you realize you’re all so bicycling?” Or maybe you do. I don’t know. I do know that riding to work on a bike with Shimano’s 105 group seems just fine in Portland.

So enthusiasm? Plenty in the article. But an award seems a little ostentatious. Having only been in town for six weeks, maybe that aspect will become clearer, but what I’ve seen so far is the quiet kind of humility that comes from just doing something, without expecting an award.

If I could give Portland an award it’d be for keeping it all low-key, and the trophy would be this sweet Girven fork in this Portland Cragslist ad:

Maybe engrave it with a quote from the ad: “WHAT U SEE IS WHAT U GET.”

Congratulations, Portland.

Oregon to Washington Over the I-205

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Apr 242012

One of my goals as a father is to actually be home for one of my daughter’s birthdays. I was stuck in Chicago last April, and this April I’m in Portland. The up-side this time around is that the whole family should be with me here at some point, provided we manage the logistics and all. And that I find a house.

To that end, this past Sunday I decided to follow up on my prior raw pizza visit to Washington State with a bike ride there. I’d heard you could ride right across the I-205 bridge from Portland to Vancouver–and by “right across” I mean bicycles ride right straight down the middle of the interstate. Such an ingenious feat of city transportation engineering I’d never encountered, and frankly, it sounded too good to be true.

Given my pizza experience, I approached the situation with a degree of cautious optimism and checked the route out first on Google Street View. This didn’t really clarify anything, but the route did look even more magical and wondrous, given that habit Street View has of ghosting out sections of road and obscuring obstacles like other cyclists, leaving only their helmets. I was left with many unanswered questions.

Where, for instance, did the road go once you reached the other end of the half-mile long bridge, and how the hell did you get up into the middle of all that traffic in the first place? I sort of imagined a way you could do it (which turned out to be accurate), but as is my nature, I still suited up as if expecting this all to be some kind of hipster Portland trap, wherein some intellectual derelict living under the bridge would ridicule my stupidity at falling for the joke, endlessly poking fun at my naivete while re-purposing my beloved La Cruz into an admittedly attractive garden trellis right before my eyes.

Still, one image from Street View caught my attention. It was this dude clearly riding his bike across the bridge.

Riding Across the I-205 from Portland to Vancouver

My inspiration.

If Guy in White T-shirt can do it, thought I, then I can, too.

So I did.

It’s really great.

Turns out, the route I’d been taking to work goes right up to the I-205 bike path. I’d been turning to head to work literally five feet from the path that led to the 205 ramp (image at the top of the post shows the bike lane as it approaches the 205).

You do, in fact, go under the road and then up a ramp until you appear, kinda wonderfully, right in the middle of a whole bunch of speeding cars and mountain views and Columbia River.

Now that's a bike lane.

While I did make note that deep section rims might not be the best long-term bridge commute option, the ride was nothing by gloriously fun. The north-bound route into Vancouver climbs pretty noticeably, but, being the first 75-degree day we’d had in a while, all the roadies were out letting you know what was what, so I just tried to pick guys in the distance to chase down with my 38mm steel beads and two week diet of Pop-tarts and beer. It wasn’t a bike commute; it was just a good time.

Once over you shoot down a ramp and follow a serious of dedicated bike lanes and extremely peaceful little sub-division routes. I was headed to Camas, only a dozen or so miles from Oregon, and everything about the ride was just great.

I think for the entire trip between states and over a body of water I had to ride on a section of road not clearly labeled as a dedicated bike lane for about 20-yards. Just incredible.

Here the old La Cruz reclines leisurely at a Starbucks along the way. Even the crowded strip malls had some bike lanes, and the dude who served me my coffee asked where he could get a Giro Atmos like mine. What kind of magical place is this, anyway?

I may even develop a taste for uncooked pizza.

Arriving in Portland

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Apr 132012

I made it here. After 2500 miles, slipping into Oregon from Idaho was pretty uneventful. In fact, a semi blocked the “Welcome to Oregon” sign, so I shot this instead.

I’m proud of myself for staying calmly seated at the first gas station in Oregon. Still weird. Going to take some time to get used to people pumping my gas, along with the whole “entire new life” thing, but at least the scenery made it tough to be concerned about anything.

Some fifty miles into Oregon, I remembered why I’m here. The hills and mountains started and just kept spreading out and becoming more amazing. Thanks to a fire alarm at the Sleep Inn in Boise, I hadn’t slept much the night before, and of course I’m a little jangled to begin with this trip, but the majesty of these was downright breathtaking. And it just kept on like that until I started up into the bigger mountains, and the trees started to appear.

After a long stretch of flat and dry land I picked up the river and followed it into the Hood River area, home of the Multnoham Falls shown at the top.

Now comes a long process of getting my bearings and figuring out how to live in Portland. Having brought a whole bunch of bikes and parts, but somehow no little, blinky tail light, I’m not off to a good start, but there’s enough coffee here to help me figure everything out.

Taking it With You

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Feb 282012

I’m at that stage of my life when I ponder the big questions, like, “Why can’t my cat fit into a platypus costume?” and “How can I take plants with me when I ride my bike?” The former being hopeless (believe me), I’ve recently been given fresh hope for the latter by this article about bike-friendly plant holders.

Admittedly, these little Knog-like weed pockets are pretty amazing, but they don’t really satisfy my desire to travel extensively with a few rhododendrons or a three foot square section of corn field, forcing me to wonder, just how much stuff could I pedal around on a bicycle?

Yes, one trip to Portland, and I find myself thinking a lot about bikes as genuine car replacements. The technology is closer than you think, and it’s super awesome.

By now everyone knows that nearly every parent in places fat, geographically-challenged Americans traditionally think of as cold and dreary is transporting kids to school by bicycle. The barrier for me hasn’t always been the elevation gain involved in ferrying my kids around by bike, so much as the general inability of most bike transport methods to sufficiently terrify them. But the Dutch Taga bike finally has me covered.

The Dutch are a forward-looking people, breaking new ground not only in child transportation, but in the potentially far more lucrative children-as-airbags market. Still, I think the really untapped potential here has to be infant jousting, particularly if the Dutch can manufacturer suits of armor as tiny as they apparently can helmets. Seriously, is that the same helmet the woman is wearing, only freakishly Photoshopped down to scale for the baby, or can you really get stylish, visored helmets for six-month-old babies somewhere? Here it is again, from a slightly more suspicious angle.

That can’t be a real helmet. Or a real baby. And why does this woman look so much like my friend Jeff? I find all of this very suspicious, and a little off-putting, but still, the ability to strap one of my kids to the front of a bike and charge out into the world has genuine appeal. Nothing in the article says you shouldn’t take your Taga bike off sweet jumps.

NPR just mentioned the huge percentage of tech sector companies competing to be more and more bike-friendly, and there’s really a quality of life thing going on there. For a lot of people, getting to ride a bike to and from work almost means never having a bad day at work–or at least being able to leave it at work.

At any rate, I’m having a tough time forgetting you, Portland. The next time I get back, I need to be on a bike.

Personality Tests

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Feb 272012

In my recurring theme of form versus function, I noticed these images from Paris designer Juri Zaech, which I think of as a kind of inkblot test. If you think the image above is generally pretty cool, you might tend to prioritize form over function. If, on the other hand, looking at that “bike” is the visual equivalent of listening to Nickleback for you, then you must have the same visual compulsive disorder that I do. I don’t necessarily “dislike” the image above. It’s more accurate to say it “bugs shit out of me.” I believe the technical term is “gives me the willies.” Disturbing. I don’t know why, but something about completely disconnected bike tubes floating around really bothers me. Would it have been so tough to maybe add paint to the frame and fill in those structurally missing sections? It might make these “word bikes” less “whimsical,” but at least I wouldn’t want to hunt down the artist and force him to weld something.

Here’s another one. Check out this photo:

Fashionable young woman on a fashionable bicycle, or pre-sparkling hippie Nosferatu for a new HBO “True Blood/Sex in the City” crossover project? It just so happens you’re looking at the first bicycle by fashion house Dolce and Gabbana. You’re welcome. Clearly nothing stood in the way of Yo Gabbana Bana’s pursuit of fashion on this bike, including taste and what I can only describe as “bike-ness.” If ever there was a bike for people who frequently get shit caught in their chains, this is it. According to the author of the article, the Editor/Test Rider was quoted as saying, “This bike is absolutely gorgeous! I’m totally besotted! I want one!”

Besotted, indeed.

Quick tip for you fashionistas out there who just have to have it, but can’t pony up the suspected $1000k premium upcharge for a bike made by people who specialize in making sunglasses for muppets: go to Wal-Mart, buy a bicycle for under $100 and some sweet leopard print yoga pants. Everybody knows DIY is the new black, and exactly nothing is more DIY than artisanally resewn animal print yoga pant bicycle tubing covers. So much cheaper than the custom paint applied to this garbage scow of a bike, plus you might be able to find florescent green leopard print (the “Holy Grail of leopard prints). Sure, the Dolt Cabana mobile can technically “function” as a bicycle, but it’s the form here that will clearly be moving units, so to speak.

Finally, ponder your own feelings about this device, which takes the raw functionality of a bicycle and a desk and, in combining them, renders both completely useless.

That’s sort of a brilliant triumph in the particular strain of fashion known as “function deconstructionism.” Not since the combination bathtub-meat locker have two otherwise distinct things commingled so successfully. Still, I’m holding out for the IKEA model, which I hear is translucent green acrylic and filled with live fish.

If I seem a little snarky and function-obsessed this week, it could be that I spent the last few days in Portland, which, compared to most places I’ve been, seems genuinely designed to accomplish stuff. Not only are Chris King and Zen–two of the only places still producing quantities of bicycle components and frames in the U.S.–based here, but so are an endless stream of small builders and blue collar entrepreneurs doing things to make money without first securing a round of VC funding. If you build stuff or want to, Portland really is a little like an amusement park disguised as a city.

Good meetings there, too.

Maybe best of all, I got to endure the company of my old friend, Jason, who was kind enough to put me up during my stay and show me around, and who once again casually dropped a piece of wisdom so profound that I’m still processing its full implications. Cruising through the “Bizarre/Mystical” section of venerable bookstore, Powell’s, Jason went out on a limb and declared, “Hitler ruined high boots for men.” Fashion isn’t often discussed in a city where many women choose not to wear makeup and “business casual” works five days a week, but when it is, it’s pretty good.

Lemmy Up

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Feb 222012

I’ll be traveling to Portland on Thursday, and I have to admit, I’m a little intimidated. I’ve ridden mountain bikes, road bikes, and various things in between for a whole lot of years. I’ve also spent a good bit of time on single-speeds, done some stupid stuff on tandems, and towed kids on the fixed. I am also, apparently, associated with the bike industry, meaning a trip to Portland, even one strictly for business, is supposed to feel just a little like coming home.

But the thing is, I’ve never ridden a tallbike, and I have no intentional piercings. If left to my own devices, I will not drink Pabst Blue Ribbon or make my own bike parts out of leather. More concerning still, the creativity of my facial hair ranges only from “getting slightly straggly” to “just shaved.” My riding conditions here in Mayberry also couldn’t be more different. Much of my experience sharing the road involves places where cars rarely travel (though, in fairness to me, when you do see a truck on some of the roads I ride, it’s usually best to dismount and scurry up the nearest tree before it can even get near you). To my credit, I’ve been in a band and own some really nice cloth grocery bags, but the band was a long time ago, and I think the bags were mass-produced.

Portland just bore witness to the Mini Bike Winter Olympics in general and the Ben Hurt Chariot Wars in particular, which, to my untrained East Coast eye, appears to be a cross between a GWAR show, a Michael Bay film, and that eviction scene at the end of Michael Moore’s Roger and Me. Of the various places where you can check out the festivities on the Internets, the most hipster ironic is a site out of Texas with completely corporate name.

Further irony, I’m headed into the heart of Steampunk to, among other things, discuss a bicycle frame that’s pretty non-retro and very “not steel.” In fact, it’s pretty damn high tech. Blog entries may be patchy over the next few days, but I’m hoping to show everyone a rough sketch of the new frame design. I’m finalizing a revised drawing of the the suspension that shows the shock now in the (hopefully) final, vertical position, and I hope to be able to post that up here before the week is out.

In the meantime, I’m concerned about how high the pivot is on the Superlight 29er, but I still want one. I’m a single-pivot guy from way back (but, then again, everyone who owned a full-suspension frame before 2000 pretty much had to be a single-pivot guy), and I think this bike would be just a total and absolute blast to ride.

And the new dropouts on the Highball Alloy frame? So very, very nice. I’ve had a man crush on Graney and the entire SC engineering department for years (guess I’m just drawn to the dangerous bad boy types who–literally–wear the engineering hats at bike companies). Seriously, look at the dropout.

Others have done similar things, but somehow the guys in Santa Cruz keep taking the rough-edged ideas normally found only on Hand Built Bike Show bikes and adding shit like “mechanical engineering” to create things that look good and work really well. They’ve made all kinds of slick shit at SC, but for my money, “captured nuts” is the concept that pretty much sums up the brilliance of that company’s entire crew; they’ve harnessed the power normally reserved for building the worlds first 100% deadly potato cannon or remote control 4×4 beer keg, and used it to create arguably the most rider-friendly bike designs ever made. Just very polished, usable products.

In contrast, consider the particularly un-usable Motörhead box set even Lemmy doesn’t want you to buy. First Elvis Costello, and now Lemmy Himself, is telling fans a record company’s box set of his early material is overpriced. According to this article from the Consumerist, “Unfortunately greed once again rears its yapping head,” says head Motörhead Lemmy Kilmister. “I would advise against it even for the most rabid completists!”

Only in the UK can you look like Lemmy . . .

and use a phrase like “rapid completists.”

Come to think of it, I have my mantra for the whole Portland trip. When it comes to being authentic without going hipster, Lemmy is the way and the light.