Accessories

Fashion accessories: a basket to put stuff in






















A stylish leather trunk

Or the whole handbag and heels

Twisted Sister

My years as National Mountain Bike Patrol have left me unable to pass by when a fellow biker is hurtin'. On the Hawthorn bridge, I came across a young lady with her bike against the rail, hand-turning her front wheel. There weren't many commuters anymore - the flood leaving downtown would have been a half hour before - so there weren't any experienced cyclists around to help her before I rolled up.

I'm not quite sure how she'd done it, but she'd crashed a while back and managed to swivel her front wheel 360 degrees - it was pointed in the right direction, but the cables were looped around and pulling so tight her canti brakes were in perma-lock mode. She was fine - a slight abrasion on the leg - but the wheel would not spin.

I unhooked the brakes and tried to spin the tire back around and it wouldn't go. Erp. I took off her wheel, spun her back through, and hooked everything up again. I told her I wanted her to go straight to a bike shop from here and we discussed which ones were on her route.

She seemed quite grateful, but you know, we bikers have to help each other.

Classy bike, classy bike commuter.


Classic bike. Hard core commuter. Note that these two gentlemen work together.

What Sunday Parkways wants to be when it grows up

I saw this short at a Wild & Scenic film festival. I've not been able to get to a Sunday Parkway in 2009, but it looks like we'll have more of them next summer!

Looking like a cop

Sorry, no photo, but on my morning ride to work, I stopped in the bike lane at a red light, and a gentleman Shakespeare would have termed a "rustic" began crossing Sandy Blvd in the crosswalk ahead of me. He stopped in front of my bike.
"Are you a cop?" he demanded of me. There was no one else there, he had to be talking to me.
"Pardon?"
"Are you a cop?"
"Um. No, not today?" I was a little bewildered by the question.
"You look like a cop," he said, standing there with his fists on his hips in the middle of the street.
"Ahh .. no . ." I'm fit, but not brawny. I'm on a bike with a change of clothing in my bag. No mirrored sunglasses. Black shorts and black jacket, yes, but the jacket says IMBA in large white letters. "I look like a bike commuter."
"You got all the cop gear."
A yellow pannier, a green backpack, a gray helmet, gloves. I'm not seeing this. Luckily, the light turned green, and I steered my bike around the man and continued my commute.
In case you need to know, Portland Bike cops look more like this. Bike commuters look like . . . well, almost anything else. Full business suit, full racing kit, rain jacket, no shirt, bike shoes, flipflops, skirt, kilt, speedos, tie, scrubs, you name it. But not very much like a bike cop.

That's Quite a Rack

Bike up to the world on Akenny


Bike racks for book lovers at Powell's


This is a generic staple rack near Couch. It's been tagged by what I've heard call "the most inoffensive graffitti". Read more about urban knitters at Instructables or knitted landscape or just google Guerilla knitting. And you thought the tall bikers had a strange hobby.

What's all this then?

Bikes. It's about bikes. And what strange, wonderful, artistic and goofy things people do on them in Portland, OR.

For instance, here we see some of the 18,000 people who attended the Bridge Pedal, riding 8, 24, or 37 miles in a zig zag course over 6, 8, or 11 bridges, most of which were shut down to auto traffic for half a day during this event. How many other cities would close their INTERSTATE for a bike ride?

Most of the attendees were on their creaky big-box-store bikes, and wearing whatever was comfy that morning - it had been hot, so there weren't so many people pedaling in the official outfit of Portland - jeans and a hoodie - but there were some. Others wore fun outfits, or decorated their bikes or helmets.

Most just got on their bikes and rode. We do that around here.