Into the Mystic

I had never ridden a century before. My longest ride up until January 8 was a metric century (62 miles), last March. I did not know whether I was in the right shape or how my body would react to the hours. Sometime in the last year, I flipped through Bicycling‘s issue on mastering “the hundo.” I give anyone permission to slap me if I ever use the phrase “hundo” unironically. I did not know how long it would take, but I estimated eight hours. I wanted to leave from and end at home, so I designed a route that […]

Springwater Corridor, Late-Stage Capitalism

At the Johnson Creek bridge, I was approached by an agitated man. He was not threatening, but he was clearly upset. Freshly showered, recently shaved, well-dressed for the cold not for the wet. I slowed to see what he needed, and after a few seconds it was clear that he is working with some cognitive impairments. He was upset about a bike (he was riding a bike). Another bike was supposed to be at one end of the bridge, but was apparently at the other end of the bridge. He showed me, but there was no bike at either end […]

St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge

Marsh. Swamp. Wetlands. Wildlife refuge. The road is low, flat, and straight. What roads in the desert and roads through the marsh have in common is that engineers saw no need to follow any contours of the land. You see either your destination, the horizon, or the next turn ahead as far as your eyes will focus. As I get closer to the Gulf, I swear I can hear rust forming on this (well-maintained) steel frame. Even the humidity has a saline taste. The air is thick like a mid-aughts poem that can’t help but use the word gauzy. Like […]

Sylvandustrial

Passing over the freeway, traffic is loud, which means it is fast, which means rush hour has passed. Six lanes of hearses sweep autumn’s leaves to the shoulder and swale. I let the sounds of Death’s robes fade behind and climb a low hill up to Mock’s Crest. Not sure whether that’s someone’s name or the crest’s authenticity is in doubt. From the overlook, past and future flitches stack around a rail yard wide with tracks and wood. Mechanical elbows lift pallets of decked and canted lumber onto train cars, each car loaded with last week’s mill work, a trailing […]

Portland Pavé

Winter riding in Portland means you have to have mudguards. More like rainguards. And they are for you as much as for the cyclist behind you. On the Zurich, I like the Portland Design Works, Full Metal Fenders. They are sleek, strong, and good looking, and they come with clever hangers which reach up and over center-mount rim brakes. Your bike does not need to have braze-on eyelets. Full Metal Fenders can be mounted using what your bike has already: the bolts that hold your brakes to the frame and the axles for your wheels. The fender stays have a […]

Dragonfly

Life is repetitive, painful, and dull. The day after day toil at the same job, whether that’s pushing the same button, monitoring the same machine, lifting the same pallets, fixing the same printer, managing the same behavior, grading the same papers, fixing the same mistakes. If progress exists, it is so incremental that sometimes we don’t even see it. The repetitiveness is its own sort of pain. Pressure on the psyche to look for escape, to see something new in the fixed patterns. Life’s pain also comes from having a body. Stubbed toes, scraped knees, stumbles, bruises. Tripping over the […]

not dead yet

The cemetery gates are open. They always are between sunrise and sunset. To get from the Sellwood Bridge up to Terwilliger, a popular cycling route, you climb through the River View Cemetery. If you stick to the marked route, identified by circles and bike figures and arrows pained on the switchbacks, then you get an average 4.3% grade instead of the 8.0% you would get if you came up Taylors Ferry. On this day, piles of slushy snow and translucent ice in tree shadow keep the blacktop wet. I pass three others and settle in to a comfortable gear, downshifting […]

Alpenrose Velodrome

After reading a few articles announcing the closing the Alpenrose Velodrome, I rode out there to see what condition it’s in and take perhaps one last look before it disappears into Portland cycling history. Hopefully, an effort to save it will prevail, but right now the future of the velodrome does not look good. It would be a shame to lose this jewel. Bicycling magazine | Oregonian | Bike Portland

Headwind

Five miles in forty three minutes. A mile every eight and a half minutes. Jogging pace. I forgot lip balm, and my lips are cracked. The others are all going the other way. A 737 takes off parallel to me and climbs higher faster than farther. Why ride this direction? Why not turn around? “Throughout the whole absurd life I’d lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across the years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years […]