Having recently turned 67 (odometer rolling over, starting on 68th year), i.e. I passed the 67th milestone (if measuring in miles, or intervals of lifeline per one's palm), I figured I'd better get my kicks while I can.
Bicycle riding is still a doability and I still get a kick out of it.
Bring both tires up to pressure, don helmet, scoot out the front door and onto the "tarmac" as it were.
My journey is "intermodal" in the sense that I take advantage of TriMet's bicycle-friendly design. The TriMet system was designed to be inter-modal as the original trip planner showed.
Put your bicycle on the bus, no problem. Unlike Seattle, Portland doesn't have a ferry system to integrate. But it does have a cable car, the kind suspended from a wire held up by towers. The cable car connects a new dense urban sector with high rises, to the OHSU hospital complex nestled in West Hills, also densely populated with campus buildings. The VA is there too.
In truth, riding a bicycle requires some level of athleticism, a level of nimbleness, which TriMet also assumes in putting a rack on the outside front, with three slots usually. Stack your bicycle in a slot, if there's room (otherwise wait for the next bus maybe), and board the bus, paying passage using the Hop sensor.
I use my Apple Watch wallet to transfer funds to TriMet via Visa, paying senior rates since I'm 67.
My route starts with some mild uphill, which will be a challenge in proportion to not doing this recently (riding a bicycle), then comes a long downhill, where I'd consider brakes mandatory, not just for avoiding jutting in vehicles from side streets, but for avoiding insane amounts of acceleration, to where stopping gracefully just comes to be hopeless.
With that busy SE 20th at the bottom, you'd better not be going too fast, just sayin'. Anyway, not to scare anybody, as everybody has brakes if they ride anywhere. Just use them.
Once down to the Willamette River level, close to OMSI, I hang south and follow said river all the way to Sellwood by Springwater Corridor.
Said corridor manifests an urban renewal strategy that's not about disrupting or destroying neighborhoods so much as benignly connecting them with more solutions than before, thanks to pathways catering to non-motorized vehicles and pedestrians.
Pedestrian lifestyles tend to be healthy, meaning those who walk a lot have time to devote to their own health and well being. Relaxed walking may also involve listening to podcasts, as the vehicles are quiet anyway, and their controllers very pedestrian aware. These paths are not provided with illumination at night. They follow the same protocol as a railroad, trains carrying their lights with them.
I'm not walking, however, not in this scenario, but pedaling, gear shifting, braking. I'm also stopping to take pictures with my Lumix camera. I don't rely on my old iPhone for pictures but instead carry a separate device, which is a little unusual, but a habit I've acquired and see no reason to break. The Lumix takes great pictures. That's what I'm using throughout the embedded album above, brought over from Flickr here in the Blogger context.
This time, instead of suffering a chain coming off, like last time (thanks to non sequitur gear shifting), I allowed myself to simply dismount and exercise my walking and pushing skills, which are needed also, as a form of exercise.
Sometimes I get in the mindset of pedaling forward no matter what, such that if I dismount I'm disallowed forward motion by foot. Get back on when ready to gain distance. It's a training technique. But I'm not looking ahead to a Seattle to Portland (S2P) at the moment (what I was training for back then).
Just push it, why not?
Then it's through downtown Sellwood, still a relatively small town considered part of Greater Portland or the Metro area or whatever we call it. Sellwood has a newly installed bridge taking over the duties of the old one, which were and are considerable, as crossing the Willamette, a major river, is no joke and doesn't happen that often once south of the CBD (central business district).
Sellwood is a first or final chance to change from west to east side or vice versa. The route is through downtown Sellwood west to east, but not on busy Tacoma (where the bridge is), but through sleepier side streets. I pass a school I at one time would teach at, when working with Coding with Kids. Other memories.
At this point one needs to know the secrets of Springwater Corridor, as in where to rejoin it, having left it to push uphill.
As I was saying, in this type of urban renewal one is often repurposing an old rail line, no longer used, but with right of way and an already stable bed. Turn it into a paved path but limit what can drive on it, as pedestrians will be sharing it and are known to veer unpredictably when texting and using earbuds.
Replace rails with pavement in a lot of cases, or maybe just run something parallel to the tracks through the same corridor, taking advantage of a widenable right of way. Such is what Metro has supplied to interconnect far-flung neighborhoods by modes of transportation other than motorized vehicles.
By secrets I mean Springwater intakes, places to join it, having left it after pedaling directly under Sellwood Bridge, after an optional stop at Oaks Park if only to take pictures. I didn't do that this time, but I did stop to shoot pix of the old industrial facilities now with relic historic status. They're covered with folk art aka graffitti.
Now when I was training for S2P, I'd rejoin the Corridor and pedal all the way out to I-205, passed Precision Castparts and other landmarks, then turn north and follow a paved bike path hugging the Max line, all the way to SE Division or Mt. Tabor latitude, then take city streets home (the Division bike lane was recently improved).
In this new abbreviated inter-modal trip, I veer off the Springwater shortly after crossing over the bridge over SE McLoughlin, a major thoroughfare, and follow the signed path, still riding, down to the Tacoma / Sellwood Max station, the Orange Line branch of Metro's light rail system. Light rail: halfway between streetcars and passenger trains, more like subways but on the surface. Max does get to play subway through a long tunnel under the West Hills on its way to and from Beaverton, famously deep under Oregon Zoo. I could ride it out to my consulting gig at the hospital, back in the day.
So then I ride the Max with my bicycle, removing the helmet, and having paid with my Apple Watch, back to Tilikum Crossing, another new bridge, also not for cars, but for Max, buses, bicycles and pedestrians. I haven't seen any segways yet. I would imagine they're legal if able to manage the grade (Tilikum has a slope to it).
Note that my loop is entirely on the east side. I've talked about ways to cross the Willamette (lots of bridges in town) but in this routine I the cyclist don't need to.
What I do next is hop on the FX2, a new articulated bus, or on a regular 2 if there's room for my bike on the front rack. If it's an FX2, one takes the bicycle inside, and again there are only limited slots, meaning there's an iffiness to the schedule.
During rush hour one might as well just plan to cycle back the whole way, if not from Sellwood, at least from Tilikum, or better, if riding, from 12th and Clinton, the stop before.
Since I don't want to do that much cycling on this workout, I plan this trip for an off-peak lower-demand interval. I was the only one in need of a bike slot this time (score!). The entire loop went pretty smoothly. I celebrated by buying myself a burrito from a food trailer just off 34th and SE Division, near where I got off the FX2.
I stuffed the burrito in its bag in my Python sweater and cycled the last few blocks back to where I started, and where my dog Sydney awaited my return.
Since a lot of the fun for me is the photography, the first thing I did, even before eating the burrito, was upload from the camera to the pictures computer, then onward to Flickr, home of the Photostream. The next day, I'd get around to this blog post, embedding said Flickr album.
