Portland by Bike

One benefit of seniority is that I usually get my pick of monthly schedules. Which is how I ended up with 36-hour layovers in Portland. Even better, the trip started and ended in Indianapolis, so I could just drive myself to work instead of taking the jumpseat down to Memphis. 

Now the company would buy me an airline ticket to Indianapolis, but it’s quicker to drive. To fly from Columbus OH to Indy would require a connecting flight.

Option 1
Drive to airport: 30 minutes
Wait for flight: 1 hour
Fly to Chicago: 1 hour
Make connection: 1 hour
Fly to Indianapolis: 1 hour
Cab ride to hotel: 30 minutes
Total: 5 hours assuming a tight schedule and no delays. Plus I’m probably stuffed into a CRJ-70 or Embraer 145 with 50 of my new closest friends.

Option 2
Get in my (used) Audi A8 
Get on I-70
Turn on adaptive cruise control, massaging seat and satellite radio.
Sit back and watch idiot drivers reenact scenes from latest Mad Max film.
Arrive in Indy 2 hours and 45 minutes later reasonably rested and uninfected.

As the saying goes: fly if you’ve got the time. More time yet? Go by jet!

Next morning on the crew bus…..

Idiot coworker: “Where are you heading?”
“Portland”
”Portland East or the People’s Republic?”
”Um…...the one in Oregon?”
”Oh, the People’s Republic.”
(I guess because Lubbock or wherever this guy lives is so f*cking awesome)

This is the kind of crap I put up with at work. Basically I work with your bitter, angry Fox News watching uncle. I’ve had a few, ahem, “spirited” political discussions over the years. And they hate Millenials for some reason I don’t yet understand.

The Indy to Portland leg is actually in the daytime. A rare thing even at my seniority. We hit some really impressive mountain-wave turbulence descending into Portland but otherwise uneventful. I’m always thankful to the Boeing engineer who installed an “oh sh*t” handle by my window. I frequently joke that I can’t land in the daytime because I can see too much, but I find daytime landings really easy.

Now I know I said I was going to Portland, but the layover hotel is actually across the river in Vancouver Washington. Recent “events” in downtown Portland have made the company skittish and they moved us out of the downtown hotel. Not my choice. It’s their dime and I stay where they tell me to.

It’s not just Portland. They tend to do that any time there’s a possibility of “unrest” in a major city. That’s when you end up in what I call the hotel hostage crisis. Stuck in some airport hotel out by the interstate somewhere. 

Vancouver WA seems nice enough. It has a small area along the riverfront that they’re trying to develop. I’d rather be in downtown Portland, but it beats the Drury Inn out by Exit 59 next to an Olive Garden an Outback and an Applebee’s.

Some people may say “what’s the big deal?” but when you spend literally half your life in hotels, which one you stay in starts to matter.

Normally on a long layover I try to rent a bicycle and log some miles. Unfortunately no one in Vancouver is renting bikes right now. Nor do they have any kind of bike share network. Well, crap. Time to think outside the box. 

I find a little bike shop in Vancouver called “Wheel Deals”. They take donated bikes, fix them up and sell them to help fund a homeless shelter. On a whim I wander in to see if they have anything cheap. Maybe I can score a crappy old mountain bike for a few bucks.

Inside is a treasure trove of 70’s road bikes. I see an old Schwinn like the one I had in High School but it looks too big. I normally take a relatively small 54cm frame. 

Then I saw it. A cute little road bike that looked like it would fit me. $195 later I was the proud owner of a mid 70’s vintage Mizutani Super Seraph. Yeah, I never heard of ‘em either. My research tells me Mizutani was a mid priced Japanese bike during the 1970’s bike boom. I doubt they were ever popular here. Fuji is the only Japanese bike brand I remember seeing back then.

They don’t make ‘em like this any more. Well actually I do. I’m building one as we speak. There’s no school like the old school.

The Eugene 1979 sticker on the seat tube tells me someone probably took this bike to college back in the day.

My first ride was to downtown Portland and back. Roughly 20 miles round trip. I hadn’t brought any bike gear besides my helmet so I was riding in just my workout shorts and sneakers. Probably not my smartest move because that old Italia suede saddle tore me up and my toes hurt from the old “rat trap” style pedals.

My ride into downtown was rather anticlimactic. I wasn’t chased by rampaging hordes of Antifa or BLM. I didn’t have to dodge any tear gas cannisters or Molotav Cocktails. Hardly the Mad Max dystopia I was told to expect.

From what I’ve been hearing I was expecting downtown Portland to be a pile of rubble like Berlin in 1945. There were some store windows boarded up but I could see the same in Columbus or Indianapolis. All in all it seemed pretty nice.

I talked to the hotel manager and they were nice enough to let me lock the bike up in their parking garage until my next layover.

A week later I’m back in Vancouver and the bike is waiting for me.

This time I’ve come prepared with proper riding gear.

I find what looks like a nice route and download it to my navigation app. A 50 mile ride that goes up the Columbia River Valley and then makes a big loop around Portland. A couple of small climbs but nothing serious.

So how does a 40-something year old Japanese road bike ride? Surprisingly well. It shows signs of wear but everything is still tight and true. I don’t like shifters mounted on the stem, but that was a popular setup at the time.

Sure, it doesn’t ride like my spare-no-expense custom frame Waterford but the price was an order of magnitude lower. You could do a hell of a lot worse for 200 bucks.

The old Sun Tour group shifts surprisingly well. The shifters have a ratcheting action and work smoothly and precisely. One quirk is the front derailleur is spring-loaded to the big chainring, which is the exact opposite of every other bike I’ve owned.

I hadn’t ridden a true “10 speed” in a while. Having been spoiled by modern groupsets with 10 or 11 cogs in the back I found myself sometimes searching for that in-between gear ratio that wasn’t there. Oh well, that’s what leg muscles are for. As my mother would have said “builds character”.

The old center pull brakes work well enough. Other than a new set of shift/brake cables everything else looks to be original or at least period correct. Everything is straight and true and it rides pretty well. I quickly take a liking to it.

If I only had $200 to spend on a bike I would personally go with something like this over the made in Guanzhou special from the big box store. A lot of these old road bikes still have a lot of life left in them.

With a little TLC this could probably be a damn nice bike. Throw on some new wheels and a new saddle and you’d have a pretty nice bike at a fraction of the cost of a new one. Plus you’d stand out in the sea of Treks and Specialized out there.

Portland has a reputation as the most bike-friendly city in the country and that was certainly my experience. Drivers gave me plenty of room. There are warning lights where a bike path crosses the road and cars actually stop for them. I was usually able to find a bike path or at least a road with a decent bike lane to ride on.

I had a young guy in a Dodge Charger pull up next to me at a stop light. He said he had just got his first car and wanted to know what my hand signals meant. 

Note that use the more intuitive point right when I’m turning right instead of the hold the left hand up for turning right that nobody born since 1950 understands.

Bathroom stops were a bit of a problem. A few of the trails had restrooms but they were still closed for the season. I finally found a port-a-potty that I think was set out for the homeless population that camps by some of the bike paths. It makes sense. People still have go, even if they’re homeless. You don’t want them doing it just anywhere. Silly me with my liberal ideas.

Portland, like a lot of cities, does seem to have a homeless problem. I’ve seen similar camps in San Jose, Los Angeles and even Indianapolis. I don’t claim to have the solution but I suspect yelling “Get a job!” at them isn’t it.

The Portland light rail system is called “MAX” which I think refers to the speed the trains travel at. Fortunately I stopped at the crossing because this thing flew by me.

I live in one of the largest cities in the country with no light rail (Columbus OH). To me commuter rail seems like a win-win even if you don’t use it. Would you prefer to have all those people on the freeway with you during your daily commute? 

The same goes for bike lanes. Would you rather all those bike commuters were competing with you for downtown parking spaces?

Apparently some people can’t even grasp the concept of enlightened self interest.

All in all a pretty pleasant ride. Overall I really like Portland. In fact, I’d move there if I could afford a house (narrator’s voice — he can’t).

The I-5 Bridge spans the Columbia River between Oregon and Washington. It’s old (1917) and badly under capacity for the amount of traffic that goes across it. 

I’ve crossed the Golden Gate by bike many times but I found the I-5 bridge a bit intimidating. The bike lane is relatively narrow and there’s so much traffic noise that pedestrians have a hard time hearing you. Hit one of those exposed girders and you’re going to feel it.

The roadway shakes from the constant truck traffic.

I was told by the way too chatty limo driver that the bridge was on the list to be replaced in Biden’s infrastructure plan. I would say it can’t happen too soon. 

(I’m really not antisocial, but after flying across the country I’m usually not in the mood to discuss current events with a driver that I’ve known for exactly 5 minutes.)

Now buying a bike just to do a few rides may seem silly, but renting a decent road bike in a city like San Francisco or Boston will cost you $100+ for 24 hours. I got six rides for my $195 and came out ahead of the game.

I really wanted to bring this thing home with me but the logistics were a problem. Sure, I fly a cargo jet but company policy makes it difficult to travel with a bicycle. At the end of the month I donated it back to the place I bought it. I was sad to see it go, but hopefully someone else will enjoy it as much as I did.