2008 Providence BridgePedal
So, today was the day our merry band of miscreants rode the BridgePedal. Every year in Portland, the majority of our bridges across the Willamette river close to motorized traffic and let bikes take over the road. Most of the bridges can be crossed during a normal commute, but others such as the Marquam, are freeway bridges and generally off-limits.
With a few routes to choose from, we opted for the 8 bridge / 24 mile route. Chris, Colin, Bryan, April, and myself met up at Stumptown at 7am, then headed over to Salmon and Front for our 7:30am start. Which we got to around 8am.
After a quick pass through some city streets, we hit our first bridge, the Hawthorne. This was then quickly followed by the Ross Island bridge. So far so good. I cross these bridges all the time as part of my short waterfront loops, so nothing extraordinary yet.
Then came the loop onto I-405 and up the Marquam. These were our first big hills of the day. The onramp to the freeway gave us a good opportunity to pick up speed as we cruised to the top of the double decker freeway span.
The course wound its way through SE, past Branx/Rotture, and then back to downtown across the Burnside. Things got a little bunched up here, but soon enough we made our way to the Broadway bridge. Again, these two bridges are bike commuter bridges (and drunken walks, but thats another story), so nothing exciting.
We then had to make our way to the Fremont bridge, the second car only bridge we got to cross. There is a fair elevation difference between the Broadway and the Fremont, so by the time we got to mid span of this double decker, a quick water break was in order.
After the Fremont, we had a long trek through industrial NW Portland out to the St. Johns Bridge. Again, another decent elevation climb right at the end to get on the bridge, which nearly kicked my ass.
At this point we had crossed all but the last bridge back in town to get back to the Waterfront, and were probably 3/4 of the way done with ride. It was just before 10am, so pints were in order. Well, actually, a couple of pitchers. We ran into our friends Anne and Carly there, and after a nice 45 minute pit stop got back on the road.
The route had us head back to the Broadway bridge, loop through the North end of the Pearl District, down to the waterfront and to the finish line.
Except, thats about two blocks from Bridgeport Brewpub. So with the finish line in sight (basically), we stopped for another pitcher and some snacks. Feeling refueled, we headed down and finished the ride.
Futzed around the Bite for a minute, headed off to Voleur for some lunch, then back home.
Weather was amazing. A little cool and gray to start, then breaking open to sunshine later on.
The ride was all sorts of fun, our crew stayed fairly close together, no mechanical mishaps (at least during the ride), lots of people having a good time, pitchers, biking… Phew!
(rest of the pics on the Flickr)
