I spent much of the day running one massive errand – delivering flyers promoting the Monday night race series coming up at PIR starting in May to bike shops scattered across the city.  I was doing it for the race organizer, who also happens to be the president of my cycling team.  I set off with a list of 21 bike shops in every part of the city, and ended up taking about 5 hours to do the entire loop of 57 or so miles.  Not bad considering all the traffic lights, stop signs, and stop time at each shop.  Here’s the loop:

I started out headed Northeast towards Forest park.  Springville road is a nice long climb up to the park, and then I took Springville road that turns into a trail into the park.  I had heard there were some decent gravel trails that could be managed by road bike, but Springville isn’t really one of them.  It turns into a steep downhill mountain bike trail that would have been slightly technical on a mountain bike, and was insane on a road bike.  It was muddy, which made things even more interesting.  I survived my way down it without ever stopping or even unclipping, but I rode the brakes the whole way down.

Then I took a wrong turn on Leif Erickson when I should have continued on Springville, and wound up at Germantown Road, so really I should have just taken Germantown in the first place.  Regardless, it was fun to explore Forest Park.  It’s beautiful and really peaceful.  Plus, I got some great practice for Eugene Roubaix.  Too bad I’m not racing it this year.  Here’s a view (through a plastic bag covering my phone) of Leif Erickson:

After finishing the windy, fun descent of Germantown, I crossed the St. Johns bridge (cool bridge!) into St. Johns.  I made my first bike shop stop there, and then headed over through North Portland into NE, stopping at various points along the way.  From Northeast I cut across towards the Rose Quarter for a couple stops, then into Southeast.  I headed as far south as Sellwood, then took the riverside bke bath (more like bike freeway) back to downtown.

After marveling at how close the downtown bike shops are to each other compared to the rest, I picked a particularly steep road to go up into the West Hills in SW Portland.  (12th to 16th to Washington – probably 20-25% grades at times).  From there the rest of the ride featured a really nice downhill run into Beaverton, where I distributed the rest of the flyers before returning home.

Before the trip, I wasn’t particularly concerned about riding in a big city that I’m only slightly familiar with, but I was curious how stressful it might be with traffic.  Turned out to be a non-issue.  Part of it is that I’m very used to riding with traffic, but biking in Portland is exceedingly easy.  I now have a good understanding why it’s one of the best cities for biking in the country.  Bike lanes everywhere, lots of wide roads, and designated bike routes that you can’t possibly miss even if you weren’t looking for them.  I used my iPhone and general sense of direction to navigate between stops, but finding good roads to get between A and B was a breeze.  People seem to think that biking downtown is best left to crazy bike messengers, but that was probably one of the easiest parts – you can keep up with traffic!

I also got a good feel for North, NE, and SE Portland, areas where I haven’t spent much time.  They’re all really nice areas, and I reconfirmed the fact that I’d like to live in pretty much any part of Portland.  North or Northeast are probably even better than I thought for biking, because the ride out of town across the St. Johns Bridge is fairly quick, and then you’ve got access to all kinds of open roads.

All in all, lots of fun exploring and getting a good workout in at the same time.

Here’s the list of shops I stopped by:

Weir’s Cyclery – 8247 N. Lombard, Portland
Revolver Bikes – 6509-11 N Interstate Ave, Portland
Cascade Cycling – 122 N Killingsworth St, Portland
Upper Echelon Fitness – 4829 NE Martin Luther King Blvd, Portland
Community Cycling Center – 1700 NE Alberta, Portland
Bike Gallery Hollywood – 5329 NE Sandy Blvd, Portland
Cyclepath – 2436 NE. MLK Jr. Blvd, Portland
Metropolis Cycle Repair – 2249 N Williams Ave, Portland
Bicycle Repair Collective – 4438 SE Belmont St, Portland
Joe Bike – 3953 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland
Veloce Bicycle – 3202 SE hawthorne, Portland
A Better Cycle – 2324 SE Division, Portland
Seven Corners Cycle – 3218 SE 21st Ave, Portland
Sellwood Cycle Repair – 7639 SE Milwaukie Ave, Portland
Bike ‘n Hike – 400 S.E. Grand Ave, Portland
Bike Central Co-op – 220 SW 1st Ave, Portland
Veloshop – 211 SW 9th Avenue, Portland
Bike Gallery Downtown – 1001 SW 10th Ave, Portland
Bike ‘n Hike Beaverton – 10120 S.W. Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy, Beaverton
Bike Gallery Beaverton – 12345 SW Canyon Road, Beaverton
Performance Bike Beaverton – 3850 SW Hall Blvd, Beaverton