As a recent transplant to Portland, I’ve been incredibly curious about the Sunday Parkways series of neighborhood-based family-friendly rides that the city holds each month May through August. What would it be like to ride with hundreds or thousands of moms, dads, kids, and bikers of all stripes exploring the city together?
It just so happened the first Parkway of the season coincided with the 2013 Cyclofemme celebration of global women’s cycling (229 rides in 184 cities this year). Portland had several rides registered for Cyclofemme! I met up with a few other riders at the lovely Peninsula Park in my neighborhood before heading over to Clever Cycles where we met the rest of April Streeter’s Women on Wheels group to start our 5 mile ride to Lents Park. Along the way from Peninsula Park, we picked up Leah Benson (easy to spot her in her red dress with matching red bike). We almost picked up another lovely lady in a dress by the Rose Garden but she was actually heading to a job interview and didn’t even know about the Cyclofemme rides. I ended up leaving our group momentarily to backtrack to the MAX stop when I spotted what I thought was a woman with long blonde hair bent over her bike trying to fix something. Turns out, it was a dude with really long hair who was putting his chain back on. I must admit, I wouldn’t have gone back to help if I had noticed he was a guy to begin with. Is that bad?
Anyway, it was May 12, Mother’s Day, and what a great way to celebrate so much that has gone right for women on bikes this year! The awesome Women’s Bike Summit in Washington DC in March was such a wonderful thing. So many incredible things going on around the country and so many inspiring women making things happen in every US city. Portland has its own contingent of incredible women making awesome things happen in Portland for women on bikes and it was a joy to be around some of them for this event. And to have Cyclofemme founder Sarai Snyder there with us to celebrate really added a special touch to the whole day.
April ordered tattoos for our group and Jamie put little red carnations on our handlebars. The route from Clever Cycles to Lents Park through the Hawthorne and Belmont neighorhoods was so beautiful. Some of the greenest, leafiest, most tree-lined and energizing parts of the city are here and the route April selected was full of stunning scenery. When we got to Lents Park, the Parkway festivities were already in full swing: music, food, info tables, bikers everywhere. I headed right over to the vegan sausage table and enjoyed a locally made vegan sausage with caramelized onions and sauerkraut. I saw some burrito bowls from another booth further on down that looked really good too. Lents Park, like every other park I’ve seen in Portland so far, is beautiful: big, green, spacious, and restful.
After we’d had a chance to eat and mill around, Janis McDonald from the city’s Women on Bikes program fired up a small PA system and Sarai welcomed us with a short address. April said a few words and so did Janis who was the co-ride coordinator for the day. After a few group photos, we finally got to taste April’s delicious mini cupcakes. Yum! The lemon icing was extra good.
From there, a portion of our group returned with April to Clever Cycles. But I rode the rest of the Parkway with my new friend Arlene (also a Pittsburgh native). From Lents Park, we followed the hundreds of other riders to the other parks on the Parkway route. The city of Portland did such a good job running the whole event. There were volunteers at every turn on the route along with police making sure car traffic adhered to set corridors. There were route maps available at every park. And every stop had something unique and special going on at it — old timey music in one park, a live performance of Shakespeare in another, games for kids, demo’s, samples, fish hats, dixieland music, great food everywhere. Even though there were lots of riders in the sometimes narrow spots like the Springwater Corridor, riders were courteous about moving over so another rider could pass by. All in all, it was very orderly and well managed. Janis said there are some 400 volunteers for the Parkways! What a massive effort to pull off, but so worth it. I’m grateful that so many kids are growing up knowing what it’s like to ride bikes with their families in such a fun, enjoyable way. This truly is the path to building a future of biker riders in America.
It’s also a great way to spend the day hanging out with a new friend, doing something fun and enjoying our beautiful city. Can’t wait for the next one in June.