Don’t stop riding! The Bike to PSU Challenge is over, but you don’t have to chain up the spoked beast. After all, summer is here—sort of—and Portland’s streets are great for cycling.
In fact, Portland was just ranked as the best city to commute by bike in the nation by Bloomberg. The results, based on a census taken in 2010, compare cities with more than 250,000 workers. Portland beat 24 other cities with a cycle-commuting rate of 5.44 percent, which means almost 16,000 Portlandians primarily rode their bikes to work in 2010.
That’s a lot of sore butts, and Portland didn’t just scrape by either. This city’s bike-commuting rate was almost twice that of second place San Francisco’s and third place Seattle’s, neither of which cleared 3 percent. Portland’s bike-mania may never stop. A quick stroll along the waterfront will prove that. Pedicabs haul passengers to and fro, families pedal past, a dog wearing sunglasses and a bandana sits in one cyclist’s basket, tall bikes and unicycles roll by.
Our streets are lined with bike lanes and our sidewalks are splattered with bike racks. Sometimes it seems like there’s a bike store on every corner. Even some of Portland’s bars double as bike maintenance shops and gear stores, and some companies have gone as far as manufacturing mobile pubs powered by pedaling patrons. If you haven’t seen one rolling past your house yet, you probably will soon. They have two rows of bar stools with a keg mounted on one end and seat about 16 people. You pedal while guzzling beer and getting a tour of the city.
What’s next? Beds with built-in gears so you never have to stop pedaling? Portland’s cyclists want to ride all the time, in the rain and the cold, wrapped in wet-weather gear, scarves and coats. And when it’s nice, they take the clothes off and ride naked: on June 16 at 10 p.m. Portland’s eighth annual World Naked Bike Ride will begin.
The first year of Portland’s naked ride was 2005, and only around 170 people came out. That number doubled almost every year since then, and last year more than 5,000 people joined in. If the doubling trend continues, 10,000 naked cyclists could casually ride through downtown this year.
According to information posted on PDXpipeline.com, the purpose of the naked ride is “to draw attention to cycling and the folly of oil dependency. We hope motorists will begin to suspect cyclists have more fun, and hence maybe they don’t need their cars as much as they thought.”
A city that lets its citizens ride naked is a city I want to live in, though I do (most of) my commuting fully dressed. I slacked off this month during the Bike to PSU Challenge, I’ll admit it. I logged fewer than six miles all month. But summer will soon be in full swing, and I intend to ride a little more every week. If you haven’t biked in Portland, you need to. It’s part of the city’s culture. You don’t need to drop four grand on a custom-crafted bike to join in, either. Go on craigslist.com and buy a used beauty. Scrub the rust off, slap a bell on and ride.