Tag: photos

Keep Portland weird!

May 29, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Co-opting Austin’s marketing strategy, Portland also wants you to keep it weird (read the history of this slogan). If you haven’t yet, please peruse my 54 (so far!) photos I’ve uploaded from my trip to Portland, Oregon, in April this year.

A wall in Chinatown (yeah, Portland has a Chinatown) invites citizens and visitors alike.

Bicycling in Portland is so prevalent, you’ll see entire families on the streets riding their bikes to the park, to school, or shopping.

Check out Portland’s unique transportation facilities and improvements in my photoset, “Transportation in Portland.”

Passenger is the new cargo

April 7, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Did you know that people carry their kids, friends, spouses, and parents on bikes?

I carried my first passenger in April 2010 on my trip to Portland. I test rode a Yuba Mundo from Joe Bike in the SE Hawthorne neighborhood. But this photo shows a friend carrying ME on the bike.

I really want to carry someone. I told my sister that when I get a new cargo bike this year (either the Yuba Mundo or the WorkCycles Fr8) I will pick her up from her apartment and take her to school. It will be the most joyous occasion of 2010. Mikael at Copenhagenize talks about throwing his son’s bike on the front rack of his Velorbis when he goes to pick him up, so his son can ride home on his own.

This photo is so much fun, I printed it out and posted it on my refrigerator.

Passengers: the ultimate bike accessory. Want to see more photos? Marc at Amsterdamize has 260+ photos and videos in his Side Saddle set. Check the blog post about riding side saddle to get some tips.

That Lakefront Trail

April 1, 2010 / / 0 Comments

It’s not the “Chicago Bike Path.” It’s not the “Lakefront Path.” It’s not the “Chicago Riverwalk.”

Those are all names that have appeared on Google Maps at some point to describe the 18-mile multi-use path along Lake Michigan in the city limits.

It’s the Lakefront Trail. And it’s pretty great. Most of the time. South of Solidarity Drive.*

It looks like this:

Burnham Harbor. My point and shoot camera, a Fuji F50fd, was recently damaged and the lens cover will not fully retract. It casts a shadow over wide angle shots. When zoomed, like in the photo below, the shadow disappears.

And this:

Can you name all the buildings?

*The Lakefront Trail is extremely congested starting near Museum Campus (especially when there are a lot of walkers and tourists that day), and has pinch points at Monroe, Grand and Illinois, Oak Street Beach, North Avenue Beach, and Belmont (those are the ones I remember, I rarely ride on the Lakefront Trail because of the insanity). No matter how many drawbacks I list, you can’t beat an open and unobstructed view of the city or the lake. Open this photo to see how many people are using it.

Tucson has every kind of bikeway

March 18, 2010 / / 0 Comments

A bicyclist rides north on the “Highland Avenue” separated bike path on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson, Arizona.

(This is the second post about Tucson, and the fifth about my December 2009 trip to Arizona.)

I had heard that Tucson was a bicycle friendly town. I didn’t know just how friendly until my dad and I rode our bikes around town and  happened onto one of the many bike-only separated paths. You can see the campus bike map (PDF).

There are probably 10 different names for this kind of path. It’s not a separated path because there’s no adjacent roadway accessible to automobiles. You could call it a multi-use trail, but it’s not really a trail. The path is part of the city’s street grid; some streets “dead end” into the entrance so bicyclists don’t have to turn onto another street to go straight, they simply enter this bicycle only path. In some places, the path is grade separated and travels under a shared street.

I like this kind of bikeway a lot. I know they are standard fare in the Netherlands, and it’s nice to know they are standard fare somewhere in North America.

See the full photoset of bikeways in Tucson.

Riding under Speedway Boulevard on the “Warren Avenue” bike path.