Photos by Heather Andrews

Exterior Bike Racks at the Oregon Convention Center

• On the Holladay Street side, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues
• On the MLK side, between Pacific and Oregon
• On the MLK side, at Hoyt

If an event at the OCC attracts any sort of real crowd, you'll find bicycles locked down to just about anything permanent. So what's a conscientious bicyclist to do?

Luckily, there is also some super-secret bicycle parking.

Bicycle Parking in the OCC parking garage

If you enter on level 1 (the south entrance between MLK and 1st on Lloyd Ave) just go by the tollbooth, and there's hanging parking immediately to your right, right in sightline of the parking attendant. Just past that, on the righthand side, some more hanging parking. And by the door to the Convention Center, there are U racks on each side of the door.

On Level 2 below it, there is far less parking—just a couple of the U racks by the OCC door, and in the SW corner of the garage.

His bicycle built for two comes with a tiny covered trailer and his green safety vest is emblazoned with the words "Powered by Potatoes". He's young and lean and bearded and not what you might imagine as a typical Loaves & Fishes Centers volunteer. But Vlad Ionis is making a difference in the lives of homebound seniors in the Hollywood neighborhood by delivering Meals-On-Wheels using his bike.

Read more in the Loaves and Fishes Newsletter, May 2006!

The last Friday of every month, Shift volunteers serve breakfast to bicyclists on the Broadway and Hawthorne bridges. Many bike commuters have come to look forward to hot coffee and delicious pastries on their way to work once a month - and you can't beat the view!

Coffee is provided by Red Wing Cafe, a local fair-trade coffee roaster; and pastries are donated by local bakeries including Red Wing, Grand Central Baking Company and others.

We generally arrive on the bridges around 7:00 a.m. and stay till 9:00.

Join us for this fun, community-building event. Stop by on your way to work, school, shopping, or whereever you and your bike are going. Just stop on by.

It's incredibly humane. Drink coffee or tea from a porcelain cup! Nibble on some good carbs! And chat with someone you don't know about anything you want.

Check out this great video from BikeTV!

It's such a cool thing that other cities are following in our footsteps with free cyclists breakfasts of their own. Yay!!

Filmmaker (and New Yorker) Clarence Eckerson (featured at the Transportation Film Festival) loves Portland. No, he hasn't told me so, but it's obvious in his short films about the Portland bike and transportation scene.

Eckerson's work has been featured in BikePortland.org and Portland Transport, and this week, it's also being featured in NYC's StreetsBlog. That's right. Each day, there's a new filmlet about Portland posted. So far, there's been one about our new Festival Streets in Chinatown, and one on Bike Boulevards.

If you're looking for more Clarence and more Portland-luv, check out his BikeTV site and the videos page at NYC Streets Renaissance.

Pedalpalooza is so big this year, you really need to have a plan of attack. There's almost 150 events!! Over 17 days!

The official Pedalpalooza website, shift2bikes.org/pedalpalooza/pp2006.php is the most up-to-date about events. Get this, events are still being added!

But sometimes, you just want to know what's happening today. And that's where Jonathan's BikePortland comes in. Everyday of Pedalpalooza, he'll have a post about the day's events in an unthreatening yet come hither-sort of way. Check it out!!

In a conversation online about road-rage towards bicyclists by motorists, Jonathan Maus from BikePortland.org made these suggestions:

don't we already have a road-rage hotline?
actually two of them.

if it's really bad call 911.
if not so bad call the non-emergency police number at 823-3333.

How do you "cater" to two-wheels?

Are all those people unwelcome everywhere else? I don't understand.

I was surprised, honestly, at the uproar that welled up on a local listserve about Christian Ettinger (former Laurelwood brewmaster)'s new someday-to-open brewpub which will cater to bicyclists, scooterists and motorcyclists.

When something caters to bikes and motorcycles, is it excluding cars? It could be, but it's more likely that it will have facilities that make it easier for bicyclists and scooterists. And if you don't ride, you just might not know how important these things can be.

Like motorists, two-wheeled travelers see their vehicle as both transportation and a matter of pride. It might have cost a lot of money or show many hours of hard work. And we're unhappy when we come out and find parts missing, stuff messed with, or our beloved vehicle gone entirely.

And Portlanders overwhelmingly are two-wheel crazy. We bicycle, we scoot, we ride motorcycles—and we rejoice in these things. They're fun!

So what do two-wheels need? Secure and sheltered parking that will allow them (us!) to lock up and feel reasonably confident that our transportation will still be there when we come out.

For bicycles, an example of a business that does this well is the original Lucky Lab on Hawthorne. There is lots of bike parking, you can easily lock up, and if you are the sort who can't let their bike out of their sight, you can sit on the back porch and enjoy the sight of it while you drink and nosh.

Even better is the new Lucky Lab beer hall, with indoor bike parking, and the Moon & Sixpence, who let you bring your bike either inside, or to the back patio.

When you consider that one "parking place" can hold 10 bicycles, you can make a big impact in just a little bit of space. And while scooters and motorcycles are bigger, certainly, than bicycles, they also can take up less space than a car—it's no big t'ing to have four or five scooters in a parking place.

Oh, and there's a video too. Nicely done!

For those of us who travel a little slower (and funner) via bicycle or scooter, picking a route to the coast can be, umm, interesting.

As Michael in the above thread noted, Highway 30 has loud traffic and "it just sucks out your will to live to have it roaring by your left ear all day. Also, there are a bunch of really challenging hills."

So, there are issues of traffic, of speed, of hills, and of scenery. This thread, on the OR Bike blog, is bike specific, but the info is useful for scooterists as well. These will also work for well mannered drivers who want to get off the beaten track. One caution: your cellphone won't work on most of these.

When cars park in the bike lane, it's not just annoying, but also dangerous. But if you're in the city of Portland, those are the numbers to call.

TriMet wants to learn more about people who ride both bikes and MAX light rail. We have very little information about how many people are taking bikes on MAX and/or biking to MAX. This survey will tell us where bikers are coming from and where they are going.

We also want to know how riders are using our bike parking facilities and about the types of trips they are making (work, recreation, school, etc.). This information will help TriMet improve integration of bicycles and MAX.

The next bridge south is the Fremont Bridge, which is a freeway bridge. The next bicycle-able or walkable bridge is the Broadway, six miles to the south.

The next bridge north is the Sauvie Island Bridge, which leads to, naturally, Sauvie Island.

Is there anything sadder than coming out of someplace and finding your bicycle long gone?

Jonathan Maus of BikePortland.org has a game plan for those who have had their bikes stolen:

1. Gather your documentation.
2. File a police report by calling 503-823-3333.
3. Register with the FineToothCog/BikePortland.org Stolen Bike Listings.

The cool thing about the FineToothCog/BikePortland stolen bike listings is that it informs the bike community about your stolen bike. How's that? Well, the stolen bike listings are listed on BikePortland.org, the most popular bicycle web site in the country. They are listed at FineToothCog, which compares reported stolen bikes against Craigslist's bikes for sale listings.

The easiest way to sell a stolen bike is on the internet using services such as Craigslist ...

Finetoothcog takes over the menial task of scanning these sites.* Like a 'fine tooth comb' the fine tooth cog covers the electronic sales methods and keeps you informed of bikes for sale similar to the one you describe. It sends you an email digest each evening and provides a webinterface to viewing what bikes are for sale similar to yours.

The Stolen Bike Digest is a daily email that is sent to local shops, police officers, and concerned citizens. It includes all the stolen bikes listed during the day (usually 3-6 bikes) and recipients are encouraged to print out the list and display it in their shop or place of business.

FineToothCog even offers a Stolen Bike map (wow, two bikes have been stolen within a block of my house!).

And if you haven't had your bike stolen, Jonathan at BikePortland offers tips to minimize the chance that it will be stolen.

thanks to Nancy for asking.