This Space for Rent

blackmailing myself

I have been having a devil of a time actually motivating myself to get out on the line before it’s late in the afternoon, but I believe that I’ve managed to find a way to do it. It’s hard to drag myself out the door in the morning when it’s COLD and DARK (or it’s about to be HOT and DARK) just for the sake of being on the bicycle (despite knowing full well that when I’m actually on the silly device I’m perfectly happy to ride until I run out of sunlight or the patience of my family,) but a chance encounter with a Tri-Met “BUS STOP CLOSED FOR PROVIDENCE BRIDGE PEDAL” reroute sign yesterday afternoon gave me a chance to test what would happen if I put some money on the deal.

It cost me US$35 to register for the bridge pedal yesterday, but if I was going to actually take advantage of the bridge pedal I would have to actually wake up at 5am so I could get out the door and on my way up to the Fremont Bridge for a 7am departure (otherwise the US$35 would be completely wasted, because the website helpfully said “NO REFUNDS AT ALL, SO THERE!”)

fremont bikes

It seems to have worked

This is not a perfect solution, for a couple of reasons

  1. I ended up being unable to go to sleep the night before because I was trying to figure out how fast I would have to ride to do the loop twice (based on the less-than-useful FAQ helpfully mentioning that the Fremont bridge would be returned to automobile traffic at 11:30. The FAQ could have mentioned that the Sellwood loop was going to be shut down as soon as the last full-route rider came off the bridge and turned north towards Macadam.) I did figure that if I could do the loop in less than 2h30 (I actually took 2h40, but that included a reroute because the Yellow Menace had parked a train across Naito Parkway, and if I was going to do a twice around I would have cut off at Russell St and avoided that obstacle completely) I could have /barely/ cleared the bridge before it turned back into i405. But by the time I’d figured all that out, it was already midnight, so it left me with about 4 hours of sleep before I had to wake up and start paddling northwards.
  2. TOO MANY PEOPLE and the xtracycle does not have the sort of nimble handling it takes to quickly thread through clots of people moving half my speed.
  3. NO TEA – I rode up to the starting point, did the entire loop in one go (aside from one photo stop to see the 8:15am northbound Cascades come by on the east side, one stop to get a panorama at the top of the Fremont Bridge, and a third stop on Interstate to get a few pictures of EPT #501 before heading towards home and a pot of hot tea) so by the time I hopped onto the Springwater Trail for the last stretch towards home I was feeling really untearrific.

Next time around I’m going to have to set aside the material components for hot tea the night before, so I can have a few cups before I stumble out the door at 0dark30. And at least the next blackmail attempt conveniently routes right past Joe’s Donuts about halfway out, so I can refill with more tea and/or coffee, plus pick up some donuts to bring back home. (It is a cargo bike, after all, and I’ve carried donuts the long way home a few times already.)