So, it’s my second day in Portland, Oregon with a bike. I scan the bicycling maps left at the place I am renting. It appears the St. Johns Bridge, about four miles north, is a cool destination. In fact, on the map, it looks like it might be a bike/pedestrian bridge. Well, they keep saying it’s a bicycle friendly city.
I am, of course delusional.
The road there winds around these cliffs below which are industrial areas, the Willamette River, and forested areas beyond the river. Beautiful. Busy road, but lovely. I get close to the bridge and quickly realize it’s a major thoroughfare. But the blue line on the map meant it at least had a protected bike lane. It’s been foggy this mid-Saturday morning, but not too bad. I meander around a little before I find the entrance to the bridge. There’s a sidewalk along both sides of the bridge but no barrier. The right lane of the roadway has lettering that spells, “Bicycles on Roadway.” I suppose this is where bikes are supposed to be.
Only after I’ve made my choice on the roadway do a few other things dawn on me. First, the fog is much thicker on the bridge than it was earlier. Like, much thicker. Second, I am wearing clothing that blends in with the fog, no caution lights. When the first double-length semi carrying a quarry’s worth of gravel passes me on the left, I realized I was going to die on this bridge. I can see about ten feet in front of me. I can’t even look at the ten feet behind me to understand just how close the cars and trucks are getting to me before they dart into the next lane over. My idyllic morning ride across a “pedestrian” bridge has turned into crossing the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey to Manhattan at rush hour. Come to think of it, that would have been safe. Traffic would be grinding forward at about 1 mph.
I pedal as fast as I can. I recall the last time I pedaled this fast I was trying to get from Fort Hamilton Parkway area of Brooklyn back to the Brooklyn Bridge too late in the evening and the only direct route I knew at the time was to just barrel down 4th Avenue (for the most part, the kind of neighborhood in 1981 you didn’t want to be fixing a flat tire). Anyway, I keep climbing the gradual incline to mid-span. When I get there, a kaleidoscope of colors appears from the fog. Turns out a class or group is (1) performing fog worship, (2) practicing their Tai Chi, (3) suffering the effects of too much Chai Tea, or (4) all of the above. They are on both sides of the bridge, to boot. The break in my concentration, I think, may cause me to waver and wreck. Still, poetry in motion, or burial under a few tons of gravel? Focus, focus, focus.
The map indicated many biking paths in the green space on the other side of the bridge. Of course, I didn’t actually bring the map with me. I couldn’t find any of them. Traffic was heavy, intersections difficult. So I pedal back to the bridge. This time, I take the sidewalk. Strangely, I do not pass or even see the colorful movement artists. Only ten minutes or so had passed. Did they quit soon after I saw them and run? Had they rappelled under the bridge? Could they disappear off of a bridge this long that fast? Or was it just the over-active imagination of an all-too eager cyclist, that dream-like moment as my life passes by ahead of my thoughts of certain death?
Only the Portland fog knows.
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