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| lantius |
 Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 4:04 am |
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1337
Joined: 22 Jul 2005
Posts: 5448
Location: right over
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holy crap. just got back from the most ridiculous midnight mystery ride ever.
basically, got into town after five hours of crap traffic and hooked up with some folks at the bowling alley, then to the horse brass. then evilmike and i met up with the mmr crew at acme. from there a huge posse rolled to plaid pantry, then down the river trail to fucking milwaukie, where we went down more side trails, through a park, across a dried-up section of riverbed, and found ourselves drinking and having a little fire on elk rock island. with probably fifty or sixty of our new cycling friends.
watching the line of bikes snake across the dry riverbed was absolutely surreal.
i think you all would like the mmr crew, they don't roll super fast but they seem to know how to have a good time. plus, drunk girls riding bikes in their underwear. and really drunk too: like a guy so drunk he shoulder-checked a mailbox. and the girl who just fell down in the middle of the trail. i guess when you only do it once a month you can't be expected to be experts. i highly recommend everyone check it out though, it's an awesomely fun time and very chil..
anyhow, i just got home and it's 5am and it's taking basically forever to do anything. 28.8 baud in the hizzouse, i can't believe i used to use a modem half this speed back in the day.
tomorrow is a rest day, and then sunday is bridge pedal, seeing the sprockettes at the bite of portland, more rest, and then the zoobomb in the evening. yay bikes! hope all you mb's are having a fine time out on vashon. |
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| derrickito |
| Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 10:34 am |
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now with 50 percent more EVIL
Joined: 22 Jul 2005
Posts: 7079
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what the hellzus? was there some big event scheduled down there? i had this weekend completely free, i woulda come!
mb! |
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| freemywrld |
| Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 2:48 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2006
Posts: 362
Location: Behind you
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derrickito wrote: what the hellzus? was there some big event scheduled down there? i had this weekend completely free, i woulda come!
mb!
I believe it was the Vibrator this weekend... |
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Beer is both food and water, but neither water nor food is beer. |
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| derrickito |
| Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 5:25 pm |
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now with 50 percent more EVIL
Joined: 22 Jul 2005
Posts: 7079
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hes not at the vibrator, hes in portland. vibrator is on vashon
speaking of vashon, i heard 40 people showed up, and that they have 3 kegs of beer and a few hundred cans of beer for all of them
you guys should totally swim back drunk |
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| freemywrld |
| Posted: Sat Aug 12, 2006 6:28 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2006
Posts: 362
Location: Behind you
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Holy crap that is alotta beer! I can't wait to get my work schedule changed.. tihs whole working on Friday and Saturday nights thing really sucks my ass...
Who wants to get drunk on Sunday night with me?? Anyone??
Bikes! Beer! Babes in Bikinis?! |
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Beer is both food and water, but neither water nor food is beer. |
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| iro1751 |
| Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2006 2:50 pm |
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Joined: 25 Jul 2005
Posts: 722
Location: Washingtonia
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derrickito wrote: what the hellzus? was there some big event scheduled down there? i had this weekend completely free, i woulda come!
mb!
Down there? Completely free? WTF? What about up here (Vashon)? You knew about it! And you totally missed out on a great time! |
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Ride Your Bike |
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| lantius |
| Posted: Mon Aug 14, 2006 11:47 am |
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1337
Joined: 22 Jul 2005
Posts: 5448
Location: right over
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holy crap. got home saturday morning around 5am, spent all saturday chilling and relaxing, and then got up sunday morning at 5am to head to pdx for the bridge pedal.
holy crap.
there were so many cyclists there, i could not believe it. it's the largest group i've seen in my entire life, and it just kept coming. we started a little after 6:30, heading across the morrison bridge and then bombing south along the river down to the sellwood bridge with the fast group. plenty of squiddie-looking guys in the fast group, plus a fair number of weekend warriors and the like in team kit. i saw one or two guys on langsters and a couple on surly fixies as well. eventually we made it back north and they routed us across the hawthorne bridge just as the 6- and 8-bridge groups were starting. due to some bad traffic management they ended up sending them down towards the sellwood as well instead of the ross island, resulting in a crazy-illegal u-turning situation across two lanes of traffic. and i mean literally thousands of riders. picture a three-lane highway, completely packet with cyclists for a mile and a half.
eventually we crossed the ross island bridge just before they closed it off and rerouted all the other riders away from it. that then put us on the on-ramp to the top of the marquam bridge, aka i-5 northbound. it was nuts! we bombed down the on-ramp onto i-84 and then climbed up to the top of the bridge where they had a swing/jazz band playing, photo booth, kegs of root beer, etc. the view from up there was incredible - not least to mention because as you looked across the city at the rest of the bridges all you could see was streams of cyclists rolling across them all the way up the willamette. then a sweeping downhill off that to the burnside bridge, back through oldtown to the broadway bridge, and then another climb up to the top of the fremont bridge, aka i-405 southbound. another ton of people up there and a marimba band, plus starbucks giving out free espresso shots.
from the fremont bridge it was another bomb down the hill and a long northward run up to the st. john's bridge. mike and i hooked into a paceline and blew past alot of very sketch riders who were clearly not used to riding in a big group - they stayed in the middle of the lane, too scared to be near the cars and too scared to be near the edges. so we had to pass them on both sides... it was treacherous. there was one more climb up to st. john's, a very classic looking bridge north of town, a quick run off that to the rest stop for bagels and bananas, and then a long flat and descent back down to the steel bridge, #10, which put us right at the finish line at the bite of portland.
it was about 36 miles in total, and counting alot of picture stops and one flat fix it took us about 2 1/2 hours. not bad considering mike was running 64 gear inches. we killed a little time until the bite opened and watched the sprockettes perform, before we went up to jam for some well-earned breakfast. all the way around town we kept seeing more riders - apparently this year they had about 18,000 people. EIGHTEEN THOUSAND. holy crap.
anyhow, after some resting all afternoon and some fucking delicious lamb and ham pizza for dinner i went down and met up with the zoobombers. apparently they had been off exploring a drainage culvert somewhere, up to their waists in creekwater. but they still made it out and i managed to get one bomb in down the hill before i had to get out of town so we could get back up here. they seemed pretty cool and i wish i could have hung out a bit longer. also, riding on the max was awesome. maybe in half a decade we can do our own beacon hill bomb using the seattle light rail (ha).
my summary of the whole weekend: riding in portland = Sometimes I think of suicide, but I'm too pathetic and lazy to pull it off. Women hate me.. |
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