We are dyed-in-the-wool Pedalpalooza fans. It’s our favorite time of year! If we haven’t told you about Pedalpalooza — listen up! It’s a summerlong festival of biking, with rides led by anyone who wants to. We most definitely want to! Themes range from instructive (History of Food Carts!) to fantasy and cosplay (Unicorn Ride!) to activism (Sunbirds to Gaza) to parties on wheels (Loud and Lit is our favorite!). Sometimes rides are just about eating — the Ice Cream ride, the Taco ride, the Pizza ride, another Ice Cream ride… Others are just about listening to music (some with clever double entendre themes), like Back Street Boys (with back streets), Cake (with cake to eat too), or the ever-popular Prince vs. Bowie ride.
We’re attending as many rides as we can, and we’re eager to see you get on a bike and join us, even if you’ve never done a Pedalpalooza ride.
Pedalpalooza is totally unique, and without this community-focused bike activity Portland would be a very different place. While the main intensity is just for the summer (defined as June 1 to August 31), rides continue throughout the year at the Shift2Bikes.org website.
Anyone — yes, anyone, even you — can sign up to lead a ride. Most ride leaders are expressing a personal passion or favorite bike ride with their first one. Some our team have led include the Mad Max ride, “Yes I can fit it on my bike!” ride meant to help others learn how to ride with unwieldy cargo, the Pink bike ride (yes! pink bikes), and the skeleton ride (visiting all the fun skeletons in town). Some rides have themes that suggest a costume or a sort of bike to ride along (Cargopalooza for instance!, the cat ride), others are more subtle. One famously weird ride was named “Britney Spears Toxic Ride” and included visits to former toxic waste sites, with historical information, and a matching Britney Spears toxic song for each site. The Twilight ride visits filming sites while playing the soundtrack along the way. The Back Street ride plays Back Street Boys while visiting every back street.
Once you’ve been joining Pedalpalooza rides for a while you start to ask yourself, what would be even MORE fun/weird/adventurous/funny/wonderful? The best ride I have ever attended was one that brought a film projector and screen setup on a trailer up to a high point above the city and played the movie the ride was themed around at the end. Less than a dozen riders made it all the way to the end and it felt like we had been selected as the most important and special people in the city for a private showing. We ate the snacks we had brought along and wrapped blankets around ourselves and watched a movie while the moon rose.
And then — there is the World Naked Bike Ride! Many bike rides will be without clothes but there is usually one enormous ride with thousands of nude or partially nude riders. Body paint, fairy wings, sequins and lingerie abound as riders protest against oil dependence and body shaming. (Nudity is protected free speech in Oregon, with some limitations.)
If you are visiting, ask us what our favorite ride during your visit would be, we’d love to get you out — and maybe we’ll come along with you. It’s always a good day to ride your bike.