April | 2025 | Family Ride

It’s April! That means it’s 30 Days of Biking: a pledge to ride every day in April and share adventures with #30daysofbiking. I’ll kept up a thread on Bluesky, post on Instagram, Strava my rides, and put the most recent day at the top of this blog post.

April 18, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 18: Yet another day I didn’t get out all day and took a spin around the neighborhood. I’m going to run out of well-lit photo spots at the neighborhood market.

🚲 1.5 miles, 136.6 monthly total

April 17, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 17: Borrowed my kiddo’s bike today. This pâtisserie is finally repainted and is Barbie pink again. It’s been plain white for a while during its redo.

🚲 6.5 miles, 135.1 monthly total

April 16, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 16: Brompton day! I forgot to take a photo so here’s a pic of the Brompton in Seattle last month.

🚲 8.6 miles, 128.6 monthly total

April 15, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 15: The Franklin High AAPI Club was selling $3 (marked down from $5) musubi! Yes, of course with spam! I bought two, thinking someone in the family would be interested, but there were no takers so I got them both to myself!

🚲 13.6 miles, 120 monthly total

April 14, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 14: Yipe! Almost forgot to leave the house today, hiding from the pollen. I did my same little neighborhood loop as day 7, by the little market that sells all the usual essentials + switchblades and brass knuckles. Tomorrow will be more exciting.

🚲 1.4 miles, 106.4 monthly total

April 13, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 13: Very short ride to grab dinner for kiddos. Forgot to take a photo.

🚲 1.7 miles, 105 monthly total

April 12, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 12: Ladds 500! Today was the “8th first annual” Ladds 500 and it was a blast! I haven’t been in a few years and I knew it would be more crowded than I’m use to and it sure was! It was too congested for my team of three to get around all 500 times. I did 95 laps for team Hot Moms Ride Cargo Bikes (40 with a passenger on my cargo deck), 2 bonus laps as stoker on the back of a friend’s tandem, and three upon arrival so I’m going the declare that 20 miles of circles. I didn’t Strava the whole time, thus the need to calculate. But I Strava’ed enough to get a funny map!

🚲 29.9 miles, 103.3 monthly total

April 11, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 11: One small bike + one big chair in preparation for tomorrow’s one big bike + many small and big chairs.

🚲 9 miles, 73.4 monthly total

April 10, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 10: snax

🚲 2.2 miles, 64.4 monthly total

April 9, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 9: 9.8 miles to work and a bike shop and beyond.

🚲 9.8 miles, 62.2 monthly total

April 8, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 8: A threefer with groceries by cargo bike, then gym by single speed, then kid pickup by cargo bike + kid bike. Everything is nearby, though, so all that’s only 9 flat miles.

🚲 9.3 miles, 52.4 monthly total

April 7, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 7: Just 1.5 miles around the neighborhood at night…which was better than the phoning it in of last night.

🚲 1.5 miles, 43.1 monthly total

April 6, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 6: Tired, lazy, rainy, case of the Sundays. Finally late at night rode a bike inside the house to meet quota. Here’s a pic from a week ago in Seattle to make up for the boring, photo-free day.

🚲 0.01 miles, 41.6 monthly total

April 5, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 5: Twinning with another Crust romo at the bike racks by the pie shop during the day!

And at night: a spin with the Parkpre, lighting the way with a camping headlamp (and it worked great!)

🚲 18.8 miles, 41.6 monthly total

April 4, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 4: Aw geez, it’s so early in the month and I’ve already forgotten to document the day with a photo. I took my Parkpre out today, and here’s a photo of it from a month ago on the MAX light rail.

🚲 8.8 miles, 22.8 monthly total

April 3, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 3: Just a grocery run today, and a small one at that.

🚲 2.2 miles, 14 monthly total

April 2, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 2: A day with no commute and no errands! I rode down our street and back right before bedtime. It counts!

🚲 0.7 miles, 11.8 monthly total

April 1, 2025
#30daysofbiking day 1: I don’t know if I’ll have a theme for the whole month, but I’ve got one for the day: Cars, man!

While biking half a mile to the orthodontist this morning, my kiddo and I had to leave the bike lane go around a landscaping truck. Meanwhile a distinctly non-bikey looking woman was crossing the street nearby and acknowledged us with a, “Welcome to Portland, City of Cars!”

After the appointment the kiddo took a bus to school and I Bag-and-Dragged™️ the extra bike home. I stopped by what used to be my favorite pink portrait wall, but it’s white now.

Later in the day I escorted the kid to an after-school class and while waiting at a crossbike to cross a busy street, a school bus stopped to our left to wait for us and honked long and hard. The honk wasn’t directed at us, so I assumed it was meant to encourage their oncoming traffic to stop for us, too. Mind you, there’s no legal requirement to stop for bikes at cross-bikes, but lots of folks don’t know this, including this polite but loud school bus driver. Plus, the honk worked!

My least favorite time to pedal past a high school is at the start of lunch when so many recently-licensed drivers are fleeing campus as quickly as possible. 8pm after night classes isn’t that fun to navigate through, either, but unlike lunchtime it’s 50/50 parents to students so it’s a bit calmer. But not completely calm—tonight a big black SUV with its lights out barreled out of the school parking lot, zoomed right past us, careened around a traffic circle, and sped off. Cars, man.