It’s April! That means it’s 30 Days of Biking: a pledge to ride every day in April and share adventures at #30daysofbiking. These days I find the everyday posting much harder than the everyday riding so no promises, but I’m gonna give it a try and post to a running thread on X, on Instagram, Stravaing all my rides, and putting the most recent day at the top of this blog post.
30 Day of Biking 2024 wrap up:
I made it! Only made possible by the fact that the WordPress iPhone app is much better than last time I tried to use it. It’s just too hard to blog from my computer these days. Short phone-composed posts are better than nothing!
Halfway through today I realized that if I biked 25 more miles I could round out the month with 500 miles. Not that 30 Days of Biking is about mileage, but it’s the only time I bother paying attention to my mileage. I tally my miles so I have a sense of what an average month is like, but that ends up making it fun to follow the numbers and it makes me want to boost them up if I can. However, rather than try to cram in 25 miles, I ended my 30DoB with a much-more-fitting 2-mile cargo bike trip to Grocery Outlet for 50 pounds of fizzy water (for a work event—I am not super into fizzy water like my Gross Out checker suggested). Wouldn’t a cargo bike errand have been the most perfect end to my month?! Well it doesn’t matter because I had to pop back out for kiddo cold medicine. That was 2 more miles done on my little bike because I didn’t want to take the fizzy water off my big bike. Obviously it occurred to me that just 10 more grocery store trips would get me to 500 miles for the month.
I didn’t do anything epic this month, but I did all the usual awesome stuff: carried lots of large and heavy loads, rode a bunch of different bikes, biked with lots of friends, tested lots of route, made so many grocery runs I didn’t even mention most of them, and tried to create a better bike situation for aging Pixie-dog. The most glaring omissions are finding furniture on the side of the road and going on a camping trip. And going on a family ride! All those years and years and years of family rides (our first 30 Days of Biking was in 2010) has resulted in two independently-biking teens so I’ll ride with one at a time to appointments, but that’s about it for family rides these days. It’s a good thing, but I miss my little passengers.
April 30, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 30: I started my day with a bunch of not-biking: 10-minute walk to catch a bus to catch a second bus to another 10-minute walk to then pick up a bike.
🚲 24.7 miles, 486.2 monthly total
April 29, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 29: Forgot to take a photo so here’s one of the right bike, but the wrong pants from Saturday. Took the work e-bike (and black pants) to work and back today. ⚡️ZOOM⚡️
🚲 12.4 miles, 461.5 monthly total
April 28, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 28: yuuuuucky weather today so I wimped out on my weekly childhood bestie ride this week and insisted we walk instead. To a bakery. For malasadas. Because I thought something sweet would brighten my sour, soggy mood.
But then I got on the bike for The Portland Trifecta (food cart pod, little free art gallery, bike test ride) 🥡🖼️🚲💕 with a visiting Seattle friend and it rained and drizzled and cleared and repeat repeat repeat all afternoon long.
🚲 22.5 miles, 449.1 monthly total
April 27, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 27: One of my neighbors was sitting on her porch (not that today had porch-sitting weather 🥶) and shouted, “I like your pants! Cutesies!” as I rode by. Most of my wardrobe is black or grey. I’m not sure if it’s because that’s what I like or because that’s all I find that fits me at the thrift stores. I mean, it’s both, but I don’t remember which came first. I found these “cutesies!” pants at the Goodwill bins in Glendale (LA, CA) so they’re not locally sourced.
All but 2 of today’s miles were on an e-bike so that was super fun! But also super chilly because it was so awesomely easy 🔌⚡️ 🚲 34.9 miles, 426.6 monthly total
April 26, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 26: I like biking to the Clackamas Kaiser (routine kid medical appointment). Our route is mostly multi-use path that connects to a red, grade-separated bike lane (Red! Like in the Netherlands!) to get to the medical center. The red lane ends at the corner of the medical center and rather that continue uphill straight in a regular painted bike lane in the stroad, we turn right on the flat sidewalk. The opposite direction of our sidewalk block features a contraflow bike lane in the one way road, and I do love a contraflow bike lane, but we stick to the sidewalk for the other direction, too, because a contraflow bike lane that ends in a stroad is just too confusing to navigate out of. Today we saw a person driving their car the wrong way on this one way street—that was a first for us! And not at the edge, over the bike lane, but smack dab in the middle of the street. I think they were probably trying to get to one of the nearby shopping centers and turned a block too early and didn’t want to navigate through the medical center parking lots to correct their course. I have no idea if they could see my incredulous stare from the sidewalk due to the dark tint on their front windows. But hey thanks, wrong-way car, for inspiring me to do some Googling and learn about Oregon tint laws and tint percentages in general. I’d say this car was sporting 20% instead of the 35% max, which runs the risk of a $360 fine. The more you know!
After the appointments we hopped the MAX and rode three stops on the way home. Portland high schoolers ride transit for free so I only had to pay for me. I love biking around on my own schedule rather than having to wait for buses and trains, but if I had a free pass I’m sure I’d ride transit much more often.
🚲 25.2 miles, 391.7 monthly total
April 25, 2024
# 30daysofbiking day 25: I thought I’d have a fun errand today (carry a kid by cargo bike to pick up a bike from the shop), but instead I worked from home all day and only stepped outside for tiny dog walks. I was going to just skip, but decided to phone it in inside instead. I’ve biked down the hallway in years past so stationary pedaling is new for me for 30DOB. If I put enough weight in my Big Dummy basket it lifts the back wheel off the ground and the Brompton was just about heavy enough.
🚲 0.00001 miles, 366.5 monthly total
April 24, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 24: Carried 60 pounds of fizzy water to work. Semi-regular ✨THANK YOU✨ to TacomaBikeRanch for selling me his old Xtracycle WideLoader for a song (10 bucks!!) 12 years ago. Love this thing!
🚲 14 miles, 366.5 monthly total
April 23, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 23: I don’t like fixing flats I don’t like fixing front flats I really don’t like fixing rear flats I don’t even know how to fix rear belt-drive flats. An ode to my Haulin’ Colin trailer that made it super easy to ferry The Street Trust’s Vvolt e-bike a quick little 1.2 miles to the Something Cycles bike shop.
🚲 16.9 miles, 352.5 monthly total
April 22, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 22: 100 helmets in my Haulin’ Colin trailer. They looked more impressive, but felt much lighter than the 50 locks I toted before fetching the helmets this morning. I’ll admit I like my big, impressive-looking, but light loads, heh.
🚲 18 miles, 335.6 monthly total
April 21, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 21: 2 of today’s miles were a trip to food carts with a friend from Seattle who was passing through town!
🚲 20.3 miles, 316.4 monthly total
April 20, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 20: weekly ride with westward with a stop at Tito’s Taquitos in Beaverton—so good! Then I hopped the MAX to get extra east on my way home. It was my first visit to the new Gateway North MAX Station. The “A Better Red” project is rad, but I hadn’t realized it ate up part of the I-205 Trail multiuse path.
🚲 52 miles, 296.1 monthly total
April 19, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 19: 24 miles on the small bike with no photographic evidence, then 2.5 just-as-exciting miles with the big bike to bring a kid bike to Bike Frequency’s new location (2 doors down from the old location) for a tune up.
🚲 26.5 miles, 244.1 monthly total
April 18, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 18: Did some errand running and route testing in Milwaukie. I adore little car-free cut-throughs, but this one was too narrow for my bike with the Xtracycle WideLoader attached. Plus it’s paired with 20 feet of gravel so it’s not the best to take newbies on anyway. Ah well! I’ll be back without the WideLoader (and without toting 50 bike locks 💪 along for the ride) because like I said, I ❤️ lil cut-thrus.
🚲 14.3 miles, 217.6 monthly total
April 17, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 17: There was so much road construction on the way to and from work with no marked detours that I felt mildly lost the whole commute. Good timing, though, with all the warnings I’ve been seeing about work zone awareness week. Often it’s fun to be forced a block or two off the norm because I get to see new things. Today the most notable unusual thing I biked by was the “Honk if you love Elvis” van. I’ve seen it a few times before, but never regularly. I didn’t stop to take a picture, so here, instead, is my bike outside Nayar Taqueria. Last time I was here I forgot a lock, so this orange grenade “stroller lock” (this lock is of the caliber moms use to lock their baby strollers at Disneyland) I got at One on One Bikes eight years ago is a big step up. The day of the forgotten lock I thought some dude was casing my bike, but he hadn’t noticed the lack of lock and was simply excited to peep a Crust Bikes headbadge up close.
🚲 15 miles, 203.3 monthly total
April 16, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 16: Rode a regular bike to work and brought my cargo bike home. Almost forgot to take a 📸 so here’s the custom sticker on my fork my friend Jen made for me 😊
🚲 14 miles, 188.3 monthly total
April 15, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 15: Birthday kiddo pickup, birthday sushi pickup, trying to keep up with kiddo.
🚲 6 miles, 174.3 monthly total
April 14, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 14: 10-mile pedal to a 6-mile walk around the southwest hills. I get to see a lot of cool things biking, but slowing down to walking speed always reveals even more. And sometimes things are aimed at the sidewalk instead of the street, like the sign for a lost cat named “soup of the day.” Hope you find your way home, little buddy!
🚲 20.6 miles, 168.3 monthly total
April 13, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 13: Bullitt’s first Goodwill drop off. My cargo straps are on my Big Dummy that I left at work yesterday so I tied two old holey tubes together around the box. Then my soon-to-be 17-year-old (what!) and I fetched birthday cake ingredients, grabbed dinner, visited the free range neighborhood chickens, said hi to a goat, and hit the dirt jumps (well, one of us did that last one).
🚲 2.9 miles, 147.7 monthly total
April 12, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 12: Tabling supplies toting day! There was a chance of rain so I protected my precious cargo with a picnic blanket. I haven’t been this way for a bit so while I knew there were changes happening to the road through Rose City Golf Course, this was my first look at them! A low curb is going in the middle of the street to keep one-way cars on one side and bi-directional protected bike lanes on the other. At the end of the day I left my cargo bike at the office and took my Parkpre home. I’d conveniently left it at work a couple weeks ago.
🚲 16.5 miles, 144.8 monthly total
April 11, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 11: I took the Bullitt to errands today since my Big Dummy is still covered with tabling stuff. Originally purchased to be a kid-driven unicycle-carrying vehicle, I think it’s time to just admit that it’s my bike now :) Which means I should swap out its saddle because *ouch* it came with a hard little seat.
I learned this novelty bike-shaped bike rack that’s a pain to park a normal bike at was great for the Bullitt! And I only wheeled over to try it because I was having trouble getting the Bullitt close enough to lock to the regular staple rack. Go figure!
I also took the Bullitt to the grocery store for the first time ever. I saw my nextdoor neighbor in the parking lot and she said, “Let me know if you need to buy anything big and I’ll drive it home for you.” And I said back, “No, Sharon, let ME know if YOU need to buy anything big and I’ll bring it home for YOU!” Good times.
Note: I only bought half our usual amount of groceries so I can’t speak to capacity versus the Big Dummy just yet. Since I didn’t buy anything fragile I rode the Bullitt on gravel for the first time! It did great. I think the Big Dummy is definitely more of a mountain bike, though. Plus I’m not a pro bakfiets driver yet.
🚲 2.6 miles, 128.3 monthly total
April 10, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 10: I toted tabling supplies home from work for a shorter ride with them to an event in a couple days. A neighbor yelled, “Get it, girl!” at me as I pedaled by 🤣
🚲 12.5 miles, 125.7 monthly total
April 9, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 9: I didn’t take a photo of my work commute because on the way home I was distracted by loose bunnies. I leaned my bike against a tree and captured one and put it back over its fence, and the second one put itself back under its fence before I could grab it. Once I stowed my bike at home, Pixie and I walked back by the bunnies to see if all was well….but it wasn’t because now the bunnies’ yardmate chihuahua was loose! I’ve found this little guy on the lam before. In fact I’ve found about a dozen loose little dogs in the neighborhood and it’s definitely easier to get them home on foot than on bike. Now I know that goes for bunnies, too!
🚲 14.8 miles, 113.2 monthly total
April 8, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 8: Work and back. Chilly today, but no rain while I was out!
🚲 12.4 miles, 98.4 monthly total
April 7, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 7: It took me all week to use a bike besides my cargo bike! How interesting. It’s the best bike and so useful, but it’s nice to be zippy sometimes. And I can fit a regular-sized bike on the MAX light rail. Like most weekends, I hung out with my longtime pal Miwa today. We used to swim together as kids in Albany (the California one), then we started walking together during lockdown, and now we bike together!
Lately we’ve been biking to Beaverton or Hillsboro, but today we mixed it up with a never-again-too-hilly ride to the MAX to Beaverton. It was a terrific adventure! With bonus stops at Sesame Donuts, BG’s Food Cartel, Universal Cycles (and now I remember this is not the first time I’ve biked us over there on a Sunday when it’s closed), and Trek Beaverton for tubes, tubes, and more tubes.
🚲 36 miles, 86 monthly total
April 6, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 6: Today’s theme was animals. On the way to the pet store I herded a bunch of chickens in the middle of one our gravel roads back into their yard, and then on the way home I visited neighborhood goats. Then I headed back out to feed a friend’s cat for more small miles and more animals.
Having a big cargo bikes means I can combine trips the way people in cars do. I don’t normally get Pixie so much food, but they only had the 28-pound bag in stock. So I got that an a freebie 5-pounder of a new brand and they fit fine with a week or two of groceries.
🚲 4.5 miles, 50.5 monthly total
April 5, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 5: Zero school + 1/2 day work = double Lego! First stop was Bricks & Minifigs for their big bins of used Lego sold by volume, then on to Lloyd Center and Brickdiculous for a Lego set, minifig, and viewing of a sweet bus display in their gallery area. And a bonus for me: an awesome new Pinball museum called Star Tropics right next door.
Did you happen to notice my lock job? I came out of Bricks & Minifigs to discover I hadn’t connected the cable to the U, leaving my kiddo’s bike unlocked. In my defense it was hailing when we arrived so I was a bit distracted. I didn’t have a saddle cover with me, but I did have my rain pants so I wrapped them around both saddles keeping them nice and dry.
🚲 15 miles, 46 monthly total
April 4, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 4: Hooray for hybrid—I worked half the day from home and half from the office. I celebrated the kids’ last day of the school quarter by picking up pizza from Baby Doll Pizza on my way home and bundled it up into two Trader Joe’s cooler bags because they’re somewhat insulating and super cute.
Life with independently biking and busing teenagers is pretty cool, and as I approached home I realized my timing was looking good to intercept a kid leaving afterschool D&D at a game store halfway between school and home. I ended up making it there a couple minutes later than perfect, but I caught up a block from the place!
🚲 13 miles, 31 monthly total
April 3, 2024
# 30daysofbiking day 3: I’ve never stopped to check out this newish something-or-other in the neighborhood because I’m usually a block or two away. It’s the world’s sweetest doggie stick library!
🚲 1.75 miles, 17.8 monthly total
April 2, 2024
#30daysofbiking day 2: Tuesdays are office days and today was a spectacular commute because I rode in and out with a coworker for her very first bike commute! And then I impulse stopped at St. Francis Ice Cream on the way home for vegan strawberry for the kids and Pixie Lix for me. Obvs I chose it for the name, but also: it’s cookies and cream + rainbow sprinkles so the flavor is 💯
🚲 14 miles, 16 monthly total
April 1, 2024
I wasn’t sure I’d make it out today and thought I’d either blow the challenge on day one or ride a bike down the hallway late at night (which is totally legit), but my sweet kiddos convinced me I should grab burgers for dinner so I traveled a whole mile (each way). I dressed partially for the weather I want: shorts and flip flops, and partially realistically: puffy and thick knit cap. Worked fine!
I took mostly paved roads over (just one gravel block) and as many as possible gravel blocks home. The gravel blocks have few, if any, cars on them which is reason enough to always use them, but my chosen route was planned to use the crossings and stoplights I like best in each direction. Also, this route meant I could snap a photo by our local dirt jumps for ya! The Big Dummy’s wheelbase is too long for things like this, but sometimes I like to crash and embarrass myself here on a smaller bike.
🚲 2 miles, 2 monthly total
Family Ride 