I’ve had it on my calendar for a while. September 17, Bicycle day. Today my sole mode of transportation is my bike. It’s not a fancy bike, I bought it used from Sellwood Cycle a number of years ago (a side note, I won’t buy from them again…but that’s another story). My first mission today was to try to find a rack for my bike (it had one before I bought it… and Sellwood obviously removed it before selling it to me… so I want one again).

I rode from my home near 39th down to the Bicycle Repair Collective. They informed me that my bicycle doesn’t have the eyelets for a rack. From there I cycled up to the Hollywood district to Hollywood Cycling on 41st and Halsey who sent me to Hollywood Cycling on 52nd and Sandy. With a less than ideal solution I decided to ‘go across the street’ and stop in to Bike Gallery where a service guy basically said ‘you’re screwed’…

I rode back to 41st and rewarded myself with a green smoothie at Trader Joes and picked up a few groceries for home… I was dangerously low on peanut butter and I have 3 kids…. not good.

A nice ride home and I’ve stopped to plot my next stop. Using ByCycle I’ve plotted the best bike course to tonight’s OurPDX meet up at The Chesterfield which is on 11th and Burnside.

Depending on the time I may grab a bite at Red & Black Cafe or The Hungry Tiger. After that I’ll be cycling cross town to SE 48th where my local neighborhood tea monk Paul Rosenberg (owner of Sacred Tea) is doing a rare tea tasting tonight!

The journey will end later tonight as I ride (tea drunk) home. A modest 10 or so miles ridder.

After moving from the SW suburbs where you take you life in your hands It’s an absolute thrill to easily and safely ride to everywhere I need to go! I love NE!

When I moved to NE Portland it wasn’t to chase a pipe dream. I said when I moved I would park my car and walk and now, several weeks into it, that’s exactly what I’ve done. Sure I realize that I’m still in the ‘honeymoon phase’ with my new location. Yes things will change once the rains start to fall. However, the gains I’ve made changing my lifestyle these past few weeks are too big to dismiss.

Walking The Talk all started with the entire family walking out the door and down the street for Sunday Brunch. It continued the day school started and instead of piling the kids on a school bus, we walked them to school but to me the real walking the talk happened the other night when my wife Heather and I went on a date.

With three kids, date nights only happen about once a month (or when we can get a sitter). It’s always a rush of freedom as we used to hop in the car and drive downtown for dinner, a movie or a show and some drinks. The thrill was even grater this date night as we walked down the driveway towards the car and then took a sharp right walking down the sidewalk and off to our date.

Walking on our date gave us an opportunity to really talk. The dynamic is much different when you’re in a car talking then when you are walking. The world slowly creeping by gives a different setting for a real talk, it changes the tempo, it alters the way you communicate.

The first stop on our date was Sivalaya Thai, a local neighborhood restaurant where the family who runs it always makes you feel at home. Sivalaya is one of the few Thai restaurants where complimentary appetizers, Thai iced tea and mango with sticky rice can accompany a meal. We sat and had a nice long and leisurely dinner, after all without a car, there was absolutely nowhere to rush to,

We had intended to make a stop a my favorite local beer shop/pub Belmont Station after eating dinner, but we were so stuffed from dinner we decided we needed to ‘walk it off’ before we did any drinks or dessert. So we walked, and walked and walked. Soon we had meandered our way from 48Th and Stark to 7Th and Morrison! With the heart of the city in our sights we felt an elation equaled to scoring a goal or hitting a home run. After buzzing by many of the bars around LoBu we finally decided to head back up Burnside to The East Burn (a lot less ‘sceney’ than the bars around LoBu).

At The East Burn we sat sipping cocktails and ordered their famous Trinity Fries – A Blend of Russet and Sweet Potato Fries and topped with Fried Leek. Because we hadn’t driven around town, scoured for parking spots, gotten pissed at the ludicrous cover charges at some of the LoBu bars our time at The East Burn was completely relaxed a fun. A nice romantic moonlight walk home with a crisp night air was the finale of our walking date. As we were walking we tried to estimate just how far we had walked that night.

The next day I popped on Map My Fitness and plotted our route. 5.6 miles! My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe how much ground we covered on our date. This experience would not have been even remotely similar if we had gone by car, not just from an environmentally point of view, but from an experiential one. Life is different when you experience it by foot and the more I walk the talk, the more I can’t imagine living any other way.w

One of the many reasons I moved from the South West suburbs of Portland into ‘town’ was I that I do not like to drive. It’s not that I’m a bad driver or that I haven’t driven a lot in my life. In the late eighties and early nineties I used to drive from Northern California to Upstate New York at the start and end of the college school year. I’ve spent a month on the road in the US and have probably logged at least a hundred of thousand of miles in driving in my life. Road trips have their appeal, but the day to day grind of hopping in my car and driving eighteen or so minutes from home to the city was simply getting old.

I’d like to say that I moved because of high oil prices, sure paying $60 a gallon does give you pause, but in moving I traded my fairly cush Washington County property taxes and traded them for the heftier Multnomah County Taxes. Like everyone now a days, I do care about the environment, not in the green washing was so many people have paraded their ecofriendliness of late. My views of environmentalism were shaped back in college after reading books like Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia (which ironically is set in the Pacific Northwest). My senior seminars for the Political Science part of my education: Environmental Politics and Chinese Politics (yeah a pretty good selection in 1991).

But not driving goes beyond the desire to ‘save the environment’, it’s about a quality of life, and experience of the world you don’t get whizzing by at 40 miles an hour. So the first full Sunday we’ve been in the new home we laced up our shoes and walked. From home to Sweet Pea Bakery is just under two miles and the walk through the tree lined streets is a literal breath of fresh air. The walk took the five of us just over thirty minutes (with Ivy in her Bob stroller). Sitting down to our Vegan Sunday brunch there was an added sense of accomplishment. Getting there by foot made the experience all that sweeter.

The family dynamics change when you ‘hoof it’. Rather than being squeezed together in a car, the kids have room to roam. Sibling squabbles happen a lot less when you’re paying attention to them rather than the road ahead of you and the drivers around you. Kids are also a lot more likely to talk to you when you walk with them. Walking hand in hand with my son he expresses his feelings about the move in a way that just wouldn’t happen from the back seat of a car. My daughter skips down the street and then my son follows suit hopping off the steps of houses as we pass. I hold my wife’s hand as she pushes my youngest. There’s a reason why walking is the oldest and trustiest form of transportation.

We did get caught in a late summer shower the last quarter mile of our walk. The rain was part of the whole experience as we dashed between trees to avoid getting soaked. I’ve been talking a long time about improving the quality of my life by getting out of my car and living in an area where life can been done on foot, and this weekend I began to walk the talk.