Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Bike Culture

Introducing Bike Culture is something more complicated than starting with one bike or one rider, it is a feeling, a mystery, something that has to be experienced from within.  This story in no way shows the magnitude in which Bike Culture is infused within Portland, but it touches on just a few aspects of what Portland has to offer.  In a longer story this will become about Portland’s core, it will become about the faces of Portland, but right now, it is a meet and greet, it is the showing of what is going on within another city involving bikes.  To some this won’t be shocking at all or it might be eye opening to some who want to see more.  From the midnight hour to the early morning drop-offs, bike culture is always happening, and to understand it all requires a lot of leg power, availability, and respect.  Riding a bike isn’t just something that kids do, or something that an aspiring ‘Lance Armstrong’ does…it is for everybody who wants to really get to know not only who they are but where they live.  It evokes emotions in a person that will make someone ride a bike that is much smaller or larger than the average bike, it makes people get off their horse and choose a bike for the game of polo, and it inspires a father to bike his three sons five miles through a city and over a bridge to school, and it inspires people everyday to get out and explore, even for just a moment; Just long enough to make a small revolution inside themselves.  Riding starts with just one revolution.

Friday, December 19, 2008