Summer Solstice

As summer officially begins in the Willamette Valley, it’s rainy and gray outside my office window. It’s supposed to stay rainy all weekend. Instead of being out in the yard, letting the puppy chase us around and grilling steelhead, we are in the house revisiting our cozy, wintry side. It’s weird to know that summer camp starts next week. I’m transcending the gloom with memories of my own adult version of summer camp, which was the years I spent participating in Pedalpalooza in Portland. Back then it was just a few weeks of themed bike rides, although now it spans the whole summer. I tried to join a few rides every week when I lived there. They ranged from a handful of people exploring points of interest to hundreds of people in costumes taking over part of the city. Some happened during the day and others at night; I did one Midnight Mystery Ride that ended up at a secret party spot in the grass off of Interstate 205. I was never a big party girl, but these casual bikey celebrations usually suited me. Aside from the beer and other adult substances, I think they made us all feel like kids again.

In the early 2010’s I joined the Solstice Ride, led by my friend Chris. The plan was to spend the entirety of the year’s shortest night on bikes, from sundown to sunrise, making a giant loop around the city. A few scores of people joined at the beginning, around 8:30, to ride to a bluff where we could watch the sun set. Picnic snacks and hidden drinks were passed around for pregame. We continued riding as the dark settled in, chatting and playing music from miniature speakers to liven up the otherwise ordinary, midweek night. After each handful of miles, we stopped at city parks to rest and hang out. Some were in neighborhoods I wouldn’t normally visit in the dead of night, but the magic of bikey summer camp made the city feel wide open to us.

We refueled with donuts from a 24-hour shop on NE Alberta Street and junk food from one of the many Plaid Pantry stores that were open all night. There were no bars on this tour; nobody wanted to park themselves indoors just to drink. The whole point was to be on our bikes as long as we could stand it, watching the inaugural summer night complete its course. People started peeling off from the group when it got too late, or when we happened to ride by their neighborhood and they figured they might as well go home to sleep. I lived in Southeast Portland at the time, nowhere near our route, so I had no such temptation. I’d taken the following day off work so I could be in this for the long haul. I must have had a thermos of coffee on me.

In the small hours of the morning, we’d reached the farthest point of North Portland and started heading south along the industrial edge of the river. Here were the metallic clanking and squealing of rail yards and shipping ports, ordinarily muffled by the sounds of daytime traffic. I’d biked along this bluff plenty of times during the day and was always captivated by views of the city’s West Hills, Forest Park, downtown buildings, and boats traversing the river. With all of that muddied and stilled by darkness, I watched the industrial activity in the foreground instead. I’m not sure what work was being done at that hour, but it felt like I had a secret window on the city’s machines carrying out their slow and steady duties in the absence of humans.

As elevation dropped to meet the river level, our group was pared down to the remaining eight or ten cyclists. The Eastbank Esplanade was magical at that hour. A bit of chill came off the water, flowing quietly as it reflected the streetlights of downtown Portland across the river. Both sides of the waterfront are busy during the day with bikes, runners, walkers, and tourists. It can be hard to navigate on a bike in summer. I leaned my bike against a fence and gazed left and right, basking in the sight of an empty riverfront and the silence of bridges that carry thousands of cars daily. The silence broke as bells on the Burnside Bridge started to chime, signaling that the drawbridge was about to be raised. (There was no tall boat coming, but the drawbridge mechanisms need to be exercised every so often to be kept in working order.) I watched as the surface of the flat, concrete bridge was slowly split in two, both halves carefully rising to nearly eighty-degree angles. This shouldn’t have been a thrilling event, but my friends and I were true Portland nerds and I think we all loved to see the bridge raising happen under “wild” conditions.

We crossed the river as the sky was just barely starting to lighten, aiming to reach Pittock Mansion, a prominent spot in the West Hills, in time to watch the sun come up. That meant climbing to the top of a 1,000-foot hill, pushing ourselves forward with what little energy we had after being up all night. I wasn’t the only one who had to dismount and push my bike on some of the steeper roads. Eventually we all collapsed on the lawn of the mansion, which wouldn’t be open for visitors until a reasonable hour. Surrounded by manicured rose and azalea bushes, sweaty and happy, we witnessed the sun rising behind Mount Hood and awakening our beloved city with pink light.

I sat still long enough to start feeling the exhaustion in my bones, then it was time to go home. I coasted down the steep, tree-lined curves of West Burnside for what felt like a full twenty minutes of no pedaling before hitting the city center. Traffic was just starting to come in from the outer parts of the city, over the same bridges that were empty a couple hours before. I glanced at the commuters with the private glee of knowing I was on my own version of summer vacation.