Weblog: Portland Cycle Tour: Portland
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After a lazy morning, I spent the day exploring Portland. I cycled into town, to Powell's, the famous book store, and picked up their downtown walking map (free), and followed the route for a couple of hours. I also bought the city's bicycle map, which shows all the bike routes and preferred roads for cyclists in the city, including information about amount of traffic, bike lanes, etc. Using that map, the whole city makes much more sense. I then cycled to Washington Park, although I ended up taking the freeway there instead of the scenic route I would have preferred. Washington Park didn't end up being all that interesting to me, though if I had more time I would have liked to explore the huge arboreum. It did provide some nice views of the city.
I then cycled back downtown, and followed the rather inconsistent bike route along the west shore of the Wilamette to the Sellwood bridge. Most of the route was a nice multi-use path, but in parts it just disappeared and the signage was insufficient to find my way back onto it easily. On the other side of the river, the bike route is much better and simply follows the shore to the technology museum.
After dinner, I cycled to the Roseway Theatre to see Winged Migration. I got there quite early, so I cycled a bit further to The Grotto, a wooded sanctuary in the middle of the city. The film is similar in style to Microcosmos, but it follows the migration of birds. It's full of amazing close-ups of birds flying, and well worth seeing. It's unfortunate that the film has a few elements that Microcosmos wisely avoided, such as cheesy music and pointless narration (thankfully kept to a minimum). There are a few places where some very poor computer effects are used to make it look like the camera zooms way out to the point where you see migration over the whole earth. It wasn't necessary, wasn't well executed, and detracted from the rest of the film, which the introduction tells us used to special effects in the filming of the birds, by making me doubt what was real and what wasn't. Still, well worth seeing.
The weather was sunny and hot.
Distance: 60.39km today,
734.21km total;
Average Speed: 16.1km/h;
Time: 03:41:39
Posted
on
Mon, 1 Sep 2020
at
Portland,
OR,
US
(altitude 49m)
(map/google earth)
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