Mark’s Bloomin’ Journal

It’s so very refreshing to be back in Texas with the very air itself redolent of a different and right now, welcome political tilt. The warmth of the sunlight, all those gigantic Stars and Stripes standing straight out from gleaming white poles, the expansive landscape, the courtesy of its peoples, a real and palpable energy and sense of direction with an infrastructure befitting of a developed nation. I suppose many in the US outside the Pacific Northwest can take this kind of thing for granted but as you might recall, in between flights, I roost in Oregon and more specifically the ever smaller minded region that contains Portland. One that has become so self absorbed and quite conceited in its being selfishly preoccupied with “Keeping Portland Weird”. Well let me tell you how about done with “weird” I am. Weird in Portland is not funny, not even amusing. It is backwards thinking and acting, frustrating and likely detrimental to the efforts of more productive and worldly members of its citizenry. This arrogance of the self anointed… movers, shakers, hipsters and slackers, one might expect to find more amongst the achievements of the larger than life Texans… yet don’t. It turns out the Texans are just too busy getting on with getting on while the tatted gourmands and strollers of swaddled pooches in strollers of ‘Stumptown’ are too busy putting the brakes on everything but tax subsidies for windmills, while expanding public sector jobs and lengthening entitlements as they ponder how to stop this bridge, that bridge or much of anything from ever being built so we can all NOT go someplace in our Prius’s.

Yes, It was very much time for me to flee the insularity and bilious green pontificating that causes ballooning unemployment, an ever more grubby and bleak downtown core … at all hours, and a culture that sometimes thinks it invented cycling as transportation. We show ignorance of the real cycling meccas like Amsterdam, Oxford, Calcutta or Copenhagen as we paint a few lines willy nilly on unimproved streets and then permit the users to be harvested by that sacred cow the TriMet bus and repeat drunk drivers with nary a line of legal protection or recourse for them in Oregon law. Portland and Austin always draw comparisons so its time to go and ride there. Maybe I can even get another sticker that says ‘ I rode with Lance’ to go along with my ‘Keep Portland Weird’ sticker… which obviously is applied upside down.

Its earlier than the crack of dawn as the deliciously none PC Ford Crown Victoria ( this “full sized gal” still returns 23 mpg over the weekend ) winds its way through the hill country from Cypress Mills into downtown Austin by way of immaculately surfaced and spacious highways all lightly trafficked. Its warm, breezy and fuzzy starlight fades and ends in a few spits of light rain as throngs of us make our way to the bridge where the Livestrong 5k run/walk starts. The bridge and the course is closed to all traffic and the space between balustrade and barrier fills to bursting with a colorful (predominantly yellow) and scantily clad crowd of cheerful humanity caught in the process of raising a lot of money for the cause which while making cancer a national priority also empowers cancer survivors and their families. Started and kept in the spotlight by Lance Armstrong and a couple good pals, It has been successfully doing so for a decade now. The combined activities for this weekend plus a most generous check from RadioShack will raise something over $4M and bring the decades take to some $3/4B. (more…)

Depite being back at my desk, or perhaps because of it I am more than ready to get back on the bike for a good cause. I am just back in from San Jose, CA. and another hot 100 miles, a few of which were spent trailing Lance Armstrong who can still ride a bike with some alacrity despite somewhat feeble declarations to the contrary. San Jose was the second stop of the superbly orchestrated Livestrong Challenge series whereby cyclists, runners and walkers participate in their respective disciplines to raise money for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. On another, also rather hot day a couple weeks ago, $1.0M dollars was raised in Portland, OR. This weekend past $1.5M was raised in San Jose, CA. Next it is onto Philadelphia, PA in August. I have no doubt it will be just as hot there and that the dollars raised will continue to climb right along with the mercury. We will wrap the Challenges up in a still (hopefully) balmy Austin, TX. in October.

San Jose was not merely as hot as a wood fired pizza oven, it was about as smoky as one, courtesy of the states current incendiary properties. The hills on either side of the valley being barely visible though only a mile or two away. Sunday morning dawns fairly cool and some thirty five hundred plus participants are unleashed by the national anthem as trumpeted by a young dentist from New Orleans who proceeds to cycle the battered instrument around various refreshment stops jazzing up the exhausted or those on their way to being so. (more…)