Riding Bikes

Riding bike is really cool. Last night Rex called up to ask if we could all ride bikes today, so we did. Mark, Rex, Max and I rode around the neighborhoods between NW 19th and downtown, played in Dragon Park ("Rarrhh! I'm a lava monster!"), ate and drank at the Hotel Oregon, and had ice cream at Serendipity, the best smelling place in the world.
It smells like being 7 years old, in the candy store on 4th St. in San Rafael, where I once got 5 soft serves because the guy filling in for the owner (who was at a funeral) couldn't get the machine to work right. Total bliss. I was replete. There was melting ice cream everywhere. I had one in each hand, my dad had two, and my mom had one, walking down the sparkling sidewalk.

We rode back through the NW neighborhood to about 12th Street, and came home. We looked at the 1920s bungalows, kept the kids from getting run over, and enjoyed the town.

In the evening I went for a ride out Hill Road, which turns to gravel where the yellow line in the road ends. There are two more hills behind that one. Not too steep, but it was a lot easier to come back in the 54" gear than it was going out in the 70" one. It's cool to ride on gravel with fat tires, but there are still cars (well, pickups) that use it as a real road. I had to put my shirt in my mouth on one downhill to filter the billowing clouds of dust after an F150 with a trailer of ATVs passed.I'm surprised at the number of dirt roads in Oregon that actually GO somewhere. Even in Portland, there are neighborhoods where you're driving along and "whoops!" there's no pavement. It's cool. It reminds me of Australia. Which reminded me of 1970s California. Which reminds me I have yet to write the post called "Why DO so many Californians move here?"

The colors in the evening on Poverty Bend Rd ("Poverty Bend Road" might be the best name for a road ever) were incredible. Very intense greens. Warm orange lambs. A field that could not be any greener. The Perkinje Effect, of course.

Named for Mr. Perkinje... of course, who noticed that in the evening, right before sunset, red things really popped, and green things looked really cool. He figured out that it was because the light from the Sun had to pass through more atmosphere in the evening, and some of the shorter wavelengths don't make it. So more green and red light gets through to reflect off green and red things, and hit our eyes and make us say "ahh, the Golden Hour!"

My friend Holden told me about the Perkinje Effect a long time ago, at sunset, which made me realize something important. If you notice something, and can give it a credible explanation of WHY it's happening, you can name it after yourself.
You want to be careful, though. If I figure out that the reason people are such wadweeds* on the road, or choose to put things up inside themselves, I might not want to call it "the Philip Effect". No.Besides, "the Philip Effect" is already taken. It's the effect where people notice something happening, and explain it, and get to name it after themselves. "The Philip Effect." Simple.

Riding out there made me glad to be an American. But this... made me proud.

*I was pleased to see that Ben Pappas' 1992 coinage, "wadweed", is completely absent from the internet. Until now.