Eastside Esplanade Bike Ride

At the beginning of the summer Cali and her friend Kat made quite an extensive list of things they wanted to do this summer. Everything from dancing on top of a mountain (which they did on our trip to the beach) to going roller skating which they did last night and wait until you see the pictures from that!!

Another thing on their list was to go biking along the waterfront downtown. They decided that Thursday this last week was the day to do it. Tessa and I were lucky enough to be invited along.

Maybe it's because they knew I would buy them lunch at our favorite pizza place before hand....

But I prefer to think they actually enjoy my company!

We drove the bikes down to the waterfront right near OMSI.

The Esplanade goes for several miles along the river with great views of all the bridges, crosses over the river and then runs along the waterfront on the west side.

We even had a little visit with the former mayor of Portland - Vera Katz!

There was only one slight injury for the day - and it was me! We had stopped along the Esplanade before crossing the bridge over to the west side and my foot got stuck on the peddle as I tried to get off the bike. This caused me to fall over - in slow motion - trying to protect the camera that was hanging from my neck. I finally landed on the ground with the bike on top of me.

All three girls remained on their bikes laughing at me - not one of them offered to help me! I managed to untangle myself without their help!

I did incur an injury too.

It looked a lot worse in person and it HURT! I wasn't able to put my shoe back on and rode the rest of the way with it off.

Cali was very resourceful though and saw some Park and Rec guys working along the waterfront and asked them if they had a band aid - fortunately they had a first aid kit in their truck so I was able to patch up my wound!

We also were able to witness an exciting rescue by the Coast Guard. As we crossed over one of the bridges to get to the Esplanade we saw a motorcycle police officer standing looking over the side of the bridge. His lights were going on his bike.

I casually mentioned - "Oh, someone must have jumped"

When we got down to the esplanade sure enough there was the coastguard on a jet ski with someone laying on the back of it. There were additional paramedics waiting on the dock with warming blankets - I was right - someone had jumped! It looked like he was fine though.

Cross that one off the list!