providence bridge pedal

on sunday, we got up at 6am to get ready to do a long bike ride. we met up with our friends, team "kamikaze" at 7:30 downtown. (our friend c brought 4 extra water bottles filled with the drink "kamikaze," hence our team name.) we joined 20,000 other people to ride over portland's ten bridges. j's friends chose to start at 8, but the ride started at 7am. it was really slow going the whole day, until we reached our 5th or 6th bridge. at one point, there was such a large traffic jam of bikers that we were sitting completely still for 45 minutes. we reached the eighth bridge right before they closed it (the fremont bridge doesn't usually allow bicycles) to bike traffic. halfway to the st. johns bridge, we lost race support, so we decided to quit & just ride back. doing all ten bridges came to somewhere around 36 miles. i was getting awfully grumpy by the end. because we were running so behind due to the stupid traffic jam, we had to push ourselves really hard to make the cutoff times. my rear end was still sore from the previous weekend's ride. there were tons of kids riding all over the place, and few people followed common biking etiquette. i won't be doing that ride ever EVER again. biking is not fun. it hurts, and it's dangerous. you could be the most responsible rider, and people can still run into you, causing crashes. not my idea of fun.