On a sunny Sunday morning, Kate Holleran and Claudia Peterson are off on their 17-mile nursery road ride.
Despite the introduction of daylight-saving time making their 9 a.m. ride a little chillier, nothing could break the spirit of these dedicated cyclists.
Holleran, a 27-year Sandy resident who has been an avid mountain biker for nearly as long, began road riding as an alternative to running.
“In Sandy, I road bike,” Holleran said.
Despite her love of mountain biking, there are very few trails that originate in Sandy. To her, the biking scene in Sandy is all about the road.
Holleran and her friends’ route of choice is their nursery ride, which originates from the old Sandy High School, goes out Bluff Road to Proctor Road and down to Dodge Park, providing fabulous views of Mount Hood and lots of nursery scenery.
“We like to bike, and we have fun doing it,” Holleran said.
They also enjoy taking the Springwater Trail into Portland and then taking public transit back, with Holleran noting she finds both MAX and Sandy’s SAM bus to be very bike friendly.
During the summer, the Mountain Express, which travels from Sandy to Timberline, is equipped with a bike trailer so cyclists can use the bus as transportation up the mountain and travel down on their bikes.
Bike-friendly Sandy
Jennifer Marks, Sandy Main Street coordinator, is passionate about increasing bike tourism in Sandy. Her main projects thus far include creating a 2015 Bike Map and getting Sandy businesses to be bike-friendly.
When she started her job in Sandy last year, the city only had two bike-friendly businesses listed on rideoregonride.com — AntFarm and Organic Sandy. Now, there are 11, including the Sandy Public Library, Otto’s Ski and Mountain Bike Shop and Chariteas tea house.
“We just want Sandy to be a destination hot spot for cyclists,” Marks said. “We want them to dine, lodge, shop here.”
Marks has approached businesses about joining Travel Oregon’s Bike Friendly Business Program. The program has a list of more than 40 amenities, including free Wi-Fi, public restrooms and bike racks, to become bike-friendly, a business only has to offer three of them.
Marks said according to rideoregonride.com, nearly 160,000 cyclists pass through Sandy on their way to the Sandy Ridge mountain bike trails.
“We really want those businesses to take advantage of those cyclists passing through Sandy,” Marks said. “We don’t want to be the gateway as much anymore, we want to be the destination.”
Her goal is to eventually sign up 15 businesses
Staying safe on the road
As a rural community, most of Sandy’s roads are not equipped with bike lanes.
“Bike share programs, bicycle advocacy groups, Safe Routes to Schools, and bike lanes … are now part of the conversation,” said Nancy Enabnit, the city of Sandy’s community services director. “Many people are not comfortable riding on a road with only a painted white line as protection.”
Holleran said despite traffic traveling a little faster, there’s less of it on Sandy rides. Rural roads are part of what makes road biking in Sandy a great workout.
“We live in Sandy. You can’t go anywhere without going up a hill,” Holleran said with a laugh.
“In an ideal world, bicyclists and drivers will have equal rights when it comes to road use,” Enabnit said. “However, no matter if a cyclist has the law on her side, cars are bigger and the cyclist will probably feel the results of a collision more than the motorist.”
Holleran advises cyclists to wear bright colors and always be aware of their surroundings and oncoming traffic.
“You should be able to bike safely doing that,” she said.
Holleran said you do need to have two separate bikes for road biking or mountain biking. Mountain bikes need some kind of suspension in order to be driven on rougher terrain, while road bikes are much lighter than and generally not as beefy as mountain bikes.
Although you can spend thousands of dollars on buying the best gear possible, Holleran recommends buying two bikes that are pretty good and getting into both mountain and road biking.
“They’re different varieties of the same species,” she said. “They both have wonderful things about them.”
For mountain biking, Holleran suggests either the Sandy Ridge Trail System, which can get pretty technical, or the easier Government Pass, which takes you from Government Camp nearly down into Welches.
Holleran said children are likely to love mountain biking, in which they get to be out in the wild and don’t have to worry about cars.
“It’s good to get children in the habit of biking to places they want to go,” she said.
Originally Published in Sandy Post
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