Portland

Why Portland rocks, in a somewhat large nutshell:

I went to Powell's City of Books and went to the Cycling section. They had several copies of Forester's Effective Cycling, one used. They had several copies of Mapes' Pedaling Revolution. They had several copies of tons of books about bicycle repair and about commuting by bike, all the various bike sports figures, bike touring memoirs, etc. And they had copies of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac.

I am old-fashioned. I could have gotten these books from Powell's online. Or from anyone online, really. But I was stubborn. I went all over Long Beach trying to find Forester and Mapes. I went to places in LA, Phoenix. Whereever I happened to be. Nope. Now, Santa Cruz was close. There were tons of bike books at Logos, but not Forester or Mapes.

The fact that Powell's has these books says, first, that Powell's is awesome. But also it reflects that there is a real cycling culture in Portland, with numerous people reading books about cycling.

I could have figured this out by the racks outside of Powell's, made to look like various famous books involving bicycling, and crammed full with various pretty bikes, but that would have been lazy.

Anyway, so now I have my Mapes and Forester books, and can go back to Long Beach happy.