Southwest Sunday Parkways.

Portland's Sunday Parkways (where a loop of roads are partially or totally closed to car traffic and the bikes and the walkers come out to enjoy the roads) is in Southwest Portland for the first time.  Matt and I rode from our house in North Portland, stopped at church/Sand in the City and then joined up for a ride.

Headed up Terwilliger, traffic free!
 

Stopping for a banana and a self portrait.
 

In Gabriel Park, Matt did some Zumba.
 

By Maplewood School we stopped for a magic show.  Brian Proctor, the magician putting on the show, was quite good.  He balanced the know-it-all of the kids ("You know, I can hear everything you are saying," he said in response to the running commentary by an eight-year-old: "I know what he's going to do next, he's going to join all the  ropes into one."  The kid shut up and was amazed at what happened next) with jokes for the adults, ("Here's a magic marker," he sniffs it, "I think I know why they call it magic.")

At one point, he asked if anyone had a dollar and, the audience being primarily children, no one did.  I grabbed one and handed it over.  Brian had me write my name on the dollar in sharpie, "Your first felony?" he asked as I was doing it, and then took the dollar from me.  The dollar swiftly changed into a Zambian bill which he gave back to me.  Holding the Zambian bill, we watched as red sponge balls and limes disappeared and appeared in a variety of cups.  For his finale, he carefully cut open an lime and there was my dollar inside the lime.  We were all--adults and children--amazed.
 

So I can recommend Brian Proctor for any of your magic needs.  And if you have no magic needs, then perhaps you can invent some.

At this point, the camera battery died, so there are not more pictures of Sunday Parkways.  Overall, I thought it was a good course.  There were some tight spaces (I wasn't a fan of the two-way bike traffic in a single lane along SW Vermont,) but I was a fan of all the hills.  They kept me busy through the ride.