The 2023 Bike Summer Pedalpalooza calendar is filling up and your favorite ride SEW MANY BIKES is back for year 2! This post will get updated as we fill in the map and places we’re going to hit on our slow, no-drop, all biking and sewing abilities ride from NE PDX to SE PDX. (*see below for bikey jargon definitions like “no-drop”)

Pedalpalooza Official Calendar is here.

• When: Saturday, June 24, 2023
  • 11 AM to 3 PMish
• Start: Modern Domestic, 422 NE Alberta
• End: Sew House 7, Ford Building, Suite 350, 2505 SE 11th Ave.
  • Less than 7 miles total
• Ride Leader: Marne Rowland Duke

GOOGLE MAP IS HERE

Ride Description: 

This year’s ride starts at Modern Domestic in NE Portland. We’ll gather beginning at 11 am at the corner of NE Alberta and NE Grand Ave., but come earlier if you’d like to do some shopping (they open at 10 am). The kind staff at Modern Domestic will be happy to hold your purchases for you to pick up after the ride. 

For our second stop we will be revisiting Portland Fashion Institute. They hosted our group last year, and we wanted to check out their new, bigger digs. 

A short ride away we’ll pay ElizaBeth Rohloff a visit in her atelier. ElizaBeth will give us a tour of her studio where she creates custom and hand-made, vintage-inspired millinery, and clothing and hosts sewing classes.

Nancy Stovall, award winning quilter and local Portland Modern Quilt Guild (PMQG) celebrity, is opening up her studio, Just Quilting. We will also have the current PMQG, Marika, on the ride with us if you have any questions about the Guild, why you may want to join, and how to get involved.

Our final stop is at the Ford Building on SE 11th Ave. We’ll head inside to first visit Sew House House Seven owner Peggy Mead. Peggy will tell about how she’s built a popular independent pattern company. To wrap up our day, we’ll meet Dawn from Fiber Rhythm Craft & Design, also located in the Ford Building. 

*This is a NO DROP ride.

What does that mean? It means me, Becky Jo, or any of our organizing team/corkers will make sure no one is left behind.

What’s a corker? That’s those cool people that stop traffic on cross streets so we can all go through as a group. These folks are usually PILLARS in our biking community and are the kindest, most generous people you will ever know. Feel free to reach out and give them gratitude during the ride.

This ride is SLOW and CHILL. No really. I, Marne, my husband with the GoPros, and a few others will have ebikes so we can efficiently catch-up between cork and caboose points, but you can comfortably ride a single gear, heavy cruiser the entire ride if that’s your baby. See the youtube links below to see how slow we really go.

Uh, what’s a caboose? That’s the person who brings up the rear to make sure no one is left behind.

There will be bike watchers at every point. As there can’t possibly be enough bike racks at every stop, fear not. We will either go in at shifts or if we do all fit at once, volunteers stay behind.

Stay tuned for more details as your Ride Leader Marne and her crew of volunteers makes this an amazing adventure for you.

Amit’s Video from last year: Sew Many Bikes 07-02-2022 #pedalpaloozabikeride #sewing – YouTube

And Becky Jo’s very early attempts at footage (apologies in advance :D) Sew Many Bikes – Pedalpalooza Portland x Portland Frocktails biking and sewing event July 2022 – YouTube