Biking and Blueberry Math

Yesterday my father and I decided to wake up early and ride our bikes to Portland. Actually, we drove to Sellwood and then rode along the wonderful Springwater Corridor. It’s 4.5 miles, and that’ll take you just past the Ross Island Bridge. On the way..

• 5 great blue herons
• 5 ospreys (2 nests along the way, spotted one baby)
• 1 woodpecker
• 7 canadian geese
• and many, many ducks of varying shapes and colors

We continued along and crossed the Steel Bridge, went back along the other side of the river via Waterfront Park and headed back over Hawthorne. And then back up the trail. The whole ride was about 10.5 miles.

Portland seems very different on bike. You can take the back roads all you want, and avoid traffic and those hobos who wash your car window even when you don’t want them to. But best of all are the unique people who make up the biking bunch.

Sporting "No One Died When Clinton Lied" and "If you can read this, you’re not the President" stickers on the back of their bikes, all the folks we talked to on the way seemed very in the know; environmentally conscious, politically active, healthy and energetic, my kind of crowd!

Though I must admit I was a bit worn out after we were done. Phew! Time to step into New Seasons Market and get some nourishment.

Let’s see.. after that Max came over and finally saw the first Spiderman. Now we’ll have to go see the second one, aha! Third time for me!

This morning at 6:00 we were off again, shorter course this time (5 miles maybe), to Bob’s Red Mill for breakfast. Then we headed back through the woodsy Aldercrest roads.

I was seriously tired afterwards, but.. seeing as I wanted to see Spidey again, I needed to earn some money today. My dad said I could wash his truck for $10 and I took him up on the offer.

I guess it would have been nice to know that he hadn’t washed his truck for a year and a half. It wouldn’t have been that bad if the bed wasn’t covered in old wood chips and the interior wasn’t covered with mud. But there’s no time like the present, so I got right to work.

Two and a half hours later I finished, and resolved not to do any more work for the rest of the day! So, of course, my mom wanted me to go out into the shrub lands and pick blueberries for eternity, or until she got another 6 pounds. Think about it:

• Blueberries weigh around 1 to 2 grams each, if they're lucky.
• It takes 453.59237 grams to equal 1 pound
• For 6 pounds, we needed about 1360 blueberries!
• I estimated that you can get 20-60 (if you're lucky) ripe blueberries per bush, so we'd have to visit at least 20 different bushes in the farm.
• Picking a blueberry takes about .5 seconds, so 45 minutes was the lowest possible ammount of time I could get it done in, not coutning breaks, snakes, and traveling from one bush to another.
• So, all in all, picking blueberries is lame.

Anywho, sometime after I had stopped wondering how blueberry picking could be fun, I had filled up my bucket. My cousin and I wandered off, as far from the berries as we could muster. As it turned out, that just ended up leading us into some Himalayan blackberries. I guess our fingers were still in the picking trance, so I went about picking the blackberries.

When my mother finally called that she was done with her precious, precious blueberries, my legs were scratched and bloodied. So I stumbled past the strange horned goats (who were also picking berries) and into the car.


"YOU HAVE CHANGED MY LIFE AS OF TONIGHT, SARA ELISE BERNERT!!"


Well, I guess I have that going for me...