The Roll Over America Velomobile tour began at Salmon Street Springs on the waterfront recently and I had a P.90 to test before shipping it off to Lithuania. So I made a trip over the Morrison bridge to check out the cool collection of human powered three-wheeled vehicles. They are beautifully designed engineering marvels and were arrayed facing the waterfront in front of the fountain.
It was a very bright Portland day and a good crowd had gathered to see the travelers off on their cross-country adventure. Since their departure was emminent, I went to work photographing the riders(?) and their vehicles. There was a real exitement in the air about these Velomobiles that had been shipped from Europe specifically for this event.
Since it was uncharacteristically bright for a Portland day, I enjoyed working at a fairly rapid pace with relatively short pinhole exposures. There were a number of variations on what seemed to be the typical Velomobile design so I sought out a few unusual examples for the photograph above. These are cyclists of course, and they were outfitted accordingly.
I thought about how enjoyable it would be to travel with the group and document their exploits. But I had to settle for serving as an illustration of a "typical" Portland inhabitant with my African Grey parrot Zane on my shoulder and a rather unusual camera on a tripod while another Portland resident explained to the Velocyclist below why Portland was such a great city. The young rider was from the North of England (I unfortunately neglected to get his name!).
