One of my goals as a father is to actually be home for one of my daughter’s birthdays. I was stuck in Chicago last April, and this April I’m in Portland. The up-side this time around is that the whole family should be with me here at some point, provided we manage the logistics and all. And that I find a house.

To that end, this past Sunday I decided to follow up on my prior raw pizza visit to Washington State with a bike ride there. I’d heard you could ride right across the I-205 bridge from Portland to Vancouver–and by “right across” I mean bicycles ride right straight down the middle of the interstate. Such an ingenious feat of city transportation engineering I’d never encountered, and frankly, it sounded too good to be true.

Given my pizza experience, I approached the situation with a degree of cautious optimism and checked the route out first on Google Street View. This didn’t really clarify anything, but the route did look even more magical and wondrous, given that habit Street View has of ghosting out sections of road and obscuring obstacles like other cyclists, leaving only their helmets. I was left with many unanswered questions.

Where, for instance, did the road go once you reached the other end of the half-mile long bridge, and how the hell did you get up into the middle of all that traffic in the first place? I sort of imagined a way you could do it (which turned out to be accurate), but as is my nature, I still suited up as if expecting this all to be some kind of hipster Portland trap, wherein some intellectual derelict living under the bridge would ridicule my stupidity at falling for the joke, endlessly poking fun at my naivete while re-purposing my beloved La Cruz into an admittedly attractive garden trellis right before my eyes.

Still, one image from Street View caught my attention. It was this dude clearly riding his bike across the bridge.

If Guy in White T-shirt can do it, thought I, then I can, too.

So I did.

It’s really great.

Turns out, the route I’d been taking to work goes right up to the I-205 bike path. I’d been turning to head to work literally five feet from the path that led to the 205 ramp (image at the top of the post shows the bike lane as it approaches the 205).

You do, in fact, go under the road and then up a ramp until you appear, kinda wonderfully, right in the middle of a whole bunch of speeding cars and mountain views and Columbia River.

While I did make note that deep section rims might not be the best long-term bridge commute option, the ride was nothing by gloriously fun. The north-bound route into Vancouver climbs pretty noticeably, but, being the first 75-degree day we’d had in a while, all the roadies were out letting you know what was what, so I just tried to pick guys in the distance to chase down with my 38mm steel beads and two week diet of Pop-tarts and beer. It wasn’t a bike commute; it was just a good time.

Once over you shoot down a ramp and follow a serious of dedicated bike lanes and extremely peaceful little sub-division routes. I was headed to Camas, only a dozen or so miles from Oregon, and everything about the ride was just great.

I think for the entire trip between states and over a body of water I had to ride on a section of road not clearly labeled as a dedicated bike lane for about 20-yards. Just incredible.

Here the old La Cruz reclines leisurely at a Starbucks along the way. Even the crowded strip malls had some bike lanes, and the dude who served me my coffee asked where he could get a Giro Atmos like mine. What kind of magical place is this, anyway?

I may even develop a taste for uncooked pizza.