The first thing you will notice is that on main streets there are always bicycle lanes full of bicylists, especially during rush hours. So, one has to be always alert because there are so many of them, especially when car and truck traffic is heavy whipping by along your right side or crossing in front of you. It made me a little jumpy today because some of them are going so fast down slopes like up to 30 mph or more and weaving through traffic at times. So, if you aren't careful and are from a different kind of driving experience be really careful as a driver.
I hadn't driven during peak traffic before so I wasn't prepared for dealing with this. Also, I'm driving a big 4wheel drive truck so because of side clearances I had to be extra careful to miss riders riding alongside me or crossing without warning in front of me while driving.
In Portland, Bicyclist seem to either have right of way over other types of vehicles or else they think they do. So, because of this it is sort of like the way motorcyclists ride in England, France, Germany and Italy. In other words it can get pretty scary.
I can remember when we visited Nice, France and drove over to Monaco in a rented Mercedes. My daughter was only about 14 then and hadn't learned to drive yet and we were stopped at a traffic signal and a motorcyclist was so completely drunk one Friday night that he kept slipping back into the bumper of our rented Mercedes. My then 14 year old said, "You need to yell at him to stop doing that!" I said, "Hey. He's either so drunk or on drugs or both that doing that isn't going to help the situation" (especially because motorcycle macho is much different in Europe than it is here in some ways). So, she wasn't satisfied but had never had to deal with really drunk people or people on drugs before. I just hoped the guy was going to survive the night and didn't want him to die while my 14 year old was watching by crashing into something while going over 40 miles per hour. IN my own life I have seen too many people die on motorcycles and even have seen people in death convulsions caused by sudden death.
However, I have driven in other countries and grew up driving in the Los Angeles County, California area so I'm pretty much ready for anything after that. I remember all the people in the 1950s who came to California from very countrified places (even in the farmlands of California) that couldn't get off of freeways because no one would give way to them for changing lanes to exit a freeway according to their (country standards of driving). In Los Angeles people will cut in front of you with about 6 inches to a foot to spare in front or back while driving 75 miles per hour and most of the time they are skilled enough to do that as long as you can handle it as a driver having that done to you that way. And if you are there never take it personally because this is just how people drive in Los Angeles. Because if they didn't they would never see their families because the traffic can be bad there 24 hours a day. But, generally speaking your best time to drive would be 9pm until about 5 am or 10 am to about 3 pm if you want to go faster on freeways. But, even then you might get into traffic jams miles long even then because of various unknown reasons. And anytime after 2pm forget it Friday and the same from about 2pm to 9pm on Sundays. Much of the time Los Angeles and Orange Counties are a 100 mile long traffic jam on freeways there.
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