First Time Naked Bike Riders!

We found some food trucks parked at the edge of the park and had lunch.

We reapplied sunscreen, which took longer than normal.

We found a place to sit and took in the weirdness all around us, eventually realizing we were now part of the weirdness ourselves.

"Hey, I know what we need to do to fit in!" said Robin excitedly, "BODY PAINT!"

"Okaaay..." I responded cautiously, "what do you have in mind?"

" A couple of things, actually. I was thinking some kind of face paint to help disguise me if our pictures end up on the internet, and I've seen some women walking around with brightly colored handprints all over their body."

"Practical and fun too. Can I be the one to make the handprints?" I asked hopefully.

"I won't get handprints if you can't do them!" she replied, blushing.

We found a booth offering what Robin was looking for, She chose a cat face, which took a while but really came out well; she probably couldn't be easily identified in photos with the new camouflage. The vendor offered me several trays of paint with different colors. I dipped both hands in the red paint and began adding handprints on Robin's back, legs and arms. Once I got the hang of it I moved on to her breasts and ass.

"My turn!" she said," dipping her hands in blue paint and motioning for me to turn around. She left her handprints on my shoulders and ass, along with the words First Timer.

The vendor told us to let the paint dry for at least a half an hour before putting our backpacks on to avoid messing up the paint. We had a little more than an hour to go before the start of the ride, so we found a spot to sit and wait, our painted skin making us feel more like we belonged in the bizarre scene.

The music stopped and a voice came over the speakers urging riders to get into position on the street. We were finally about to get riding! We put our backpacks on and took up a spot near the center of the pack. We made an impressive sight, thousands of nude, partially nude or scantily clad cyclists as far as we could see!

Robin smiled broadly, clearly enjoying the experience so far. We heard cheering up ahead and the pack started to move; we rode slowly side by side. As many people as there were clustered together, it looked like it would be a slow cruise all the way, but that gave us more time to soak up the sights.

It was too noisy to talk but for a long time we stayed fairly close together. Robin drifted over to the side of the road, apparently not minding being seen up close by the thousands of cheering people on the sidewalk. I slid over too, but it took some time to work my way through the traffic to get over to the side. I could still see her up ahead, waving to the onlookers!

Every once in a while the police interrupted the flow of cyclists to let backed up car traffic get through. I got caught on the wrong side of one of these interruptions, completely losing sight of Robin as she continued beyond the cross street! We had never made a plan for how to reconnect if we became separated. I was worried but knew we'd be ending up in the park at the end of the ride, so I tried to enjoy the experience. We were in a business district now, with taller buildings and a wider road. And brighter streetlights, noticeable since the sun was just about to set.

I noticed a few riders headed in the opposite direction on the left side of the street.

"I must be nearing the halfway point, maybe I can connect with Robin as she heads back." I thought.

I stopped at the side of the road, feeling pretty self-conscious about standing nude just a few feet away from dozens of cheering spectators and almost as many cameras. I tried to ignore the crowd on the sidewalk and reached inside the front pocket of my backpack, but my phone wasn't where I thought I'd left it. Still hoping to reach Robin before she passed me on the way back, I moved on to the main compartment. I found the phone, but it was tangled up in...a bikini top?

"What's Robin's clothing doing in my backpack?" I thought before it dawned on me that I had HER backpack, which meant she must have mine. The one with no clothing at all, and my ID and phone. We pretty much never use each other's phones, and when we do it's usually been handed to us by the owner. I couldn't remember her lock screen password and was pretty sure she didn't know mine.

So we were now separated in Portland, neither of us with any wearable clothing and no way to contact each other OR our ride back to our rental SUV. I did a mental inventory of what we each had in our possession; besides her locked phone, I had Robin's ID, a bikini top and a pair of jean shorts for all the good they would do me. She had my ID, a card with Sam's contact info, around $8 left over from our food and body painting purchases, sunscreen and a credit card she probably didn't have the pin for.

Not an ideal situation.

Without any better idea about what to do, I resumed riding, slowly, in case Robin was pausing to look for me, thinking she would be back at the park before too long.

At this point in our tale, I'll turn over the narration to Robin to fill in the story of her time on her own.

Everything Joe has written so far is as I remember it, though I'm going to have to have a word with him about including so much detail about our first trip to the beach!

When I saw that he had been blocked by the police giving cars the right of way at a cross street I stopped to wait for him, but found that the spectators took that as an invitation to photograph me. A lot. I couldn't wait in the middle of the road without risking being the girl who caused a hundred-rider pileup and had no interest in a lengthy nude modeling session, so I pedaled on, slowly, thinking Joe would catch up eventually.

When I reached the park where we had started I began to get a little worried, wondering if he'd had an accident or mechanical problem. The traffic coming into the park was too heavy for me to stay by the entrance, so I moved a short distance into the park and decided to try calling him. Finding nothing very useful in what obviously was NOT my backpack, I said the first thing that came to mind, to no one in particular..."FUCK!"

I waited around 30 minutes without catching a glimpse of Joe and started to debate whether my odds of finding him were better if I roamed around the park or if I stayed put? I thought my chances were about the same either way, but opted for roaming, figuring I might as well see what my fellow riders were getting up to. There were a lot of naked dancers and a lot of semi-nude people watching the dancers. My theory was that the semi-nude folk were trying to work up the nerve to go all the way and join the nude tribe. I did see a few people do just that while I was watching. I thought that if I wasn't worried about where Joe was and how we were going to find each other I might have joined in!

I have no explanation for why it took as long as it did for me to figure out how to call Joe, maybe some sort of nakedness induced brain fog. It finally came to me...BORROW SOME KIND STRANGER'S PHONE! It turned out my pitiful story convinced the first guy I asked to hand over his phone; it's possible my nudity helped. I entered my number, waited to a full 9 rings before hearing Joe yell, "HELLO!"

The kindness of strangers had reunited us, and not a moment too soon as the police were beginning to clear the park! We agreed on a spot to meet and a few minutes later we were hugging each other about as chastely as two naked people can.

Joe texted Sam but got no reply, we guessed she was probably at one of the various post-ride parties. Having working phones again, we looked up the lot we'd parked the SUV in; thank God Joe had bookmarked it!

Seeing it was less than 4 miles away we decided to just keep on riding. After a mostly quiet ride, we reached our rental and loaded our bikes in the back.

As we pulled out of the parking lot, Joe said: "It's 10:30 and our ride to the yurt will take at least 2 ½ hours, if we don't have any more complications we'll blow past our 24-hour goal."

"Congratulations," I said, "but next time we do this we'll have to make some changes in our planning."

We finally had a stretch of time without anything going awry, and reached our yurt by 1:20. Our National Nude day adventure was over, except for a moonlit visit to the beach to wash off our body paint.