PENDLETON, Ore. – Flags provided by Fred Bradbury of the VFW flew high as Pendleton Mayor John Turner addressed the riders gathered at Til Taylor Park on SE Dorion Ave., saying that “Til Taylor would think [that] having a bike week in Pendleton is the greatest thing since sliced bread.”
Wednesday, July 19, 2017. Pendleton, Ore.
(Pendletonian Times/James Tibbets)
Pendleton Bike Week organizer Eric Folkestad told riders that the 2017 Bike Week has had the “biggest turnout yet” before handing the mike to Umatilla County Sheriff Terry Rowen, who led the Pledge of Allegiance.
In an interview after the ceremony Folkestad said that the Pendleton Bike Week is a “growing, major rally on the west coast.”
Over at the Pendleton Convention Center, award-winning children’s author Paul Owen Lewis says that he has been riding motorcycles for the past 40 years, and writing children’s books for 30 of these.
Lewis says that he saw the opportunity to write a children’s book about his pastime of 40 years after asking “Mr. Google” how many children’s books exist that deal with bikers. Google told Lewis that there were none so he pitched the idea to his agent in New York.
“No major publisher would touch it” says Lewis. His previous works have been distributed by major publishers including Random House, who Lewis says thumbed their nose at the idea.
After receiving no bites on the idea for two years Lewis began to consider self-publishing the book. He says that while he thought “self-publishing was for losers,” he stated that he “really wanted to write this book.”
Motomice was written and illustrated by Lewis and is published by Beyond Words Publishing of Hillsboro, Oregon. Festival organizers confirmed in an email that Lewis has been invited to the Sturgis Buffalo Chip 2017 Festival.