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Kristine Okins
To her, adventure was bike ride away
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Midwest transplant and
artist Kristine Okins embraced Portland's urban lifestyle as a messenger
The Oregonian, July 26, 2005
By Joan Harvey
Their hearts were young and carefree. The three bright, beautiful
sisters came individually to Portland from small-town Minnesota and
called themselves Team Oki.
Kristine Okins was the middle sister, the adventurous one. Her first
trip to Portland was made riding boxcars with two friends. Her family
members were wrecks by the time she arrived, and her sisters chewed her
out, but she made it safely and loved telling the story.
She was an artist, a graduate of the Perpich Center of Arts Education,
and had a bachelor's degree from Minneapolis College of Art &
Design. After she moved to Portland, she got a job as a bike messenger
and made it her profession.
She dreamed of adventure and seeing the world. She wanted to bike
across the United States and across Ireland, the land of her ancestors,
and to sail tall ships. Her favorite book was "Captain Blood." She lent
it to friends to read and, after they had, sat down with them to watch
her copy of the old Errol Flynn movie.
She reveled in the young, urban Portland lifestyle. She lived with her
sisters, Melissa and Angela, and other roommates in Sabin and then
Boise neighborhood houses.
Kristine had been a vegetarian for a long time and more recently became
vegan. She haunted vintage clothing stores and was a perfect model for
retro clothes, with her bright red curly hair and rail-thin body. She
had trouble getting above 100 pounds to donate blood.
She wore the clothes for fun (an incongruous skintight black prom dress
to hang out with Angela at the Amnesia Brew Pub), but was developing a
refined, elegant style.
She didn't own a car; every place she went, she went by bike. She lived
a healthy life, never smoked and never drank to excess. She always wore
her helmet biking.
Kristine courted her reputation as being hard as nails. She had a
vocabulary that would make Capt. Blood blush, and wasn't hesitant to
use it.
And yet she was as gentle as a kitten. She loved animals and couldn't
bear to kill a spider; she'd cup it in her hands and take it outside.
She still slept with her childhood stuffed animals, Lima the llama and
Leroy the lion.
She was a wizard with a sewing machine. She patched the pants of her
fellow bikers so that the patches were barely visible, and she made
bags out of vintage fabrics that she sold online and more recently at
Last Thursday.
Kristine was in love. She met Billy Bleichner, a bicycle mechanic at
River City Bicycles, through mutual friends. He teasingly told her,
"Bike mechanics and bike messengers aren't supposed to get along in
this town."
She smiled and answered, "We'll see about that."
She swooped around town on a pink Tomasso that she and Billy spent six
months building together. It fit her perfectly.
When Melissa encouraged her to get back to her career as a graphic
artist, Kristine shrugged it off. She had had a taste of sitting all
day in front of a computer screen, she said. Right now, she loved her
life, loved her freedom and wanted to enjoy it a little while longer.
She had a whole lifetime ahead of her to spend in front of that screen.
She was looking forward to Melissa's wedding. She bought two new-old
dresses from the Glamour Gallery, designed the announcement cards (a
picture of a hitching post with a knot around it) and was designing the
invitations. On July 1, she and Billy were going to New York City,
where she was registered to compete in the Cycle Messenger World
Championships.
On June 27, 2005, Kristine was hit by a truck in downtown Portland. She
died the next day. She was 25.
Her close-knit community of fellow bikers held a memorial ride for her
July 1. Afterward, a group met to talk and cry and reminisce about her.
In the evening, they decorated two bike wheels with flowers and, in
their sad tradition, cast them into the river.
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