Braggy Blogger

As of today, I've ridden my bicycle over 500 miles in the last 8 weeks. For some cyclists, that wouldn't be much of a milestone. For me, it's pretty darn cool. I've noticed that the same hills whose slopes used to make me want to vomit, fall over, and cry (Beacon Hill, Jackson, MLK, I'm looking at you) aren't the obstacles they used to be.

In fact, these days I tend to prefer riding up over Beacon Hill to travel to and from work: the streets are wider, and the views are enough to make me forget all about my sweat and toil. Every time I cross the Jose Rizal Bridge and see downtown spread out below me, Elliott Bay and the Olympics in the distance, or cruise south down the Chief Sealth Trail and gawk at the panorama of Mount Rainier and Lake Washington, I fall in love with Seattle a little bit more.

(The steep streets behind Interlaken Park, among others, continue to make me want to vomit, fall over, and cry, so I still have plenty of room for improvement.)

Ride Civil

I like this. Good job, Bike Hugger!

Day 8

I fell asleep on the bus ride home this afternoon and missed my stop. Fortunately the sharp left turn two blocks past my stop was unexpected enough to penetrate into my sleeping brain and wake me up, so I didn't have to walk far. I blame Tuesday's failure of the light-rail package; I'm pretty sure these types of mistakes never happen on a train.

I'm planning to ride a 40-miler on Sunday accompanied by other people for the first time. I'm a little nervous about the likelihood of being the slowpoke of the group. It's just two other women my age from work, so it's not like going on a Cascade Bicycle Club ride or anything like that, but they are both slightly younger and definitely less heavy than me. And one of them just ran a half-marathon a couple of weeks ago, so that's a whole 'nother league of fitness right there. I figure I'll count it a successful ride just as long as I don't collapse in a shuddering heap at mile 32 and have to call a taxi to get me the rest of the way home.

I've been knittin' a mitten

Unfortunately it came out too small. I was too afraid to divert from the pattern, having never navigated the construction of a mitten, and so that's what I get...one too-small mitten. I think I know what to do to make its mate fit my hand more accurately.

I biked home from work last night at dusk (taking the direct route on 24th up Capitol Hill...a mistake I shall not repeat until my legs get quite a bit stronger) and immediately headed back out again so I could cast my provisional ballot in yesterday's election. I wasn't terribly informed, and left most bubbles empty; it was really just Proposition 1 that I was determined to vote for. I didn't think it would pass (and it didn't), but I still wanted to cast my vote in favor. It would have implemented a "regional rail and transit system between Lynnwood, Shoreline, Northgate, Seattle, Bellevue, Redmond, SeaTac airport, Kent, Federal Way and Tacoma," as well as funded projects on various roads in the region, as I understand it. It was to be funded by a regressive sales tax, and various environmental groups made persuasive arguments against the roads portion of the package; despite those good arguments in opposition to the plan, it was nice to briefly imagine the idea of getting around the region without a car.

I grew up on the ass end of nowhere. We lived 20 miles from town. If you didn't have a car, you stayed home. There was no getting dropped off and picked up by the parents unless you could do whatever it was in a small enough time frame that the parents could run some other errands in town before picking you up again--no running in and running home when the round trip was almost an hour.

I'm sure that's a big part of why I get so drooly over public transit projects--even Metro, which already has its fair share of drool and other bodily fluids crusted in the crevices of its buses. My very first public transit memory is of taking the Max train on a visit to Portland when I was about 8, and zipping to the zoo or OMSI or somewhere grand and impressive. After that, I remember when I was about 15 I visited a friend who'd moved to Eugene. On Saturday night we decided to go see a movie. We walked down the street and caught a bus that took us right to the mall where the theater was, and it blew my mind, man. I was a little awestruck. How did she know where the bus would take us? How did she know where it would stop, and how could you make sure it stopped where you needed it to? Wasn't it all just a little too easy?

When I moved up here for school I had to get cozy with the bus system in order to go to work or ever get off campus on my own. One of the first days after moving in, my roommate and I decided to go explore Seattle. "Let's go to the Pike Place Market!" we decided, so we hopped on a bus and headed downtown. When we hopped off the bus we promptly lost all our bearings and strolled off in exactly the wrong direction. But we did find our way back to the bus stop and back to school, and from then on I was all about the bus system. To and from work every morning, up the hill for groceries, downtown or the U District on the weekends, and I got along without a car just fine for six years. I even tagged along with a friend when she wanted to go all the way to the SuperMall in Auburn one summer Saturday.

Then I spent a tiny bit of time in Boston, and in London, and realized almost for the first time that public transit could do more than merely get you around town. You could live just as far from London as I had lived from my hometown, or even farther, and still get on just fine without a car.

It's possible to live in Seattle--even way down at the southern edge of it--without a car. But honestly, it's not very easy (and I imagine it only gets harder the further you get from the city center). There are about 3 bus lines that run within easy walking distance, fortunately; two go downtown, and one goes north through the U District up to Loyal Heights. The one that goes to the U District only comes this far south until about 7:30 p.m. on weekdays, and not at all on Sundays. After that, you have to transfer on Rainier to one of the other buses coming south from downtown (which is going to kick my ass when I start evening classes in January, finishing class at 9:30 p.m. And, appallingly, it may just be quicker and easier to come home on the bus, pick up the truck, and drive all the way back to the U on those nights, ridiculous as it sounds.). But one of those two has a varying schedule, and only half of its runs come this far south. And sometimes the bus is just too jammed full to pick up any additional riders; I've seen them blaze past bus stops without slowing when that happens.

Well and all. No transit option can satisfy every possible route configuration for every person, of course. But for now it looks like I'll be stuck fantasizing about expansions to my carfree options.

November ride!

I rode my bike to work this morning for the first time since early October. It turns out that riding 8 miles on a chilly, foggy morning is in some ways much more pleasant than making the same trip in warmer weather.

With both lanes open on MLK finally (for all but a couple of short segments), I made it to work in about 40 minutes. I think I improved my time by crossing over to 23rd at the top of the hill instead of continuing down MLK into the Madison Valley. The latter route takes me down too far, and I then have to climb back uphill just before work. It's not much uphill, but it's enough to get me all out of breath again. By sneaking over to 23rd via side streets atop the hill, and then whizzing down 23rd, I don't have to climb at all after Cherry. I do, however, have to clutch fervently at the brakes all the way down the other side of the hill.

Metrics

I went for a bike ride on Saturday, riding down to the end of the Green River Trail in Kent and back up home to Rainier Beach again.

Number of miles ridden: 38
Number of miles by which this exceeds my previous longest ride: 12

I felt like a cartoon, I was so happy to be out there. The sun was out, the trail was surprisingly uncrowded--nothing like the Burke Gilman, which is the only other regional trail I've ridden on. I stopped for a break after 12 miles in a newish park in the Kent area, dedicated to three men who died on a fishing trip in Alaska a couple of years ago. The park had a shelter, restrooms, picnic tables, a barbecue grill, and lush green grass...and nobody was there. On a sunny Saturday. Of a three-day weekend. Weird. I refilled my water bottle at the drinking fountain and went on another 7 miles, to where the Green River Trail intersects with the Interurban Trail.

I thought about taking the Interurban back up to Tukwila to make the ride a loop, but saved that one for a different day. I was in a windy trail mood, a mood for meandering along the riverbank and behind office parks and under bridges, not for a straight-as-an-arrow sprint back north. I wandered home, showered, and headed out to the bookstore with Mr. Thel for dinner and literature.

Despite my expectations, I wasn't even sore on Sunday. Of course, the trail is flat as can be...but still, I preened a little at the evidence of my budding strength. I can't imagine a better way to spend part of a Saturday, and I can't wait to go out again.

What Thel Saw

On Cloverdale
A brown-and-white pit bull is resting halfway out of an open second-story window, his front legs casually crossed, looking contemplatively out at the street like a jowly middle-aged man planning his escape.

On Lake Washington Boulevard
There is a woman wearing a yellow jacket and black shorts, her curly grey hair flowing in the breeze, who rides her bicycle every morning along Lake Washington Boulevard. She rides south in the mornings and north in the evenings, so we cross paths with a nod on the days that I ride. She, however, rides every single day. I have seen her every morning from my car for the past three or four months, rain or shine. Usually in the mornings when I drive our paths cross just at the top of the Seward Park hill--the same hill I had to get off and walk up the first time I encountered it. She crests it smoothly, seated, her legs moving sedately. When I ride my bike I am on the road much earlier, and our paths cross up north of I-90. She rides with just as much easy grace on the flatter road there--not for her the hunched-over grimace and the racing whirl. She gives me a slow nod without losing cadence, and I feel like I've crossed paths with a queen.

The best thing Thel saw
Coming up away from the lake near the end of my ride, the road climbs through a series of S-curves. Non-athlete that I am, I always slow down to become the pokiest little puppy imaginable up that hill. This morning just where the slope begins, a bad-ass man came whizzing up past me, clad in black and blue spandex. Perched high up on his back was a wee pink backpack sporting the Dora the Explorer logo. I only had a few moments to take it in before he was gone around the corner, far fitter and faster than I. And although you didn't bother calling "on your left" as all the polite bicyclists do, I salute you, swift athletic Dora-loving man.

Pedal to the Metal

I'm on track to ride 3 days this week--more days than driving! And heaven knows I must ride on Friday, the actual Bike to Work Day!

In response to comments on the last post (comments!) I'm still pondering the car sale. I've spent so many years struggling with a credit card debtload...it would be ever so lovely to get out from under it all at once. I do hesitate because, well, yeah...riding my bike to work for a week in lovely May weather, when the sun is up before 6:00 a.m. and the birds sing as the wispy mist on the lake melts away, is a far cry from riding to work and back in the dark and rain and mud and puddles of December. I know my willpower will quail before such a prospect.

BUT. Luckily for me, I happen to live one block from the bus line that takes me directly to work with no transfers. It's a poky sort of route right now, especially with MLK down to one lane each way for the light rail construction, but it still only takes about an hour--about the same amount of time as riding to work, actually. So if I did sell the car and end up desperate for warm transport to work of a freezing winter morn, I would have a pretty easy alternative. This makes the idea of going carless easier to swallow.

I'm so glad you guys commented...what else am I missing? I want to run this past as many skeptics as possible! Lord knows I already know what the folks at the Cascade Bicycle Club forums would say, so this is far better critique of the proposal.

There can only be one

I'm not a very hard-core "Bike to Work Month" participant, but I've done it 3 out of 9 days now. And I no longer have to get off and walk that last little bit up the hill past Seward Park, either: on Wednesday I (ever so slowly) pedalled all the way up it without a pause.

Riding my bicycle to work is a joy in part because my brain has hard-wired a connection between "experience of being on a bike" and "experience of being on vacation." As a kid in the sticks we rode our bikes a lot all summer long. And every time we went camping for a weekend, which also happened frequently in the summer, we loaded up the bikes and took them with us. So now when I hop on a bicycle my brain says, "Ah, sweet, we're on vacation," even if my body is actually taking us to work (haha brain, PSYCH!!).

It is also a joy because it feels like cheating to transport myself for free. Like giving a finger to "the man." The oil-selling man, anyway.

Which brings me to say...I'm thinking about selling my car. Mr. Thel has recently replaced his shiny car with an oldish truck for work, and yet I am pondering the plunge to becoming a one-vehicle household. If I can ride my bike to work the majority of the time...first of all, I'll be healthier and perhaps lighter in due time. Selling the car would allow me to pay off all my debts that aren't related to my house and my education, and THAT, my friends, would be a load off my mind. In addition to letting me pay off those debts, it would save me at least $300 a month in vehicle expenses. It would be better for the world in terms of reducing my carbon footprint, naturally.

It's a lifestyle change, for sure, but I can't stop thinking about it longingly. It feels liberating. We'd still have a vehicle capable of carrying us all in case of emergency or camping or whatever, so why not stick with just one?

I'll keep you posted. We'll see if I can actually get to the point of bicycle commuting every day for a solid week, at least, and then...