Gasworks in the sun

Posted by Daimon on May 13, 2013
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Gasworks

Gasworks Park

The sun has been out in Seattle, and so last weekend I hopped on the bike and headed down the hill to Gasworks Park.

Gasworks is one of the more interesting public spaces in Seattle – a lush green lawnscape surrounding the rusting industrial hulk of a decommissioned gasworks plant.

Gasworks park

Sunny day in Gasworks

The relics and shadows of a city’s industrial past always give a silent siren call to me; for some reason the abandonment elevates the interest level.

There’s something about urban decay which allows you to feel an almost intimate connection with the spaces. The lifelessness of machinery sitting bereft of purpose provides a canvas for unconscious stories. A city is meant to be lived in, and items left behind, no longer contributing to the life of the city, can be all the more interesting for it.

Gasworks Park brings this decay, normally found in derelict warehouse districts or on the edge of industrial yards, into a vibrant center of public space. It’s this contrast which allows a rusting hunk of metal to add unexpected beauty to the greenery surrounding it.

The tangled metal piping of the gasworks stands in the middle of the park. The bulk of it is surrounded by a fence, discouraging the climbing and exploration (and trouble, certainly) the structure would otherwise bring. But there are some outlying parts of the plant which are accessible, standing right in the middle of the grass field.

On this day, most of the park’s inhabitants ignored the rust-covered metal to soak in the sun. A group of friends had set up shop behind a pavilion in an area with picnic tables I didn’t know existed before. There we ate, drank and played bocce, soaking in the sunlight and the humanity which had the same thought as us on how to spend the day.

Seattle skyline

Seattle skyline from Gasworks

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Bursting the bubble of self-delusion

Posted by Daimon on February 12, 2013
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There are only so many ways to write about not riding my bike, and far fewer ways to do it that people would actually want to read, but that’s the theme so far this winter.

Part of the problem is my inability to deal with a known bug in my brain’s calculation process. If I ride four times one week, then once the next week, then don’t ride at all, then go out two days, my brain doesn’t think, “I didn’t get out much this month – was lucky to get a ride in each week.” No, the part of my brain which makes these calculations instead feeds me this line: “I’m riding about four times a week. Good work.”

A corollary here is my inclination to weigh the benefits of riding regularly (better fitness, lower weight) and completely discount the effect not getting out might have. This was driven home on a short commuting run last week. After riding to and from campus a couple times a week and adding other rides once or twice a week, I wasn’t exactly sprinting up the hills, but the tamer rises and drops had become a forgotten fact of life. A month or so off the bike, though, left me panting at any incline, even one I’d have counted as “flat” a short time before.

Identifying these issues is far easier than combating the problems. Working from home with classes one day a week makes it easy to pass on riding in the cold and wet, and it doesn’t take long to get out of the habit entirely, staying in even when the sun is out. Facing this blog and seeing the lack of posts might be the best motivation I’ll have – I need to pick up the pace here as well as on my bike. It’s time to give myself something to write about again.

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Back in the saddle

Posted by Daimon on January 07, 2013
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It’s been a long time since I hopped on my bike and went anywhere. Nearly a month, in fact, a period of time which is far too long, but which is not without excuses – I left town over Christmas, a break in classes meant I had fewer reasons to venture out – but mostly the cold, wet and darkness of winter made it easier to drive, or stay close to home (or not go outside at all).

Carkeek path

Carkeek path

So when I saw a bit of late afternoon sunshine last week, I made a resolution to venture forth – briefly – for a short afternoon ride, and to head out in a new direction.

Cities have their own gravitational pull, geographically and culturally. From my apartment, Seattle generally pulls south (towards downtown) or east (toward the University). There’s a natural inclination to start out in those directions, not only because it means beginning with a downhill, but because those are the directions where most destinations lay. Even when starting a ride without a destination in mind, or when deciding where, exactly, to go, the unconscious inclination is to start there, in the directions to which I’ve become accustomed.

There’s nothing wrong with letting this impulse guide me most of the time – even starting on a familiar path, there are still wide variations and paths I have not yet seen. But it also makes sense to recognize the routine, and actively decide to go elsewhere, to ride toward the neglected compass points.

So when I headed outside in the thin late-afternoon sunlight, I decided to head north, a way I’d rarely ventured even in a car. For a destination (it’s generally easier for me to choose a spot on the map to head toward, rather than attempting a random route) I settled for a block of green on the map I hadn’t yet seen, Carkeek Park.


The day was chilly, but dry, with clear views across the Sound to the Olympic Mountains, views so impressive I had to stop a number of times when the vista opened on a cross street. When I reached the park, I parked the bike and started down a walking trail to see what I would find with the fading light I had left.

Mossy treeVery quickly, the trail dropped into the trees, a sliver of nature secluded from the surrounding streets. Above, there were still glimpses of houses through the bare branches – I’m sure in summer the full greenery would block even that reminder of the city from the path.

Even though the pavement was dry on my ride, once in the park a fine coat of moisture sat on all surfaces, and in places the trail turned to mud and standing water. The trees seemed to funnel and capture moisture, giving it even more of a feeling of being a separate landscape from the city. The path descended steeply down until it reached the bottom of a ravine, where it joined a wider trail which ran alongside a creek. As I was running low on light, I left the rest of the park for another day.

I rode back, stealing a few more glances of the mountains before sunset, slightly reenergized and resolved to carve out more time for riding and exploration, even in the shortened days.

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Darkness falling on exploration

Posted by Daimon on December 12, 2012
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This was mostly expected, but as the daylight hours recede – shrinking down as the sun is deep into winter hibernation – and the clouds move in, lowering the sky and dropping the blanket of cool moisture on the city, my biking activity has also dropped.

I continue to use my bike as my primary mode of transportation, riding to and from campus regardless of the weather. But the weather (and the workload of the last weeks of my inaugural quarter of grad school) have worked on the back of my brain and kept me from the longer exploratory rides I reveled in when the sun was out.

It hasn’t been a conscious decision, really. It’s just that in the past, where I might have found a spare hour or two, looked out the window and made the decision to ride, now it simply seems more appealing to spend those hours working on something else, or just drinking hot cider and listening to the raindrops on the window.

But as I continue to commute on bike, I’ve found the weather doesn’t really create a barrier to biking. In addition to the rain pants, I made a thrift store find and now have a nice breathable, waterproof jacket (this is a more versatile option than my previous decision of a non-waterproof jacket or a non-breathing rain coat – I would usually go for the non-waterproof item, as even in a heavier rain the exterior would get wet but the water rarely soaked through the interior liner). I still would like to find a better glove option, but I’m OK on that front as well. So it’s no worse biking than walking in the rain, and biking has proven to be a faster option than the bus for any of my short-hop transportation needs.

What the dreariness has done is build a mental barrier which makes it less likely I’ll just hop on and go. But now that the quarter is over and I’ll have more free hours, I’m going to try to at least occasionally step out and pedal a bit. There’s still nearly an entire city to explore.

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The hills of Seattle – my arch-enemy

Posted by Daimon on November 30, 2012
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I started this blog to see if it was actually possible to get around Seattle by bike as a very casual cyclist. After two months of casually biking around Seattle, I can absolutely say the answer is … maybe.

The weather hasn’t been as much of an issue as I would have guessed. The hills, on the other hand, are both better and worse than I initially feared. Continue reading…

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On the streets of confusion

Posted by Daimon on November 23, 2012
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Where to go?

There was a discussion in one of my classes recently about web design, and one of the most basic principles went something like this: “Don’t make your users feel stupid.”

I feel like this piece of advice should be adhered to well beyond the confines of web design. Really, in pretty much any instance where you’re trying to impart information to people, you generally want to do so without making them try to figure out what’s being said, avoid confusion and basically not make them feel stupid. So on my ride home from that class, I had to finally stop and take a picture of the strangest “helpful” road marking for bikes I’ve seen in Seattle. Continue reading…

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The first step toward a rain solution

Posted by Daimon on November 19, 2012
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It seems that the rain really will just continue to come down, but now I have a partial defense against Seattle’s drearier elements.

My previous attempt at biking in a proper rain (getting around in the more usual misty conditions isn’t really an issue – even a couple months in, I barely notice any moisture in the air that isn’t actually falling, but instead hanging there, waiting for you to run into it) left me with the unpleasantness of sitting around in wet jeans for hours after the ride.

This time, however, I added one crucial piece of gear to my arsenal.  Last week, I picked up a pair of rain pants at REI, which were worth every penny I paid. They are loose enough to be comfortable to move and pedal in, and fit easily over my jeans. But they also have fasteners at the bottom, not only to keep rain from getting in underneath, but which also serve to keep them well out of the way of my chain (which is a better solution in the rain than rolling up my right leg to avoid the disaster of having my pants caught in the gear at high speed). Continue reading…

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Headed downtown

Posted by Daimon on November 14, 2012
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In many ways, I know my Seattle biking experience doesn’t really speak to most other people’s biking experience.

My personal geography patterns cover a small area of Seattle, mostly north of the ship canal. I live in north Fremont and most of my trips are between there and the University of Washington for my graduate program. I don’t think this is a unique footprint, but it covers a pretty insignificant portion of the city limits, much less the greater metropolitan area.

Even in my small space I deal with hills, the challenges of sharing roadways with traffic, a few dedicated bike trails and the difficulties of Seattle’s weather. Most of these are, I think, universal in this city to varying degrees. But it misses a lot of other common experiences – I almost never travel in or between the densely populated areas of Capitol Hill and downtown, which numbers alone suggest must be a common trip and probably requires dealing with steeper grades than I am faced with.

So to break out of my well-worn path, at least slightly, and because the whole point of this exercise is to find out if a bike is a realistic primary mode of transportation, I decided to take a ride downtown, a trip I’d made only by bus or car so far. To choose a destination, I figured ‘What’s more Seattle than heading to Pike Place Market?’ The answer is probably anywhere,  I know, but I hadn’t been since moving here, and I think I have to at least go once before starting to roll my eyes at the very mention of the market and complaining about how it’s only for tourists. (At least I assume that’s how long-time residents react. I moved here from D.C., and that’s basically our reaction to anything anywhere near the Mall.) Continue reading…

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Trying to make it easy to bike at UW

Posted by Daimon on November 12, 2012
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Even after riding to and from the UW campus for more than a month and doing some quick research on bike resources on campus, I had no idea the university had self-service bike maintenance stations, including (in theory) air pumps.

Thanks to a classmate who’s also biking for pointing this out. The campus has five repair stations next to bike rack locations, although they’re easy to miss if you don’t know they’re there. Even with the map of the locations, it took me a second when I got to the spot before I found the tools handing from a repair stand.

The tools are a nice touch, but what I was really looking for was the air pump – I realized my tires were woefully low. At the first spot I tried, the air pump was simply missing. At the second, the pump was missing the presta valve fitting. With my tires still hurting for air, instead of continuing to try each of the five locations to see if any of them had functioning pumps, I simply stopped by the ASUW bike shop in the HUB and used one of their floor pumps.

The self-service stations are a good idea. It’s a shame they’re not better marked (and a few signs alerting bikers to their existence at other main bike racks around campus would also help), and a bigger shame the air pumps – probably the most commonly needed tool – aren’t there.

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Wet

Posted by Daimon on November 07, 2012
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I’m well aware that it rains in Seattle, although so far my time in this city has been mostly dry. Even on rainy days, the sky has politely stopped dropping precipitation when I venture outside.

Until last week, when I had to get to class and the rain was definitely coming down. With actual drops, even, instead of simply misting. So I decided to see how I’d fare on the bike. I still don’t have much in the way of rain gear (not just for biking – I don’t have much rain gear for simply being outside in wet weather) but I made do. My laptop went into a plastic zip-lock in my backpack for the ride, a dry shirt was wrapped up and off I went.

As soon as I started, I understood why adding after-market fenders is a cottage industry for the bike shops in town. My fender-less bike threw up water ahead and behind me, although my backpack didn’t seem to have a problem taking the brunt of the spray.

Once again, I arrived at 45th Street right as a bus pulled up. And again, I wrestled with my desire to simply hop on (understandable, I feel, as it was raining) before decided to stick with the bike. On one hand, this was a wise choice, as I handily beat the bus to the U District. On the other, I did end up getting fairly soaked.

Not completely soaked – my non-rain coat handled the rain better than expected, and even though it was wet on the outside, it didn’t seep through and my lower top layers stayed dry. And my new gore-tex shoes worked even better than expected, keeping my feet dry despite the constant spray from the tires.

But wearing jeans isn’t really the best option for wet weather, and even on a short ride of a couple miles they were completely soaked through. On the plus side, the brisk day of around 50 degrees wasn’t so cold to be a major issue, but it was cold enough to still be slightly uncomfortable.

To be fair, this outfit would have left me fairly wet even if I was walking – the bike only accelerated the process. But it did reinforce a few things I’d already guessed:

  1. Biking in the rain is certainly doable, if you understand there is water involved and you’ll likely get slightly wet.
  2. I need to figure out a proper rain outfit, so I don’t spend an entire Seattle winter in wet jeans.

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