This is one newcomer’s attempt to discover whether it is actually possible to use a bike in Seattle to regularly (well, at least occasionally) get from point A to point B.
In September 2012 I moved from Washington, D.C. to Seattle to start graduate school at the University of Washington. I know a few facts about my new hometown, with “it’s extremely hilly” and “the air is often filled with moisture” among them. And yet, when I mentioned my upcoming move to people who had lived in Seattle, I kept hearing it’s a very bikeable city which did not seem to match up with the few facts I knew.
So now that I’m in Seattle, I’m going to see if Seattle really is a bikeable city for the casual cyclist, or if it’s only bikeable for the sort of people who spend significant chunks of their disposable income on spandex. I started this experiment reasonably out-of-shape but not completely unfamiliar with a bike; over the past few summers I occasionally (a half dozen times a month) commuted to work, about six miles each way, by bike and regularly used Washington’s bikeshare system to get around town. But mostly-flat D.C. is no Seattle, and I quickly learned I’ll need to get somewhat fit if I want to tackle even mild Seattle hills. So my plan is this: in addition to biking to and from class twice a week, I’m going to try to get out and bike at least two other days each week. They might be short rides of 30 minutes to an hour, but I’ll try to tackle some hills, and I’ll try to explore my new city and find out why at least some people believe it is actually fit for biking.
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