Biking Seattle

Starting anything new can be intimidating. If you don’t know the culture, the layout or how things are done, getting up to speed in any activity is daunting, especially if everyone you see looks like an expert.

No matter how familiar you are with an area in a car, it is an entirely different place on a bike. The major auto routes become places to be avoided, and the side streets that frustrate in a car can reveal wonderful surprises on a bike. There is also a feeling of vulnerability, especially at first. I know some people who hesitate to ride a bike in a city out of nervousness about sharing the streets with cars and trucks. Most city streets don’t bother me, although I try to stay away from multi-lane arterials if there’s not space for a bike on the side. The feeling is, the faster traffic is going, the less likely they are to notice or make way for a cyclist.

I didn’t expect any of this to be an issue the other day when I wandered outside for a brief afternoon ride. I’d noticed a trail on the Seattle bike map paralleling the ship canal to the south, on the opposite side of the water from the Burke-Gilman, and decided to take a look. Continue reading…

Most of my trips to campus have been along the Burke-Gilman Trail, because it’s just more fun to zip along on a trail dedicated to bikers than to stay on the streets.

The trail isn’t the straightest path from A to B, though. It adds distance to head south to the trail, wind along the water to the south side of campus, then wind through campus to the north side where my classroom building is. So when I realized I was running late this time, I decided to take the direct route.

As I hit 45th Street, a 44 bus was pulling up, which mirrors my route most of the way. I briefly thought about stopping and hopping on the bus, especially since a slight wind was cutting across my non-gloved hands (item No. 1 on the priority list – good gloves). Instead, I decided to stick it out on the bike and rode past the bus as it was picking up passengers.

The late-afternoon traffic along 45th Street was moving, but slow. In several spots I was able to roll past long waiting lines of cars. By the time I got to the U-District, I’d not only stayed ahead of the original bus I’d decided to forego at the start, I caught up to the 44 bus ahead. And the direct route shaved nearly 15 minutes off my last trip to class (although part of the reason is I know how to get to the building from the north, and still don’t have my bearings totally for winding through campus).

All in all, a win for commuting by bike.

Last week, the consensus around Seattle held the sun was about to disappear. Rain and clouds were in the forecast, and people who could scurried out to soak up the last of the precious rays until who-knows-when.

(I haven’t gone through a winter in this city yet, but people who have tend to speak of the annual occurrence like a grueling endurance test – just hold on and keep plodding along until you reach the end of the grey and the sun breaks back through, and you forget all about what you just went through until it happens again a few months later.)

So with the sun still hanging in the sky, energizing the city, I rode out to check out my new backyard. I’d moved into an apartment across the street from Woodland Park less than a week earlier, putting Green Lake just around the corner as well. An exploring expedition was in order.

Continue reading…

I lived in three different places in the first three weeks I was in Seattle. We drove in from D.C. with a heavily-loaded car and landed in Wedgwood, where we rented a room while apartment hunting. We found one, but it wasn’t available until after our time in Wedgwood ran out, so in between we found a room in Mt. Baker.

My first biking trips in Seattle started from these temporary spots, where I discovered my new city really did have an inordinate amount of hills and started to learn how to avoid them. Moving around also gave me a beginning course in the geography of the city, although I still feel like my mental map is mostly blank.

Now that I finally have a permanent residence in Seattle, my map is slowly starting to take shape around the new apartment. I’m living across from the South side of the zoo, putting Green Lake essentially in my back yard, giving me a nice place to take in some of the last rays of sun before the rains came.

Most routes away from the apartment start off downhill. I assume I’ll get very acquainted with the surrounding hills fairly quickly. As I continue this biking experiment, perhaps I’ll even stop cursing them each time.

But sitting at the top of a hill means getting away quickly, and on what passes for my commute it’s certainly more helpful to have the quick trip going (when I have to be somewhere at an appointed time) than coming back. The first time I made the trip between home and the university for class I stepped out the door and coasted down Fremont on my way to the Burke-Gilman trail for the first time.

I’d heard about the Burke-Gilman trail. After telling anyone from Seattle my plan to use a bike as a main mode of transportation to Seattle residents, the response generally went along the line of, “That’s great. You’ll love it. Except for the weather. And the hills. Yeah, you’re definitely going to want to figure out how to get to the Burke-Gilman trail.”

The streets of Seattle generally have a few cyclists here and there. Everywhere I’ve ridden, I’ve noticed a few other people on bikes. But the smattering of bikers on most roads are just the scouts, making way out from the main hive on the Burke-Gilman. The city north of the ship canal generally funnels people to the trail, where the density of bikes reaches fairly epic proportions during rush hour.

It’s easy to see the appeal. A trail devoted to bikes that traverses the city west-east and then turns north is reason enough. Add in the fact it’s mostly flat, which is reason to go well out of your way to stay on the trail and avoid the punishing elevation gains, losses and gains again most routes feature. A straight line from A to B has nothing on a flat vertical graph to make biking feel like the proper way to get somewhere, and not just a devious method to make my thighs burn.

The trail isn’t quite what I expected, at least in the section I’m using. It’s not a track with designs on isolation. There is no wall of trees along the length to take you out of the urban environment. It’s a trail that runs alongside roads, occasionally crossing them, and is only concerned with getting you from one spot to another on a bike. It’s just what I wanted for a commute.

I have discovered a universal truth. This is based on my experience in two cities, and I believe a sample size of two is the point at which Internet protocol requires you to make gross generalizations. The truth is this: the best maps to get a sense of a city are that city’s bike maps.

Seattle, like my previous home of Washington, D.C., publishes an official bike map. You can get a map for free at bike shops, find it online as a PDF or if you’d like to support the postal service the city will mail you a free copy on request. One way or another, get yourself one. Even if you don’t bike, it’s one of the best city maps you’ll see.

The bike maps in both cities manage a scale that balances detail with overview. They tend to be fairly large to encompass the whole city, and focus on the street-level realities better than the average highway map, which is more concerned with letting you know how to get your car from one place to another. In order to fit the entire city, they don’t have the full detail a neighborhood map would – other than a few bike-related businesses, there aren’t many shops listed. The main sights and major buildings are there, but the lines stay clean. What the maps do very well is give you a sense of the streets and connections of a city. How areas bleed into one another, where the main arteries are (and whether those arteries are to be avoided without a car, or if they accommodate those outside a vehicle). Seattle’s helpfully tries to show where the hills are on main biking streets, although a novice cyclist may find a hill has to be fairly large before it makes the cut.

The information on a bike map tells you something about an area, regardless if you’re planning to bike, drive or walk. It is a map of the network for those outside of cars, where the connections are. It tells you where the parks are, where you can escape the urban landscape, how friendly an area is to those on the ground.

Even with a smart phone GPS in my pocket, at times I’ve had to stop and consult my bike map as I travel Seattle, checking if the algorithm’s plotted path actually makes sense on the ground, and how to connect one route to another. In theory, posted street signs complement the map by pointing out bike routes through the city. Seattle is better than most at giving bikers information on the streets, although I’ve found the signage at times to be oddly inconsistent. A series of signs pointing you along a road will suddenly stop, leaving me adrift.

Occasionally, however, once I find the path again, the signs continue along, a welcoming series of markers pointing out the way at least someone has determined is the best option for winding through the streets.

Last week I was commuting from Mt. Baker in the south to the University, a trek that requires finding the Montlake Bridge, which is apparently best done by staying as far away from the road leading to the bridge as possible.

The closer I got to the bridge, the less obvious the route was, so the regular Lake Washington Loop signs were necessary guideposts. Even so, I wasn’t sure I was following them correctly when they pointed me down an alley. Then a few turns later, another alley.

The official alley route was a new twist for me, but why not? It definitely avoided the traffic on the road. And after winding through, the signs sure enough popped me out right in time to catch the bridge across the ship canal to the University.

First, though, I took a detour. In between the alleys a waterfront park caught my eye. The trail soon enough restricted bikes, but I wandered far enough to find a small, still pocket of water nestled right underneath the highway. I’m filing the path along to Marsh Island and beyond away as a spot to return to, sometime when I’m looking to explore on foot.

Looking east across Lake Washington

For the entire three weeks I have lived in Seattle, the skies have remained cloudlessly blue, completely disregarding the city’s reputation.

I’m aware this sunny state may not last, but for now it provides an incredible backdrop when I stumble across a spot where the elevation and streets align to provide a vantage point with views to the east or west, across the water and to the mountains in the background.

Biking gives me a chance to take in these grand lookouts, as well as the smaller, hidden sights of a city, in ways other transport options don’t. In a car, the spots are gone by the time they register. Walking allows time to savor a spot, but I’m less likely to venture far enough on unfamiliar paths to stumble across the wonderful unknowns.

Stairs of mystery

The main reason I decided to start this blog was to document my time exploring my new city, and (if I have the legs and lungs to tackle it) exploring by bike gives me a chance to find the small, unexpected spots that I love in cities. I’ll drive to hit the big destinations, the tourist spots and well-loved local parks. But biking gives me a chance to find little corners few see.

I’ve already documented how much difficulty I’ve had with the topography as I attempt to bike it. However, Seattle’s vertical nature also gives it a striking character, especially as I’m coming from an essentially flat city. Parks cover the sides of hills, and from a sunlit-bathed street at the top of the hill the entry to the park’s trails is a long staircase, descending deep into shadow. From just outside, the stairs pose a mystery – what’s at the end? Most of my brain says the obvious: nice little walking trails in a wooded urban greenspace. But a little part of my brain remembers the scary bits of the fairy tales of my youth, and puts the monsters in the darkness. I assume I’m not the only one in Seattle who has had this feeling. After all, this is the city with a troll under a bridge.

Flo Ware Park

This week, I twice rode from Mt. Baker to the University of Washington for class. The first time, I rode past this this park entrance without stopping, but it stuck in my brain. The next day, I stopped to grab a photo. The brightly-colored entry gate is for Flo Ware Park, a small park with a playground, unremarkable except for this loving artwork to the park’s namesake. It turns out Flo Ware was a community activist whose name might otherwise have faded away if not for the bright display.

As often as I can, I’m going to try to document the small spots like these I find on my rides in Seattle as well as the more well-known sights. I want to share what I stumble across as I ride as well as my experience of how easy or difficult it is to experience the various landmarks of Seattle by bike.

Someday, I hope to look back on these early rides and laugh.

I’ve already fallen behind on my goal to do four rides a week (of any length – later I’ll try to work up to distance goals, but small steps are called for here). This afternoon I decided to do a short ride, with the goal of tackling a hill on the way.

I wasn’t quite sure what the terrain would be like, but found a hill where I wasn’t quite expecting it. The downs in this town are glorious – coast away – but the up on the other side  is painful. I’ve quickly learned that although I’m fine pedaling at a steady pace on a flat surface for miles, my body is not set up for powering up hills. I’m badly in need of some cardio help (which is what this is all about, right?). About halfway back up the hill, with thighs burning, my lungs more or less shut down. As I stopped to catch my breath, my pulse was pounding hard enough that it affected my vision.

I really need to get out and bike more.

[fitmap id=”141098023″ type=”ride”]

Find the hills – and avoid them.

Obviously, Seattle is built on hills. The grades on some streets are daunting even in a car. The steepest of the streets are pretty obviously not to be tackled by a biker at my level (fat and out of shape, although hopefully moving a bike around Seattle will begin to change that). There are other streets, however, which don’t appear so bad in comparison, but are still too much for my beginning fitness.

I know this, and I knew this before I started my first trip across town to the University of Washington. I started at a higher elevation north of campus, so in theory I could find a route which minimized elevation gain. On paper, I thought I’d found one. And then I felt so good going downhill, I missed a turn somewhere and ended up funnelled to the wrong corner of campus. I started to make my way up a hill without an escape route; the only sidewalk was across three lanes of traffic. Halfway up, though, the realities of my body won out, and I managed to squeeze out of the way of most of the traffic until I could make a break across traffic to the sidewalk, where I walked the bike up the rest of the way without shame.

Lesson learned. No matter how good I feel going down, I am not yet going to win in a face-off between me on a bike and a Seattle hill. When I map a route for my own well being, stick with it. Although the goal is to be able to make it up at least the mid-range hills after a few more weeks on the bike.