My Pedaling Career, Part 4: Rock Hard

Bikes played no part in my undergraduate experience. Campus was in an isolated part of a hilly city. It was great for taking walks, but there was no cycling infrastructure and the roads were fast and narrow. I had a car, and that worked for me.

After finishing my undergraduate degree I moved to Bellingham for a few months before heading to grad. school. I had spent breaks here in town, including two summers, but it wasn't until after graduating that I really got to experience the nice urban trail system. Discovering them on foot, I came to desire a bike for better access to more places.

The real catalyst that made me buy a bike was that I was going to graduate school in Seattle and I knew I wouldn't be able to park on campus. Also, I had heard tell of the Burke-Gilman Trail. Miles of nice trail were waiting to be explored by bike. So I went around Bellingham to a few bike shops and found something used, affordable, and good for trails. I ended up with a barely-used Specialized Hardrock, vintage mid-'90's, no suspension. Oddly enough the color scheme was reminiscent of my first cruiser -- two-tone purple & fuchsia that fade into each other. It wasn't on purpose; mostly I just don't care. It was the kind of bike I wanted, and it was pretty close to being the right size for someone as tall as I am.

The Hardrock stickin' it to the Man on the streets of Seattle

Arriving in Seattle I soon learned that their trails, unlike those in Bellingham, are paved. I made sure to buy a bike for the kind of crushed limestone surface we have on trails in Bellingham, but which Seattle apparently doesn't. It wasn't a disaster or anything, as the bike still worked, but the Hardrock ended up being overkill for the riding I was doing.

I found an apartment a mile and half from campus by sidewalk, and biked to school most every day. Driving to campus wasn't an option since I couldn't afford to park there. My car sat around at the apartment for a week or two at time, while my bike was a constant companion. I had a plastic milk crate bungeed to the rear rack, a pair of Apex Defender fenders, and with that setup it was quite the urban assault grocery-getter. I could take the Burke-Gilman from campus to the nearest grocery stores and return home the long way, i.e. the flat route, wobbling along with way too much weight in the back, placed way too high. There were many inadvertent wheelies heading home from the grocery store.

My biggest triumph with the Hardrock was getting confident enough to ride down some of the broad steps on campus. I hadn't ever ridden down steps before, so I felt it was something of an accomplishment.

Probably my proudest moment with the bike was riding to campus on the day of the big Boxing Day snowstorm of 1996. I was scheduled to work at my campus job so I drove back down from Bellingham on the evening of Christmas Day, then woke the next morning to at least 6 inches of snow. My Hardrock was up to the task of plowing through it all, though, and we made it to campus just fine. Unfortunately my boss did not, and he had the key to the lab where I worked. He hadn't come back from vacation in time to miss the snow, and the roads were mostly impassable to cars. So, while I got TO the office just fine, I couldn't get INTO the office. I eventually gave up and had to head back home, snow still piling up around me. But my bike and I had triumphed all the same.

Dec. 26, 1996 -- I biked right up that snowy slope to get to work in the building where the camera is housed.
From http://www.washington.edu/cambots/archive.html

We had a very nice year & a half of grad. school before I finished up and moved back to Bellingham. Then four months later I moved back to Seattle, having landed a job in my field. This time I lived a long way from work, but I was entirely car-free. Most of the time I took the bus to the office, but from time to time I did ride the Specialized some 8 miles each way.

The shortest route from home to work took me along the one unfinished stretch of the Burke-Gilman trail, through the industrial underbelly of Ballard. That stretch is STILL unfinished 13 years later, and cyclists are still riding with trucks and being injured crossing the railroad tracks that slant across the street in a couple locations. It's sad that fears about reduced freight mobility have as their consequence real injuries to individuals.

At least there's a warning sign and some sharrows now.
From http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/pacificnw/2012187424_pacificpburke11.html

After a year and a quarter with this commuting solution, my office moved to a new location about a mile closer to home. The new place was much simpler to bike to, but extremely difficult to bus to. The whole situation just wasn't working, so I moved.

The place I moved to was two miles from work by foot, or at least 2.75 miles by bike. The difference was due to shortcuts involving parks and stairs -- the route was a hilly one. My bike was too heavy to carry up and down the extraordinarily long sets of stairs on my route so I'd have to pedal a substantially longer way. In heavy Seattle traffic. With wicked grades. I could bike to work in 12 minutes flat, but biking home would take me 40 minutes. Walking took just under 25 minutes either way. The buses were every bit as inconsistent as biking, so I tended to hoof it.

Denny Way: fun to sled down; not fun to pedal up.
From http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2008885019_sdot19m.html

Which left the Hardrock locked up at home most of the time, affixed to my custom-installed bike rack in my personal parking space. If I had also always used my u-lock I'd probably still have that bike. But I felt my parking space was secure enough to use a cable and padlock when I covered the bike with a tarp, and after about a year somebody cut the cable and absconded with my nice bike.

Insurance gave me a meager payout for the loss. I did a little shopping around and picked up something comparable from a local bike shop (no photo available). The shop salesman I worked with did nothing to dissuade me from buying a bike that was way too small for me, and I ended up riding it only a couple times before selling it for a loss. Thus my cycling career in Seattle concluded.