I moved from Seattle to Bellingham and hung around town for four months in early 2002, then went traipsing around the country for five months in the car I finally bought. I had been car-free in Seattle for over three years, but eventually succumbed. While car-free I was one of the original of members of Flexcar, a car sharing service, which was later merged into Zipcar.
The end of my journey around the country brought me back to Bellingham. I lived a suburban existence for ¾ of a year, driving hither & yon about town. But then it was off to Eugene, back to graduate school, and a return to the saddle.
I specifically chose to live in a place that was easily accessible to one of Eugene's off-street multi-use paths, of which there are several (see Eugene's 2010 bike map PDF). Since the town sits in a river valley, much of the place is flat, which was quite a relief to me after biking in hilly Seattle. The place I found was 4 miles from the University of Oregon, but getting from one to the other was a nice, easy, flat route. The majority of the ride was on a paved Shared Use Path alongside a canal, and most of the rest of the way had a bike lane. A bit of gravel path and some neighborhood streets were also part of the trip.
Just like when attending the U. of Washington, biking was the quickest, cheapest, and easiest strategy for getting to campus. Driving was out since parking passes were expensive and no guarantee of finding a place to park, while off-campus street parking was hard to find and always ended with a time-consuming walk. Taking the bus required a transfer, which introduced time and complexity. Biking would instead be straightforward and consistent.
As soon as I moved to town I bought a bike. This time I knew what I was looking for and had the ability to buy something that would really fit my needs. I wanted a sit-up-straight bike for tooling around town. No more hunched-over road bike. No more aggro mountain bike madness. This time I was getting something that I could ride calmly, peacefully, without raising my blood pressure or pulse, if I didn’t want to.
I had always felt with the Specialized Hard Rock that I had to go Go GO when I was riding it. Something about it made me want to push, to always go faster than I was. I was aware of it, but couldn’t seem to do anything about it. I felt the lean-forward stance forced this attitude. My thinking was that if I wasn’t in an aggressive stance, then I wouldn’t ride aggressively.
Wheelworks was on my way to and from campus, which I figured would be convenient for service. So I shopped there. The bike I got, and still have, is a Fuji Supreme hybrid from 2003. It has a very up-right riding posture. My sightline is higher when I’m on the bike than when I’m standing. This lets me see over top of most cars, some trucks, and gives me great visibility in traffic.
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The headset was raised about as far as it'll go -- it's the tallest set of handlebars almost everywhere I park! I had the shop add fenders and a cushy seat; I added a rack at the back, a bell, lights, and covered it with reflective stickers (more on that in a later post). It now looks like this:
It's comfortable and easy to ride. It's not the fastest, but not the slowest. The frame geometry gives it a short wheelbase, which means a tight turning radius, but also makes it less stable than many bikes. It's not possible to ride no-hands -- the front wheel doesn't naturally track straight at any speed.
I rode to campus almost every day for 18 months. Both tires got puncture flats within six months, but replacing the stock tubes with heavy puncture-resistant tubes has kept me flat-free since 2004.
During those 18 months I felt like I got to know some of the birds who lived in & around Amazon Creek, since I pedaled by almost every day. In particular there were a pair of mergansers, one green heron, and a kingfisher that I saw regularly. Plus a blue heron now & then. Lots of ducks. A few turtles. Generally a nice place to ride.
My closest brush with disaster during this time was hitting a Nutria one icy fall morning. Nutria are big water-dwelling rodents native to South American that have been introduced to these parts.
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They're like a cross between a beaver and a rat. There were several munching on some Thanksgiving leftovers next to the path. I was nearly able to stop as they bolted across the path in front of me, but one of
them did get a bruising from my front tire.
After 18 months of idyllic riding, I moved elsewhere in town. G and I shacked-up, and we lived only about a mile from campus. For nine months I walked most of the time rather than worrying about bike parking on the U of O's crowded racks.
Then we moved to Seattle. We found a place very close to my new job, and for two years I walked to work. As with the last place I had lived in Seattle, it was simpler and safer to walk to work than to ride. Seattle's hills and narrow streets are better handled on foot via sidewalks & stairways than on two wheels. Our bikes were very lonely.
It wasn't until moving back to Bellingham, yet again, that the bikes became practical for transportation once more. But we didn't return to cycling right away. We found a place to live just a mile from G's place of work, and it happens to be near a bus line that can zip me off to my place of work. For the first year or two I took the bus, and G mostly drove. There were several obstacles to overcome before cycling become our norm.
First, parking. When we moved in, our building had two bike racks -- which was great! All residential buildings should be so lucky. But. The one under the carport isn't secure (people who lock there get things stolen), and the one in the garage was super crowded. Both are wheel-gripper racks, so with my u-lock there's only two secure spots to park, and I was always nervous about somebody taking my spot. Plus it was hard to get in and out, what with being both crowded and awkwardly located in a far corner of the garage.
The other obstacle was not have a remote garage door opener that was easy and convenient. We eventually sprung for a keychain fob remote opener, and now I'm set.
My bike rack problems were fixed about a year and a half after we moved in when, as a member of the condo board, I shepherded to completion a process of planning for and buying an additional rack. We now have an 12 more potential spots to use a u-lock. Whew. And the new rack is easier to access than the old one. Zip in, zip out. Zoom!
I've been riding consistently for well over a year now, and I enjoy my commute much more now that I'm not riding the bus all the time. Yes, there's the changing in & out of biking clothes at work, but the ride is long enough, and has enough elevation change, that I can't ride in professional clothes and still have them be professional by the time I get to work. I can handle taking ten minutes before and after work to get into proper attire. When I rode the bus I had to kill 15 minutes on each end, so I'm actually saving time this way. Not to mention that on the way home (the downhill direction) I can beat the bus on days with particularly bad traffic. So there, bus.
More of our errands are being run by bike, too. It's starting to seem normal to hop on the bike and odd to drive the car when I just need to run to the store. I'm glad we chose to live in a centrally-located spot so most of the places we need to go are easily accessible by bike. We even have a trailer for big loads, although we don't use it all that often. It's good to have, though.
It's not that I hate cars, or driving. Rather, I hate spewing pollution into the atmosphere. Driving is fun, and someday I hope to have an electric car. I'll still ride my bike in town. People-power is better than electric-power, too, but the gulf between them isn't quite so huge.
So that's my pedaling career. I'd describe it as 'checkered', featuring fits & starts. The one constant is that I prefer people-power to gasoline-power. Making that happen requires some hard decisions, the most critical of which is deciding where to live. I choose to live where it's easy for me to later decide to get around using something other than a car. Hopefully I'll be doing so for a good long while.
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