My Pedaling Career, Part 5: Commuter Hybrid

After I sold the bike that didn’t fit I went for about a year and a half without one. My circumstances had changed, and so did my transportation requirements.


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.

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.

Bikelove, or: Why I decided to stop worrying and love the commute.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, historically, I was only a fair-weather biker and usually only rode out of necessity.

I've been aware of the environmental destruction associated with petroleum-powered transportation for a long time, but unfortunately, I had a tendency to make excuses (to myself) for my personal automobile usage, such as:

My car gets great gas mileage.
My car is 12 years old and it's only logged 84,000 miles (overall, I'm not driving much).
I plan my errands so that I don't have to make frequent trips.
I don't want to be late--I HAVE to drive.

But a year ago, a couple of events happened that began to haunt me.  On April 2, 2010, there was an explosion at the Tesoro refinery in Anacortes.  Seven people were killed, which made it the deadliest workplace event in Washington state history.  Then less than three weeks later...Deepwater Horizon.

After those events, every time I found myself behind the wheel of my car, I felt terribly guilty.  I knew that it was humanity's oil addiction that drove the dangerous business of oil refining.  It drove us to put oil rigs farther out in the ocean, which was risky and tested the limits of our engineering abilities.

A few weeks after the incident in the Gulf of Mexico began, I took my car in to a local mechanic to have the oil changed.  For the rest of the day, I reflected on that normally benign act of vehicular maintenance in such a negative way, that I began to make myself physically ill.

My home is about a mile from my workplace.  Given the recent tragedies, my excuses for why I couldn't ride my bike or walk to work seemed a bit shallow.  I knew I needed to make a change.  No more excuses...

My Pedaling Career, Part 3: 10-Speed

At some point, I think it was after 2nd grade, I outgrew the coaster bike. Like my older brother, I then got to pick out a new one. Not 'new' new necessarily, but a replacement within a budget. My brother's blue dirt bike was new and within budget. My choice was to go fast rather than to jump high. I went with a used, purple, 10-speed road bike.

Hand brakes! Shifters! Tube Socks!

I had that 10-speed until I headed off to college, although it was used very little once I got a driver's license. Most of the time the shifters barely worked which made riding it less than enjoyable. Unfortunately I've never had much success tinkering with anything mechanical, and this was no exception. I traversed my suburban neighborhood quite well when it was working, but I may actually have spent more time on my brother's dirt bike than on the road bike. The dirt bike was definitely more fun on the bmx tracks made by older kids in the empty fields.

My enthusiasm for the bike waned after riding it to junior high a few times. Somebody smashed the little odometer I had installed on it the summer before, when I would take it out for long-ish fun rides through the neighborhood. And I seem to recall being taunted for having a bike that was ugly or old. I was made fun of for all sorts of things in junior high, so why would my bike have been spared? I ended up walking to junior high a lot even though it was far enough to make riding reasonable (3/4 mile). The winters in the city where we lived were pretty harsh and cycling wasn't always possible. But mostly I think it was a combination of the bike not working very well, and the ridicule.

High school was given over to cars since I had a driver's license all four years. I didn't get to drive much for the first two years, while my brother was still at home and had dibs on the extra car. My final two years, though, that car was mine. Even so, during the final couple months of my senior year I started walking to school whenever I could. It was a mile and half by the shortest walking route (two and half miles by car), so it wasn't at all unreasonable to walk. 

I'd like to note that, contrary to most understanding about the suburban pedestrian/biking experience, the subdivision I grew up in was an incredible place for kids to get around safely. While proponents of connectivity today rail against circles & cul-de-sacs, in my neighborhood walkers and cyclists had the upper hand on autos because every one of those isolated streets had at least one sidewalk that cut through to the next one over. Many configurations were such that it was quicker to walk to a place than to drive. Looking at a map today's planner would be appalled at the lack of direct road connectivity, but I want to attest to the fact that, done right, circles, loops, courts, & cul-de-sacs can be great for pedestrians & cyclists.   

The barely functioning purple 10-speed was sold around the time I headed off to college. For several years I went without a bike, but that was just a passing phase...(to be continued).  

My Pedaling Career, Part 2: Coaster Brakes

I learned to ride two-wheelers when I was around 5 on a little tiny bike (with coaster brakes), small enough my feet could touch the ground so I could learn to balance. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a picture of it. I recall it was old, well-used, a bit ugly, and perfectly suited to its task.

Some of the other kids in the neighborhood started off on larger bikes with training wheels. I maintain that I learned to balance more quickly than those assisted by the training wheels, and I recommend the short bike/no training wheels approach (not that anyone's asking my thoughts on the matter, but there it is all the same).

The rainbow bike, the purple bike, and flags! I'm in my brother's shadow...

After properly mastering balance, stopping, and steering, my parents rewarded me with a big bike. They trolled the garage-sale ads one weekend, found something promising, and we came home with a rainbow-colored, slant-bar 'unisex' coaster bike with a banana seat. It wasn't as cool as my brother's purple coaster bike, but it was ok. And at least it didn't have a Huffy seat -- those squared-off things were ugly! The purple bike's banana seat was replaced by a Huffy seat at some point, so I know from which I speak on the matter.

So it was great! Finally I could keep up with my big brother on his bike, and my parents on theirs (we sometimes had family bike rides, and the mini bike was not a success versus their bigger ones).

But then -- disaster. When I started school, we learned that kindergarteners weren't allowed to ride bikes to our school! Even those that could ride, couldn't. Total bummer. So I had to walk while my brother could ride, although when I walked he usually did, too. We could take a bus to school, which we did when the weather was bad, but I often walked the .8 mile home after my half-day.

First day at new school -- note the Huffy seat. I walked.

First grade was at a different school in a different town. There were expansive bike racks in several location, so they were always convenient and available to me -- if I had wanted to ride, that is. Turned out we lived so close to school, a third of a mile, it didn't make sense to ride. So I walked from first through sixth grade. Having the rainbow slant-bar bike may have had something to do with not wanting to bike to school, as well.

As an aside, this new elementary school had no bus service, and most kids walked. The school district had drawn the boundaries for this school (and possibly only this one?) so that nobody lived too far away to walk. A few parents regularly drove their kids, but there weren't many of those. My brother & I only got rides when the temperature was well below zero. 

The rainbow bike, and the new blue dirt bike

   

Back to coaster brakes: my brother got to pick out a replacement for his purple coaster bike after he finished third grade. He chose a new blue dirt bike, which was cool and even had a handbrake, but it still wasn't a Redline. So not really that cool. And he almost never let me ride it! Ever tried riding the dirt bike track with a banana seat? You can't get any leverage on the handlebars to help with jumps, so you can't look cool AT ALL.

My first bike with handbrakes followed not long after ... .


UPDATE: The Bicycle Alliance of Washington agrees that my preferred method of learning to ride is the best.

My Pedalling Career, Part 1: 3 Wheels

My big brother & I, in the great indoors

My pedalling career started, unsurprisingly, with a tricycle. My older brother and I each had one, his larger, mine smaller. We could ride them inside the house because the walls were logs and we couldn't do much damage except to ourselves.

Banished, but street-legal

A year or two later our family moved, and since our new house wasn't as resilient as the log house, the indoor pedalling was over. But, we did get to add spiffy hand-me-down license plates to make them 'street legal'.

It wasn't too much later that my brother learned to ride a two-wheeler. Then I was finally allowed to use the bigger trike.

Always with the hand-me-downs

Next up: graduation to 2 wheels!


P.S. This was all long before moving to Bellingham...