Enjoying the Rain

Today I took the bus in; no running, no biking, just fully tapering before Sunday's marathon. As I was walked to the bus in the typical Seattle Autumn drizzle, I was reminded of an incident many years ago, in a different life, when I was a traveling paper salesman. I was in Denver for a trade show, the show was over, and all the sales people were out to dinner together before heading back to their respective towns in the morning. One particular sales guy was trying to mock my hometown of Seattle by describing it as the town that was all about intermittent windshield wipers. His comment was largely ignored, but his point was taken. Seattle is a generally wet city. Not real heavy rain, but sort of an on and off drizzle. In his book Still Life with Woodpecker, Tom Robbins talks of using a canopy of blackberry bushes covering the city to protect us from the rain, but what can you expect, Tom Robbins is a transplant from back East. I don't think the wet bothers true natives, or at least those who were born and raised in Seattle. But it clearly bothers the transplants, which there are so many of. I enjoy the rain, in fact I actually enjoy being out in the rain. What gets me down is the incessant complaining by the transplant. For at least 9 months of the year you hear and read endlessly about how dreary the weather is. It's all the complaining about the weather does get me down; and ultimately it's hard not to get caught up in it and get down on the weather that I would otherwise enjoy. This year I've actively been trying to avoid any talk about weather, or reading anything negative about the weather. Generally my plan to stay positive about the weather seems to be working, although it is early, and summer just ended, but I seem to be happy spending time in the cool gray misty rain. And it's a good thing I enjoy this wet weather because on Sunday I'm likely to spend my second Portland marathon in the rain, feet sloshing, clothes soaked all the way though, running for hours in this, with a big smile on my face.

The daily bicyle commute

A few months ago I decided to discontinue my work subsidized bus pass and rely on bicycle and running as my primary means of commuting to work. My place of work is only about 6-1/2 miles from where I live so the commute is short, and the majority of the commute isn’t in traffic, but rather along the Burke-Gilman trail. Besides, it takes longer to get to work by bus or car than it does to get there by bike.

The best part of commuting to work by bicycle is the other cyclists. Seattle is definitely a city of bicycle commuters, and one of the primary routes for commuters is the Burke-Gilman trail. So the daily commute along the Burke-Gilman trail is always an adventure. There are the cyclists who slowly plod along, as well as those who see their commute as their personal daily crit. As for me, I fall somewhere in between. I do tend to see my commute as a bit of a personal time trial (anything under 25 minutes is good), but I have my own rules for my ride:

• I do actually stop at stop lights.
• I keep my place at stop lights and don’t jockey for a better position in front of the other cyclists who were waiting before me. This might get me stuck behind some slower cyclists, but I can pass them later.
• I don’t draft other cyclists during the commute (I might pace them, but there’s a good distance between us).
• I don’t pass other cyclists then immediately slow my pace (that drives me crazy).
• I don’t pass other cyclists unless it’s safe to do so (e.g. I’m not passing a cyclist with oncoming cyclists two abreast).

My commute can be interesting when I stick to these rules and try and beat my previous PR for getting home or getting to work. However, being a strict rule follower can lead to road rage and I do tend to get annoyed when others aren’t following the same set of rules. But I try and use that just to make the ride even more interesting; I might suddenly have someone I must catch and pass who is now way ahead of me because they flew through a traffic light while I was stopped.

Today I decided I would just take it easy and enjoy the ride in (I tend to tell myself that a lot, but rarely follow it). My ride started off with all of the lights in my favor as I ride down a mile of NW 24th Ave in Ballard, a hill long hill steep enough to easily keep pace with the cars. As soon as I got on to the Burke-Gilman trail, I knew the ride was going to be a bit more interesting. Everyone seemed to be moving at a pretty good pace, no slow riders. The pace was plenty fast enough so I just stuck ten or so feet behind the first person I came up behind. As I followed I was passed and then the person in front of me got passed by a faster cyclist. The person in front of me clearly frustrated that someone dared to pass them during their commute quickly picked up the pace, and passed the person that just passed them. I kept up with the pace behind the two cyclists following behind just close enough to see how it would end. In the end their were no violent acts of bicycle road rage, one of the riders turned off of the trail and headed in a different direction. However it was enough to keep todays commute interesting and get me to work a bit faster than what I had initially planned on; the daily Burke-Gilman bicycle commute is rarely dull.

My 1000 Mile Commute Winds Down

This year I didn’t even pull out my bike out until February 12. However, back on February 19 I decided to challenge myself to travelling 1000 miles of my commute in 2009 by bicycle. My commute is roughly 12-1/2 miles round trip; so to commute 1000 miles by bike I needed 80 round trips. To keep track of the days, I recorded every day I biked here (6.25 miles for a one way only trip, 12.5 miles for a round trip).

Flash forward 8-1/2 months later and November is approaching, the year is starting to wind down, and I am within 3 days of complete my goal. I added up the days left for me to commute by bike, taking into account holidays and planned days off, and figured out I have 37 days in which I can commute by bike, so pulling off 3 days shouldn't be too difficult.

Though out the year of commuting I had setbacks; weeks I just didn’t get on my bike. However there were also weeks where I biked regardless of the conditions; I actually commuted by bike on the hottest day in Seattle history, or today which was probably the coldest and wettest ride in this year. I even videoed my commute for posterity. Regardless of how hot or wet it got, my bike ride was rarely more than 40 minutes long, which was usually quicker than taking the bus to work. I admit that in the larger scheme of things biking 12-1/2 miles to and from work is no big deal. Yet when its all said it done, it will feel kind of cool to say “I commuted 1000 miles by bike in 2009”.

Maybe in 2010 I should try for 2000...

My Commute Continues...

Work has an event going on called "Ride In The Rain" (which I didn't sign up for). The idea is you compete for the most miles commuted by bike, the most days commuted by bike and the most day of commuting by bike in the rain. The 2009 event started on Sunday February 15 and goes for 4 weeks; the top rider is at 288 miles! If I only count the miles I've ridden starting February 15 I was at 104 miles, but now I'm down to 100 miles. The reason I say that is because the Ride In The Rain site referenced an online tool GMaps Peodometer that lets you calculate the distance of your route by bike or foot or whatever. GMaps wouldn't let me be completely accurate with my route, but it looked more accurate than my previous calculations and it brought the round trip down to just over 12.5 miles (so I lost 1/2 a mile on my round trip). The good news for me is that I still need to bike the same 80 days to get to 1000 miles of bike commuting in 2009.

Here's what my ride home looks like

Death of Kevin Black

Yesterday it was reported in Seattle area news papers that a cyclist was hit and killed by a van in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle. As more information became available we learned that the man was a 39 year old father of two and researcher at the University of Washington.

I admit that I don't know the guy, but this story really got to me. As a father of two little girls myself and employee of the University of Washington I have also often commuted to work by bike, probably taking almost the exact same route as Kevin Black; this guy could have been me.

I am definitely a fair-weather bike commuter; last fall my bike got put away in the shed waiting for longer warmer days. I imagine my normal bike commute is likely very similar to this Kevin Black’s: The majority of the ride is on the relatively safe Burke-Gilman trail, but between my house in Ballard and the start of the Burke-Gilman trail I have maybe a mile on the streets of Ballard. I am by no means a hard core cyclist, I often choose the least busy roads to slowly make my way though Ballard, the reason is that I’m the kind of person who is hyper-aware of cars around me…often just short of terrified to ride on the streets, but I wasn’t always like this.

The reason for my current attitude about biking around cars comes primarily from an incident a couple years ago. It was a summer day when I was commuting home from work, sometimes on nice days I would make my way from the Burke-Gilman trail West all the way to 34th Ave NW and bike casually up that hill to my house maybe going all the way up to sunset hill park to catch a little of the sunset. While biking West down Market Street in Ballard West of 24th street (this was before 24th had its current bike lane) I had a car pull out of its parking spot on my side of the street right in front of me. I was prepared for someone to pull out of their parking spot into traffic, but NOT prepared for what this guy did, which was to pull out of his spot to do a full U-turn in front of me. Luckily the guy saw me half way though his U-turn, but not before I had to swerve into the two lanes of oncoming traffic on the opposite side of the street. I managed to avoid the guy making the U-turn and avoid running head on into oncoming traffic, but I was pretty shaken up. Things could have gone different in so many ways.

Even thought the days are a bit longer and warmer, right now I’m a lot less enthusiastic about pulling out my bike out of the shed than I was a couple days ago.