Old Lady on a Bike

Cycling the City of the Angels

2011-01-21T21:21:00.000-08:00

Last week I took my Dahon folding bike with me on the Amtrak Coast Starlight to visit Mother Sun and Friend Nancy who lives on “Museum Row” near Wiltshire Blvd. in Los Angeles. Mother sun smiled on me every day as I toured the city by bike and the Metro rail system, temperatures ranging in the high 70’s to low 80’s.
Meanwhile Seattle continued to morose under cold, wet gloom.

What? You biked in LA? That’s the ultimate car world not a bike friendly city like Portland or Eugene! It’s true, LA isn’t big on bike lanes. Bikes are an after-thought or perhaps never thought of at all. Yet I found it delightful cycling there.

Wiltshire Blvd. spans the entire city. Many of its sidewalks, ranging up to 25 feet in width, are lined with palm trees, restaurants, stores and businesses. There are few big ugly gaping parking lots in view. An old lady on a bike has no problem, given L.A. ordinances allowing bicycling anywhere, so long as you don’t endanger people or property. Even if you are one of those hot shot speed-o spandex wearing cyclist, no problem. Wiltshire is so wide you almost have to look over the curve of the earth to the opposite side. There are 4-6 lanes for car traffic and parking lanes wide enough for semi’s but occupied mostly by small SOV’s or not at all. There is plenty of room to cycle on the street if that’s your style. And there are many big wide boulevards like that in L.A.

So. I have a suggestion about how the City could significantly reduce its colossal carbon footprint. Put some of those boulevards on road diets. By that I mean just restripe them, making the parking and driving lanes a little narrower. Then paint in bike lanes on either side to of the street. There’s oodles of room for bike lanes on LA streets. Can you imagine, with weather like that (83 degrees in January), how many thousands of commuters would get out of their cars and ride bikes?

On my second morning in LA I bought a camera with a zoom lens but no view finder. I’ve always been shy of new fangled cameras like that. But the store didn’t have any cameras with view finders, so I decided to give this technology a try, taking pictures when blinding reflections on the screen made it impossible to tell what was looking at.

But the result was often amazing when I would just point the thing at something and hope for the best. I took shots of many buildings, parks, murals and statues all over town. I took the Bunker Hill Steps, artwork inside the Central Library, the Flea Market and pedestrian mall fountain on Fairbanks. In Hollywood I shot Roy Rogers and Shirley Temple’s foot prints, costumed movie characters like Bat Man and Spider Man posing on the street. I captured huge wooly mammoths, camels and dire wolf skeletons at Wiltshire’s La Brea Tar Pits, gallery artworks across the street, and much, much more. What surprised me most were shots of famous paintings I took through windows of the LA County Museum of Art. Reflections of buildings blended with the paintings for some serendipitous composition. Building reflections also blend with my photo’s of manikins in a thrift store window on Fairbanks. You would almost think I was a hobby photographer, I had so much fun taking pictures.

See some of them at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=93983&id=1453599604&l=d31eb72711

Friends are puzzled when I tell them I was willing to spend 4 days getting to LA and back when a plane ride would have taken a only a few hours. But If you want to relax and get away from it all, why not do it on the train? You can wander about, get a snack from the lounge car, have dinner in the diner, or sit in the sunny dome car gazing at breath-taking views of forests, mountains, pasture lands, and waterways.
The best part is the opportunity to catch up on pleasure reading. I read The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver and David Gutterson’s East of the Mountains with which I would not have found the luxurious time to entertain myself at home. I even did a modicum of writing, (this blog entry for example.)

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How’s Whistle Stop coming? Still no permit from the City although I’ve been assured it’s right around the corner.

Whistle Stop Coffee and Bike Shop Sitll on Square One

2010-12-12T12:50:00.002-08:00

Whistle Stop is trapped on square one. Its pawns are scattered all over the dank gray basement of our 100 year old house in the form of café furniture, bike tools, an espresso machine, grinder, files, architectural drawings, and much more. Whistle Stop even has a cool fan page: www.facebook.com/WhistleStopCoop. The fans are waiting.

It was early August when I first found my way to the Seattle Department of Planning and Development (DPD) located on the 20th floor of Seattle Municiple Tower. Though familiar to me now, It was new then, that big room with its long counter, waiting area with wall to ceiling windows looking out over the freeway and Seattle hill- scapes.

I plopped my shiny blue bike helmet on the counter and spoke to the woman behind the desk. “I want a permit to open a coffee and bike shop.”

She looked up at her computer screen “I’ll sign you up for a counseling session. There’ll be a wait. Do you have your plans with you?”

“Oh, yes,” I rummaged through my back pack and pulled out my 12 page business plan.

She shook her head. “I mean your drawings.”

I reached into my pack again and produced an 8 ½ X 11” piece of graph paper with a floor plan carefully drawn in pencil.

The woman suppressed a grimace which might have been the start of either a laugh or a frown. “It has to be an official architectural drawing with a site plan of the surrounding streets and sidewalks.”

I heard a laugh behind me. “You need an architect,” said a voice. “Our firm just finished designing a coffee shop.”

I turned around and looked up at the tall young man. “How much did it cost?”
He shrugged. “Oh, about four thousand dollars.”

Now I was the one who laughed. The value of this work of art in my hand was about ten cents for the graph paper. The design was free because it had erupted spontaneously from my brain.

I waited for about an hour before a different woman called me to another part of the counter. This woman told me I would indeed need architectural drawings, much larger, not on graph paper, but on vellum. She asked me the address of the building in which my shop would be located. I said I didn’t know the address but it was in a big building called the Citadel on the corner of Martin Luther King and Othello Streets beside the Station. So the woman called up her Google Earth, found the general vicinity and figured out the address. Then she looked at her computer screen and signed me up for an appointment with the microfiche section. She said to go and wait there until someone called my name.

I waited about twenty minutes before the man behind the counter called me up and handed me some little dark square films. He said to take them over to one of the microfiche viewers and look up the permit numbers for the address. He seemed to assume that I must know what I was doing or I wouldn’t be here.

Following the example of someone else, I went over and placed one of the little films on the glass tray under what looked liked a TV screen and shoved it in. I had done something like this some thirty or forty years before in another life, but I don’t recall the images being this confusing. Here were all these miniature forms with lots of helter skelter words and numbers. After searching at length without knowing whether or not I had found what I was looking for, I went back to the counter and asked the man if he could help me. “I’m not supposed to do this part,” he said. “Customers are supposed to do it themselves.”

I nodded. “It’s better to be independent,” I agreed.

The man shook his head but proceeded to do my work for me even though it wasn’t in his job description.

After a couple more DPD counseling appointments in August, I finally showed up in early September with some drawings that were good enough to be granted an “intake appointment” in mid October. It so happens that I have a kind neighbor named Jenny who is an architect. She had charged me considerably less than $4000

However, three days before the “intake appointment,” our game plan changed. Instead of renting the room in the Citadel which is in very bad repair, we were offered the opportunity to rent the vacant lot between the Citadel and the Station. We would buy an office trailer, fix it up like a bike and coffee shop and put it on the lot. This way we would have a nicer building in a more visible location.

I ran over to Jenny, and she miraculously came up with a fairly official looking set of drawings in a couple of days. This time I thought it might help to have some people less ignorant than me in my corner at the meeting. My husband went with me and so did Ed, the man from Jemco who wants to sell us the trailer, and Lyle, a DPD City planner who coordinates our Othello Neighborhood Plan.

A young man ushered us into an office cubicle with a wide table where we laid out our drawings. After we told him about our change of plan, he went out and came back with another woman who told me I should have canceled the appointment and made a new one because this was a new plan at a different address. It was of no consequence that the different address was only next door to the original one.

We would literally have to go back to the drawing board. We would need elevations depicting all four sides of the building as well as supportive detail of stairs, wheel chair ramps, etc. She gave us a booklet about rules regarding temporary buildings. She said that after we had these drawings done, we could make another “intake appointment.”

Jenny went right back to work for us, and we came back a month later with a huge roll of beautiful drawings in quintuplicate. But at the next “intake appointment” it completely different people who barely looked at our drawings. They said, “Our permits for temporary buildings are only for four weeks or six months,” This would not, of course, be enough time. The game had stopped. This was a new game with different rules, and our little piece on square one had nowhere to go as far as we could tell.

We found out that next year the City Council will consider a possible new ordinance that would allow temporary buildings on vacant lots where planned developments had been postponed due to the recession; our situation exactly. However, if the new ordinance passes with no contention, it will still take until May at the earliest to go into effect.

Now mind you, the people who work for the City of Seattle are really nice. Lyle said he and others are trying to help us. Ed, the trailer man, is trying to help us too. Maybe someone will figure out how the rules of this game will allow Whistle Stop off square one soon.

2010-12-12T12:50:00.001-08:00

2010-12-12T12:49:00.000-08:00

Whistle Stop Co-op; Espresso, Bagels and Bikes

2010-10-13T16:24:00.002-07:00

On May 17 I told you I had this crazy idea about opening a shop. I made it sound so easy. Now five months later I am still on square one. Not that I have never been off square one. In fact, I’ve been all over the board circling back and around again and again. No wonder my head is spinning.

Once I had a place by Othello Station to put my shop, then I didn’t have it, then I almost had another place and on and on. I hope to finalize this decision soon, but it’s not a promise. I am still going round and round with the city of Seattle to get my permits. Although I’ve been down town to the Department of Planning and Development three times, each visit lasting several hours, my intake appointment is scheduled for October 20th. And I’ll be showing up there with a different plan than the one they accepted last time.

I have a whole file box full of research about, menus, designs, drawings, etc., etc.. The file folder containing my research on equipment alone is about an inch thick. It’s full of brochures and quotes on espresso machines, grinders, triple sinks, hand washing sinks, refrigerators, counters, Panini grills, etc., etc., much of it obtained from warehouse and showroom visits all over several counties. Let me tell you, this stuff is very expensive. But I still don’t know what we’re going to buy. We do have over $2K worth of bike tools but no place to put them. We have lots of furniture because we rented out our vacation cabin on Hood Canal to help meet expenses and hauled everything back across the Sound. We have cute logo.

I know I started out with a checker board metaphor, but actually this is more like a roller coaster bike ride. Up one hill and down the other. It feels like we’re at a high point now, but I’m hesitant to be optimistic. The terrain looks familiar. I’ve been here before. Maybe we’ll drop down again into a dump. But even though I don’t know what I will bring to my DPD intake appointment Oct. 20, I am resolved it will be right and they will haul out their pens and write me a permit.

I have not lived the easiest life nor the hardest. But this is the most difficult trip I’ve ever been on, even harder than bicycling across India. Maybe you’re thinking of hitting the comment button now and typing in some advice. Go right ahead. But believe me, there has never been any shortage of advice, much of it conflicting. Some of it made things worse. But even so, I will listen carefully and give you words grave consideration. I’m in no position to refuse anything free, let alone generous counsel. My brain is in a shambles.

Don't bother advising me to give up, no matter how sane and sensible that would sound. I can't do it. Giving up is not in my behavioral repetoire. Here's a quote: (I don't recall who said this, but, not knowing whether it was good or bad advise, I took it to heart): "Did you ever try? Did you ever fail? No bother. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

2010-10-13T16:24:00.001-07:00

2010-10-13T16:23:00.001-07:00

Accessing the World's Great Bike Paths

2010-08-06T21:54:00.001-07:00

My husband, Dick Burkhart, and I have been with our Bike Friday Project Q tandem on many world renowned bike paths. We have traveled old canal boat toe paths in Ohio, New York, New Jersey and beyond. Avoiding much city traffic, we biked out of Paris on a path that took us clear to farm country. From there we headed eastward across the continent on roads bordered by red poppies and rolling hills covered with pea fields and punctuated by villages of stone houses, geranium pots on every window sill.

There were occasional bike paths in Belgium too, but once we got to the Netherlands there was no more need for roads. Holland’s numbered complex of bike paths, more important than its freeway system, took us all the way across the country to the Hague without needing to get off. On our trip up the East Coast of the US we traveled a bike path all the way across Cape Cod. In fact, we had to make a special effort to get off this bike freeway in order not to miss the sweet New England Villages for which the Cape is famous.
To name a few.

Normally with bike paths you have to know where to get on and off. Except maybe in Davis, California, which was built for bikes, you can’t just get on at any street corner. Bike path designers tend to separate the path from the rest of the community. I suppose that’s because cyclists want to ride unencumbered by the rest of the world. Likewise property owners want to keep bike path users at a distance. So fences, hedgerows, and ditches tend to border bike paths, prohibiting escape before the next exit that may be a number of miles ahead, kind of like with freeways. Best to take water, tire pump, patch kit and tools, maybe even lunch, along.

Seattle’s Chief Sealth Trail is maybe one of the hilliest I’ve been on. It rises up, dips down, and up again on its ascent through City Light’s power line strip, gaining about 200 feet of elevation within a few short miles from the Rainier Valley neighborhood floor to the top of Beacon Hill. When Seattle built the Chief Sealth Trail (CST) a few years ago, they apparently assumed that users would access it dutifully, as with most of the world’s bike paths, at designated intersections a mile or more apart even though , in this case, there are no fences, hedge rows or other barriers between it and the houses. Instead the Trail runs through the City’s mowed grassy power line strip with no encumbrances on either side to keep anyone out or in.

So once in place, the Trail’s access system began to take on a design of its own, a network of pathways the planners had apparently not envisioned. The wide expanse of mowed grass spreads out on either side of the CST turning this mundane power line strip into a walking park to gaze upon a majestic panorama that spreads one arm westward along the Olympic Mountain Range and the other eastward over the Cascades with Mount Rainier crowning her snowy head to the south.

No, the Skyline Footpaths, as I call them, were not part of the City’s plan for the CST. They were made by feet the way cow paths form. CST users don’t enter from the mile apart cross streets the planners had in mind. Most access the Trail by human made foot paths that lead from houses, sidewalks and yards. Humans have created their own network of paths the way deer and groundhogs do. It’s the same way towns and village streets were formed before there were city planners.

Looking out over the power line strip park, you can see lots of people on the CST. Some are on bikes. A few are in jogging shorts running up and down the hills. Lots are walking dogs. There are African women in long colorful veils and Asian women in cone shaped coolie hats corralling their kids. There are people in suits and ties heading down to the Othello Link Light Rail Station on their way to work down town and others wheeling suit cases to the airport via light rail. But if you bike the Trail, be sure to drop your bike at its intersection with Holly Park Drive and scramble on foot about 40 feet up a narrow path to look out over Lake Washington and the Othello town center. From there the view is best. I’ve seen a few mountain bikes up there from time to time, but mostly it’s feet, and you never have to lose sight of your bike to enjoy the view.

I am working with a group of neighbors to apply for a grant from the City to gravel and enhance the network of footpaths people have made to access the Chief Sealth Trail. I wonder what would happen if we took out all the fences and hedgerows along most of the world’s bike paths and just let people access them at their own convenience. Would cars become obsolete?

Whistle Stop Co-op; Beverages, Books, and Bikes

2010-05-17T18:01:00.000-07:00

If you live in our neighborhood, Othello, you don’t have to fork out a $1500 round trip ticket for an exotic trip abroad. All you have to do is show up in the center of our business district, and you will be in some exotic place resembling your dreams.

Othello’s center piece is a new light rail station that’s designed to resemble an Asian garden with pretty little trains whistling into it every few minutes. Surrounding the Station are plenty of Asian grocery stores, East African café’s, Chinese herbal medicine shops, etc., etc. Oh yes, you will have almost as much difficulty being understood in English there as you would in Katmandu, especially if there are minor nuances involved in your request. Sure, you can buy a cup of coffee, but don’t try to get one without caffeine or with fat free milk. Come to my neighborhood and you virtually leave the U.S. half a globe away.

While I love rolling out of bed every morning into this exotic place, there are some things we need. One is a coffee shop that does serve non-fat decaf, known in Seattle as a “Why Bother?” and other espresso variations. We also need some semblance of a book store where people can sit and gather, read, study, and/or relax. But most of all, we need a bike shop. We are served by bike lanes and a magnificent bike path called the Chief Sealth Trail. But Othello is crying for a bike shop.

So I have a plan. With help from family and friends, we will solve all these needs with one unique consumer and employee owned business which we will call, “Whistle Stop Co-op; Beverages, Books, and Bikes.”

So here I am several years retired from my former day job as Vocational Rehabilitation Counselor. (There were too many syllables in that occupation too.) But I’m thinking about taking on a new career that will have an even longer title: “Shop Keeper of Three Stores in One: Whistle Stop Co-op; Beverages, Books and Bikes.” It will be a family run employee and consumer owned cooperative.

To prepare myself, I am taking a course in how to run a business and have already written pages and pages of my business plan. I have long lists of things we need, like espresso machines, and serving counters, and bike tools, and tables. Being an family of book worms, we already have a fairly large expendable library. The accountant/bookkeeper will be my husband, Dick, who is a retired mathematician. My son, Erik, will manage the shop and fix the bikes. He is well versed in those skills. My job will be promotion as well as making coffee. I hope to hire an assistant for the barista part because eye-hand coordination isn't my strong suit.

Of course, the most important thing we will need is a shop. This was promised to me by my dentist, Dr. Silver, one morning while he was examining my teeth. He was excited about my idea, and he just happens to own an empty plot of grass right on the main corner next door to the Station. He said he will have a shop built on it and rent it to us for the going rate that the Asian grocers and other shop keepers pay in the neighborhood. Of course, it will take awhile for him to get the shop built. That gives us time to plan, buy things, take more courses and make more lists. Maybe before too long I won’t be a retired old lady on a bike but rather an old lady shop keeper coming to work on a bike. I’ll let you know when we open up so you can come visit.

In Heaven with my Dahon Folding Bike

2010-02-04T15:02:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting on park bench under the warm, sunny skies of heaven. I knew where to find heaven because I spent a couple of days here last winter this time. To get here my friend, Lucy, just walks out into her back yard and opens the gate. Voila! There appears a ten mile smooth gray asphalt bike path through an expansive groomed parkland surrounding a lake. Well it’s not just a lake, but a gigantic aquatic amoeba comprised of many lakes, channels, ponds and sloughs reaching out tidy and unperturbed from an invisible nucleus. Views along the path around the waterway feature sparkling fountains, white sand beaches, palm and live oak trees.

An unbroken line of variable housing surrounds the park, but heaven’s home owners association requires that colors be selected from a limited pallet of soft earth tones, the brightest being red Spanish roof tiles. Thus everything from apartments to bungalow blends attractively with the landscape. Apparently there is even a size limit on dwelling units. Perhaps the reason there are no mansions allowed in heaven is that, out of proportion to the others, they would be an eyesore. The effect is not unlike much of Europe where ordinances require that all buildings be constructed of native stone. I couldn’t bike around the lake when I was here last year because I didn’t have my bike. So I resolved to come this year for two weeks and bike the ten miles around every day.

As if heaven weren’t enough, Lucy shows me other south Florida attractions. She has driven me to the Everglades which I also saw last year.. We walked on a board walked called the Anhinga Trail. Anhingas are great black birds about as tall as a six year old human and with wing spans the size of hang gliders. The Everglades are an Anhinga’s idea of heaven. Flocks of white egrets and other great birds lift like clouds from marsh grass and shrubs. The Everglades are heaven to many other species such as twelve foot alligators that sleep on their fat bellies in the mud. They wear big permanent grins on their faces that look like a kid dabbed sloppily on with a paint brush.

Humans would have a hard time living in Everglades because they would sink into the mud and thus become easy alligator prey, hence the board walk. But Lucy said human heaven was actually resurrected from the Everglades basically by destroying Ahinga heaven. So human heaven still has a few cute gray grebes and a flock of Ibis which are white birds with long curved orange beaks that peck at the ground like chickens.

I started preparing for this trip around Christmas time When Seattle tends to be, “Darker than a thousand midnights down in a cypress swamp.” (A reference by James Weldon Johnson to Ahinga heaven only at night.)

The challenge was to find a way to check Dahon on American Airlines to Miami without paying extra. My husband, who is patient and understanding, tried to help me stuff it into our Bike Friday tandem suitcase, but it wouldn’t fit. So I went to U-Haul and found a box big enough to fold the bike up and stuff it in. But then I found out that the linear measurement of the box was 64 inches, but the maximum allowed was 62.

Dick told me not to worry. He would figure out a way to get my bike in the luggage at no extra cost. I did not doubt him. Dick is a PhD mathematician, a virtual rocket scientist. Sure enough, the day before I left, Dick took Dahon’s 20 inch wheels off and stuffed them in my duffel bag. He then folded the frame in half and that way it fit in the suitcase. So all I had to do was shove my clothes and things in around bike parts.

Dick accompanied me to the Seatac Airport on Seattle’s new light rail that only a few weeks before had been extended all the way there. Lucy met me on the Miami side and we deftly rolled the suitcase to the parking garage and lifted it into the trunk of her car along with the duffel bag.

The first day Dahon and I explored heaven, we had only gone about two of the ten miles when the trail ended in a library parking lot, beside a shopping complex of that hell known as an American suburb, its eight lane arterials clogged with traffic. Ghastly to think that thousands of acres of Ahinga heaven had also been transformed into this! But I knew there had to be at least eight miles of human heaven left if I could just get around the shopping center and find a way back in on the other side. The other side greeted me with a big three story apartment complex and a huge locked metal gate. I went into the management office with my bike in toe and explained that I wanted to bike back around the other side of the lake to get to my friend’s house. Smiling, the manager took his key out and unlocked the not so pearly gate to heaven.

The next day I decided to go around the opposite eight mile way and try to find another exit from heaven without encountering a locked gate. This time a couple hundred yards before the shopping center, there were some sidewalks entering some apartment buildings. But upon investigation, the streets all lead to the other side of same locked gate. The manager came out and opened it again, this time frowning.

The next day I went the same eight mile way around again, determined this time to find a way out that didn’t go through a gated community. But on the way, I had a flat tire. Of course, I had not come prepared with a spare, this being heaven after all, a place of no worries. Luckily the flat had occurred under one of heaven’s half dozen bridges where cars from hell cross over. I called out to a fisherman beside the lake and asked what street it was going over the Bridge.

“Hammocks,” he said, without turning to look at me. So I phoned Lucy and asked her to pick me up where Hammocks Boulevard crossed the lake.

But while pushing the bike up the steep bank to the bridge, I fell down hard on my left hip, the post-fracture one with the metal ball joint. I screamed as though I was afraid I would dislocate the hip and have to go back into surgery . . . which I was. In truth I wasn’t hurt much, but the scream got the fisherman’s attention, and he pushed my bike the rest of the way up. Lucy drove me and the Dahon to a good bike shop which replaced both multiply patched inner tubes with bran new ones and lined the wheels with neoprene strips.

I returned to heaven next day firmly resolved to ride all the way around, this time finding the elusive free man’s exit with no locked gates. Observing carefully as I biked again under the Hammocks Bridge, I learned that I had already found the way out without knowing it. Beside the bridge where I had the flat tire, there was a sidewalk leading from the bike path right out onto the street. From there it was only about a block to the shopping center where I bought a few groceries, biked round to the library parking lot, out through the open gate, and basked in the glory of heaven for the two remaining miles back to Lucy’s house. Since then I’ve done that every morning (each of which was warm and sunny) stopping at the shopping center for grub and maybe a book to enjoy on a park bench by the lake for the rest of the afternoon. This is the heaven!

Fortune cookie prophecy: Persistence and determination will get you to heaven.

Biking to Hood Canal; Mission: Lower Stress

2009-11-11T13:37:00.000-08:00

When I go alone by bike to Hood Canal, my mission is to reduce stress. But lately my trips over there have had their stressful moments. For instance, last time when I was riding up to the ferry pay booth, I was assaulted, yes intentionally assaulted, by a large pick up truck. The truck crashed into the side of my bike as an enormous tire rolled over the side of my foot. A gray baseball capped head protruded from the window frame of the truck.

“Don’t cut in line!” Pretty high stress.

His accusation was correct. But there were extenuating circumstances. There were two semis in line behind the pick up and no place else to go but out on the street.

This trip I got a gentler start. I took the Link light rail and got off at the International District/China Town Station. When I arrived at the ferry terminal there was no one in line, so I pulled right up to the booth and paid without incident. I spent the fifteen minute wait for the boat basking in the sun as though it were July. On board, I began reading the novel Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons, a frivolous old fashioned example of British humor. Very low stress.

When I got off the ferry in Bremerton, there was a stress free perfect connection. Kitsap County Bus #14 was waiting to take me to the Silverdale Mall. But my polymyalgia rheumatica was acting up so it was a slap stick skit getting the bike onto the bus. I dropped the bike on the pavement while slamming the carrier arm down on my front wheel. Moderate stress. .But no matter. I got on the bus and entertained myself with the novel until we got to Silverdale.

Now for the biking part of the trip. It’s only seven miles from Silverdale to our family cabin in the village of Old Bangor on Hood Canal. It’s a bit hilly but not bad. Basically it’s a matter of climbing up over the ridge and down between Dyes Inlet and Hood Canal. I headed up Old Frontier Road just as I have been doing for more than thirty years.

Old Frontier had always been a fairly gentle up hill slope so I started steadfastly pedaling in the sunshine enjoying the warmth and familiarity of it all. But something began to feel different. The slope became steeper than it had ever been before. Maybe I was getting old? I looked up hill ahead of me and saw that the world had changed. Although I had been biking straight ahead and had not to my knowledge made a turn, I was no longer on friendly, easy Old Frontier Road but was traveling on an entirely new road that was headed steeply up over the ridge off in a different direction. To get back onto Old Frontier I had to make a sharp left turn that had never been there before. A new road had been built since I had come this way only a few months earlier. Moderate stress.

From then on I relaxed under blue skies, the roads deep in shade as they took me through forested suburbia. There were pleasant roller coaster ups and downs, a soft wind whistling in my hearing aids, lots of nostalgia feelings. I had raised my children in this neck of the woods, and it was old home week. Stress very low.

Our family cabin sits in a meadow overlooking Hood Canal and the Olympic Mountains right next door to the Trident submarine base. As the years have gone by we have learned not to notice the twelve foot chain length fence (barbed wire on top) on two sides of the property. Most of the time I come here to the whisper of wind and total peace. But this time neighbors were standing outside to greet me as I came up the road.

“We’ve had a little excitement. Someone cut a hole in the fence last night and broke into the Base. Not to worry, it wasn’t terrorists, just some protestors.”

Not to worry. That was fine to say, but when they showed me where the hole had been, it was on our land only a few feet from our driveway. Stress way up.

I had just barely turned on the heat in the house and started to stuff in lunch when there was a knock at the door. Two lovely ladies wanted to talk with me about the hole in the fence. Assuming that they wanted to question me as a possible witness, I explained that I had not, of course, seen anything because this was a vacation house and I had only just arrived a few moments before. But I invited them in. sat them down, and offered tea or coffee.

No, they didn’t want tea or coffee.

“Are you police?’ I asked.

They handed me a business card that read, “U.S. Navy Criminal Investigative Service.” Stress going up.

It became evident from their polite line of questioning that they had come to check me out, not so much as a witness, but possibly as some sort of accomplice. Maybe they thought I had given the protestors permission to use my driveway?

That was a silly thought because someone planning to commit a federal offense probably wouldn’t ask permission.

Their implied suspicion was reasonable however. I am well known in the neighborhood as a peace activist as evidenced by my published novel, Alien Child, and my former participation in a number of demonstrations at the Bangor gate. The two women fixed their lovely bright eyes upon me and asked about the comings and goings of my family and friends, what church I attended, the names of some of my peace activist friends. Because I am an old lady and not much good at recalling names, I asked them to read me a list, and I would tell them if I remembered anyone.

I recognized one name.

“How long have you known her?” they asked.

I thought back. Although I did have some distant fond memories of this person, I had not seen nor heard from her for a couple of years. “Thirty years or more.”

Early next morning my husband phoned me from Seattle to say he had seen a press release saying there had been a “plough share action.” Not only had the protestors cut a hole in the fence by our drive way, they had done the same to a couple more fences. Ultimately they had gained access to a nuclear weapons storage facility, made a trail of their blood, and put up banners claiming the weapons were against international law and the law of God. The woman I had remembered was one of them. The others were strangers from out of town. The press release said they had all been hand cuffed and required to lie on the damp, cold ground for four hours. They had already been released, but, of course, will eventually be put on trial and sent to prison.

I thought about that. But like so many of my fellow world citizens, I snuggled back down in my warm comforter and sipped my morning coffee, trying to fulfill my mission: lower stress.

Cross Training: Of Bikes and Biochar

2009-10-07T20:58:00.000-07:00

Having just returned home with my panniers full of groceries is proof that, despite my lapse of blogging, I haven’t quit biking. But for the last few weeks my biking distances have barely exceeded my swimming and walking. No, I’m not training for a triathlon, not that I know of anyway. In fact, my physical prowess has slowed down to where I can almost hear the grim reaper swishing the air around me with his scythe. In fact I swear I can feel him hacking away at my right arm now trying to chop it off.

Well, maybe it isn’t that bad, but it is now with difficulty that I put on my coat and sling my pack over my back, let alone load my bike on a metro bus. That’s because of a flare up of my polymyalgia rheumatica resulting in a huge increase in pain and stiffness. The doctor suggested that I go back on prednisone which is a steroid. I have refused to do that. Instead I’m trying everything from massage to castor oil to Chinese herbal medicine, but what seems to be helping most is my new triathletic cross training.

I can’t believe my good fortune that, as a senior citizen and Group Health member, I am eligible for free membership in the YMCA which has a swimming pool and hot tub. Getting there and back requires a couple of miles walking to and from the light rail station. Why don’t I bike the two miles? I would except that Cherry Street between the Pioneer Square Station and the Y is a virtual cliff.

Partly to keep my mind off such petty woes, I have also been sitting around in classrooms lately doing some cross training of the brain, getting myself boned up on weightier matters like climate change (the planet’s pain). Previously I had thought bicycling instead of motoring would make the greatest possible individual impact on reducing climate change. But this past weekend I rode Amtrak with my husband down to Portland and attended a four day conference called Ecoconvergence. There I learned so much my brain hurt almost as bad as my other muscles. I attended one panel on climate solutions expecting someone to at least mention alternative transportation, i.e., bicycling. Instead they were pushing something I had never heard of: biochar. I have just discovered my spell checker hasn’t heard of it either. Have you?

Jerry Adams, the guy touting biochar, said that all human activity combined emits substantially less CO2 than does the plant matter rotting in the world’s farms, forests, and compost piles. That includes the ones in your back yard and mine. To make biochar they take dry, dead plant matter and burn it in a contraption that doesn’t let the smoke and fumes out but rather uses them to keep the plant matter smoldering. The type of burning is called pryolysis. There are elaborate machines designed to make biochar, but Jerry said you could make a simple device in your back yard out of a covered barbecue pit.

By making biochar instead of letting plant matter rot, you prevent CO2 from getting into the air and warming the planet. What’s left after you burn the plant matter is biochar which is an extremely rich fertilizer that could enhance the soil for hundreds to thousands of years. Jerry said the Pre-Columbian Amazonian natives used to make biochar to enhance soil productivity by smoldering agricultural waste. My explanation here is, of course oversimplified, but if you want to learn more go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wike/Biochar

No, I’m not going to stop biking and start cutting down the jungle of blackberries and knockweed in my back yard to make biochar. Instead I’m going to bike and blog around talking about it. I hope to help promote WECHAR, the Harvesting and Restoration Act of 2009 which has been introduced into the US Senate. Maybe I could even convince the City of Seattle to use its yard waste collection to make biochar. That way they would not only cut CO2 emissions in the City air, they could even sell their extra biochar for profit. Maybe that would boost the City budget enough that the wouldn’t have to cut any bike lanes or trails.

ClumsyCycling and the Health Care Hullabaloo

2009-08-19T22:21:00.000-07:00

On December 5, 2007 I fell and broke the little hip ball-joint off the top of my leg. My bike had been pointed up a steep concrete ramp from the parking basement of an office building in downtown Seattle. When I started to dismount and walk up the ramp, my foot got caught on the high bar of my bike and over backwards I went. I was immediately wrapped in a cocoon of nice people wanting to help, so I gave them my Group Health Coop number. Someone immediately phoned an ambulance which, within minutes, delivered me to Virginia Mason Hospital.

“I’ve heard that old ladies die of broken hips, I said to one of the nurses while I lay on the gurney waiting to be X-rayed.

“Yes, but I’ll tell you one thing for sure,” she said. “You won’t.”

I knew without asking that this positive prognosis was based on two facts:
1) I am a bicyclist and therefore in better than average health for an old lady and
2) I am privileged to be a member of Group Health, one of the finest medical programs south of Canada.

The day after I fell, a competent human body mechanic/orthopedic surgeon made a tidy ten inch incision in my leg, tossed out the useless ball joint, and replaced it with an artificial one. The day after that a physical therapist came to my room, showed me how to use a walker, and began teaching me to climb stairs with it. The day after that, I went home and independently ascended the two flights of stairs into my house. On February 24, 2008, less than three months later, I went back into business as an old lady on a bike, doing my shopping, errands, going where I need to go.

Group Health’s total invoice to me was $330. I didn’t have to pay anything for the operation or physical therapy, but there was a $100 per day co-pay for each of my three days in the hospital totaling $300. The $30 was for the walker. It was all very simple, no red tape, no paper work. For a normal office visit I pay $10 at the counter, no questions asked. Confusing invoices rarely come in the mail.

So why can’t every poor cyclist who falls off a bike in this country have such complete and hassle free medical care? Nearly every industrialized nation in the world provides that for all their citizens.

The answer is that in America health care is corporate business. So if you can’t pay, you can’t have it. Wealthy insurance companies have plenty advertising dollars to make sure we won’t get a public option, let alone a good single payer system to compete with their money making racket. In the days of Hilary Clinton’s sincere efforts to fix health care, these companies spent millions to scare people with the propaganda that allowed them to take over.

By the time President Obama came on the scene, a lot of people had awakened to the obvious truth as fewer and fewer people could afford health care. Lots of people had figured out we were not going to get affordable health care as long as we were confined the mercy of the corporate insurance system But back came the insurance industry with more scare propaganda, telling people that with a new universal system that includes a public option, they will lose what they have.. Actually these companies are the ones afraid that they will lose what they have, namely a corner on the market wherein they can name their price. Lately we’re hearing that the answer lies, not in the public sector, but in private coops like Group Health. I’m sorry, but Group Health, though wonderful, is by no means affordable for everyone. It costs a sizeable portion of my pension.

Republican protesters interrupting town hall meetings don’t care about the millions of Americans who can’t afford health care. They only want to prevent Democrats from accomplishing anything so vitally necessary and therefore popular as quality, affordable health care for all, something that would bring this nation up to par with so many others. That would strengthen the Democrats whom that see purely as opponents, not as co-workers in the effort to govern. But maybe the donkeys will thumb their noses at the elephants and pull it off on their own. That would be reassuring because all this hullabaloo makes our system of government look as clumsy as an old lady falling backwards from her bike down a concrete ramp.

New Easy Way to Bike up Beacon Hill

2009-07-31T18:21:00.000-07:00

A long high ridge towers over Interstate 5 for several miles before that clogged freeway intersects I- 90 and enters down town Seattle. The ridge is known to us a Beacon Hill.

If you are not on the smoggy freeway but rather standing above with your bike in the charming Beacon Hill business district there are wonderful places to go. It’s basically a coast from there down 12th Street past magnificent mountain and cityscapes to the International District along Jackson Street. Or before crossing a great bridge over a spacious ravine, you could hang right onto the I-90 bike path that will take you past parks and green space all the way to Lake Washington and on across the mighty Lake to Bellevue depending upon how far you want to go.

Or you could go in the opposite direction from the Beacon Hill Business District south on Beacon Ave. and take the Chief Sealth Trail with its skyline views of the Cascades and Olymppic mountain ranges. That Trail angles down the other side of Beacon Hill to Rainier Valley, a narrow stretch of city between the Hill and Lake Washington. That’s my neighborhood, a colorful feisty, international place where lots of
people know each other and have heated differences of opinion on every imaginable subject, in short, a great place to live! It’s called Rainier Valley.

From the perspective of an old lady biker down in the Rainier Valley, it used to be a long, hard sweaty slog to the top of Beacon Hill. No longer. As of, July 18, 2009, Seattle’s birth date as a true city, there’s a new way. From anywhere in the Rainier Valley it takes only a few effortless minutes to get to the top of Beacon Hill these days. No, I haven’t taken up driving a car, heaven forbid! But after winning a long hard fight, with many boisterous, angry, and sadly misguided factions, in the Rainier Valley, we finally have our first fourteen mile segment of light rail.

All you have to do is put your bike on the train at any one of the lovely stations which have so improved the looks of the Valley by means of their gracious architecture enhanced with amazing public art. Depending on where you get on, it will be only a stop or two before you enter Beacon Hill via tunnel and a few seconds later arrive at the Beacon Hill Station

Push your bike off and pause a few seconds to appreciate the Station’s artistic simulation of evening sky and deep blue sense of outer space. Walk under bright creations that look like sea monsters or giant bacteria suspended in the sky and into one of the four big elevators each spacious enough to turn a couple of bikes around at once.

With breath taking speed the elevator rises 160 feet. The doors open. Step out. And Voila! Find yourself on a beautiful new plaza with attractive plantings and paving stones. Red Apple Market appears like magic in front of you, a familiar land mark to get your bearings in the heart of the Beacon Hill business district. No slog. No sweat. A few short minutes of comfort, ease, and beauty have brought you to a height that used to take the better part of an hour to achieve.

Now for a gorgeous downhill ride in any direction!

P.S. I want to put in a shameless campaign plug here for Mayor Greg Nickels who is up for reelection. If it were not for his indomitable persistence, Seattle would not yet be born as a real city.

The Right to Ride a Bike

2009-06-11T22:43:00.000-07:00

Recently Chuck Ayers, Executive Director of the Cascade Bicycle Club, gave a great speech as part of an alternative transportation panel at Seattle City Hall. He talked about society’s unquestioned presumption that everyone has the right to drive a car. Most people have likely never thought about this before because this right is as much a given part of our world as the CO2 emissions that choke the air we breathe. Our rite of passage into adulthood occurred at age 16 when we were handed the keys to the family car. That was when we started to make our own decisions, go where we wanted to go. The world was our oyster.

This assumption of the right of everyone to drive a car has shaped the building of our world. Roads go everywhere, through everything, over everything. If there isn’t ample parking everywhere, we have the right to complain bitterly. Conservatives shudder at the thought of socialized medicine, but never blanch at the notion of socialized highways, many of which are built with no room for pedestrian or other forms of transportation.

People look at me in wonder when I show up someplace on my bike. Many claim it would be impossible to ride a bike anyplace from where they live. They say it’s too dangerous. Car traffic is fast and heavy. The roads have no shoulders.

But what if the tables were turned? What would the world be like if we didn’t have the right to drive a car? What if driving a car were a unique privilege but instead everyone had the right to ride a bike? It’s hard to imagine because that world would look so different from ours. Certainly there would be fewer cars and many more bikes. Probably there would be many toll booths where cars would have to stop and pay for the privilege of using the roads. All major arterial would have bike lanes, or maybe we wouldn’t even need lanes because cars would drive slower and look out for cyclists. Everyone would move slower, and life would be more leisurely.

We could dream on, but I doubt the world will look like that anytime soon. However, Seattle has taken a small step in the direction of becoming a city that provides more rights for cyclists. Seattle hired Toole Design Group of Maryland to help draft the Seattle Comprehensive Bicycle Master Plan which, over the coming decade may assure everyone a reasonable right to ride a bike where ever they want to go. Chances are you may even be able to send your child to the grocery store on her bike to buy a loaf of bread. Likewise, I recently saw a man with a lower mobility disability riding his hand operated bike around the three mile Seward Park loop and then on up the long steep hill of Seward Park Blvd. Within a decade, this gentleman and many others should be seen riding peacefully anywhere in the City.

The Seattle Comprehensive Bicycle Master Plan will be implemented gradually, but over the course of a decade many visible changes will make their marks upon the City. Lots of streets will be repainted to accommodate bike lanes, sharrows, and wide curb lanes. When all the planned changes are finished, there will be a well connected bicycle network to link existing bike routes, schools, parks, neighborhood business districts, etc. At important intersections there will be more bicycle parking and other improvements. Employment centers like downtown will have showers, changing facilities, repair shops, and bicycle storage lockers. There will be signage to help cyclists find their way through the City. Seattle Department of Transportation will be in charge of maintaining all this just as it now does with all the automobile amenities that assure you the right to drive a car.

Imagine your grandchildren growing up in a world where everyone presumes the inalienable right to ride a bike!

What Will Become of Us?

2009-04-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

I haven’t felt like doing this bike blog lately. I bike almost as much as ever. I have to get where I’m going. But the bike muse doesn’t sit on my handle bars like she used to. Instead my mind has been trying to muck its way through this thing called “the economy.” Like many of you, no doubt, I’m wondering intently what will become of us.

Like practically everyone else, my husband and I found out we’re going to be a bit poorer than we planned in our advancing years. We’ll have to cut out our frivolous travel hobby. We’ll have to stay home more and lead an even simpler life than we already do. Meanwhile every night after I park my bike in the basement and head upstairs, I will keep breathing a prayer of thanks that none of our kids has yet joined the teaming multitudes of the unemployed.

But the big concern for me now is Othello, not the Shakespearean play. It’s the neighborhood where I live. I’m pretty invested in the place, heart and soul. Some people have jokingly dubbed me “unofficial mayor” of Othello. Actually, I think of myself more as the wife of Othello. I’m married to the place. So maybe they should call me Desdemona.

What I have invested in Othello is about a dozen years of neighborhood organizing trying to make sure we get a pedestrian friendly town center built around our new light rail station. Up until October 2008 our neighborhood dreams appeared to be coming true with bravado. Riding the wave of the great real estate bubble, new urbanist developers who had also fallen in love with Othello were planning mixed use commercial and residential buildings around the station. Their beautiful drawings and models exceeded our hopes and dreams. Then in October 2008, the economic bubble burst. The now familiar phrase is that development is, for the most part, “on hold.”

Not the light rail. That appears to be moving along. Sleek modern cars run up and down the street every few minutes cheerfully ringing their little test train bells as they pass in and out of the pretty wrought iron station. I throw them kisses as they pass and picture how in July when they start picking up passengers, my bike and I will be among their most loyal customers. But to attract enough ridership to really keeps it going we’ll need more people and shops and stores. That’s where this thing called “the economy” comes in.

I’m not one of those gullible types that sit around watching the news and waiting for the economy to start “growing” and get back to “normal” again. I don’t believe in that. This isn’t “Econ for Dummies Made Easy.” What it looks like is that past economic booms were just big Wall Street casinos where rich people gambled with our future using paper monopoly money. This notion that we should praise the god of “economic growth” makes no sense in terms of the real world. Economic growth depletes the world of its non-renewable resources, most notably oil. Besides, there are already six billion people on a planet that was probably built for about two billion, and it was the abundance of cheap oil that made possible the population bubble in the first place.

So I see these hard economic times as not just a cycling down that will swing back up again. I believe capitalism as we know it (meaning the big stock market casino) is over. What I imagine taking its place will be a poorer, simpler time. There will be fewer people, more of whom will be riding bikes and trains. Instead of eating packaged supermarket food shipped from California, they’ll be growing food in places like (my favorite fantasy) the power line green belt along the Chief Sealth Trail right in my neighborhood, Othello. Instead of living in big houses on great polluting lawns sprawling out into infinity, they’ll be living in small apartments in places like the Othello town center, chatting with their neighbors and walking in Othello Park. They’ll use trains and bikes for transportation, not cars. That I hope is what will become of folks like us who have invested our hopes and dreams in a simpler form of city life.

But what will become of I-5 and other big freeways in the USA? Maybe poor street vendors will spread out their wares for sale on them like in India. As for the big houses way out in the suburbs, new urbanist, James Howard Kunstler projects they’ll be slum tenements housing several families who cultivate the lawns for food. Bleak as this sounds, it’s better than more big phony economic bubbles pumped up by greedy capitalists and waiting to burst again.

Being Futurewise: Transit Oriented Communities

2009-03-10T15:14:00.000-07:00

I once had a history buff for a coworker. The walls of Henry’s (not his real name) office were plastered with his treasures, namely laminated newspaper clippings from before WW2. Henry was an oldie like me. Like me, he could remember a world without freeways, car oriented commercial strips, or suburban sprawl. Like me, he did not drive to work. But instead of biking he took the bus from the north end of the city and transferred downtown to another south bound bus. His commute took over an hour each way but that gave Henry plenty of time to read history books.

When we were first becoming acquainted Henry asked me if I was interested in history. I had to think about this. I read history only as it relates to other interests like creating a global democratic government, replacing the automobile with bikes and transit, etc. “Actually, I’m more of a futurist than a historian,” I said.

I told him about how I was working with a neighborhood planning group to make sure a pedestrian friendly town center would be built around a future light rail station in my neighborhood. I described how our ugly piece of commercial strip with its acres of parking lots would one day resemble a transit village like the many that line rail systems in major transit cities like Copenhagen and Singapore. There would be lots of bikes parked at the station. People would leave their cars at home and walk to the trains stopping at coffee houses and park benches to chat or read newspapers.

“Like in the old days,” sighed Henry. (So much for my claim to being a futurist.)

Our long awaited light rail system in the Seattle/Puget Sound region is scheduled to begin running in July of this year, 2009. My neighborhood has a plan and design guidelines which have attracted developers who want to replace our yawning parking lots with attractive mixed use residential and commercial buildings with stores along the sidewalks and housing above__like in Copenhagen and Singapore,

Like Henry you have to look at history to see why so many US cities like Seattle have been uglified with parking lots, strip malls, big box stores, and CO2 emissions that create global warming. New Urbanist, James Howard Kunstler summed it up in one phrase, “zoning laws.” After World War II our cities created zoning to make everything convenient for the automobile. They made it illegal to build pedestrian friendly places like the old main streets of America’s small towns or the transit villages of Copenhagen. For miles our major arterials had to be built wide to accommodate fast moving traffic and zoned “C1” (one story commercial with acres of parking required) Sorry no residences. Who would want to live there anyway?

In the past decade, some neighborhood planning in Seattle has been directed toward reversing this trend. The plans allow zoning “overlays” for denser pedestrian oriented places. The idea is that people will want to live near light rail stations with community gardens, public parks, stores along the street.

A Washington organization called “Futurewise” has proposed a state law, HB1490 Transit Oriented Communities which embodies a complete reversal of post World War II zoning regulations. Motivated by Futurewises’ mission to reduce urban sprawl, the proposed bill requires neighborhoods within a half mile of light rail stations to build denser town centers like the one planned for my neighborhood. It would require 50 dwelling units per acre in larger urban growth centers like downtown and the University District. Other station areas have to adopt plans with similar effects, namely the building of denser, mixed use residential and commercial town centers. There will be no minimum parking requirements in the future town centers. HB1490 is therefore the complete antithesis of zoning ordinances that created “car world,” and urban sprawl. If this new zoning law succeeds half as well as the old ordinances that have so uglified the American landscape, we will be living in a futuristic world that will be more like the good old days.
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It's Always Warm There and Other Myths about Bicycling in Florida

2009-02-16T20:21:00.000-08:00

Myth # 1: It’s Always Warm There

Well, most of the time. But on our first day at my brother’s condo in Indian Shores near Tampa, Mother Nature sent the Pacific Northwest weather gods down after us. It poured rain as the palm trees bent low in the wind. Then two big cold fronts chased each other down from the north. On the coldest nights temperatures dipped down into the thirties. Luckily we were snug in our Hilleburg four season tent made in Sweden. But days were mostly nice. The coldest reached into the fifties with clear sunny skies, but by the time we reached Miami, our bare limbs were browning in warm sunlight.

Myth #2: Bicycling Is Very Popular in Florida

Floridians were aghast when my husband, Dick, and I told them we were cycling Highway 41 (called the Tamiami Trail) from Tampa to Miami. They were even more stunned when we explained that our Bike Friday Project Q tandem (made in Eugene, Oregon) could be disassembled and packed in our trailer which becomes a suit case to be checked on an airplane.

In Seattle the popularity of cycling is manifest in groups of six to twenty bikers groomed in flashy jerseys skimming along Lake Washington Blvd. and headed out for a fifty mile round trip training ride in preparation for the annual summer 10,000 cyclist strong Seattle to Portland mob scene.

We did see a number of bikes in Florida, lots of them racked onto the backs of RV’s. Such bikes tended to carry old ladies like me on evening spins around RV parks. We only saw one other bike traveler. He was loaded up and headed for the Everglades. Bikes weren’t even allowed on the Skyway Bridge crossing Tampa Bay so my brother was kind enough to drive down there in his van and ferry us across.

The most avid cyclists we met were my brother, Tim, and his friend, Barbara who, like us, are no spring chickens. We had to put out some effort keeping up with them on the Pinellas Trial, a 35 mile county bike path. But Barb wore a T shirt that read “I biked the entire Pinellas Trail--and it only took me four years.”

The unpopularity of cycling was expressed in gestures and taunts from passing motorists on a northerly stretch of Highway 41. “Get on the sidewalk, you jerks!” Never mind that the sidewalks in that seemingly endless commercial strip of road weren’t wide enough for our trailer. At regular intervals, phone poles grew out of the so called sidewalks which often deteriorated to muddy foot paths with no curb cuts at intersections. So we biked as inconspicuously as possible on the far right side of the street. Even so, one man jumped out of his car and yelled, “No one can get around you.” Never mind that it was a six lane boulevard.

The popularity of Florida style cycling was best displayed in tourist Mecca’s like Sanibel and Naples where families and elderly couples pedaled leisurely along networks of bike paths through woodlands often headed for nature parks or beaches. We also found some nice wide shoulders for cycling on a six mile stretch of bridges to Sanibel Island. Infinite panoramic views like the ones from that bridge, of the Gulf and coastal islands, are some of the cycling’s greatest thrills. Also farther south through the Everglades there was less traffic and some decent shoulders where we felt safe and unharrassed.

.Myth # 3: There’s Nothin’ Out There

“Where you folks headed?” asked a local hopping out of his pick-up at a gas station.
”We’re taking this road all the way to Miami.”
“There’s nothin’ out there,” he grunted.
“We’ve heard there’s lots of wild life.”
“Oh, I guess you’ll see a few birds.”

That was the understatement of the year. What we actually saw was a bird watcher’s paradise. Great flocks of white egrets would suddenly rise like storm clouds out of grassy wetlands. Ahingas and herons stood on stilts of legs in the marshes, their long graceful necks poised to suddenly dart out and stab a fish. Flocks of wood storks, white with black tipped wings, and pink rosiette spoon bills perched in trees along side the road. Pelicans flew overhead in formation like stunt planes at the fair. Sometimes we stopped for short hikes along board walks where alligators lurked in dark pools of mangrove swamps. Once we saw a great horned owl perched regally on high. I felt so sorry for people charging by in cars. You must move slowly to see things.

Myth # 4: Lodging is Outrageously Expensive in Florida

I suppose there’s some truth in that. But at the beginning of our trip, my dear brother, Tim, and his wife, Linda, put us up for a few free nights in their condo at Indian Shores. Then we avoided hotels, particularly fancy ones in prime tourist traps although a couple of times we had to resort to private camp grounds which could cost up to $65 a night. But we loved the Florida State parks with their stately royal palms and grassy spaces. These places with fellowship, fun, nature hikes, ranger talks, ice cream socials warm showers, continental breakfasts and more can be enjoyed at the reasonable price of $20 per night. Since we had no automobile, we were allowed to stay for free a couple of nights at Collier Seminole Park as guests of another couple. We also lucked out with some free nights camping out in lovely primitive sites beside the road.

Our final three nights were also cost free thanks to the generosity of our friend, Lucy, in Miami. Her beautiful Spanish style house is located on a park surrounding a lake with a ten mile bike path running around it. Complete with man made white sandy beaches, the place is quite the tropical paradise. Lucy has the house up for sale at $255,400. She wants to move back to cold, rainy Seattle where the average home costs about $150, 000 more than that. Anyone want to cash in their chips and trade them for a winterless life?

Myth # 5: We Biked All the Way from Tampa to Miami

Actually the tow bar of our trailer broke in two outside the Miccosukee Cultural Village on our last day so Lucy drove about 20 miles out and picked us up. Don’t blame the mishap on Bike Friday. That delicate little piece of aluminum tubing has hauled our stuff thousands of miles across many lands. Besides the Company has since replaced the six year old part with a new one at no cost.

Myth # 7: Alligators are Green

Actually they’re black.

Biking Through a Winter Wonderland

2009-01-04T19:36:00.000-08:00

Does somebody out there bike in snow? I can’t remember ever trying it, even as a kid growing up in St. Louis, MO. I recall seeing some people doing it in Germany, but I’m unlikely to attempt it now that I’m an old lady with a little ball of metal for a hip joint.

In Missouri we kids mainly biked in summer. In winter we dreamed of sledding through a White Christmas. Every few years our dreams came true, and we had snow for Christmas. Sometime since I came to the Pacific Northwest about 2/3 of a life ago, I gave up dreaming of a White Christmas. Seattle didn’t know much about snow. Maybe once or twice a year some sloppy white globs flew around in the air never reaching the ground. Sometimes it did cover things with that wet gray slush they sacrilegiously dubbed “snow.” Usually by the end of the day, the street gutters were little streams and rain was coming down as usual.

As for me I long since gave up dreaming of a White Christmas where your gloomy mundane winter world is transformed into something mystically white and “scintillating from a million diamond points.” Why wish for something that isn’t going to happen? That’s the surest route to unhappiness. In fact I made up a song:
I’m dreaming of a wet Christmas
Just like the ones I always get
May your days be merry and yet
May all your Christmases be wet.
After all one advantage of rain over snow is that you can put on a layer of Gortex and off you go to do your Christmas shopping by bike.

But this year, the closest to my 70th birthday, Mother Nature gave me a surprise Christmas present. It was a White Christmas exceeding all my childhood dreams. It started snowing in Seattle around the middle of December, and we had snow enchantingly filling the air and mantling the earth until the day after Christmas. A few days before Christmas we went to Lopez Island which is one of the most beautiful places the human species ever inhabited. We walked around peering across shimmering silver inlets through screens of falling snow as this already gorgeous place converted to a world of unimaginable splendor with white garnishing forested islands and blanketing rolling fields. Later we went to our family cabin on Hood Canal, ate Christmas dinner and exchanged gifts while watching snow filling our meadow.

I can hear some of you scoffing, “Bah humbug! Snow’s a nuisance!

I have to admit there were a few minor inconveniences in addition to not being able to ride my bike. Seattle garbage trucks were grounded and trash blew all over the city. The transit system was paralyzed. My husband had to shovel our sidewalks several times and lie down in the snow to put tire chains on and off the car. I was a bit skittish about walking in the snow for fear of falling and throwing out my fake hip, but I used hiking poles and stayed unsteadily erect. I guess the hardest part was that on Lopez the pipes froze for a couple of days, so we had to melt snow for water and use imaginary toilets outside in Winter Wonderland. But I have always found inconvenience to be a side effect of adventure

After Christmas the gift melted like ice cream in August. It was refreshing to get out and safely run some errands on my little black Dahon. But guess what! White feathery looking stuff is falling thickly again outside my window. It’s at least covering the lawn and some of the tree branches if not the street. In the morning we’ll see if it’s really snow or just water running in the gutters.

Anticipate, however, my next blog which, if all goes as planned, will be about our upcoming tandem bike trip later this month in Florida. So much for White Christmases and Winter Wonderlands.

P.S. I would love to hear what you think of snow and whether or not you bike in it.

Bike Shops for a Better World

2008-12-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

My husband and I once took a bicycle tour of Soweto, the famous township in Johannesburg, former home to Nelson Mandela. (But that’s another story) Today I’m telling you about Afribike, www.Afribike.org/ , the nonprofit organization the conducted the tour. We met these amazing folks at their display booth during the World Summit on Sustainability in 2002. Afribike’s motto is, “Freedom is nothing without access.” Its purpose is to promote biking, not over driving a car, but rather over walking. That’s because thousands of South African women have to walk miles every day touting huge bundles on their heads and babies on their backs. To help these women out of poverty, Afribike gives them a course in bike repair and, at low cost, sells them a bike and, if needed, a small bike trailer. With this advanced transportation technology, the women can go to college, commute to jobs, take their children to day care and do all sorts of errands for which many American moms think vans and/or SUV’s are indispensable.

Afribike’s supply of donated used bikes comes in shipping containers from places like New York and London. Now and then one of the shipping containers is reincarnated as a small bike shops in a village or township and staffed with an Afribike trained mechanics who now has a job.

But nonprofit bike shops are not confined to the developing world. There are two on my way down town. I stop often at Bike Works www.bikeworks.org in the Columbia City neighborhood. It’s located in a small New England style house. Fronting on the sidewalk is its garage which has been converted to a store front with a big window full of bikes and all sorts of accessories from head lamps to chain grease to derailers. From this shop, Bike Works conducts normal day to day business for customers like me who push their bikes in from the street. Bike Works is where I have had most of my former repairs done. If I have to leave my bike there for extended repairs, it’s only a ten minute bus ride home.

But Bike Works has a higher purpose than just replacing my brake pads. A stairway leads up from the shop to where a room of the house has been converted to a class room. Kids and adults come there and learn to fix bikes. After a child takes the course and volunteers seventeen hours, they get a free bike. People from all over the city and beyond donate old bikes which Bike Works volunteers repair. Some of the refurbished bikes are sold in the shop, but many go to nonprofit organizations like Tree House and Fair Start that help poor kids. Thanks to Bike Works some poor children may find bikes under their Christmas trees.

Bike Works also partners with an organization called, The Village Bicycle Project a nonprofit organization similar to Afribike. Bike Works donates used bikes which the VPP ships to places like Ghana and El Salvador. The Project conducts a day long bike maintenance course for poor villagers. Anyone who completes the course gets a bike for half price.

Also on my way downtown on 14th Street just north of Jackson is a store front dubbed The Bikery. The shop consists of one lofty spacious room. Along its walls are large clearly labeled wooden boxes of carefully sorted bike parts, one box for derailers, one for chains, one for seats, etc. In the center of the busy room are several bike mechanic stands, most in use. This bike shop has no paid employees. Everyone is a volunteer.

I have not yet taken advantage of The Bikery’s services. That’s because you have to fix your own bike. Surely any self respecting old lady on a bike should try it sometime. The rental of a bike stand costs only $5.00 per hour and there are always expert mechanics on hand to help. My temporary excuse is that my Dahon folding bike is quite new and (knock on wood) does not yet need repairs.. In fact, I was a bit embarrassed about my shiny, new and expensive Dahon parked by the The Bikery door. The Bikery’s purpose is to make bicycling accessible to everyone at low cost. The most expensive bike in there costs $100 and can be paid for at least partly with volunteer hours.

But I have other excuses for owning this fancy bike in a world of poverty and want. Dahon is my accommodation for being an old lady with a piece of metal instead of a real ball joint in her hip. Besides my bike cost a lot less than a car and is friendlier to the planet.

Cycling Through Hard Times

2008-10-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

Hard times, like everything else, come in cycles. For instance, the end of daylight savings time and the cycle into darkness comes round this time of year as dependably as the death and taxes. This dark side of the sun cycle is tough on bicyclists. We have to go out again and buy a new head lamp which must be the world’s most popular target of theft. Then we have to check the rain gear to make sure its waterproofing survived the last cycle through the washing machine. For me the darkness cycle is pretty tough. I think I have what they call seasonal affective disorder (SAD). In summer I’m the happiest person on the planet. In winter I verge upon clinical depression-—except, of course, when I’m on my bike. It is impossible to depress while riding a bike. In fact, it’s hard to ride a bike without a smile on your face.

But sun and mood cycles are benevolent compared with the really hard ones, namely economic cycles. I was born in 1939 as the world was slowly cycling out of the Great Depression,and from the terrifying economic news these days, it looks like we might be cycling into another one. Judging from the length of the last Great Depression, my life cycle might be up before the hard times are over.

Throughout out my lifetime, there have been minor economic cycles of boom and bust, regulation and deregulation that unfettered the robber barons who then barreled right over the rest of us. Closely related to economic cycles are election cycles. As the Republicans cycled in and the Democrats cycled out, the ideology of deregulation and laissez faire capitalism usually rises while the social safety net tumbles. Maybe in a few days the Dems will cycle back in and clamp the breaks on today’s robber barons. I can at least hope.

But there are tougher cycles yet. Whole civilizations come and go as the major energy resources upon which they depend are depleted. Petroleum geologists believe our civilization is at the peak of its major energy source which will begin to decline. My children may live to see the fall of civilization as we know it. Those will be hard times indeed. Luckily my offspring are cyclists so not as petroleum dependant as many. Still no matter how hard times get on the down cycles, we humans seem to cycle right on through. We have our familial cycles of grandparents, parents and children. We have our friends, our communities, our love and faith in one another. We have our bicycles.

Back in the Saddle Again

2008-09-18T22:33:00.000-07:00

“Back in the Saddle again. Out where a friend is a friend. Whoopy-ty-aye-ay I go my way. Back in the saddle again.”

When two months after the clavicle fracture, my no biking sentence finally ended, that old cowboy song burst joyously out of distant memory into the most brilliant sunlight of an Indian summer that I can recall in many years. The saddle refers to a horse, of course, but coincidentally, bike seats are also called saddles.

Recently converted to the bike-to-work religion, my friend Linda reclaimed the sweet little Burley (Birdy) folding bike she had lent me last winter to rehabilitate from my hip fracture. So I bought REI’s new model, the Dahon folding bike. A honey in her own right, Dahon is not very much like Birdy. She has her own peculiar personality and charm at half the price.

In lots of ways, Dahon is friendlier than Birdy. As I probably mentioned in early entries, cute as she is, Birdy won’t fit on a bus rack. She has eighteen inch wheels, too small for the slots, and her big chunky chain and derailer hang way low like cow’s udder at milking time. So there’s no way of putting her on the bus, short of folding her up.

Dahon has a tidy black business woman look to her. Her twenty inch wheels fit neatly into any bus rack. Her chain is barely visible, mostly hidden by a dainty chain guard. That same shiny piece of metal also hides Dahon’s hub shifter. There is no derailer to get in the way, even with my big old panniers fully loaded, of hoisting her gracefully onto a bus rack.

As for ease of folding there’s no contest. Some sadistic male engineer designed Birdy’s folding system. Several steps must be executed in a rigid sequence or you screw the whole thing up and have to start all over. Birdy’s main folding process consists of lifting the bike twice while folding each wheel separately inward and under. The front one has a tricky double hinge. With Dahon, you just release a lever on the bar and she basically folds in half. Even so, why fold? She fits on the bus rack unfolded. Just pull up in front of the bus and lift her on. I’m really very mobile with this bike.

Dahon has only one disadvantage. Her gear range is a bit narrower than Birdy’s. It’s pretty wide for a bike with only eight gears instead of twenty-one like Birdy. But I would judge from uphill pedal resistance that Dahon’s lowest gear is somewhere in the low mid-range of Birdy’s. Never mind. Dahon’s is adequate. I can pedal her right up to the top of Capitol Hill after the #48 bus lets me off at 23rd and John.

In fact, I’m sitting up here now having a latte at the Victrola Coffee Shop on 15th Ave. Be sure to check this pace out on a sweet sunny afternoon.

I have to admit that I didn’t come up here just for a latte. I had an appointment at Group Health this morning so I’m killing some time before my ride up Broadway to Yesler for my volunteer job as an English as a Second Language teacher. Then it will be back up to the top of Beacon Hill for a community group meeting this evening. There are lots of hilly days in my life as a biking old lady who refuses to quit. But as a friend of mine pointed out, “Hills are why they made buses.” I’ll be taking the #36 up to Beacon Hill for an evening ride along the Chief Sealth Trail with its great views of the mountains and the lake.

Another Bicycle Booboo

2008-08-03T11:21:00.000-07:00

“You are a poor advertisement for alternative transportation!”

A fellow book club member slapped me with this insult at a vulnerable moment. Now,

not only was my body devastated but so was my ego. I already knew that. I didn’t have to be told. After having fallen and broken my left hip only last December, now in July I had fallen again and done something else. I didn’t know what I had done to myself this time, but the rising pain in my right shoulder told me it was not good.

On route to the book club meeting, I had been cruising happily alone in the “sharrow” lane on Beacon Avenue when my right handle bar clipped the rear view mirror of a parked car. A nano-second later I slammed into the concrete. I lay there screaming and moaning for maybe a full minute before I looked up and noticed that a line of cars had stopped and were waiting for me to get out of their way. So, cringing with pain, I raised myself up gingerly and slowly pulled my pack back onto my shoulders, loaded as is was with heavy things like books, bike lock, head lamp, etc. Thus encumbered, I gripped the handle bars and managed somehow to tolerate the excruciating torment for a couple of miles until I reached my friend’s house where the meeting was already in session.

Someone lent me a cell phone to call the Group Health Consulting Nurse.

“On a scale of one to ten, how bad is the pain?” she asked.

“Seven.”

“Can you lift your arm?”

I tried but could not lift it forward, only out to the side.

“You’d better go to Urgent Care right away,” she said.

A friend, (not the one who accused me of being a poor advertisement) drove me there in her car. Sian was an angel, insisting upon staying with me through the three hour ordeal. We had to wait more than an hour just to see the doctor, and then the pain medication was not dispensed until after the X-Rays and definitive diagnosis.
I wonder what it would be like if you showed up in Urgent Care all bloody and with a limb hanging off.

The diagnosis was a broken clavical. On the X-Ray my collar bone looked something like an artist’s pain brush all splayed out and frayed at the end.

Prognosis and treatment for a broken collar bone is fairly simple. They just put you in a sling and off you go with a bottle of pain pills. The worst part is that you’re grounded from biking for two months. Still, compared with last December when I broke the ball joint off my femur and it had to be replaced with a metal one, this was not that serious. Never mind that my daughter and I had planned to bike on Cape Cod and around Nantucket Island together the next week. I’m doing everything I had planned to do only a little slower on foot.

My daughter bought me a pedometer and suggested that, for optimum health, I should walk at least 10,000 steps per day. It’s fun to keep score. I have been exceeding that by two or three thousand. This past week I went with my husband and some friends on a six day hiking trip in the Pasayten Wilderness. They carried my stuff.

But the bad part is what people say to me. The Urgent Care Physician put it this way: “Maybe you should research other forms of transportation.’

“It won’t take any research, I said. “ I already know. It’s called Metro.”

People don’t understand what they’re saying to me when they suggest I give up bicycling. They are asking me to give up my joy, my freedom, my independence, the love of my life. They are asking me to surrender my soul. That would be a pretty difficult adjustment. I might have to make it some day, but not yet. It has been nearly a month since my fall. Only one more month to go.

Does Bicycle Heaven Exist

2008-06-24T22:41:00.000-07:00

Does Bicycle Heaven Exist?

This is a theological question and therefore could not be answered in this brief blog entry, but nevertheless it’s one for an old lady on a bike to consider. The simple one word answer is “yes.” Earth is bicycle heaven. It has a good many warm sunny days and a few decent roads with shoulders. That’s about all it takes to qualify as bicycle heaven. End of story.

That was a short blog entry.

But, come to think of it, some parts of the planet are a lot more bicycle heavenly than others. The Netherlands is a prime example of a bicycle paradise. It was designed and built with bicycles in mind. We once biked all the way across Holland without ever needing to get off a protected bicycle path. And those paths were all signed clearly with route numbers, better than motor vehicle highways in most countries.

Cities like Amsterdam and The Hague have separate bicycle paths along nearly all their major thoroughfares. Many thousands of bicycles are parked at train stations in suburban towns on any given day. That’s because the most common method of commuting to work from the suburbs is to bike from home to the train station and take the train the rest of the way into the city.

No, they don’t commute in cars on the freeway.

So to really qualify as a bicycle heaven, a place needs to be designed for bikes. How can you have a heaven that wasn’t designed for you? This reminds me of an awakening I once had in my former career as a vocational rehabilitation counselor working with people who lacked vision. These people were extremely capable. The problem was not that they were blind. The problem was that the world was designed for sight dependent people. Heaven, for a blind person, would have audible traffic signals, variably embossed paving materials, tactile signage, and the like. It would have to be designed for the other four senses. And, of course, as with bicycle heaven, blind heaven wouldn’t have a lot of automobile drivers charging around acting like they owned the place. Cars would be few and their drivers would be mindful of other travelers and treat them with respect.

If you happen to be a U.S. bicyclist reading this, you may be thinking of studying Dutch and expatriating to Holland. Maybe you feel cheated like the gentleman who emailed me after my blog on how to load your bike on the bus. He complained that buses where he lives have no bike racks and the roads have no shoulders. If you live in a bicycle purgatory like that, instead of moving to the Netherlands, another option would be to become a bicycle heaven advocate in your community. You could work toward the goal of qualifying your city for a League of American Cyclists “platinum award.” That’s a sort of bicycle heaven prize.

Currently only a couple of U.S. cities have achieved platinum status, Portland, Oregon and Davis, California. I have had the pleasure of bicycling briefly in both of those towns, and, believe me it felt like true heaven. Portland has bike lanes and bike paths that go everywhere. To get from the train station to my nephew’s house in the Hawthorne district, we had a pleasant ride on the bike path across the Hawthorne Bridge and up a gentle incline all the way. In fact four of the bridges crossing the Willamette River in Portland have bike paths.
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In Davis we rode from one end of town to the other on a bike path through a park-like green belt. When we got out onto the city streets, there were bike lanes wide enough for three or four bikes abreast. Whole families casually biked together through the down town area. Motorists didn’t growl and honk at bicycles the way they do in Seattle. They just smiled and waited politely for us to pass, just as they would have done if we had been driving a BMW.

I hope we can get Seattle a platinum award like Portland and Davis one of these days, maybe your town too. Let’s make the whole of planet earth into a true bicycle heaven, one street, one city, one country at a time.

This is Freedom

2008-06-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

There are two mini bumper stickers on my bike. One says, “I have no country to fight for. My country is the earth, and I am a citizen of the world.” The other one says, “This is freedom.” I’ll talk about the first one in a later blog entry. This one is about freedom.

I never experienced freedom until about the age of nine when my parents finally got round to buying me a bike. It was one of those big blue single speed girl’s bikes with balloon tires. I loved her dearly. After my dad taught me to ride, they forbad me to go out onto Chambers Road, the major arterial where we lived. They said it was too dangerous. But that was not a problem for me. The alleyway behind the house connected to a network of gravel roads beckoning me off into infinity. At every possible chance, I would get on my bike and take long rides through that flat Missouri countryside.

This was the late 1940’s just before the dawn of urban sprawl. We lived in a two story white brick New England style house. in the middle of an isolated block of seven homes in north St. Louis County. That was the first city street so to speak that had popped up in the rural countryside waiting as it was to be filled in over the ensuing years with millions of ranch style cracker boxes stretching as far as the eye could see.

But when I first got my bike the area was still rural, with distant destinations for a child to explore. There were friends to visit and mulberry trees to climb, ponds for catching frogs and shallow muddy streams wiggling with crayfish. (We called them crawdeads for some reason.) Using only back roads so as not to break my parent’s rule, I even found my way to the nearby town of Ferguson where there was a great library and Deckmeyer’s Drug Store. I didn’t have any money, but the pharmacist’s daughter, Lisa Deckmeyer, was one of my best friends at school so we sat side by side on ebony black stools leaning against their white marble fountain and drank free chocolate sodas and cherry cokes.

Freedom, after all, is getting to do what you want to do. It’s not being limited by what a parent, teacher, boss, or the norms of society want you to. It’s being open to sunshine and sailing through wind all on your own. It’s moving your limbs and growing stronger every day. It’s living life. My bicycle gave me that for the first time.

That was sixty years ago. But it’s still the same. I’m sitting up here in my office staring at this darned computer screen for hours on end. But then I look out the window and see Mount Rainier’s ice-blue glaciers shining against the sky. So I dream up an errand I need to run on my bike. Maybe I need to drop a book off at the library or go to the post office. Even though it’s a little out of the way, I just have to stop off at Kwik Cup Espresso, my favorite coffee shop, and have a latte. That way I might have another great conversation with Allen, the owner and connect some more with his wonderful spirit. After that, I’ll have to take a spin or two around the park on the way back so I can commune with nature for a bit. Freedom calls and she’s a bike.

April in Paris or Wherever Happen to Be Biking When

2008-05-17T18:56:00.004-07:00

If you spent the first part of your life in other places and came lately to the Pacific Northwest, you soon realize that you can’t tell the seasons by the calendar. One year it was 53 on Christmas and only 50 on the Fourth of July. So I have other ways of marking the seasons. For instance, the first day I put on my bike shorts is the first day of summer. I see lots of young male cyclists with bare knees toughing the November rain, but not me. It has to be summer.

This year the first day of summer was this past Thursday, May 14. That was when I tossed my long polypropylene bike pants in the laundry and donned my shorts. Then I headed for downtown shopping via the west sidewalk of Rainier Avenue S. Because it was summer, that gave me an excuse to stop at Baskin Robbins for a “small vanilla milk shake.” Well at least I asked for a small one. But never mind, the proprietor filled a half gallon blender jar better half full of ice cream. Then he charged me five bucks.

I sat at the little café table in front of the big Baskin Robins window wall sipping the lovely thing while the CD player filled the shop with a jazz piano/vocal arrangement of “April in Paris.” It used to be that whenever I heard that tune, I immediately started dreaming of Paris with its baroque architecture along the Seine and side walk cafes beneath chestnut trees and started feeling nostalgic and wander lusty. But this time I stopped myself. Because suddenly I realized that no matter how beautiful it was whenever I was in Paris, I wasn’t any happier then than I was at that moment on Thursday in Baskin Robbins on Rainier Avenue South. That’s because ever since I broke my hip and thought I’d never ride again, I know how lucky I am just to be alive and riding my bike.

Mind you the scene outside the Baskin Robbins window wall on Rainier was a far cry from Paris. It was mostly crumbling concrete and chain link fencing with barbed wire. Many of the tumble down commercial establishments were being demolished for hopefully better days to come with the nearby McClellan Light Rail Station. In fact dominating the scene was a giant bull dozer across the street looking like some tyrannosaurus rex gobbling up big mouthful of old concrete.
But it was beautiful. It was warm and sunny. I was perfectly comfortable in bike shorts. What more could I ask?

This morning my husband and I rode our tandem down around the Seward Park Peninsula and on up Lake Washington Boulevard. Everybody was out in force, sitting on grassy slopes, picnicking beside the Lake, walking the paths, riding their bikes. The Cascade Range lined its snowy peaks up along the horizon and Mt. Rainier floated in the haze above it all majestically surveying her realm. Paris has no beauty to rival this, our home.

We stopped in Leschi at Pert’s Deli, an old tradition of ours, and arguably the most popular bicycling destination in Seattle. We sat at one of the umbrella tables on the side walk pretending we were in Paris. Who would know the difference?
The tables were all full of cyclists, young and old from many walks of life. There were rich cyclists with those brightly colored helmets that have lots of air holes and are swept way back like duck’s butts. And there were poor cyclists making do with round dumpy helmets carried over from other sports. One guy wearing a construction hard hat leaned over to lovingly help his young wife or girl friend adjust the strap of her Mickey Mouse back pack. Rich or poor, young or old, everyone was happy. That was because they were alive and bicycling, and it was summer.
I just heard they’re calling off summer tomorrow. Clouds are moving in already. That’s okay. There’s still lots of life and bicycling miles to go before I sleep.

Seeing the World by Bikes and Books

2008-05-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

The only way to really see the world is on foot. That’s the way Jesus and Buddha traveled. Because to really be someplace, you have to move very slowly, observe everything, talk to everybody. On the other hand, the world is a rather large place so you might not have enough time left to see it all the right way. By car, it’s a waste of time to even try. Confining yourself to a little motorized wheel cage, you’re bound to miss almost everything. Your best bet is to use a bike. It’s faster than walking and there are no walls to cut you off from anything. You have free access to the world and vice versa.

Although we have barely scratched the surface of the globe on our Bike Friday tandem Project Q, my husband, Dick Burkhart and I have made a few stabs at it and hope to do more. In the spring of 2003, while George Bush was busy wreaking havoc in Iraq, we biked along the east coast of the United States from Miami, Florida to Bar Harbor, Maine. We discovered the Southern peace movement, learned a lot about our nation’s history, experienced amazing little pockets of civilization like the Gullah culture, the grace of Savannah, the southern coastal islands and much more. We jolly well took our time doing that, sitting around camp fires and sharing stories way into the night.

In subsequent adventures we biked along the sunny east coast of Brazil from Curitiba to Porto Allegre ending up at the World Social forum of 2005. Later that year we biked from Toronto to Montreal, then from Paris to the Hague where we toured the Peace Palace and the Chambers of the World Court. Once we even biked across my home state using the Kady bike trail that follows Lewis and Clark’s route along the wide Missouri.

Our most interesting adventure was the trip from Agra to Mumbai, India ending at the 2004 World Social Forum. By choice, if not necessity, we bike alone with no support vehicle nor guide other than Dick’s magical map reading powers. I wrote a book about the India trip. It’s called “Humbler than Dust; A Retired Couple Visits the Real India by Tandem Bicycle (available through Amazon.com as well as Barnes&Noble.com.)

The pace of our global circumnavigation was curtailed last December when I fell and broke my hip. The ball joint broke completely off my left femur and had to be replaced by a fake metal one. To assess the progress of my rehabilitation, we’ll be back in the saddle again next winter (2008-2009) for a tamer expedition from Tampa, Florida to Key West. Besides orthopedic assessment, that trip will serve as prevention plan for my Seasonal Affective Disorder. That affliction hit hard this past winter when my convalescence forbad biking from December 5 through February 25. Imagine trying to survive a dismal Seattle winter with darkness descending at 4:30PM without being allowed to ride your bike! Now that’s depression!

Every bicycle traveler has a unique system. Ours is the Bike Friday Project Q made in Eugene, Oregon. It’s a tandem bike that can be disassembled, packed in one suitcase and checked on a plane or train. When you’re biking, the suit case serves as a trailer to haul your stuff. We don’t take much, maybe a change of clothes, a small back packing tent, a sleeping bag, and rain gear. My most essential article of clothing is a pair of neoprene rain booties. Cold, wet feet can completely spoil the fun! We don’t carry cooking utensils, just stop for food at grocery stores, restaurants, and deli’s all of which are great venues for chatting with the locals.

Maybe it’s frivolous to spend weeks on end just “infotaining” ourselves by bike travel. But we have a cause. We call it “Bike for Global Democracy.” Dick and I have a strong belief that what the world needs most is a global democratic government elected by the peoples of the world. So we hand out leaflets and give talks along the way, another excuse to meet the locals.

Before “Humbler than Dust” I had published another book, a novel called “Alien Child” which visions toward global democratic governance. It’s also available through Amazon.com. In case you think I chose the topic of this blog entry as a shameless excuse to plug my books, you may be right. I think you might enjoy these timeless adventure stories sprung from the imagination and real life experiences of an old lady on a bike.

Bike Racks, The Third Generation

2008-04-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

A couple of days after my blog entry about loading a bike on the bus, I received a call from Eilene Kadish at Metro. She asked me if I would like to come to their bike safety meeting and try the up coming racks still being designed and tested. I hesitated about as long as it took to inhale and blurt out “Yes!” This was the opportunity of a lifetime! Most things we use were designed by someone else far away and long ago. Have you ever been phoned in advance by a manufacturer and asked to come test a product like a vacuum cleaner, dish washer or even a bike before it went on the market? I don’t know about you, but all I ever get to do is complain about it afterwards.

My enthusiastic response came even before Kadish told me where the privileged event would take place. Turned out it was just a few miles from my home. All I had to do was show up at the Metro Safety Training Center on East Marginal Way south of the Boeing Access Road. Well, if you’ve ever rolled over the ironically named Boeing “Access” Road on a bike, you know it isn’t very “accessible.” Young strong cyclists with steel reflexes use a method about as safe as taking a left turn off a freeway. Never mind. There’s the old lady way. That’s to hug the far right edge of the road as tightly as you can. Whenever you come to an off ramp, stop and make sure there are no cars coming before crossing.

I started out early and arrived for the meeting in plenty of time. I had expected to compete for my turn with a line of other eager guinea pig cyclists all the way to Tukwila. But besides me, there was only one member of “the public” at the meeting. That was Chris Cameron, Commuting Specialist for the Cascade Bicycle Club. I guess they figured an old lady guinea pig with a broken hip was all they needed. If I could do this, anyone could.

Perhaps a dozen “official” folks were there either from Metro or Sportsworks, the company that makes the racks. I guess I didn’t look eager or anything. They let me go first.

A big bus pulled up with an enormous triple bike rack in front. Instead of bike slots made of the old fashioned metal railings, the new ones are black rubber-plastic troughs that kind of fan out like Darth Vadar helmets. Instead of being packed in parallel to one another like the old rail racks, these rubber troughs are staggered at slight angles leaving a bit of room to squeeze between.

Someone hauled out several tester bikes of various sizes and shapes. Showing off for the audience, I picked up the first one by it’s seat and handle bar posts just as though I were I strong young guinea pig instead of an old lady one. That smarted a little in my lower back, but I didn’t let on. I lifted the first bike gracefully into the trough, and fastened it down with the metal arm clamp. Next I leaned over the rear wheel of the second bike and grabbed the axel arm using my full body strength to create leverage. As mentioned in my last entry, this easier lifting technique works with first but not second generation racks wherein the bike tends to fall off into the street. To my delight, it worked beautifully on the new and improved third generation variety The rear wheel rested safely in its slot while I wiggled the front wheel into place. No back strain. No dumping in street.

An innovation on the new racks is a knob a knob on the arm clamp that needs to be pushed in before the arm can be released and lifted over the wheel. I presume this is to clamp the bike down tighter into the trough because there are no metal railings to hold it on. Another advantage of the new design is that, whereas first and second generation racks could hold no smaller than twenty inch wheels, these new ones of the future will accomodate any size. I even tried the 18 inch wheels on my borrowed Birdy folding bike with its low hanging derailer. This type of bike is untenable and strictly forbidden on both first and second generation racks. But It fit in nicely on the new one.

I asked Kadish how long it will be before before most Metro buses sport the new racks. She shrugged and said, “Not for awhile.” Even though “Not for awhile” is an imprecise date, I’m counting the days.

There was, however, a bus driver guinea pig there who didn’t seem as enthusiastic as I was. He reportedly had been testing the sample on his bus around the city and had found his passengers were a bit slower and clumsier than with the old models. In fact, I did find the clamp arm a little stiff to operate. I hope they don’t have to go back to the drawing board. Maybe it just needs a few drops of oil.

How to Load a Bike on a Bus (Old Lady Style)

2008-03-15T16:54:00.000-07:00

I guess it would make good slap stick comedy act. A street show with this old lady loading her bike on a Metro bus is good for laughs even at those rare times when I feel graceful performing it. So I phoned the Metro before writing this blog entry and asked, “Can someone give me instructions on how to properly load a bike on the bus?”

“It’s on our website,” answered a patient female voice.

I asked her whether she was referring to: http://transit.metrokc.gov/tops/bike/loadbike.html which reads as follows:
1)As the bus approaches, have your bike ready to load.
2)Talk to the driver before stepping in front of the bus with your bike. Make sure the driver acknowledges your desire to load.
3)Remove any bicycle accessories, including panniers, that prevent safe operation of the bus or may fall off when bus is moving.
4)Squeeze the rack handle and lower rack to release the folded bike rack.
5)Lift your bike onto the rack, fitting the wheels into the slots. Each slot is labeled for front and rear wheels. Load your bike into the outside slot if it is vacant.
6)Raise and release the support arm over the front tire. Make sure the support arm is resting on the tire and not on the fender or frame.
7)Be sure to sit near the front of the bus and keep an eye on your bike

“Yes that’s the one.”

I yawned. “That tells me everything I need to know except how to load on the bike,”

“I don’t understand. That’s what it’s about, how to load your bike,” said the incredulous voice. How could I be so stupid?

“Those instructions tell you how to operate the rack mechanism, but not how to lift the bike on,” I pointed out.

“Well, that’s obvious.! You just lift it on!” The patient tone had risen to a note of exasperation.

But it isn’t obvious. I’ve watched lots of people putting bikes on buses, and have witnessed a variety of methods. The straight forward way is to grasp the seat post with your left hand and the handle bar post with your right hand, lift, and plop both wheels in the slots at the same time. I’ve seen lots of big strong guys do it that way. Not me. I tried it a time or two, but even if my skinny old wrists managed the maneuver, my lower back objected to the pain, especially if I had left on the panniers full of shopping loot or books from the library.

So I developed a completely different system that may have looked a bit clumsy but worked painlessly and effectively. Standing on the right side of the bike I would reach my right arm over the rear wheel, grab hold of the metal arm leading to the axel, and lift the rear wheel into its slot. This method gave me enough leverage to easily handle the bike’s entire weight. It used my full body strength instead of relying on weak little wrists. Finally, with the rear wheel thus steadied, I would drop the wobblier front wheel into place. Voila!

That went well for nearly twenty years. But then along came the modern buses with their shiny stainless steel new fangled racks. Some brilliant designer had the novel idea of chopping the end off the rear wheel slots. So if you try to put the rear wheel in first, the bike falls off the rack. You have to take the wobblier front wheel with no metal arm to steady it and put that on first. I guess the point of the new design is to make it quicker to remove the bike when you leave. It sure works. All you have to do is lift the front wheel and off comes the bike. If you’re lucky, it doesn’t fall in the street.

But that rendered obsolete my old dependable loading system. I had to come up with a new procedure. Namely I had to figure out how to put the wobblier front wheel on first because there was a whole slot to put it in . Luckily, even though my wrists are weak, I do have long fingers. So I could take hold of the frame and the front wheel both in my left hand, thus steadying the wobbly wheel. Also this system of grasping the bike at a lower level gave me sufficient leverage to get the bike on. It was not as easy as my old method but worked well enough provided, of course, that I had taken Metro’s advice and removed the panniers first.

All went okay until December 5, 2007. That was when I fell and broke my hip. (I’ll tell more about that in a later entry.) That is the bad news. The good news is that doctors are amazing mechanics. I have a new ball joint and I’m already back on my bike. Well, actually it isn’t my bike. A friend lent me a cute little bike made by Burley. It’s called a Birdy. Now I don’t use panniers at all. I am limited to a small back pack for carrying shopping loot and/or books. But the bad news is I can’t even use the bike rack at all. Birdy’s derailer is in the way. The rear wheel won’t fit on the bus rack. However, the good news is that it’s a folding bike. I can dismantle the thing and get the bus driver to lower the wheel chair ramp to haul us up. Can you imagine what a Charlie Chapman act that is?
Salvation is on the horizon. In July I’m planning to buy a similar cute little contraption that REI has on back order. It’s called the Novara Buzz Fly-By Foldable Bike. That one has a hub shifter so there will be no derailer in the way of putting it on a bus rack. Maybe that way my street performance will get fewer laughs.
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The Last Time I Ever Drove a Car

2008-02-16T11:55:00.000-08:00

I was driving east just below the high hill on South Gennesee St. and starting to turn left into one of the side streets. Suddenly I hit the break as a small gray vehicle sped by blocking my turn. I don’t know how it got there. A nanosecond before, the coast had been clear. It was as if the car had materialized out of the void of that dreary November afternoon. I inhaled a sigh of relief that I did not hit the car, but exhaled cold shock as the car veered right off the street busting a telephone pole in half. The upper half of the pole hung limply from its wires balancing itself against the lower half.

A small Vietnamese woman climbed out of the car followed by about half dozen pre-school aged children. The woman stood with hands on hips glaring at me in rage. The children stared wide eyed and trembling. One slight waif of a girl in a white silk party dress and ski jacket started crying uncontrollably, a high pitched wail that cut through the city noise like a police siren.

The date was Sunday, November 28, 1999, two days before the big World Trade Organization protests. It was one of those winter days in Seattle that never quite achieve true dayness but remain in a state of perpetual twilight. The sky glowed gray like the light in a mirror reflector microscope with an untimely darkness already beginning to pull down the unwelcome curtain of night. But I had been on a mission, driving my husband’s charcoal gray 1990 Oldsmobile mini-van around town borrowing bedding to accommodate twelve Pilipino activists scheduled to spend the week camped on my living room floor. My last stop was to be at the home of my friend, Jan, who had promised me the loan of a comfortable air mattress. That would have to wait.

I don’t know how long I just sat there in the van in the middle of the street, unable to move a muscle. It was as though, like Lot’s wife, I had turned] into a pillar of salt. But soon I began to tremble and my teeth to chatter. Cars from both directions scolded with their horns. It crossed my mind that I ought to stay put until the police came, but I was blocking traffic in both directions. So after the cars had edged around me and the coast was surely clear, I crept on into the side street and parked the van along side the curb.

Despite my state of shock, I decide to get out and go check on the woman and her children. A crowd was gathering around the family all giving me evil, angry looks. One woman ran out of her house, her long blonde pony bobbing up and down. She pointed a long skinny finger at me and shrieked, “She cut her off!”

I was still trembling and my teeth chattering. “I -- .I’m so, so sorry,” I stammered over and over as people glared at me vindictively and fired criticisms like, “Why don’t you watch where you’re going? “What’s wrong with you? Are you drunk?”

Soon a policeman pulled up and got out of his car. His round red face and tiny eyes gazed at me with a stoic, almost sympathetic expression as though a severed phone pole were an every day occurrence. He gave me some forms and told me to get back in the van, fill them out and wait. From inside the van, I could see him talking to people and taking notes. An ambulance showed up. The family all piled into it together and were taken away. Still the policeman continued listening to the spectators, or should I say witnesses. I am not a judgmental person myself, but I could sympathize with them. Most people in this neighborhood were of a progressive frame of mind and would be eager to defend an innocent minority family against the careless infractions of a tall white woman in a big automobile.

I waited for what seemed an eternity, continuing to tremble especially as I got colder with the engine off. I reached for one of the blankets from my borrowed collection in back of the van and wrapped it around me. Then I closed my eyes to calm myself. Now I could think about the possible consequences of all this and what to do. Our car insurance company would be sued. They would either cancel our insurance or drastically raise the premiums. It did not look like anyone had been hurt, but, if not, why the ambulance?

It did not take me long to make a decision that has drastically changed my life. The solution was obvious. I would finish my final errand for the day and drive the van home. I would place the keys in the little china dish with the lid where we kept such things, and I would never drive again.

In the last several years I had only driven a car as a last resort anyway. I preferred going to work and almost everywhere else by bike and/or bus. The reason I happened to be driving that day was because my bicycle panniers were too small for the cargo I was carrying. I could get a week’s groceries on my bike, but not piles of blankets and pillows. Besides the fact that I loved bicycling and hated driving, I did not feel safe operating large fast vehicles because of my exotropia (wall eyedness). Every couple of years there had been a fender bender. Now this. I did not need this.

It was after dark by the time the police officer returned to my vehicle. I rolled down the window and he handed me a citation for “inattentive driving.”

“Was anyone hurt?” I asked.

The officer shook his head. “Naw, I don’t think so. The medics checked them out and said they were okay. But they took them to the emergency room anyway just in case.”

“Thank God,” I said.

Thinking back on the incident with the hind sight of so many years, I wonder if I really was entirely to blame for the accident. Maybe I should have defended myself. After all, the other woman must have been driving like a bat out of purgatory to get over the hill and in front of my car before I saw it. If she had not been speeding, she might have been able to control her car and not hit the phone pole, or at least the impact might not have broken the thing in half. But I am timid about sticking up for myself. Besides I have never regretted my hastily made decision. It has been a great relief to remove driving from my life.

That evening I went to a Unitarian church service where people get up, light candles and talk about joys and sorrows of their lives. I lit a candle and explained that due to my vision problems, I had caused an accident that day. I promised to surrender my driver’s license and never drive again. I said my only concern was that I might not be able to get as much done if I had to spend more time on the bus.

After the service a young woman came up to me and said she did not drive a car because she could not afford one. “But,” she said, “There are lots of things you can do on the bus. I don’t trim my toe nails on the bus,” she laughed, “But I have thought of it.” Me, I just read on the bus, observe the world, and relax. That is more fun than driving and not nearly so dangerous. .

The Rewards of Bike-Busing

2008-01-29T11:59:00.000-08:00

Some people stare in wide eyed wonder at the sight of a wrinkly faced female biker pumping up the street with little tufts of white hair sticking out the sides of her helmet. It’s as if they think an older woman doesn’t belong on a bike. I don’t understand this. Back in the seventies I lived in Germany where a bike was considered the most normal and natural way for an old lady to get around. A common site in villages and along the Berg Strasse was that of a typical gray haired widow pedaling by in her calf length black mourning dress and woolen head scarf with a wire rack of groceries on the handle bars of a one speed bike. By contrast, it’s pretty easy to run errands on a twenty one geared Diamondback City-Cross equipped with flashing lights and water proof panniers big enough to hold a week’s worth of groceries.
When I tell people I don’t have a license to drive a car, jaws drop. ”What a shame! How do you manage?” They feel sorry for me.
“They don’t understand. It’s the other way around. I feel sorry for them!” Automobile drivers put themselves under an awful lot of stress and shorten their life expectancy. Besides, they miss so much joie de vivre by condemning themselves to solitary confinement in one of those motorized wheel cages to get around town.

Now be honest. Can you really see where you’re going on a rainy night when the water gushing down your windshield picks up the glare of street lamps and headlights from thousands of other cars? On such a night, try putting on good gortex rain gear, getting out of your car and onto a bike. Your vision will improve a hundred percent. Instead of blinding you, the street lights will turn rain puddles into pools of molten gold. Traffic lights and headlights will blink at you cheerily from the distance. Rain drops will turn into tiny fairy lanterns falling past the bike lamp on your handle bars. Others will touch your cheeks like little elf kisses, soft and cool.. Suddenly you will come alive, experiencing the weather the way the Universe meant for you to.
I feel especially sorry for automobilers boarding the ferry. They miss all the fun. They don’t get to stand on the landing and watch the attendants wind the giant lines around the mammoth cleats. They don’t get to see how deftly the big boat slips into its mooring. They can’t talk with the attendants, hear their jokes and gossip nor eaves-drop on other peoples’ lives.

That’s the worst part about an single occupancy vehicle! You don’t get to talk to anybody. If you were to wave or say hello, no one would see or hear you. The best part about bike-bussing is that it’s social. Another old lady notices how much fun I’m having and gives me thumbs up with a grin. Strangers stop to talk with me as I wait at traffic lights. How lonely life would be without the occasional chat with a neighbor at the corner bus stop!

Once a friend asked me how much extra time it takes to bike-bus to work instead of driving a car. I thought about that for a second. “None,” I said. When I’m on the bus, that’s when I get my reading done. When I’m biking, that’s when I get my exercise. If I drove a car to work, when I got home I would have to figure out when I was going to get my reading and exercise done.” It has always puzzled me that people drive cars to the gym for exercise.

Some people look at me and say, “She’s a tough old broad!.”
On the contrary, I’m a wimp. I avoid uphills whenever possible. And contrary to prevailing myth, you can circumvent a lot of Seattle’s hills with a well planned route. For instance, if I’m going up to Beacon Hill, I can take bus #106 up there and bike the Chief Sealth Trail back down. But even without using the bus, there are lots of ways to go around hills. I’ll go a couple of miles out of my way to avoid a steep incline. Strong, young bikers tend to chose Beacon Hill as the route down town from my neighborhood. Not me. I take Rainier Ave and/or MLK.

“What? You take the busiest arterials?!”.

“Yes but I bike much of the way on sidewalks.”

“The manual says bikers are supposed to act like cars and NEVER ride on the sidewalk!”

That rule was made for young fast bikers. There is an unwritten dispensation for pokey old ladies. Most of the sidewalks around here are rarely used by pedestrians. They’re virtual bicycle freeways. At my snail’s pace, how could I choose to stumble along the gutter of a busy street with raucous speedy monsters breathing foul engine smoke down my neck when I could be on an endless stretch of adjacent empty sidewalk?
Another mistaken assumption is that a bike-bus life style is a badge of courage because you have to be outdoors in cold, wet weather. As I arrive at a destination, someone will ask whether I’m cold. Obviously that person has never been on a bike. Actually I am the most cold-intolerant sissy on the planet. But all bundled up in polypropylene and gortex, I am more likely to be too hot than too cold pedaling my bike. And I never wait long on a cold, dark street corner for a bus. A bus route across town may feature as many as three busses, thus requiring two waits at transfer points. Not so for the bike-busser. If the expected wait is longer than five minutes, I bike that stretch instead. Then when I get where I’m going I don’t have to waste time searching for a parking space.
In fact, it is a best kept secret that one of the most time efficient ways to get around Puget Sound is by a combination of bike, bus, and ferry. Come to think of it, maybe I shouldn’t publish this because then the secret will be out. After all, there are only two bike rack spaces on the average bus. But that’s alright. If bike-bussing gets too popular, Metro will just have to install more.

Besides being economical with time, bike bussing is incredibly easy on your pocket book. If a bus ride is part of my trip, I only have to pay a quarter – yes, that’s just twenty five cents – with my senior citizen pass. Then biking fuel is free, except for maybe the cost of an extra banana or two. Not to mention the low environmental cost. Bikes don’t give off green house gases, and for obvious reasons, I tend to shop locally whenever possible. You aren’t likely to find me patronizing big warehouses out along the freeway. Bike-bussing is one of the best ways to reduce your carbon foot print and help save Mother Earth .
Try it. You might like it.