The New Silverdate Transit Center = Regressive Infrastructure

 

It used to be fun to bike from Olympic View Road on Hood Canal to the Silverdale Transit Center and hop a bus to the Bremerton Ferry Terminal. It didn’t matter what time I got to Silverdale because the Transit Center was right outside the mall food court, a big glass atrium where I could fuel up and rest until the bus came.  If it was a sunny day, I could sit outside at the bus shelter surrounded by shrubbery and primroses.

But last winter when I rolled in to the Silverdale Mall there was no Transit Center there at all.   There were still some flower gardens and shrubbery but no bus stops, no benches, no shelters.  In their pace was a blank concrete wall with a barren sense of emptiness.  I rode around aimlessly until about a mile south on  Silverdale Way, I spotted a bus stop sign for the #17.  It was a cold rainy day, and I had no idea how long the wait would be so I just sat and shivered for about half an hour until it came.

The next time I headed out to Hood Canal from the Bremerton Ferry Terminal I planned ahead. Before putting my bike on the bus to Silverdale I checked the bus schedule which actually listed a place called the “Silverdale Transit Center” at the end of the line.  So there must still be such a place, just not the one I used to know.  The new one would be easier to find from this end because all I would have to do is put my bike on the bus and it would take me there.  From where ever it was, I would surely be able to find my way to the Silverdale mall and from there out to Hood Canal.

So there I was riding the #11 from East Bremerton to Silverdale as it roared over four to six lane roadways and charged up freeway ramps lined with those speeding lethal trajectories called automobiles.  I wondered when we would come down off this maze of mammoth concrete jungle spaghetti into the new Silverdale Transit Center which must surely be a habitable place possibly with a coffee shop or hot dog stand.  But we did not come down.  Instead the bus stopped basically at the middle of a huge freeway interchange.  The new Silverdale Transit Center was a little three sided glass huts in the midst of the most pedestrian unfriendly environment conceivable by the human brain, no hot dog stand, coffee shop or any sign of humanity. 

It crossed my mind to cancel my trip, stay on the bus, ride back to the Ferry Terminal and return home to Seattle.  But I wanted to walk on the beach at Hood Canal and reunite with old friends, so I bravely picked up my panniers and hesitantly prepared to disembark from the bus.  “How do I get to the Mall from here?”  I asked the driver.

“The number 12’ll be along in fifteen minutes,” she replied.

“ No, I mean how do I get to there by bike?

“Half mile that away,” said the driver pointing into the haze of a typical northwest winter day. Surely, a large place as the Silverdale Mall ought to be visible in the distance, but there was nothing but concrete freeways and on-ramps. 

I could not believe my eyes.   I am from Seattle, a city whose mayor has pledged to make ours one of the most pedestrian and bicycle friendly places in the world.   The evening before I had been doing my usual transit advocacy kind of thing, attending a meeting on how to make safe attractive streets for pedestrians and cyclists. 

I swallowed my anger, got off the bus, lifted my bike from the rack, loaded on my panniers, and headed in the direction the driver had pointed. But it was not long before I realized that I was headed down a ramp onto a freeway.   So I stopped, of course, and looked around, carefully studying my surroundings.  After a while I discerned off in another direction a traffic signal with a crosswalk which led to a busy four lane freeway overpass, not comfortable to cross by bicycle.

I reached my destination that day but not without a sense od deep indignation.  While some of us vision toward an alternative transportation future wherein cars will be considered unnecessary nuisances, the Kitsap County Commissioners, maybe even the whole County, maybe even most of the world, are still blithely and unknowingly building obsolescent structuress like the new Silverdale Transit Center.

 

Freedom is Coming and She's a Bike

Freedom is Coming and She’s a Bike

No, the old lady on a bike did not bike off into the eternal sunset.  She is still alive and pedaling even if, to be honest, often these days perched warm and dry on her indoor exercise bike looking out the window at roof tops and hillsides battered and drenched by Mother Nature. 

But the weather wasn’t what kept me from blogging last year.  It was the struggle to keep alive a business called Whistle Stop Co-op Café and Bike Shop.  It was a fun, but calamitous adventure that blew a gaping hole in our retirement piggy bank.

 One of the worst mishaps was the obliteration of 2/3 of Whistle Stop’s beautiful mural meant to enhance the neighborhood ad infinitum. Unfortunately  the colorful image of a biking lady in African dress, surrounded by verdant meadows and sweet charming friends, has been messily obscured with institutional green paint.  The reason is that we have rented the building to a nice gentleman who has deftly transformed it into an East African coffee shop.  I guess the poor guy didn’t realize that destroying other people’s art is a bit of a blunder in American culture.  But he has promised to replace the lady on the bike with a beautiful mural of an African savannah with a woman carrying a pot of water on her head.

“But the lady on the bike was even wearing an African dress!” I protested to the guy when I first saw green paint dribbling off the wall in her place. 

“Yes, but people kept coming in and asking me to fix their bikes,” he whined.  “I don’t know how to fix bikes!”

I guess I loved the young African lady on a bike so much because she was a woman-power salute painted on the busiest corner in southeast Seattle.

 Once in India I saw two women biking in saris and gave them the salute.  It brought to mind a Susan B. Anthony quote: “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling.  I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.  It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance.  I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel  . . . the picture of free untrammeled womanhood.”

Maybe it’s too much to ask that African immigrant women to be thus emancipated so early in history.  Once I saw a little girl about eight years old in African dress out biking on the Chief Sealth Trail.  But I have never seen a grown woman  wearing a burka “ride by on a wheel."

To the contrary, the other day another East African gentleman told me that in their culture a woman walking in the street is suspected to be a “loose woman.”  I hope the man was exaggerating/spinning a yarn.  Next to riding my bike, my favorite activity is taking a walk.  I take one almost every day.  To be culturally and socially inhibited from walking down the street would be tantamount to prison.  Imagine being under house arrest for your entire life!

When I think back to the early days of the women’s movement, I wonder if it ever occurred to Betty Friedan and friends how lucky they were.  Maybe they were imprisoned within suburban homes with refrigerators and washing machines, but at least they could get out and take a walk a bike ride.

Success A La Whistle Stop Co-op Coffee and Bike Shop

It was June 21. Whistle Stop CoOp café and bike shop beside Othello Station was a hoppin’ full house. To think that half an hour before the party started, I was afraid no one would show up!

Our barista, Reese Kindle was a reincarnation of Lloyd Doss from “Sons of the Pioneers.” His friend, Ehran Fox, sounded like Joan Baez. Cheri Giducos from the UPS Store across the street belted out “I Will Always Love You” like Whitney Hueston herself. Kathya Alexander, our Whistle Stop Writers’ Workshop leader, told a couple riveting tales about growing up in the Arkansas during the Civil Rights Movement. It was like watching a movie. And there were more great musicians, story tellers, and even an amazing poet.

You may recognize June 21 as summer solstice, but here at Whistle Stop, and in fact across the Nation, it was “Dump the Pump Day”, promoted by the Sierra Club. So Whistle Stop teamed up with them to hold an open mic to kick off our “Live Free or Drive” campaign. Funded by a grant from Seattle Department of Sustainability and the Environment, “Live Free or Drive” enables Whistle Stop to give away free bikes and transit smart cards to income qualified people who want to commute by alternative transportation.

One customer told me that even if Whistle Stop never breaks even, we are never-the-less a big success. We adorn this corner in the Nation’s most multi-cultural neighborhood and build community by promoting bicycling and transit. A tiny voice crying out in a wilderness of cars, we are successful by reason of being what we are. A graduate student in architecture wrote a paper about Whistle Stop pointing out how much more environmentally friendly it was to recycle a trailer than to build something new. A PhD candidate in anthropology came by to interview us for her dissertation and agreed to run for the Board.

I didn’t know what to expect when we put a trailer on the vacant lot by the Othello light rail station. Likewise, I didn’t know what to expect when I put a sign on the corner kiosk: “FREE BIKES AND ORDA CARD - ASK AT WHISTLE STOP.” But let’s face it, it’s the unexpected coming into life that teaches us. As Charles De Bois once said, “The important thing is this: To be able to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”

The people who come in and apply for free bikes and ORCA cards are folks whose lot in life I would not have known otherwise. When I asked one of them, a soft spoken nice looking woman her address, she told me she had none. She is homeless. One gentleman told me his daily commute will be to a therapy center for people with AIDS. He wants the bike to improve his health.

After Mohamed Yussuf, Editor of Runta (Truth) the Somali newspaper, showed up at the Mosque with his new bike, several of his friends, including the Mullah, came to Whistle Stop next day to apply for free bikes. Previously they had believed that real Americans only drive cars. Unfortunately, it turned out a couple of them will have to learn to ride before we can give them bikes.

So following the wise counsel of Charles Du Bois, an old lady on a bike becomes an MC for a talent show, a turner of upside down somersaults in effort to promote a little side show called Whistle Stop Co-op. The next stunt I’m planning is to get a small Bob trailer and tow a sandwich board sign advertising Whistle Stop Co-op up and down Martin Luther King Way handing out flyers. All this might not save Whistle Stop, but this old lady has nothing much better to do than try.

What else is new at Whistle Stop? Besides coffee, beer and wine, Panini sandwiches, all day breakfast, and more. Whistle Stop now has ice cream bars. Doesn’t that sound yummy? Come by and try some.

Visit our website www.whistle-stop-bbb.org. If you would like to help Whistle Stop create community through bicycling and transit, click on Democracy Works, then "donate." Also visit www.facebook.com/WhistleStopCoOp.

Dogs of Fear Pursue Old Lady on a Bike

I wake up each morning feeling like a cyclist pursued by a pack of barking dogs, namely my own fears, doubts, and self-recriminations,. What a stupid idea to open a coffee and bike shop in a neighborhood where folks are friendly and nice but don’t have many dimes to rub together. What was I thinking to blithely throw away my family’s safety and security in the middle of the worst recession since the one I was born into back into back in1939? Yesterday we took $123.10 into the till (and that was a fairly good day) what with our daily overhead expenses totaling nearly $300. What do I know about business anyway, having spent nearly all my working life within the safe territory of dependable government employment?

I conceived this crazy idea after the closure of Kwik Cup Espresso, the only place where decaf espresso could be bought in my neighborhood. “A neighborhood is not really a neighborhood without a coffee shop,” I said.

My original business plan, developed in May of 2010, declared that we had no competition, other than from a few East African and Vietnamese deli’s and bakeries that wouldn’t think of serving decaf espresso, let alone cappocino’s, frothy flavored lattes, and all the rest.

During the year and a half it took to get a permit from the city, Starbucks opened inside Safeway across the street. By this time our basement was full of espresso machines, grinders, refrigerators, café tables, sinks, plumbing, etc.. It was too late to turn back.

On the very same day the trailer that would house our Whistle Stop Co-op coffee and bike shop was moved onto its lot beside Othello light rail station, I made up a stack of brochures and ran over to distribute them at the opening celebration of the new apartment building on the opposite corner. “I’m opening a coffee and bike shop across the street,” I proudly proclaimed to an attractive young woman as I thrust a brochure into her hand.

The woman stared at me not too cheerfully. “I’m going to open a coffee shop right here in this building,” she said.

And that she did. A few months after the Whistle Stop Grand Opening Celebration, there appeared across the street a much bigger, fancier coffee shop than Whistle Stop ever thought of being. The intersection of Martin Luther King Way and Othello Street has four corners. One contains a five acre vacant lot that had been planned for development but abandoned after the recession. The other three now have espresso coffee shops.

So here sits Whistle Stop Co-op today, a sweet, restful space to hang out in despite that it’s basically a slightly glorified single wide trailer landscaped all around with little native plants struggling to take root at a busy intersection.

The Buddhist philosophy I’ve been studying tells me not to run from the dogs of fear but to get off my bike and look at them. Face my fears. Have compassion for myself and for them

So I’m standing there trying to befriend the dogs of fear with every bone I can think of.

Applying for grants
Sending out the Whistle Stop Weekly to members and friends
Contacting groups that might like to meet here
Inviting people to join the co-op
Organizing neighborhood projects and clean ups
Holding meetings, events and workshops
Trying to improve and re-improve the Whistle Stop menu

We’re using Whistle Stop as a venue to further community building, peace and justice activities, and other good causes especially alternative transportation. In fact, Whistle Stop will soon receive a $7K grant from Climate Action Network to give out free bikes and Orca transit passes as well as help with planning commute trips, weather apparel advise,to reduce car usage.

Whistle Stop Co-op isn’t trying to make a profit. That’s against our Articles of Incorporation. We just want to break even and, if possible eventually pay back some of the huge investment my husband Dick and I made from our retirement savings. It doesn’t cost anything to join, but if we were ever to make profits those would be divided among the customers according to how much they had spent and the employees according to how much they worked.

Right now we have 529 members. If every member or friend bought one meal and/or latte per week, or had their bike fixed, we’d be able to make the $300 a day and Whistle Stop would still be here this time next year.

Or you could make a donation to Democracy Works which helps Whistle Stop provide free bikes for poor kids, support our community building and educational projects, etc. To find the donation button, go to http://www.whistle-stop-bbb.org and click on Democracy Works at the bottom of the page.

Your feed back is also welcome at mona_lee@comcast.net.

NOTE: STAY TUNED FOR MORE BLOGS ABOUT THE STRESSES, FEARS, AND TRIBULATIONS OF TRYING TO ESTABLISH THIS UNIQUE NON-PROFIT BUSINESS CALLED WHISTLE STOP CO-OP.

Cycling the City of the Angels

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.)

****
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

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.

Whistle Stop Co-op; Espresso, Bagels and Bikes

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."

Accessing the World's Great Bike Paths

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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.