Take Your Bike to Work Day

I managed to stop at 5 commuter stations on the way in this morning. That's 5 stations worth of water bottles, cliff bars, cliff shot powdery drink mixes, ouch patches, and maps. Of course I was let down/disappointed/sad/bummed yet again that there were no mini Toblerone chocolate bars at the stations. Whoever organized that giveaway years ago did this city, or at least me, a huge disservice cuz now I go to every Bike to Work Day sniffing around for delicious chocolate and get handed a nasty cliff bar instead. Sigh.

The best B2W story has to be from my coworker. She lives in Snoqualmie and drives her Toyota Tacoma truck every day to Sandpoint. Sometimes it takes her an hour, sometimes it take over 2 hours to drive in. And the gas....her truck is a climbing/sailboarding/skiing/big furry dog carrying machine so you can do the math yourself. She's an amazing athlete and used to race bikes and skis like a banshee (shrugs off those "no fall" zones), but she's never abandoned her truck to ride to work. This week, however, given the amazing sunny weather we've had and a little cheerleading from her annoying officemate (me), she decided to give it a whirl and ride part of the way to work. We poured over the local commuter maps and decided she'd drive to Eastgate's P&R, then bike over Mercer Island, up Lake WA Blvd, through Montlake, and up to Sandpoint. An easy 17 miles one way. Piece of cake!

Friday morning's dawn broke. Her alarm went off at 6 a.m. She turned it off and rolled over. Off to a good start. She finally raised herself an hour later and got her gear together. She pulled on her spandex knickers and realized she put them away wet after a CX race last season. Now as she hikes them up they reek of mildew. Tasty. Not to be one put off by odd smelling clothes she throws her bike and backpack in the truck and sets off. Traffic flows through Issaquah and she nears Eastgate, but the anxiety of a new routine takes hold and she realizes that she doesn't know how to get from the P&R to the bike trail. "I'll just go to the Mercer Island P&R," she says out loud. She continues on and sees the exit for this next P&R, but is stunned to see a huge "CLOSED" sign across the exit. Shit! No time to think or pull over or investigate the nature of this barricade. A few seconds later she's zooming across the I-90 bridge en route to the city. By now she could admit defeat and drive straight to work, but she knows of one more P&R on 65th. It's not quite the noble feat of riding in 17 miles, but it will be something.

She gets to the 65th P&R and lets out a deep breath. Finally out of the car. She pulls her bike out of the truck and loads up for the ride to work. Except she doesn't know the best way to get from this area to the bike trail. Shit. Think fast. She does know that 65th runs straight to Sandpoint by way a numerous straight-up and straight-down hills not to mention no bike lane and horrendous potholes. Onward she rides. About a mile later her seat starts wiggling around and nearly falls off. She realizes that when she switched seats last night the seatbolt didn't get tightened the whole way, so she stops and pulls out an allen wrench and wrenches the bolt down. Someone rides by her and comments, "Doing a spring tune up?". Jackass.

Our heroine continues on her way, finally intersecting the Burke and rides it half a mile to Sandpoint. She's surrounded by green trees, no cars, it's quiet, serene. Her blood pressure drops. The cloud of anxiety lifts. She's almost done. The commute is almost over. She enters the campus and isn't sure of how to get to the backside of the campus to park her bike. She rides the wrong-way down a curvy, one-way access road and is almost immediately taken out by a service worker in a huge pickup. Disaster avoided, she finds the back entrance, parks her bike, takes a huge breath, and starts her day. She comes into the office and we give her a round of applause, even though she waves it off and just laughs and tells us the story of her morning adventure. She has a huge grin on her face. I congratulate her and give her a water bottle and mango-orange Cliffshot recovery drink.

The best news is that she's excited about the possibility of riding to work. The hardest part was plunging into a new, unknown routine and she faced (hopefully) more than enough challenges and still kept going. She thinks that riding 2-3 days/week would be totally feasible and could even take the bus part of the way from Preston. I rode with her back to the P&R to show her the not-so-hilly way and she was so chatty and excited about riding her bike again. Her head was swimming with the possibilities of commuting this summer and beyond. I was so happy to see the beginnings of another satisfied bike commuter. Cars and gas and politics be damned. We have another convert.