I just took another major step in my bicycle commute thing. For the longest time I’d had a… not exactly a fear but a healthy caution for going downtown on my bicycle. Because of this I had an unwritten rule about not going any further south than the Ship Canal. Gradually I would bend this rule. For example there’s a user’s group just off Mercer ave that I’ve been going to but I would rationalize that it was the edge of downtown and I wouldn’t be a good idea to go farther south than that. I bent this rule again this June during Folklife telling myself that the Seattle Center was only fifteen minutes away from where I had been biking to in Mercer and if I didn’t feel safe in the area around Aurora and Deny I could get off and walk. It turned out it wasn’t that bad and I ended up biking there for the entire weekend averaging 50 minutes each way.
So that’s where I’d left it for the next couple of months. However this week I had to go to a monthly meeting held at the downtown Barnes & Noble. Just to spell it out going downtown has become a pain for me. To the point I usually make a day of it maintaining a shopping list for several places and doing work at the library. To make matters worse getting back home after the meeting is a pain. Especially if you miss the first bus. So I’d been thinking about doing the bike ride for a while.
I’d been using the same rationalizing I’d used for stretching my range to the Seattle Center “oh this route doesn’t have that much traffic” or “It’s on a bus route. If you chicken out there’s no shame in putting your bike on the rack and riding the rest of the way” Anyway it turned out not to be that big a deal. Other than a bigger hill than I expected just before I had got into Downtown proper everything went smoothly. Turns out the traffic wasn’t as bad as I dreaded (in fact downtown congestion makes being on a bicycle an advantage) and the bike lanes were well marked so I got to my meeting with time to spare.
Getting home was a little more difficult. The route that I had planned didn’t work so I ended up retracing the way I came which turned out to be a series of one way streets with a few too many highway entrances than I was comfortable with. (Another example of Seattle’s idea of city planning which in hind sight I had not so fond memories of from my delivery days.)
But all in all it went well and any of the bugs I mentioned can be solved with a little better planning and studying the map. I should have been doing this for ages. Now the only reason for taking the bus (not counting errands that do not fit in one backpack) is so I won’t be a sweaty mess for any important meeting I’m going to.
PS
One quick caveat. I did actually bike downtown a few years before to see if I could. But that was on a holiday with bad weather and there was hardly a car on the road so I don’t think that technically counts.
