Remembering Michael Wang

This Saturday it will be one year exactly since Michael Wang was hit and killed by the driver of an SUV at the corner of Thomas and Dexter in Seattle. The driver left the scene of the accident but was eventually apprehended and charged.

Michael Wang was a husband, a father, a talented photographer, a great guy by all accounts, and he enjoyed commuting to work by bicycle.

Nearly every weekday I ride by the corner where Wang was killed, once on my way to work and once on my way home. A couple of days ago I was riding up the hill on Dexter on the wheel of another bicycle commuter. As we approached Thomas street the cyclist in front of me sat up a bit, crossed himself and then gave a little two-fingered salute toward the corner where Wang died. My mind was somewhere else at the time, so at first I didn't understand what he was doing. Then I remembered the ghost bike that had been chained to the street sign for much of last fall.

The ghost bike is long gone, and sometimes it's easy for me to ride by with my thoughts elsewhere. So, thanks to the commuter in front of me who helped me remember Michael Wang.

Rode to Work with the Mayor this Morning

I rode in to work with our Mayor, Mike McGinn this morning. Well, actually that might be overstating it a bit. Today being Bike to Work day, the Cascade Bicycle club had organized a special “Bike to work with Mayor McGinn” event. The ride started at the KEXP studios on Dexter Ave at 7:45 AM and progressed up 5th Ave to City Hall where they held a little rally. It just so happens that my normal morning commute goes right by the KEXP studios, so I left a little earlier than usual (I’m usually still reading the newspaper in my underwear at 7:45) so I could join in the fun. In fact, I didn’t actually see the Mayor until I got to City Hall. He apparently hammered hard, or did some “skitching” to get there ahead of the rest of us.

This was the scene at City Hall when I got there.

Not exactly a huge crowd, but all the cool kids were there. Even though the rally didn't draw many people, I have to say I saw like a gazillion people... no make that 10 gazillion people riding their bikes to work this morning. I love seeing so many people out discovering the joys of commuting by bicycle. I realize that quite a few of them will only do it today, but I'm sure for some today is the beginning of something bigger.

I did find Mike hanging out at the rally and talking with his constituents about the benefits of low trail geometry or something like that.

He didn’t look winded at all so at first I assumed he rode there in the back of his big mayoral stretch limo. Then I noticed he was still wearing his official mayoral reflective pant cuff strap.

You definitely don't need one of those to ride in a limo.

What a Difference a Couple of Days Can Make

On my morning commute I sometimes cut through the UW campus. Yesterday morning I was greeted by this.

Cherry Blossoms on the Quad

There are so many reasons to like commuting by bicycle...

Bring it!

Crappy photos courtesy of my crappy cell phone.

Seattle got it's first good winter blast this week and as usual it brought the city to a standstill (If Canada would just keep it's weather to itself we wouldn't have these problems). Anyway, I'm usually pretty wimpy when it comes to bicycling on snow and ice so I rode the bus to work on Monday when I saw snow in the forecast. And snow it did. The commute home Monday night was a mess. I got on a bus in the bus tunnel around 5:00, and by 6:00 the bus was only about two blocks past the end of the bus tunnel and going nowhere. From there I took matters into my own hands and got off the bus and started walking. It was really quite a fun adventure to walk home in the midst of a blizzard, passing hundreds of cars doing little more than idling and sliding. It took me about an hour and a half to walk the six miles from downtown Seattle to Ravenna where Sarah came and picked me up about a quarter mile from home. I'm pretty sure I beat the bus.

While I was walking, I saw three or four cyclists go by. They seemed to be getting along reasonably well in the snow. The only thing about it that looked a little scary was all of the two-ton four-wheeled hockey pucks sliding around on the road around them.

But mostly I was inspired. I worked from home on Tuesday, but by Wednesday morning with a bit of cabin fever starting to settle in and the snow still on the ground, I decided to give biking to work in the snow a try.


The roads in our neighborhood were hard-packed with some icy patches. The main arterials had been plowed and had some pavement showing through, but mostly I stay off of the main arterials on my route to work. It definitely wasn't my fastest ride to work. It usually takes me about 35 minutes each way, but today it took nearly an hour.


My bike probably doesn't have the ideal setup for riding in the snow with standard 28mm road tires. Still, it was much easier than I had expected. I did a little bit of squirreling around on some of the icy patches, but managed to keep the shiny side off the road for the whole trip. I have to admit, I had more fun riding in to work this morning than I've had in a long time. I mean, I'm not ready to move to Minnesota or anything, but… well… bring it on!

I'm Back!

Sorry, my blog has been down for a while. And some of my old posts are gone. Call it technical difficulties… Anyway, I didn't quit riding while that was going on so I'll probably do a few posts over the next couple days to catch y'all up.

First, some thoughts about my riding in the past year. I’ve been keeping a log of my cycling over the past couple of years. It’s nothing too fancy, just an Excel spreadsheet with the date, miles, time and a brief description of my rides. I’m pretty religious about entering every ride, unless it’s a quick trip to the grocery store or a ride around the block with Adam on the trail-a-bike. I realize I’m a little late for the whole year-end recap thing, but like I said, I’m doing some catch up blogging here. So, here’s what my year of cycling looked like in summary:

I rode on at least 248 days in 2009. In total, I covered about 8,018 miles which is 2/3rds of what the average American drives in a year. I drive a lot less than the average American, so I’m guessing I racked up more bike miles than car miles last year. (Maybe I should keep track of car miles next year so I can compare.)

About 3,383 miles (42% of the total) were covered in my daily commute to and from work, or running errands on the way. I went into the office about 230 times during the year and 192 of those commutes were by bicycle. The rest were using public transportation.

I have both single speed and multi-speed bikes. I generally do my commute on the single speed, but sometimes ride that one on recreational rides too. Overall, 3,922 of my total miles (49%) were on a single speed or fixed gear bike.

Of my recreational rides, 25 were between 50 and 100 miles in length and 15 were over 100 miles. How long was my longest ride? It sort of depends on how you define “ride.” I did two 600k brevets both of which extended over more than a day, so I’m not sure whether to count each of them as one ride or more. Both were somewhere around 380 miles and I completed the first one in 28:50 and the second in 33:45. My greatest distance covered in 24 hours was a little over 300 miles covered between 6 am on June 13th and 6 am on the 14th on the first 600k brevet.

Okay, here’s the statistic that makes me feel a little bit sick: I spent over 533 hours riding a bike last year. Whoa, that’s a lot of hours. That’s 22 days on a bike. In my defense, remember that about 2/3rds of that was time spent commuting to and from work, and my commute doesn’t take much longer by bike than it does by bus. Still that leaves 180 hours last year that I could have spent curing cancer or inventing a better mousetrap or something more useful. Did I mention that one of my resolutions for the new year is to spend less time bicycling?