Why would you want to rent a bike to tour Seattle? Aren’t there hills that would make Lance Armstrong blanch? Isn’t there snarly traffic that will turn you and your bike into something that would baffle a CSI team?
Well, yes. There are six hills over six hundred feet tall (and maybe a dozen smaller hills) in the city. And traffic can be daunting at best, and fatal at worst. However, Seattle has cleverly converted some of the shoreline railroads into bike trails. The result is flat, separated-from-cars paths that go to, and through, some of the best sites and parks in the city.
The good news is that there is a great place downtown to rent a bike. The miserably-named Bike Repair Shop rents bicycles, located at 928 Western Ave. They rent by the day or hour. Better yet, they throw in a repair kit, lock-and-chain and a helmet. Best of all, they have maps, not just lines on paper. The Bike Repair Shop map has such important things as spots marked with “Do NOT follow signs to Smith Cove Park” (it is a dead end for bikes, and is not particularly interesting). They are concerned for your safety, so they warn you to “Watch out for train tracks” under the Ballard Bridge.
The Bike Repair Shop also has a map put out by the King County bike board. It is a much bigger map, covering hundreds of square miles. It has all of the major trails. Unfortunately, the print is difficult to read on the map and the detail is wanting. You could go to www.kingcounty.gov/parks for more information. On the back is a useful guide, in writing, about the major trails on the map.
The King County system of bike trails goes all the way up to the mountains 60 miles east. Maybe you aren’t up for a hundred-mile ride to the top of the pass (3,500 feet above sea-level). But if you’re a big-time biker, you could make a day out of it and pedal to Woodinville, which is about twenty miles as the bike path goes. This is Seattle’s Wine Country. There are about a million wineries in this little village. At least a dozen invite you in for tasting.
People in Seattle are easy to approach. If you find yourself lost or confused on the trail—or merely want to know what the name of that mountain is, where to eat lunch or what is the name of that tree over there—stop and ask someone.
Best of all: the city/county buses have bike racks on the front of the vehicles. Say you get tired bike riding—I’m talking ‘doing-your-taxes’ tired. No problem. Get on any bus going downtown, put the bike on the rack and you’re back downtown in forty minutes. Even in Woodinville, there is a huge transit center. Find a bus going to Seattle and before you can say ‘blisters on my butt’, you are back at the Bike Repair Store. There are several other bike rental places in the city, but most of them are out near the University.
The idea of seeing Seattle by bike is like sipping wine with a good book and a friendly Labrador at your feet. It just seems right.
