When [bicycling] in Rome

I am not new to Washington state. As the saying goes, “This is not my first rodeo.”

I moved out to the North Cascades in the northwest region of Washington state after graduating from university in 2003. In the mountains, people came to hike, rock climb, and even bicycle across steep and winding mountain passes. My experience of Washington started as a place of wildness, wilderness, and incredible natural beauty. A place so magical that people want to spend time outside, no matter the weather. I spent nearly a decade up by the BC border, working as an environmental education intern, park ranger volunteer, and then seasonal park ranger.

I have always been a country mouse. Even while living in Washington 20 years ago, my forays into Seattle were usually brief. I went to the “Big city” for professional development field trips as an intern with the North Cascades Institute and then to visit my sibling when they moved out from the east coast after graduating from university.

During these urban field trips, I was a visitor from the outside, taking notes on what it was like to live in a “big city.” I caught a glimpse of the urban cultural landscape. My sibling took me to parks, vegan bakeries and restaurants. I ate drool-inducing chocolate my sibling would bring home from stints working in packaging at the Theo chocolate factory in Fremont. I went to see the famed Fremont troll, the houseboat from the movie “Sleepless in Seattle,” and the apartment complex where they filmed the cult classic “Singles,” featuring band members from Pearl Jam no less.

One element of Seattle city life I found particularly intriguing was the propensity for people to travel by bicycle. I had seen long distance recreational cycling along Highway 20 in the Cascades, but this was something different. When I was a kid, I would spend all day bicycling around town with my friends. With no definitive destinations in mind, we would zig zag around suburbia, making pitstops for popsicles.

In Seattle, people were bicycling not just for the fun of it but for real purpose. There was an entire culture of commuter bicycling to get around instead of driving.

My sibling began commuter biking when they moved to Seattle after graduating from university. They cycled in all weather conditions, calling me one time in advance of my coming to visit to warn me about bruises on their face from having fallen off their bike while riding over railroad ties.

I mentioned intrigue as one of my initial reactions to this new form of bicycling. Horror awe came in quick succession, particularly after discovering the very steep hills that criss-cross the greater metropolitan area. Let’s just say that the police who bicycle around Seattle had the largest, most well defined thighs I had ever seen.

This generation of cyclists, which included my brave and stalwart sibling, were cycling around well before the WDOT [Washington Department of Transportation] created signage and bicycle lanes to protect cyclists and create awareness among vehicular drivers.

I tentatively dipped into bicycling toward the end of my first stint in Washington. My ex and I thought it would be fun to get out and bicycle around, so we visited Skagit Cycle in Mount Vernon to find bikes. I had very little knowledge of how to pick out a bicycle, so when the staff said they would measure me for one and suggested ordering a Kona Jake the Snake in my size, I readily agreed. I bicycled a bit on my Jake the Snake but lost my nerve when an RV ran me off the road and into the large cement blocks that lined a section of Highway 20 near our house.

When I left Washington state in 2010 to take a job in Southeast Alaska, I rode my bicycle during the summer on the 20 miles of road in the small town where I lived. Once I left Alaska and began ping ponging around the US and the globe, my bicycle took up residence in storage.

Now 20 years later, I have returned to Washington and have taken up semi-permanent residence in Seattle. I am still a country mouse, but I have to step into the town mouse identity for a while.

My husband and I moved to Seattle from Prescott, Arizona in December 2022. It took me a while to begin to settle in. To be honest, I am not sure I truly “settle” anywhere. I always seem to have one foot in the place I left behind and another already tentatively out the door and on to the next place. Since leaving my heart in the desert, I know I am still hoping to find a future foothold (pardon the pun) somewhere with sunshine in the winter and more affordable and accessible healthcare. I did recently discover a place in northern France with granite boulders nearly identical to the ones around our home in Arizona only bordering the sea. Eureka!

But I digress.

I am here for the foreseeable future. And if not yet firmly rooted, I have definitely been taking the pulse of my fellow city slickers for some time, trying to get a sense of how people are showing up “on the ground.”

One of the ways people show up is on bicycles.

Awareness follows intention, and my focus on bicycles in Seattle took a while to take shape. I knew to look out for them when I drove around the city. My sibling had already shared some fairly frightening stories from their cycle capades, one that included being doored when they first moved to Vancouver, BC. When a bunch of people came over to help and suggested calling an ambulance, my concussed sibling responded, “How much will that cost?”

Perplexed looks all around. “What do you mean? This is Canada!”

Ok, I might have made up that dialogue a bit, but please allow me some comedic freedom in response to the exorbitant and rising rates of health”care” in this country. Suffice it to say, I have some awareness of cycling culture even if I am new to Seattle.

Bicycling was not on my personal radar when we first moved to Seattle in the winter. I was mostly just trying to survive the grey, rainy days and once more try to figure out what I was doing with my life. When we went out to eat at the Wayward Vegan, a favorite vegan restaurant, I looked up the distance bicycling and suggested that someday we might bicycle there. I don’t think I actually saw us bicycling there. I definitely did not see myself as being capable of such a feat. Riding around on a bicycle amidst all of the traffic in a city was also fairly sobering/terrifying.

It was mid-June when the subject of cycling came closer to my own home. My husband had recently returned from a brief trip to Japan to present at a conference he helped organize. Before the conference, he spent several days bicycling around Kyoto.

I suggested I might get his bicycle from his mom’s garage and he could try cycling to work on the trail near our house. If you are not from the United States–and even if you are–you might not know about this groovy program called Rail-to-Trail. All across the country, conservation organizations have created trail systems out of defunct railways where trains no longer ride the rails. In these areas, now people can walk, hike, and bicycle to their heart’s content.

We lived right next to one such trail in Prescott, Arizona. The Peavine, created from Prescott’s first railway, the Prescott and Arizona Central (P&AC). I spent many hours hiking along this trail and the miles of trails that branched off of it. Sigh.

Now ensconced in north Seattle, we are once again blessed to live near another Rail-to-Trail, the Burke-Gilman, near our new [to us] home. Three cheers!

It’s a relatively short but very steep jaunt from our house to the trail and about 7.4 miles from our door to the University of Washington Bothell campus where my husband works. There are no Roadrunner, Black Phoebe, or Ravens flying overhead, but there are gorgeous views of Lake Washington and signs along the way, boasting the Burke-Gilman trail’s inclusion in the Rail-to-Rail Hall of Fame!

More about the Burke a bit later.

My husband began cycling to work. He came home with screaming thighs and sore wrists. When my sibling came down from Vancouver for a visit, they did a review and made some suggestions for ways to make the bike more ergonomically fit.

I brought my bike from M-in-L’s garage with the thought that it would be fun for us to go for some rides together. Mind you, I was not thinking about riding anywhere in traffic. While my sibling told fond tales of riding in north Seattle (and likely our neighborhood) when they used to live in Seattle, my perspective on any kind of riding off-trail was a definitive “hell no.”

I had gotten my bike tuned up in Arizona and taken it for a few spins on the Peavine (sigh), only to find I was experiencing a lot of pain after riding a few miles. I figured I was just getting old, but when I brought it back to the bike shop they told me that actually the bicycle was too big. The distance I had to reach to get to the handlebars was too far and there was no clearance when I stood over the frame.

My sibling confirmed this to be true on their visit. While I might get a smaller piece to bring the handlebars closer, there was nothing I could do, short (no pun intended) of a miraculous late-in-life growth spurt, about the frame being too tall.

Let me just say that I really loved my bike. It was a Kona “Jake the Snake,” two tone green and white. I bought it per the recommendation of the staff at Skagit Cycle up in Mount Vernon, Washington in 2009. They measured me and ordered it. Not knowing anything about how bicycles should fit, I just assumed it was “normal” to have to psychologically prepare every time I wanted to stop and step down. I had no idea bicycle riding could be easier. I just put my trust in the bicycle people.

I tried one more time to take the bicycle out. For my birthday, we took a ride along the Sammamish Trail, which is an extension of the Burke-Gilman. We rode for an hour and then took a tour of the Woodinville Whiskey Distillery. The next day, I decided it was time to sell my bike and try to find one in my size.

I love my achilles tendons and living without back pain, and now it seemed to make sense to begin a new chapter with a bicycle that actually fit. I had no idea how difficult it would be to find a bicycle to fit my body.

All told, it took me about six weeks to find a bicycle. Since I live in the land of bicycles and in a city, it was relatively easy, albeit time consuming, to visit several different bicycle shops.

I started out at Bothell Ski and Bike, which is the closest shop to our house. This place is one of only two of all the shops I frequented on my search with a woman on staff. I initially brought my Kona in to see if they could make any changes for a better fit. I also tried a couple of Liv bicycles per my husband’s suggestion. Of course, the one I liked the best was nearly $2k. The Liv Avail was like a feather to ride, but it had drop bars. My sibling was strongly urging me toward higher flat bars. They had been skeptical when a bicycle friend recommended making the switch, but they were now firm believers in the flat bar. It kept their posture higher and put less load on the middle back.

So while I was drawn to the Liv, I didn’t buy it straight away. I had promised my husband I would not come home with a two thousand dollar bicycle, and I also felt that I needed to conduct a much more thorough search after the Kona fail. I tried the Liv Alight as well. This model has flat bars, and both have a slanted top bar, which makes it much easier to step forward after braking. The woman on staff I worked with a couple of times also recommended doing a bicycle fit with a physical therapist at a place in Ballard.

Going to someone for an actual bicycle fit was an entirely new prospect. It also turned out to be fairly expensive. I looked up the place and sent an inquiry. I had been wanting to see a physical therapist for chronic several aches and pains. Maybe I could also chat them up about bicycles.

I went out to the Woodinville Bicycle to see what models they had for a petite person. This shop was all men on staff, and the guy who helped me had more ego than I was going for. He shared a lot of great information and let me try out several different bikes. I tried a couple of Specialized models, including a very solid Dutch style cruiser. This one was by far the most fun to ride around the parking lot next door. Unlike Bothell Ski and Bike, Woodinville Bicycle was located on a busy street, and there was no way I was about to ride out in traffic. The staff person encouraged me to get an e-bike, but I said I was not interested.

He mentioned several bikes that were way beyond my price range, following with, “I don’t know what kind of car you drove here….” The inference being, maybe you are looking for a $6k or $600 bicycle. I imagine when I told him I drove a used Toyota Prius, he was far less enthusiastic about me as a potential patron.

When I mentioned that I was looking into a bicycle fit, the experience became even less enjoyable. He assumed I was going to see some other guy–I don’t remember the name, but the person the woman at Bothell had recommended was also female. He proceeded to tell me why I should come to him for a bicycle fit instead of this other fellow and all the benefits and discounts I would get. I left after that and stopped at Bothell a second time on my way home.

I tried the two Liv models from my first visit. I also tested out one of their rental bikes, which was a more of a cruiser Dutch style bicycle. This one felt like it gave me the best posture, and it had the words “Be Happy” written on the handlebars. For a person who tends toward the dour side, I thought I could probably use this reminder in a place I regularly look. However, the staff person told me that this style bicycle would be much harder for going uphill. Given the nature of Seattle, this moved the cruiser to the no column.

If it already feels exhausting reading about trying out bicycles, you may want to skip the next several paragraphs. Additionally, if you don’t want to read about men mansplaining bicycle information to me, definitely skip ahead to the part about Free Range bikes, a woman-owned bicycle shop that was recommended to me by the female PT person.

Back to the grind.

I brought my Kona over to (mend)bicycles in the Wedgewood neighborhood. The staff were friendly, and I took a test drive on a less expensive Liv Avail model while they assessed the Kona’s resale value.

The experience definitely took a dive when I returned and one staff person (they were all male at mend) told me he would give me $200 for my bike, hoping to maybe sell it for $400. I thanked him and said I would just try to sell it myself. I wasn’t in a hurry and could be patient until it sold.

He then became quite pushy, adamant that there was no way I would get more than $200 for it, recommending I spend some time on FB marketplace to see how flooded the market was with used bikes. I left feeling pretty gross. And just so you know, mend man, I ended up selling my Kona on Craigslist for $700 a few weeks later.

At this point in my research, I was pretty focused on the Liv models. Liv is a subsidiary of Giant bicycles and were the only bicycles I had found so far that were designed specifically for women. 

When I checked out Counterbalance bicycles, they told me they didn’t carry any Liv models. They also didn’t have anything my size in stock.

Not in stock became a regular theme of my visits to bicycle shops in and around Seattle. I might find models on the store site that looked like they could be my size, or at least close enough to be tweaked/retrofitted for my body, but they were virtually never in stock.

Some places, like Ride bicycle, told me they could order a model that might fit me but that I would be obligated to buy it after they ordered it and put it together. I was definitely not about to commit to a bike that “might” fit after the Kona experience with Skagit Cycle. When my sibling and their girlfriend came down for a brief visit at the end of a bicycle tour on the San Juan Islands, I gave them an update on my bicycle research progress, bemoaning the “not in stock” situation, which made it next to impossible to test ride a bike before committing to buying it. My sibling’s girlfriend told me I should tell them this was gender discrimination, what she referred to as a “gender tax.”

This process was definitely taxing, in no small way because of the way I was treated as a small of stature, young-looking woman going into shops that were predominantly a male-dominated domain.

My neighbor told me that some shops like Gregg’s Cycle would let you purchase a bike and give you a 14-day money back guarantee. But when I went to Gregg’s, they did not have any bicycles that fit me. All of the sizing seemed either just a bit too big or too small. I even tried a kids’ Specialized bike, but somehow the frame was still too tall. At least I found a pair of fun bicycle leggings with a removable chamois on clearance. Of course, this purchase would become obsolete if I never found a bike.

I tried FB marketplace for some bikes, but I either never heard back from the seller (marketplace in Seattle is so flooded with people that sellers often don’t respond because they get so many inquiries about the items they list) or I grew weary of driving all over the place to try a bicycle that probably wouldn’t fit.

The turning point came when I had my first couple of appointments with the PT person at Upward Physical Therapy in Ballard. She was amazing and gave me some helpful tips and possible models to look for under the Surly brand. These were more commuter style bikes with steel instead of the lighter carbon frames for road bikes. She said we could probably tweak the drop bars by lifting them up a bit on the featherlight Liv, but the flat bars were still going to be the better fit for my back with regard to overall posture.

My sibling had also been encouraging me to look for steel frames, which were sturdier and safer overall. I was worried about the bicycle being too heavy for me, but I was itching to find anything that would fit.

After my second appointment with the PT, I headed to Free Range Cycles in Fremont to see if they had any Surly bikes in stock per her recommendation. Free Range was a breath of fresh air. It was small and idiosyncratic. There were two women on staff, and it turned out to be woman-owned. The owner, Shawna, helped me try out a couple of Surly models. I started with the Preamble, but there was still so little clearance that it didn’t seem worth it. I tried the Surly Bridge Club XS, and there was enough clearance that I took it for a test ride. The handlebars were flat but super wide, which felt very strange after always riding drop bars. After my first test ride, Shawna put on a narrower piece to bring the bars closer to my body (less reach so I could sit a bit taller in the saddle). I went for a second test ride and could already feel the difference.

The tires on the Bridge Club were enormous, but I found the bike overall to be pretty fun to ride. With the big tires, I felt an additional confidence going off the Burke-Gilman onto the dirt trail that ran alongside. With my Kona, I was always afraid of sliding and falling off the few times I went up the sandy road up to the Peavine and along the Peavine itself. Given that I was already fearful of traffic, it felt nice to have some bulk to help me feel safer.

The Surly was on sale but still over $1k, so I didn’t instantly bring it home. I hadn’t yet sold my Kona, and my husband and I had an agreement to discuss purchases over $100.

I pointed out a Surly Bridge Club to my husband on a visit to Ride Bicycle for him to look at and test ride a few bikes. Having commuted on the Burke for a month now, he was thinking about upgrading from his 30 year old Trek mountain bike. He laughed at the enormous tires, and I didn’t blame him. But I was worn out and wanting to finally get something that fit, large tires be damned.

When my parents agreed to help with the purchase as a belated birthday gift, my husband gave me the greenlight to test ride the Surly another time. The sale had just ended, but the shop owner agreed to honor the sale price. She hadn’t taken the shorter stem for the handlebars off, and I gave it another test ride.

While I was still a bit skeptical of the large tires, the high cost, and the wide handlebars, this seemed like the closest I was going to get to a bike I could actually ride with minimal pain. In keeping with our new family motto, it was  “good enough.”

It took some finagling, but I finally managed to squeeze it into my car with the back seat down. Only then did I think it would be fun to have a photo with my new bike in front of the shop, so of course I had to shimmy it out and go back to ask if they could take my photo.

Here I am, smiling on “new bike day!”

Thus ends my adventures in finding a bike for my new chapter in Seattle. My husband found a Surly Straggler the same week, so we are now Team Surly. More soon on our adventures, bicycling around Seattle. I am thinking of a series called “Bicycling for Baked Goods and Beer.”