Sunny skies, crisp temperatures. What's not to like about a bicycle ride on a day like Friday in the Puget Sound, even if you are commuting to work?
Thousands of cyclists took to the streets in the Puget Sound this morning to participate in the 2007 Bike to Work Day.
The Cascade Bicycle Club was looking for 10,000 people to ride to work. Cities across the nation were looking at similar numbers on a day when gasoline prices set a record for the fourth straight day. (Spot checks in the Seattle Times report twice the number of cyclists over last year at certain locations in the morning.)
But it's not only about gasoline prices for the cyclists riding to work today. It's about getting out of the car, reducing pollution, and getting healthy and staying fit.
The Cascade club, one of the largest (if not the largest) in the nation, has partnered with Starbucks to put on this year's event. To make things easier on the bike commuters, Cascade set up 42 bike commute stations around the Puget Sound where volunteers handed out snacks, drinks, coffee, water bottles, sold “Bike to Work” T-shirts and bumper stickers.
I rode down to the bike station at Enatai, which is a busy choke point for Eastside cyclists heading to jobs in the city and Seattle residents riding to jobs in Bellevue. They're all funneled over a nify little bike path on the I-90 bridge.
The bike station had been opened for about 1 1/2 hours when I arrived, and 300 cyclists had already been through.
Gary TeGantvoort, manager of the Montlake Bicycle Shop in Seattle, was busy fixing and adjusting bicycles at no charge for a steady stream of cyclists who had nagging problems with their bikes.
Lots of folks were taking advantage of all the freebies, the good weather, and the camaraderie. Let's hope those positive feelings are strong enough to convince them to commute by bike on a daily basis.
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