What a great day for a bike ride as thousands of Seattle area commuters pushed off for work Friday morning.
It's too early to get a full count, but folks at the Enatai Commute Station in Bellevue (one of 42 commute stations around the region) reported more than 400 cyclists had passed through — going both directions — in the first two hours.
The Cascade Bicycle Club reported about 19,000 last year. With the wonderful weather and skyrocketing gasoline prices, you could only expect more this year.
As in previous years, I visited the Enatai station, above, where commuters were signing up for raffles, buying T-shirts or getting their bikes worked on.
Ben Boyce, a mechanic for Montlake Bicycle Shop, said most of the cyclists who seek him out are just looking for minor adjustments or fine tuning to their bikes this morning.
Blue skies and blue water met bicycle commuters as they bicycled across the Lake Washington bike path on I-90. With the warm temperatures, this might be a Bike to Work Day for the record books.
It will certainly be a record at the gas pump, as prices in the Seattle area ranged from $3.65 to $4.03 per gallon.
Myth buster
If you or someone you know needs more reasons to ride to work, Adam Voiland at the US News and World Report takes on the role of mythbuster and attacks 6 common misconceptions about bike commuting. Among them:
1. It's too dangerous: Research by Exponent actually shows that bicycling is safer than other forms of transportation.
“The company looked at a variety of activities and determined that the number of fatalities per million hours of exposure was 0.26 for biking, 0.47 for driving, 1.53 for living (all causes of death), and 8.80 for motorcycling.”
Other myths: It's too far (take a folding bike on a bus); bikes are too expensive (commuting bikes available under $500, new); too much stuff (use panniers and lighten up); no place to shower (look elsewhere in your building, health club, sponge off in restroom); biking leads to impotency (get the right saddle and right fit).
Commuter bike routes and “How to Share the Road” in the Seattle Times.
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