Category: On two wheels

I took my longest solo ride on my scooter yet yesterday: from Building 17 in Redmond all the way to Port Angeles, 90+ miles, including a five mile ferry ride from Edmonds to Kingston.

My boss ran into me on my way out the door, spied the tripod in my hand, and asked how the hell I was going to carry that on a scooter. It’s not a big tripod, but I just beckoned him to follow me: I wanted him to check out the large yellow duffle bag that would be coming with me as well. I’ll have to get a picture of me with all my gear strapped onto my scoot on the trip back.

The eastside part of the ride was easy: I took local roads all the way to Edmonds with max speeds of 40 mph in sunny weather. And, of course, I didn’t have to wait for over an hour to get on the ferry: Motorcycles skip right to the front of the line, which was over a mile long at that point.

But on the ferry, a brutal wind picked up. When we were facing due west, the blow was so strong, I was worried it would push my scooter over. The clouds were ominous, too, and I realized then that I only had enough plastic to cover myself and one of my two bags–clothing in the duffle, electronics in my backpack. Tough choice: the backpack would be shielded somewhat from the forward velocity, and much of the electronics are weatherproof. Wet clothes are easy to dry.

The ride from Kingston to Port Angeles was rough. The air was 10 degrees cooler than the eastside, that wind was blasting into me the entire ride, it started to rain, and the speed limit was much higher (55) than I expected (45) for a winding, rural road. Normally, 55 mph is no problem, but with luggage and wind, my max speed on straightaways dropped to 55-60 mph, from 70. There weren’t many straightaways, of course: it seemed like the entire ride was uphill, and I had to pull over frequently to let cars pass me–I could barely hit the speed limit most of the way.

The Hood Canal Bridge was the worst, though. Without trees or hills to block the wind, I was constantly pushed over to the right. To make it even more fun, the bridge had three stretches of metal grating: a scary prospect in wet, blustery weather with four wheels going 45 mph. On two wheels? *shudder*

By the time I arrived in Port Angeles, my fingers felt raw with cold (despite my heavy gloves), my nose was running, my whole body ached from the weight of my camera and laptop on my back, and I was chilled to the bone. I never understood that saying until I owned a scooter. It took over an hour for the caloric furnace that is my body to warm back up: I was bundled up in my scarf and heavy scooter jacket throughout a mediocre Chinese dinner.

But I’m here, and safely. And the wind should be at my back for the return trip.

When I bought my new Vespa, I made sure to buy crashbars–steel bars that run along the cowls and legshields, and are supposed to protect the paint job from roadrash in minor drops. Today, I discovered that they worked!

I had to drive to work today, and pulling into the parking garage, I took a bit sharp of a turn with the throttle open a little bit. With all the snow and ice, WSDOT has laid down a lot of sand and gravel (no salt: all the salty runoff kills the salmon runs), so I was accelerating and turning on dirt, basically. And I dropped the bike.

I was only going five miles an hour, so I scraped my knee like I was a seven-year-old tripping on pavement while running. But there’s not a scratch on the body of my Vespa. The crashbars took all the road rash!

I spent $8 on parking yesterday, because the two motorcycle parking spots in front of my dentist’s office were taken by a car. A police car. Not even Seattle PD, mind you, but Federal Way, a city way to the south. I was annoyed but late, so I went for this semi-illegal spot I’d noticed another trip downtown: a diagonal wedge where cars couldn’t fit. On the way there, I noticed, not a block from that motorcycle parking, an area reserved exclusively for police parking. When I got to my semi-illegal spot, a car was parked there, blocking the driveway to a parking garage. So I just went into the parking garage.

After my dentist appointment, I went back to see if the police car was still there. It was. I waited for a while, but no one came out. So I took some pictures with my cell, figuring I’d call to complain to the Federal Way police later in the day. It’s Federal Way City police car number 6032, Washington license plate number 38301 D.

Then I left, but Lo and Behold! I only had to drive a block before I ran into a parking enforcement vehicle! Told him about the cop parked in motorcycle parking, he said he take care of it, slap the guy with a ticket. I’m sure it’ll get wiped away. But so satisfying.

That was the word from KUOW traffic this morning. No accidents to speak of. Just rain. Rain? Rain snarls traffic in a region where there are seven months of rain? What did I get myself into?

I take the Sounder 545 Express Bus to work. I started by loading my bike onto the bus, and riding the 6.75 miles from the east side of the 520 floating bridge to Microsoft and back. But it’s been cold recently, and rainy, and dark, and I’ve been just taking the bus.

But the bus isn’t a hair faster than a car in the morning. There are no express lanes in Seattle on the bus route, so I’m stuck on a crowded bus, inching along as five or six lanes of traffic merge into two lanes to cross the 520 bridge. Why bother even taking the bus? Yeah, I can read the paper, but it’s not faster, and it’s incredibly crowded from 6am to 830am.

I’ve actually started working from Bauhaus coffee shop down the street in the am and taking a bus btw 8:45 and 9:15. I thought traffic would be easier, but it’s not. True, the bus is less crowded but… P******* tells me you might as well not get on the bus until 930am.

Then there’s the return. It’s bad no matter what. The bus is always standing-room only between 5pm and 6pm. Then, the traffic is horrible, and it’s horrible from 4pm to well past 7pm. The HOV lane is the right lane, so at the 520/405 interchange, single-passenger vehicles clog the bus lane as they cross the former HOV lane and try to exit 520 to get on the 405. It’s also clogged as they get off the 405 and line up trying to get into the left lane before the right lane turns into an HOV lane again. Yeah, you save time after the 405 interchange, because traffic in the non-HOV lanes is still slow getting onto the 520 bridge. But it can take anywhere from 15-35 minutes to get from MSFT to the bridge. It takes me 25 minutes by bike. But it’s dark, and half the ride is on surface streets, and even in a bike-friendly place like the Puget Sound area, drivers still don’t pay attention to anything that isn’t a car.

I think the key to the crowding thing is that people come to the bus stop at a constant rate, starting at 6:30 am, and continuing until 8:30, and then from 5pm to 6:30pm. Thing is, the buses come every ten minutes only from 8:02 to 9:12, and from 5:48 to 7:08. So 6:30am to 7:52am, and 5pm to 5:38pm–when the bus comes every 15 minutes–is crowded.

But that’s just about getting a seat. It doesn’t address the traffic.

Jono has decided it makes sense to get in at 5am and leave at 3pm. But that’s not a solution.

If I could split lanes or ride in the shoulder in Seattle, I’d buy a 250cc Vespa, and scoot in most of the time. But I can’t. I’m stuck in traffic like everyone else.

We also thought that Microsoft should just demand that entire divisions work from home one day per week. No choice, you can’t come in. You work on Office? You work from home on Tuesday. You work on Windows? Live? Every group has a day. That’d be 10K+cars off the highways each day.

Seattle just hasn’t figured it out. And based on the transit plans I’ve seen, it will only get worse, because no one has the guts to get people out of their cars. LA knows you can’t add more freeway lanes. Build it, and they will come. You have to encourage different behaviors. Seattle still thinks more lanes are the answer, not providing EFFECTIVE alternatives to cars. Like HOV lanes for the bus that single-passenger cars can NEVER enter. Or rail.

I’m one less car on the road. In San Francisco, that behavior was rewarded. The train was brilliant. In Seattle, I suffer just like people in their own cars. In fact, my commute takes longer than a car, because of the bus stops. The only difference is that I get to read. While stuffed in like a sardine in a bus.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been trying to replicate my commute experience at Oracle. In San Francisco, I was one of dozens to put my bike on Caltrain at 22nd Street, and, when I wanted some exercise, I would get off at Burlingame or San Mateo and bike the eight+ miles to Oracle. It was a beautiful way to start the day: all but 1 mile of the ride was on a bike path hugging the shoreline of the San Francisco Bay. No car traffic, completely level, and a peaceful 30-minute ride. I averaged 19 mph, sometimes higher, and got a wonderful work out.

In Seattle, I strap my bike onto the front of the 545 express bus to Redmond. There’s only space for three bikes (as opposed to 36 on CalTrain) but I’ve only been bumped once, and that was going home. I get off at Evergreen Point just across the 520 bridge, and take off. I have a choice for the first mile or two: ride along an extremely narrow and bumpy jogging trail through the woods along the north side of 520, or take a residential street with wide shoulders on the south side of 520. Recently, I’ve been taking the side street: not only is it smoother, but the hills are less… hilly. Then I cross back to the north side of 520, go up another residential street, which turns into an incredibly long, steep downhill. Fastest I’ve gone is 38 mph. Then another couple of miles on secondary (non-residential streets) with barely a shoulder to speak of. And all uphill.

Finally, I’m on the bike trail that runs along 520 all the way into Redmond. Of course, Microsoft is just barely in Redmond so I’m only on that trail for a couple of miles. It’s almost all uphill, of course, and my average speed for the whole ride is 10 to 12 mph.

It’s a good workout, and I do like starting the day with a ride. But
it’s not as picturesque as riding along San Francisco Bay, and I get
caught at a lot of really long stoplights.

What’s humiliating about the morning rides are the hills. Well, the
hills aren’t really humiliating. It’s the old guys with gray hair who
are blowing past me on the uphills. I had three in one morning. Nobody
passed me on the trail along the Bay.

"Why don’t you take the ride after work, when it’s all downhill?" I hear you cry.

I do, actually. When I bike in the morning, I almost always bike back in the evening. That’s mainly because there is so much demand at the Microsoft bus stop, one bike is almost always bumped. And even if you’re not bumped, by the time your bike is on the rack on the front of the bus, every spare seat is taken. Standing in the aisle as the bus lurches in the agonizingly slow, stop-and-go traffic at the 405 interchange is murder on my knees. Plus, at Evergreen Point, I can take buses other than the 545 to Stewart and Denny.

But the evening ride isn’t quite enough of a workout. It’s only 6.75 miles, so with all the down hills, it only takes 22 minutes–just barely an aerobic workout.

This weekend was Festering Oktoberscoot. When I first heard of the rally–a scooter-based tour of Seattle breweries–I thought this would be a singularly bad idea. A half a glass of alcohol on a two-wheeled vehicle feels like two to three full glasses when driving a car. There is just so much more that you need to pay attention to.

But this isn’t a young and irresponsible scooter crowd (I’m probably the youngest person in the crowd other than Hottie Ms. Headlights). At every brewery, it was just about a taste. A dash of beer in a shot glass.

That’s not to say that the ride went perfectly smoothly. Kelly went down after the first brewery this morning. She was slowing down and pulling to the right to block a car that was edging into the pack (it boggles the mind, but some car drivers will utterly ignore motorcycles and just pull in like we aren’t there). But the move was sudden enough that Marty, right behind her, had to slam on the brakes. He didn’t have quite enough space, and he didn’t turn out of the way (maybe there was another bike directly to his left, don’t know). A perfect accident: no single person was at fault, but everyone contributed just a little bit.

Kelly had a little road rash on her legs (like someone else I know, Kelly chooses fashion over protection) and went into mild shock. I got a little worried when she laid back down on the sidewalk a second time after refusing to go to the hospital–I didn’t see the accident, but I was worried she banged her head. So I called our family ER doc, Trish. It only took a few minutes for everyone else to convince Kelly to stop by the emergency room, and by the time I reached Trish, Kelly was in a cab with Sugar Bear following behind on his scoot. (Kelly, a fellow Softie, claimed she wouldn’t have gone if it hadn’t been for our employer’s fantastic health benefits).

Kelly joined us about six hours later at the barbecue at the end of the ride, bruised but in good spirits.

All said and done, I do like this scooter crowd. They’re all laid-back and easy-going and low drama–just like the handful of people in the San Francisco crowd that I enjoyed spending time with.

I bought a replacement for my Vespa yesterday.

Same model: ET4.
Same year: 2002.
Same color: platinum.

Of course, it has 7,700 fewer miles, it doesn’t have this little rattle when I start it up, and it doesn’t ride quite as rough. Those are all to the good, but I had grown fond of the rattle and the grind and the squeaky brakes. And of grumping about them.

Even better, I paid less for this bike than Geico paid out for my old one.

Heather asked me if I rode around all weekend on my new ET4. It had been a month since I’d scooted around, and I really wanted to get back on my bike.

But on Thursday evening, Chanel called me to suggest she and Finn and Ellie drive up from Portland for the weekend. How could I say no? And you can’t really put a three-year-old on any kind of motorcycle.

Geico has stepped up to the plate now that the G****s have accepted responsibility for the accident.

I had a rental car for a few days, which helped with the move and made my commute easier (I’d rather be stuck in the 520 parking lot on a 1.25 hour commute, than be stuck at 5th & Virginia waiting for the bus to Queen Anne on 2 hour commute). I could have kept the car for longer, but now that I’m in Capitol Hill, finding parking is more trouble than it’s worth, so I returned it Monday morning after almost a week with four wheels.

Geice valued my scoot at $2,950, which is about right for a pristine ET4 bought from a dealer. I’ll get the check this week.

Interesting side note: the Seattle Times recently reported that new Washington state laws have made a big dent in accidents caused by new teenage drivers. Not that it helped me, but… Technically, the kid who totaled my scoot should lose his license until he’s 18. It takes two mistakes for this, and he made them both at the same time: causing a collision, and driving with non-relatives his own age in the car.

More important, I found the exact same Vespa model, year and color selling for $2,800, and with 1/3rd the miles.  I would have bought it on Saturday morning, but without a local bank branch, I’m sorta stuck. I’ll be withdrawing the max from ATM machines all week to get the cash together.

This Saturday morning, I’ll be back on two wheels.

My old Oracle buddy Brian found this article on the rising popularity of scooters in the US. I must say, I’m a little shocked at the age skew, but then again, I’m a little shocked that I’m only a couple of years away from being in that age skew.

As to fuel economy, yeah baby, $6 for a tank that lasts all month! You can run almost any errand–including grocery shopping at any non-big-box store–and park just feet from your destination.

I have actually had the fuel economy conversation with several colleagues here: one was thinking of buying a pair of scoots for both himself and his wife to make their commutes easier. Of course, she wants a Harley, which costs a mere $15,000 more than a Vespa. Others are merely in the state of saying "I can’t believe I burned $15 of gas racing from Redmond to Seattle. There has to be a better way."

I miss my scooter.

The BBC reported a rather disturbing study on safety and bicycle helmets. Drivers in the UK apparently will give far less space to cyclists wearing protective gear and reflective clothing than they do to cyclists wearing street clothes.

The offered explanation is that drivers may think the properly attired cyclist may be more experienced riding in traffic and thus ride more predictably, meaning they don’t need to give that cyclist a wide berth. Which amounts to zilch when you need to swerve to avoid debris or glass or a pothole.

That’s why cyclists have a right to the full lane in California and other states.