Thanks to these high, high temperatures (OMFG!!1! 80 degrees?! *pantpant*), the P-I reports, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is close to calling a smog alert. The shame! The agency's Dave Kircher says to do everything possible to keep from driving the next few days: "Stay home, have an iced tea or whatever, and don't mow your lawn." Here we just laugh! As bicyclists, we're gonna pack extra water, but otherwise, Kircher, we'll do whatever......

The other day we asked if there was anything special you could do to set off the arrow for turn-only lanes if you're on a bike. And yes, there is. (See also comment #9 by eldan.) But that still leaves the question of what you do when you can't trip the signal no matter what. How do you get out of that spot legally without being run over by impatient motorists lining up behind you?......

We spend a lot of time here at Seattlest bemoaning the fate of bicycle riders in Seattle. It's a hard-knock life for us, we like to say, living in a city that likes to tout itself as green to the nth degree while also putting forward a Master Bike Plan that leaves something to be desired in almost every neck of the woods. Well, on Saturday, when the weather was spectacular, we took a nice,......

Our bike route to work from Magnolia to Capitol Hill takes us down a short hill on 20th Ave W to the Pier 91 bike trail. That little street runs right along a ton of train tracks leading into the train yards. (It's on the back side of the Interbay Golf Center.) Generally it's filled with locomotives connected to empty cars or lines of containers waiting to be shipped one place or another. Noting terribly......

For all the talk about whether or not the city's Master Bike Plan goes far enough, one thing is clear: if you spend any time on the city streets, there are new bike lanes and preferred bike routes out there. To help you keep track of all the changes, the Department of Traffic has released a new version of the bike map. If you ever ride your bike outside your neighborhood, you're going to......

We were impressed by this morning's Times article about the need to increase bicycle safety on the city's streets. Writer Mike Lindblom stays away from polarizing histrionics. Instead he makes bicyclists seem like sane, good people who just want to make it to work alive:At each end of the Fremont Bridge, road signs tell car drivers to yield to bikes -- southbound motorists turning right toward Seattle Pacific University will wait for the bicyclists pedaling......

This Georgetown bike couldn't possibly have looked as cool in real-life color. Thanks for dropping Spokes in our Flickr pool, El Gregein.......

You recall the other day we were mad as hell at the Washington State Ferries for running their boats until they rusted through, leaving everyone high and dry while new ones can be built. WSF is still dead to us, but Governor Gregoire could make our "holiday card" list if she keeps it up. First the viaduct course correction, now she's scrounged up $100 million to pay for three new ferries. Budget, schmudget! She's......

Thanksgiving doesn't allow for us Seattlesters to partake in our usual rock and roll lifestyles. Instead it's friends and family and mellow times about the house. Our drinking's liable to be more restrained and coordinated with a heavy meal of rich food. (Seattlest Geoff offered some choice beer recommendations earlier this week for those who've got a pit-stop planned on the way to grandmother's house tomorrow.) And according to the weather report, it's going to......

Seattlest has found a reason for everyone to welcome bicycles on the city's streets. The origins lie in Virgin Vacations' (has anyone asked The Name Inspector to do a write up on Richard Branson's desire to cater to virgins?) naming of the world's 11 most bike-friendly cities. Unfortunately, Seattle didn't make the list (Portland came in at number 2), which uses five criteria created by The Bicycle Friendly Communities Campaign to judge a community's bike......

When we sat down to do our endorsements we reached a disturbing conclusion. We cannot, in good conscience, vote for anyone. Position 1 Jean Godden: Wrote for the Seattle Times when it endorsed Bush in 2000. Joe Szwaja: Involved in a 1990 domestic dispute in which his then-girlfriend threw a bottle at him and he threw a plate at her. Position 3 Bruce Harrell: Doesn't spend enough time with his 15-year-old son from a previous......

There is something seriously wrong in this city right now. The fight between drivers and bicyclists has been brewing for years, but recently it seems to be reaching a boiling-over point. It pushes what we consider to be sane people, on both sides of the argument, into a state of rage that we honestly find a bit frightening. It needs to stop (and by stop we don't mean that we want to see a bunch......

Seattle's infamous Bicycle Hobo(TM) tipped us off to this cool Halloween scavenger hunt thing going on this weekend that we hadn't heard of previously, evidently called the Mess-Man's Messquerade. Here's the run down from the site: The hunt starts soon after 7pm in the sunken parking lot behind Cafe vita/Wild Rose entrance off 10th ave. This historic location is where Seattle’s first BIKE POLO tournament was held by yours truly at the 1st Messquerade.......

We start things off this weekend with a simple two words from Donte: Muthafucking Justice! As Halloween approaches, it seems that the tradition of Seattlests stalking each other continues. Seth will attend the opening night of the Seattle Opera's first ever co-production with New York's Metropolitan Opera, Iphigenia in Tauris, which is conveniently scheduled at the exact fucking same time as the Husky/ASU game. He'll try to catch the fourth quarter at the Spectator on......

Well Dan, I guess you don't even need a bike and a mountain anymore. Here is a RedBull biking event in Budapest--I guess if we can build mountain bike trails under the freeway, they can race their bikes in the subway.......

Kim is off to see Susan Werner at the Triple Door Sunday night. This weekend is a toss up for Matt between going down to Portland for the final days of the Body World 3 show at OMSI or heading out west to the The 26th Annual West Coast Oyster Shucking Championship and Washington State Seafood Festival. As previously noted, Seth is going to take The Grand Tour with George Jones at the Paramount. Friday,......

It’s been hard for us to admit this, greenie that we are, but a vote for Prop. 1 is in order, at least from this Seattlest's perspective. This has been hard because we're as environmentally friendly as they come. We ride our bike; compost; and we reduce, we reuse and leave the recycling as only as the last step of a long process. So the news we saw when we opened our e-mail this morning,......

The operative word, of course, is "considering," because by no means is a bike park at Stevens Pass a done deal. But the plans are surprisingly detailed and specific, which gives Seattlest hope. The local biking community is all a-twitter about the prospects. Each year we trek up to Whistler repeatedly for our downhill biking fix (that's a friend pictured on a black diamond Whistler trail at the right), and we'd much rather spend less......

Two UW marching band saxophonists know their bulky instrument cases can get in the way as they walk to school down the Burke-Gilman Trail. They don't want to be obstacles to the notoriously chippy bicyclists. So one, "Geekybandbabe", asks Seattle's Live Journal community for advice:Is there a certain undesignated place where we should be walking on the trail so as to ensure that we, and all other trail patrons emerge unscathed? Let it go on......

That headline was designed to hector Seattle because we know how awful it is for this part of the world to be compared to New York City. But showing Seattle how New York does something better seems to produce results (the M's notwithstanding). This time they're creating truly bike-friendly streets. It's always been unbelievable to us how Seattle presents itself as an uber-environmentally friendly city, while drivers clog the freeways in Hummers, voters kill the......

The Seattle Times has a quickie little snippet about some ski resort ownership swapping, namely that Boyne USA has bought the Summit at Snoqualmie from Booth Creek. At first we were a little concerned, namely because Booth Creek has a great track record from a customer service perspective, especially when they extended our season's pass for free after the disastrous winter of 05-06. But after a little more research, we're very excited because this is......

Our postings have been light (OK, nonexistent) this summer as we gallivanted about the western US and Canada teaching people how to ride mountain bikes. We were most excited about a trip in late August to Blue River, BC, the spot of legendary Mike Wiegele's heli-skiing outfit. The plan was to get dropped at 9,000 feet via helicopter and escort about 40 people back down through fields of granite rock slabs and unending alpine......

Admittedly, Seattlest is a bit late on this one, but hey, we gotta pay the bills too so please, forgive us for being a couple of days behind the news cycle on the Flexcar story. To us, the state's decision to force Flexcar users to pay a car-rental tax stinks from here to Olympia. First and foremost, the whole point of Flexcar is to make it easier for a household like ours - stuck......

Late summer is berry season, which means it is also bear season. A 51 year-old man mountain biking in Banner Forest (near Port Orchard on the Kitsap Peninsula) was attacked by a male black bear last week. His dogs were running ahead of him, and he heard them barking. He turned a corner, and was face-to-face with the bear, which then attacked him. Attacks by black bears are remarkably rare, which makes the situation all......

Seattlest's heart's cockles always get warmed when we see a bunch of people who choose to ride their bikes to get around get together, so we were predisposed to love Northwest Film Forum's Second Seattle Annual Bike-In last night. (Almost getting slammed by a driver opening her car door while riding over probably added to our joy at making it there.) Unlike most communal bike events in Seattle (Critical Mass, Bike to Work Day), the......

With unseasonable weather descending upon much of North America, schools getting ready to reconvene, and sports seasons getting exciting, it's a busy time of year for us here in the Ist-A-Verse. Luckily, even with all the things we have to do, we still managed to get together to let you know what we've all been up to. After cooling down from a hot weekend of many badass Sunset Junction Street Fair photo dispatches, LAist asked......

We think Chief Gil Kerlikowske said it best:"We want to hold the ground we've taken and maintain the peace here and have real-time information about where the hot spots are..."Right away you get a sense of the high-level strategy involved in taking Seattle back, street by street, from people with very little money, clean clothes, or a complete high school education. Was it necessary to make the announcement in such a dramatic fashion? We......

Despite the fact that we take the bus from North Seattle to Downtown and avoid completely the I-5 work that's being done, the TV and newspapers had us prepared for the worst. We spent the weekend hiding caches of water and ammo at various safehouses along our commute route, and packed a NOAA weather radio, our Garmin handheld and some flares into our laptop bag this morning, such was the urgency of the pending doom.......

Um, we are not so sure this is a good idea.....but, Uber Tavern up on Aurora is hosting a "pub crawl by bike" this Sunday, August 12. Actually, hell yeah it is a good idea. Just WEAR A HELMET, please. If you can make 11 (all awesome) bars in 1 day on a bike, kudos. From Uber's email: Starting time? 1pm at Uber Tavern (we will open 2 hours early for the occasion) How......

Our new workout regimen involves coasting down Pine to downtown, eating lunch, and bicycling back up to the Hill. If it works, we'll call it the 7-Minute Miracle! (Actually, even if it doesn't.) Often we pull up in front of Pacific Place, where there are four or more bike racks -- the kind of convenience we'd never noticed until we got pedals of our own. Today we were headed to the Nordstrom's Grill (the old......