Category Archives: seattle

The Bike Fairy says “Bike to School, Kids”

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Tim K | 6 comments

The Bike Fairy gives prizes to kids who ride to school

May is officially Bike month. For most riders, that means Bike to Work month. But as you’d expect from a blog that focuses on family cycling, we like to remind folks that it’s also Bike to School Month!

Despite unseasonably cold and wet weather the majority of the month, 86 kids at our school have already completed their online logs for an impressive 517 bike trips to school. We’ve counted more than 100 bikes at morning dropoff twice already, and that’s with the sucky weather. These kids are kicking ass.

Today the focus around town will be on the grownups riding to work for the F5 Bike to Work Day — Cascade is promoting a ride with the mayor and photo-op at City Hall, F5 is sponsoring feed and swag stations all over town, and there’s a big after party in Ballard – but that’s OK, because we’ve got the Bike Fairy! Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in bikes, Events, kids, kids' bikes, seattle

Tagged bike fairy, bike-to-school, bike-to-work, bikefairy, bikes, kids

Official Volcano Holiday (or Work? How about a beer and a bike ride instead?)

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Tim K | 5 comments

Refill your growlers on the beer cruise

Can you imagine a better way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens than by blowing off (get it?) work to participate in the Seattle Beer Week Brew Cruise (this means May 18 for you non-volcanic historians).

St Helens at Wikipedia The ride starts at 1:30pm at Big Time Brewery and Ale House on the Ave. in the U-district, and then, like a Yelm-swallowing lahar, it will ooze its way on the slightly-downhill-to-flat Burke-Gilman Trail toward Ballard. Scheduled stops are: Big Time, Fremont Brewing, Hales, and Maritime Pacific. Mmmm…tasty. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in bikes, Events, seattle

Tagged beer, bikes, costumed rats, seattle, seattle beer week

Promoting Walk – Bike – Ride, in the Seattle Style

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Anne | 2 comments

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn unveiled a multi-year Walk, Bike, Ride campaign yesterday at the Beacon Hill light rail station. Initial reaction locally was mostly lukewarm, with many observers pointing to the plan’s lack of funding as a major obstacle to success.

Paul Andrews of Bike Intelligencer summed up the announcement and the campaign eloquently with his post Walk, Bike, Ride, yes. Spend? Um, err….”

Where’s the money, Lebowski?

The opening line from “The Big Lebowski” kept rolling through my mind as Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn, King County Council member Larry Phillips and a supporting cast of street activists rolled out a new “Walk Bike Ride” campaign at the Beacon Hill light rail station this afternoon.

Andrews is a seasoned newspaperman and professional writer. And it shows. In contrast to many bloggers (yes, bike bloggers, too. This one included), Andrews can really write. In a, concise post, he covers both the good of the plan (The mayor, who biked to the press conference, wants to encourage a city-wide shift away from driving), as well as the bad (uh, how are we going to fund said shift)?

It’s worth popping over to Bike Intelligencer and getting the full poop. But while you are here, you might as well know that The Car Free Days’ take on the plan is a qualified “Bravo.”

Sure, presenting the plan in tandem with a big-ass bucket of money would have been nice, but we’re reasonably happy with the overall message. If we can instill the city’s collective mind with the idea that “bicycling is a normal option for normal people,” we’re on our way to change. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in alternative transportation, bigger than here, bikes, Human Powered Politics, seattle

Tagged bikes, infrastructure, mcginn, Mike McGinn Seattle politics bikes infrastructure, politics, seattle, Walk Bike Ride campaign

Seattle Bike Blog Meetup: What’s Your Agenda?

Posted on April 4, 2010 by Tim K | 4 comments

The Easter Bunny is due any minute, so I’ll attempt to make this brief.

Anne and I attended a (first?) Seattle Bike Blog Meetup tonight at Brouwer’s Cafe in Fremont. Spearheaded by Paul Andrews of Bike Intelligencer, the idea (we think, Paul can correct us later) was to gather a bunch of local bike bloggers in one place and see if we can find some common ground.

We don’t have a single voice around here like the amazing Bike Portland, but we do have a buttload of passionate cyclists blogging their individual asses off on topics they care about. Of course, trying to make the leap from “individuals” and “personal passions” to “common ground” is huge. Herding cats is a phrase that comes to mind for me. Still, there are places where we all seem to overlap. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in alternative transportation, bigger than here, bikes, extravehicular activities, seattle

Tagged bikes, bloggers, brouwers, meetup, seattle

The Great Holiday Family Bike Vs. Bus Challenge

Posted on December 22, 2009 by Anne | 10 comments

Victory! Bikes Rule

Inspired by Streetfilms Bike Vs Car Vs Transit, the Car Free Days family took a challenge of their own: Bike Vs. Bus from our house in Ravenna to Westlake Park in downtown Seattle for a little holiday in the big city action.

The event:

A door-to-door speed test pitting Tim’s Xtracycle against Anne and 2 kids on foot to the bus stop, then on the bus to Westlake Park. Our departure times and routes were the same, but the outcome would be different Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in bikes, extravehicular activities, seattle, streetsblog

Tagged Bike Vs Bus Challenge, bikes, bus, metro, Race, seattle

Ideas for Seattle

Posted on December 7, 2009 by Anne | 5 comments

Seattle Skyline from jarnott at Flickr

It must be a lot of pressure to take the helm of one of the world’s smartest cities.

Car Free Days has high hopes that Mayor-Elect Mike McGinn will continue to listen to the citizens of Seattle while taking Seattle to the next level.

We have a feeling it’s going to be a little harder to connect with the citizens of Seattle as mayor than it was as candidate. As candidate he just had to listen. As mayor he has to listen, and then act in a way that pleases everyone. The pressure of trying to make everyone happy is enough to make a mayor wall themselves off behind grumpy power-broker staffers (Nichols) or crawl into a hole (Schell).

Still, being the optimists we are, we’re willing to look for positive signs that the new mayor will keep lines of communication open, such as his recent (and apparently ongoing) series of town hall forums. We’re also pretty stoked about the new Ideas for Seattle website. Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in bigger than here, Human Powered Politics, news, seattle

Tagged change, Ideas for Seattle, Mike McGinn, politics, seattle

UW Burke-Gilman Closure/Detour in mid December

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Tim K | Leave a comment

Head’s up: Anne and I were out for ride with a neighbor on Wednesday and noticed an upcoming Burke-Gilman trail reroute.

Apparently a small portion the trail needs to be closed December 14 – January 3 to allow early prep work for the future University Link light rail station.

An easy detour is available on Mason Rd, the lightly-traveled access road which runs parallel and just above the trail grade.

Town Hall Events, Biking Mayor and Party for Val

Posted on November 10, 2009 by Anne | 2 comments

photo courtesy of Worldchanging

Worldchanging is hosting two events at Town Hall this Wednesday, November 11th and Thursday, November 12 featuring Seattle’s own –Alex Steffen, executive director and co-founder of Worldchanging, publisher of best selling tome on sustainability and internationally renowned speaker.

What’s not to like? Food and drinks provided by Skillet, promises of live music, introduction by mayor-elect, Mike-likes-bikes, McGinn and a free glass of beer from Fremont Brewing Co. We’ll be there on Thursday – come on down and join us!

Click the event link to get the scoop and buy tickets Continue reading →

2 Comments

Posted in alternative transportation, bigger than here, bikes, Human Powered Politics, seattle

Tagged Alex Steffen, events, mayor, Mike McGinn, seattle, Town Hall, Val Kleitz, Worldchanging

Car Free Days Votes for Bikes

Posted on November 2, 2009 by Tim K | 2 comments

We miss election day. Most of you probably voted weeks ago and we’re just getting around to opening our ballots. It’s not the same since Washington went to an all-mail system.

So it’s probably not to going to help most of you that we’re putting in a last minute endorsement in our otherwise a apolitical blog for Mayoral Candidate Mike “bikes” McGinn.

As you expect, our pro-bike support of the pro-bike candidate is pretty obvious. Joe Mallahan also makes it an easy choice for a family who takes their voting seriously. Even if Mallahan didn’t promise to run the city like a phone company, he’d still fall short with us for his personal voting track record.

The fact that he’s missed 13 (thirteen!) elections since 2001 means we won’t be sending any hanging chads in his direction (Susan Hutchison, by the way has fared poorly, missing eight in the same time period).

You may have different hot-buttons and may make other election choices; that’s OK with us at Car Free Days.. Just whatever you do, don’t be like Joe and Susan. Vote. Make your voice heard.

-Tim

2 Comments

Posted in bigger than here, Human Powered Politics, seattle

Tagged bikes, elections, mayor, seattle, voting, xtracycle

Everybody talks about the weather but no one…

Posted on October 15, 2009 by Tim K | 11 comments

It was raining so hard when I got up Wed. morning I didn’t ride my bike to work.

Don’t worry, I still got there on the Xtracycle, but like most days, I found it made more sense to take my time getting underway.

My morning (many mornings, in truth) went something like this: I got up. It was raining. Had my Grapenuts and coffee with the kids. Raining. Helped them get ready. Raining. Said goodbye to the kids. Still raining. Shower? Yep, still raining.

Yet 10 minutes later I was on my way to work dressed in my normal (non-bike) clothes, rain gear safely stowed in the Xtracycle Freeloader. Rain-gear optional is a a pretty usual way for me to roll (and maybe the reason I can still justify owning my hideously ugly purple/pink/black, 18 (!) year-old REI Turismo jacket/pants

I’m not saying all this to sound like a total time-challenged-douche-bag-schedule-slouching-weather-rock-star or something—though if you got soaked yesterday you might think I sound like one of those. Nah, I just want to share my two simple tools (well, three if you count the merino wool and four if you count fenders, but everyone knows that one, right?) for staying dry this winter. Continue reading →