Pacific Northwest - Biking around Seattle

Hey all,

I went to River City (http://www.rivercitybicycles.com/) in Portland over the break and told them I'm looking to commute around Seattle's neighborhoods, they pointed me to a 07 Lamond Poprad Disk (http://www.lemondbikes.com/bikes/cross/poprad_disc.php) for $1200 + lights, a multi-tool and lock.

Though (http://www.seattle.gov/html/citizen/bicycle.htm) searching (http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/bikemaps.htm) Google (http://www.metrokc.gov/bike.htm) is (http://www.metrokc.gov/parks/trails/) quite (http://www.metrokc.gov/kcdot/roads/bike/map.cfm) helpful (http://www.nwsource.com/outdoors/scr/of_search.cfm?category=biking&rid=2&orderby=name&).. specific bike questions funnel me back to bikeforums.net more times than not.

I'm looking for sneaky paths, hood to hood strategy and preferred routes for Fremont, Queen Anne, Downtown, Ballard, Capitol Hill and around UW.

If you have a part of the city dialed (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dialed), clue us in.

well, the ship canal takes care of a lot of the N-S routing. you've got only 6 choices to head anywhere significant north of downtown & Lake Union anywhere in the city of Seattle.

All of your N-S trips across the canal utilize one of the six crossings, and main bike routes filter out from the pinch points across the ship canal.

there's lots of great riding. pick up a City of Seattle bike map, they are free and very handy.

Can't add much more to Bek's post, except to point you to Cascade Bicycle Club (http://www.cascade.org/Home/) as well.

Welcome to BF!

East Hill

King County has a pretty good web site for cycling http://www.metrokc.gov/kcdot/roads/bike/index.cfm. It includes a map that shows all the trails and "recommended" routes throughout the county. You can also get hard copies of the map. I keep one in my panniers.

Be prepared for streets that aren't well maintained, and often not wide enough. The drivers do seem better at seeing and dealing with bikes than other places, though.

And, watch out near the south end of Lake Union. A new trolley was put in and tracks for it have a gap wide enough to catch bicycle tires. I took a look at this gap yesterday and it will suck most tires into it. Take special care to cross those tracks at 90-degree angles if you have to cross them.

Ditto for many of the train crossings. I got sucked into train tracks twice in one ride! Painful, and I don't think it helped my bike any.

The Seattle City bike map is a great place to start for commuting routes in the city.

For longer recreational rides -- both in and around King County -- I like this routes library:

http://www.seattlebiketours.org/members/library.html

Thanks for the tips! I'll keep an eye out for rails (http://bikeseattle.org/2007/12/12/make-the-****-safer-seattle-cyclists-protest/).. and try to be predictable (http://www.sfbike.org/?riding_predictably).