Seattle bike blogger Madi Carlson (also known as @familyride) is visiting Issaquah with her sons for a dental appointment this morning. We take a few minutes before she and the boys have to get on over to the dentist to check out each other's rides.
Madi is quite graceful on the KickPed.
I am not quite so graceful on Madi's MamaBike. Madi actually has a couple of MamaBikes, this is the smaller one, the one she take on trips that involve some bus travel because it is small enough to fit on the bus racks.
In the afternoon I take the bus into Seattle. I'm going to visit my friend Mark on Capitol Hill and then scooter over to Ballard for an evening meeting. Before Madi takes her kids off to the dentist she says "Maybe I'll see you in Seattle." We both know that Seattle is a big town and the odds of that are slim.
So I take an afternoon bus into Seattle, get off downtown and scooter up Pine. Pine is a gentle enough slope that I can actually kick my way up. When I get to my friend Mark's place, he points out that Olive is an even gentler climb up the hill.
I have a good, wide ranging chat with Mark and then scooter off to Fremont and Ballard. It's raining as I come down on 10th and the fender brake is not really very effective in the rain. I walk some of the steeper descents.
Once I cross over the University Bridge, I'm on the Burke-Gilman Trail, which is rather flat and ideal for scootering.
In the distance, you can see the Space Needle a few miles away.
And, remarkably, I see Madi and her kids in Fremont!
Madi gets a rare-for-this-blog shot of me on the KickPed. Since I mostly take my own pictures and rarely mess with timers, most of my pictures have me behind the camera and the KickPed sitting there with something I've found interesting in the background.
I'm a sucker for art.
And houseboats.
And dinosaur topiary.
Did I mention that it's raining? Well, it is Seattle.
Somehow, I manage to survive another trip to Seattle without getting stoned on pot or gay married. The meeting runs a bit late, so I hop a bus from Ballard to downtown, scooter for a tiny bit downtown to get from one bus stop to the next and then hop another bus home.
Eight miles of scootering today.
Keep 'em rolling,
Kent "Mountain Turtle" Peterson
Issaquah WA USA
2 comments:
How are your hips feeling after all this scootering? Do you kick with alternating feet to even it out? I was just down on the beach in LA and saw a fair number of adults on scooters, several while carrying surf boards!
Also, not to nit pick, but your eastersiderness is showing...Fremont only has one 'e'.
;-)
Jesse
Hi Jesse,
I fixed the Fremont spelling. I don't think that's an eastside thing, it's just an I suck at spelling thing!
As for the hips, no issues and yes I trade off which foot does the kicking. The leg on the deck is the one that gets tired, so I find myself naturally switching. I don't have a standard formula like "three kicks and switch", I go more by feel. I've also been figuring out when and where to use longer, slower kicks and when to use shorter, faster kicks. I haven't yet figured out a good way to explain it in writing, but I've learned in general how to do it in practice. As I get better at describing technique maybe I'll condense what I've learned into a "Tao of Kick Scootering" book.
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