Escape from West Seattle

A bit of a backstory, in March at the same time COVID-19 was hitting, the West Seattle bridge was closed.  Existing cracks were expanding rapidly and the city feared a collapse so they closed it down.  There is an excellent short video here of the issues and the drone footage really shows the cracking.

It had been one of the busiest bridges in Seattle, with 80,000 some trips per day and it's the main way in and out of the neighborhood.  It is possible to leave West Seattle by heading south but that is mostly surface streets and once commuting really starts up again it is going to be a mess of monumental proportions, fortunately I have been working from home and should be able to continue to do so.

A few weeks ago I started thinking about getting out of West Seattle just to say I had, as it has been at least since January that I left the neighborhood.  There is a lower bridge out of West Seattle that is only open for emergency vehicles and commercial trucks but it does have a bike lane.  This morning I decided to finally act on that plan.

Since the last time I rode out of WS there is a nice bike lane on Avalon way that I really appreciated, the road was pretty torn up for construction in 2019.

Sign of the times, bridge closed.

A shot of the broken bridge taken from the lower bridge as I was at the apex.

Here I am in Seattle proper (SODO area) looking toward downtown.   In addition to getting out the neighborhood this was my first ride of any real distance since losing 45 lbs.    It used to be that any rise was a reason to go to the granny gear but the hills were noticeably easier and my ride back up into WS didn't even require me to use my lowest gear, which was nice.

Another reason to ride the Cresta, in addition to it sitting idle since the fall, is that I am close to finishing the Trek 520 (post soon I hope) and I want to be able to compare the two, so it was good to get some air back in the tires of the Cresta GT and get some miles in on it.

And at the end of the ride there was the reward of coffee.  Not a bad way to start the day.

Ride. Smile, Repeat.