This Saturday the Tour de Fat rolls into Seattle's Gas Works Park. Bicycling enthusiasts can join in a parade, participate in challenging bike contests, and enjoy entertainment from the Portland-based Sprockettes bicycle dance troupe, left.

The New Belgium Brewery's tour is visiting 11 cities throughout the West this summer where it mixes good fun with a chance to raise funds for local bike-related groups -- in Seattle that's Bike Works and Bike Alliance of Washington.

Tour de Fat opens with a bike parade out the Burke Gilman Trail toward Golden Gardens that leaves at 10 a.m. Participants are invited to decorate their bikes and wear outrageous costumes ...   more »

Some Seattle bicycle riders made the news this weekend, but I can't say that I'm proud of them.

An altercation during a Critical Mass ride on Friday night between a motorist and some cyclists led to injuries on both sides, some messed up bicycles, and a messed up car. Fortunately no one was killed or seriously hurt.

Granted, the motorist was acting like a jack ass and should have been a little patient instead of driving his car into some cyclists. Still, there's no excuse for the reciprocal violence against the driver. It does nothing to help the cause of bicycling or to make the road safer for people on bicycles.

I'm sure violence wasn't the intent of the bike riders when they set out on Critical Mass. Most of those folks are out there for an en-masse bike ride through the streets of their city. The danger comes from largely disobeying traffic laws in trying to keep the group together. If they piss off enough people, someone is eventually going to react. It's inevitable ...   more »

It's been two weeks since the Seattle to Portland bicycle classic. Do you still have it?

Three bicycle tours are coming up Sunday in western Washington where you can test your fitness or just roll along and enjoy the scenery without competing for road space with 9,500 other souls.

There's the Tour de Kitsap based in Silverdale in the west and Tour de Peaks in the Snoqualmie Valley in the east. Sandwiched in between is the inaugural Seattle Century rolling out of Magnuson Park ....   more »

I had heard about bicycling the John Wayne Pioneer Trail and the Snoqualmie Tunnel ever since moving here in 2000, but I didn't have the right bike until this spring.

With a day to myself, I threw the knobbies on my Rockhopper mountain bike and drove up to the Cedar Falls (exit 32 on I-90) trailhead to find out about it for myself.

Briefly, it was a great bike ride, and I can't wait to return with my camping gear. I rode the first leg of about 22 miles to the next trailhead at Hyak on the other side of the 2.3-mile long Snoqualmie Tunnel, looked around, and returned. I was shooting photos with my Canon Elph, and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to try a video. It appears at left.

The John Wayne Pioneer Trail is the old Chicago-Milwaukee-St. Paul-Pacific Railroad -- aka The Milwaukee Road -- that rolls two-thirds of the way across Washington state. About 100 miles of it is a packed gravel rail-to-trail maintained as part of the Iron Horse State Park from Cedar Falls west of the Cascades to the Columbia River to the east ...   more »

This Seattle-to-Portland cyclist is all smiles as she rides down the chute to the finish line festival on Sunday at Holladay Park in downtown Portland.

I don't know about the other 9,498 riders in the 2008 STP, but what my son and I will remember most about the 204-mile bicycle tour is the unrelenting heat.

Temperatures soared into the 90s on the final day, as cyclists dove for the cover of shade at all the rest stops and along final 50-mile stretch on US Route 30 into Portland. Many roadside households, especially in Washington state, turned out to cheer us on and spray us down with water as we passed. I shot pictures the past two days, which appear on the jump...    more »