Here's a welcome sign for pedestrians and bicyclists: Street closed to traffic on Sunday.

Alki Avenue along the beach in West Seattle is reserved for people on bicycles and on foot this Sunday.

Cars and trucks will be banned on the usually busy street that runs beside Alki Beach. Instead, visitors can see stunt bike shows, bicycle art and maintenance booths, a kids' bike parade and more.

Getting there

If you're going, I'd recommend riding your bicycle or taking the water taxi, or both. That's what I did on Friday when I visited the area...   more »

Here's my reward on Thursday for a half-hour drive and nearly an hour of butt-busting climbing on my old Rockhopper mountain bike.

That's me checking out the view of Mount Rainier from the east summit of Tiger Mountain. It was such a wonderful day for Seattle -- sunny and 70s -- that I wanted to commemorate it with a new bicycle route.

Earlier in the week I had stopped by Half Price Books and stumbled across Mountain Bike Adventures in Washington's South Cascades and Puget Sound by Tom Kirkendall. What a great find and a great bargain, I thought, until I got home and realized the book was 14 years old.

With warm temperatures and blue skies, I was willing to see if these routes still exist. ..   more »

Now there's an online resource where you can tell the world about problems you've encounted while bicycling.

The Cascade Bicycle Club has created www.bikewise.org to map the locations of bicycle crashes, road hazards and bicycle thefts.

Although it was created by the Seattle-based bicycle club, it's available for use anywhere in the world, and the developers are encouraging bicycle riders in other regions to use it.

BikeWise is more than just someplace to vent your anger about the location of a dangerous intersection or poorly maintained construction site. Check into the detailed reports of crashes, for instance, and you see a section on "lessons learned." ...   more »

I've always enjoyed sharing my favorite bicycle routes with friends; even more so when it's my son.

So when Memorial Day dawned clear and warm, we headed up to the Iron Horse State Park just east of North Bend where I introduced him to the John Wayne Pioneer Trail.

In spite of a sign at the trailhead that warned the Snoqualmie Tunnel was closed 20 miles ahead, we saw dozens of bicyclists out on the rail-trail of the Chicago-Milwaukee-St. Paul-Pacific Railroad -- aka The Milwaukee Road.

Since there's no way through, or around, the 2.3-mile tunnel, the only destination for these bicyclists was an out-and-back trail ride to stretch their legs and enjoy the sunny, blue skies....   more »

Bicyclists who want to use the interim Hood Canal ferry during the 6-week replacement project won't have to mess around with shuttle buses anymore.

Bicyclists can now ride directly to the water shuttle docks at South Point or Lofall.

Earlier, bicycle riders had to board a shuttle bus in Port Gamble on the east side, or take a transit bus from the Olympic Gateway Visitor's Center on the west side.

The only catch is that bicyclists have to dismount and walk their bicyclists in the vicinity of the shuttle docks; a minor inconvenience compared to the hassles of taking the buses. ...   more »

One of the most important factors in the success of Bike to Work Day in Seattle on Friday was the forecast: No rain; just partly cloudy skies with highs reaching 67 in the afternoon.

I bicycled down to the Bellevue Commute Station Friday morning. The kiosk at the base of the I-90 bike path across Lake Washington was one of 44 set up around the Seattle area by the Cascade Bicycle Club.

More than 300 folks had stopped by in the first 1 1/2 hours, slightly ahead of last year at this time. Just eyeballing the cyclists, I'd say eastbound and westbound cyclists were split nearly 50-50, with a slight edge going to those heading to Seattle ....   more »

When your company does something that you're proud of, you want the world to know.

That's the impression I got from Ryan Burns, an employee at the Logos Bible Software company up in Bellingham.

With Bike-to-Work Day coming up on May 15, he wanted to brag a little about the in-house bicycle shop that Logos has funded.

You wouldn't be surprised to hear something like this about Microsoft, which has a bike repair shop for its hundreds of employees at the sprawling campus in Redmond. But Logos has just 170 employees, many of whom are serious bicyclists who work on their own bicycles.

By the way, Bellingham has been named a silver level Bicycle Friendly Community.

Here's a story that Ryan wrote up about the bike repair shop ...   more »

A Seattle-based outdoors magazine is offering a new Norco bicycle as first prize to the person who tells the best bicycle commuting story -- in 300 words or less.

The publishers of Outdoors NW are looking for real-life bicycle commuting experiences from the Northwest:

"Stories may include your experiences about your first bike commute, why you decided to start commuting, your best - or worst - commuting day, your rainiest commute, how it helped you get in shape, how it changed your life, etc. Stories may be funny, sad, contemplative ... anything goes...   more »

Back in the years before I moved to the Pacific Northwest, a rainy day like today would have kept me indoors. Not anymore.

Here's a small club ride I ran into along rolling May Valley Road between Issaquah and Newcastle on Saturday morning.

Why do you find so many bicyclists out on a rainy day on the first weekend of May? Here are some reasons:

-- If you're going to ride your bike here, you have to do a lot of riding in the rain. I never heard this saying until I got here: "There's no bad weather for bicycling, only bad gear." ...   more »