A long ride can be a meditation. But for me the reality is, as a city dweller, those meditative jaunts can be a bit tougher to come by. The Seattle metropolitan area has added 600,000 people since I moved here in 2002. The streets are busier, sometimes wider, and the riding has gotten a bit more dangerous—even with all the excellent bicycle infrastructure that has been added.
Meditation requires an ability to think about other things, not just whether or not that driver with their nose to their phone saw you, or the Midwestern tourists waddling toward Pier 58 even know what a bike lane is while they’re standing in it. And I saw my first Waymo the other day, so I don’t expect things to get any better.
The price of meditation it turns out though is just $12.05. That’s the Washington State Ferries fare for an adult passenger and a $1.00 bicycle surcharge to sail across the Puget Sound from Seattle to Bainbridge Island. Money well spent.
Pedaling past the island’s dark moment and over a short rise leads you to the best views back toward Seattle that you’ll typically have all ride.
Two ships, the MV Tacoma and MV Wenatchee, serve the almost five million passengers who travel to the island each year, and the good news for me is that the overwhelming majority are walk-on passengers. These are mostly people who live on Bainbridge and commute to Seattle, tourists looking to enjoy what is undoubtedly a scenic half-hour ride (each way) or folks moving on to the Olympic Peninsula for any number of reasons—those folks drive on.
Among my shaved-leg brethren here in Seattle, Bainbridge isn’t particularly cool. It’s too approachable. As soon as you say you really enjoy the Bainbridge loop, they’ll mention Vashon Island. Vashon is where it’s at, they’ll say. It’s more beautiful, it’s harder, farther away and steeper than the quite hilly Bainbridge loop. But the Vashon loop is 80 miles door-to-door from my house. I don’t always want to do an 80-mile solo loop; in fact, I rarely do these days. I’m 50 plus now, let’s not get crazy.
I roll off the ferry before they let the cars off on Bainbridge, and I go pretty hard just to get that first short climb out of the way and ride into the only thing on Bainbridge that resembles a town, Winslow. Winslow is like a one-stoplight town without a stoplight, but it pays to keep your head up. It’s the spot you come to on Bainbridge if you want a great cup of coffee, some baked goods or a fantastic meal, and you can probably cruise through it in 10 pedal strokes.
Bainbridge has a captivating and somewhat shocking history given its bucolic modern day characteristics. This land was once occupied by the Suquamish, a Southern Coast Salish people who lived on the island for literally thousands of years. Their indigenous name, appropriately, means the “People of the Clear Salt Water.” The island, like much of the Puget Sound, was mapped by a British Royal Navy officer, George Vancouver, but he thought it was a peninsula.
THE FULL STORY IN PRINT
