Washington DC, Working Out, and a Wedding!

Blogging has a taken a back seat this winter, as JR and I have been settling into cohabitation life. I really can’t complain - it’s quite boring but nice to just be at home most of the time. We grocery shop on Sundays (most of the time by bike), go to work during the week, and hang out with our friends occasionally. Both our jobs take us on overseas travel occasionally (he leaves on Tuesday for Australia) but most of my spring trips have been indefinitely postponed while the corona virus mess happens.

This boring, but stable life home life has been a really great counterweight to the slightly frenetic happenings elsewhere in my life. Everything is good - really good - but there are a lot of spinning plates up in the air right now and I’m honestly waiting for them all to come crashing down in a horrific, beautiful mess. 3 of the biggest updates for now:

1. Washington DC! Kailey Kornhauser and I submitted a proposal to the National Bike Summit for a session that was accepted! We’re heading to DC March 14-20!

As many of you read or heard, Kailey and I had a great feature article written about us in the Washington Post. This stemmed from our upcoming presentation at the League of American Bicyclist National Bike Summit about Creating Inclusive Communities for all who bike, but especially those in larger bodies (fat people!) From that article, we ran a hugely successful crowdfunding campaign and will be able to attend the summit in DC! While we’re on the East Coast, we’ll be giving the presentation for 2 additional audiences - Washington Area Bicyclists Association in DC and We Bike NYC! We’re super excited for both presentations and the opportunity to spread our message to further communities!

Snowballing off of this has also been numerous interviews for podcasts, articles, and possibly even in a documentary! I know you’re all waiting with baited breath to hear about that one :)

Perhaps most exciting of all, Kailey was featured on the cover of BICYCLING MAGAZINE!! Go get a copy if you haven’t yet!

2. Working Out. I started working out with a badass personal trainer again and I’m really excited about it!

I’ve been an athlete almost my entire life - from swim team as a kid to softball and volleyball in highschool to CrossFit in my 20s. Recent years have been focused on biking and I realized that I miss feeling strong.

I’ve been working with Kris, who is a body positive fitness trainer and I love it! I forgot how good it feels to move heavy things, move my body in a functional way, and to get really sweaty. I’m hoping these gym sessions will translate to feeling stronger on the bike too and injury prevention as my miles ramp back up as the weather gets nicer.

3. We’re getting married! I proposed to JR early this year and we’re really excited about our future together! Wedding planning is coming along - I’m sure more details will come soon, but for now we’re relishing in calling each other Fiance and playing with our rings. Love is fun. I highly recommend falling in love.

We Can't Wait for a Safe Network of Bike Lanes Downtown

The Seattle City Council's Sustainability and Transportation Committee met yesterday to get the details on why SDOT is cutting the downtown bike network and bike lanes throughout Seattle (background here.)

As a daily bike rider who is directly affected by the lack of action by SDOT, I planned to testify about my experiences biking around town, but especially downtown. I thought I would have 2 minutes, but with such a big turnout, Mike O'Brien shortened public testimony to 1 minute each.

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When my name was called, everything I planned to say got thrown out the window as a jumbled mess of something came tumbling out of my mouth. In truth, I think I invited the council members to go for a bike ride, told them it was unsafe, but other than that I'm not sure what else. King5 got a clip of me and surprsingly I don't sound too awful: 

Thankfully, I also saved the text of my planned testimony. So, dear readers, here is what I planned to say to the City Council (and have since emailed them):

Good afternoon Council Members and Seattle Department of Transportation. My name is Marley Blonsky and I’m a daily bike rider. I ride my bike everywhere- to work, for errands, for fun, for volunteer commitments, camping trips- literally everywhere. In the last two weeks alone, I’ve taken 62 bike trips for over 300 miles.

This year, I’m also in charge of my company’s Bike to Work activities. I recruited 82 coworkers to join me this month in biking to work. 36 of those people are new to biking to work. When they ask me about safe route into work, I don’t have many options to give them. Sure, we’ve got 2nd Avenue, but have you ever tried to get there on a bicycle? Good luck.

Imagine building one mile of a freeway with no connections to it. That’s what our 2nd ave protected bike lane is like.

My daily bike commute takes me from Capitol Hill to 3rd and Madison in downtown. While I’m a confident bike rider, it is incredibly scary to transition from a bike lane on Pine to a wide open street with no bike lanes at Boren. Downtown is even scarier, with no connections to the bike lane on 2nd Avenue, constant construction, and daily construction hazards.

Going home in the afternoon is even worse. After I leave the 2nd Avenue protected bike lane, I jockey with taxis, buses, and trucks from 2nd to 8th avenue on Pike Street until there is a bike lane on Pine street again.

This isn’t right.

 I had hope for more protected bike lanes and neighborhood greenways.

I called voters for the Move Seattle Levy. 

The current state of our streets is NOT SAFE.

If you think it’s good enough, I invite you to ride with me one day and see how close cars come to me. Seriously, let’s go for a ride.

Please, restore the 16 miles of bike lanes that were cut. We need a connected bike network. Thank you.

Something I said stuck with some reporter, as a friend screenshotted this quote from the Seattle Times:

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