Loop

No doubt there are equally marvelous cities in which to ride a bicycle: 

• Amsterdam, surely, where you could pedal on separated bike lanes all the way to Germany, probably
  
  
• Portland, of course, where you could gather under a freeway overpass with five hundred or so of your closest friends for some sort of post-apocalyptic cycling dance party with fire dancers and gladiators
  
  
• Perhaps even the new mecca of Spokanistan, where it seems like all your dearest friends will be living and riding bicycles within a decade
  

but it’s hard to imagine a better place to be out on two wheels than our fair city of Seattle, which affords you the opportunity to:

• Pedal over grand span at sunset with water and mountains on both sides
  
  
• Continue—on a striped bike lane—through the kind of “geography of nowhere” which characterizes so much of suburban America
  
  
• Meander along a converted rail-to-trail path alongside a cemetery for maximum peace and quiet
  
  
• End up at a spring-fed lake on a dead end near some lucky folks’ backyards for immersion into the smoothest water in town
  
  
• Then return, to more or less where you started almost twenty miles previously, via an almost continuous downhill through much leafier and less car-centric streets
  
  
• So, you can officially commemorate the end of the pandemic by enjoying what has long seemed to be the final nail in its coffin: the sharing of a common microphone among strangers for belting out favorite tunes to the amusement—and, in some cases, if truth be told, amazement of those in attendance
  
  
• Before heading out on nearly-empty city streets to home and hearth, a greeting from the dog, and a soft bed in which to repose, your head filled with glorious images of the waxiemoon late summer evening out on two wheels to color your bicycling dreams all night long.

Take that, Amsterdam! 

 In your face, Portland!  

Yo, Spokanistan, top this!

Home sweet Seattle home, always sweeter by bike.