This weekend was the grand opening of the I-5 Colonnade Mountain Bike Skill Park built below the 5 freeway near our house. We are seriously a hop, skip and jump away from this new amazing man made creation. Both Aubrey and I were pleasantly surprise at how vast and well built it was. I mean we were thinking “what can a bunch of guys really build underneath the 5 freeway?” Aubrey’s reaction? “Holy Crap.”

The park has a bit of everything for anyone who rides a mountain bike. From 60 year old guys on cross country bikes riding the beginner section to the young kid hitting the 7 foot wooden ladder drop, it’s for everyone looking for a good time. Best of all? Everything is free! Okay enough with the time wasting. I’m off to the bike shop to get my bike ready. Click on the photos to visit my Flickr gallery. I tried to document  the place as much as possible for my riding friends back at home. You know who you are. Enjoy!

Today, it’s raining 

But yesterday was sunny and warm and gorgeous, so we took advantage of it by going for a bike ride.  This was the first time I’d been back on a bike since I broke my wrist at the end of June, and it still hurts to put too much pressure on it, so we ended up going on a leisurely ride exploring our neighborhood.  There were no jerseys, padded bike shorts or screams of “keep the pace!” involved (like our usual rides).  Instead, we meandered around and took some pictures of the prettier sights that are so close to our new home.

Some views of the city and Elliot Bay from Kerry Park:

Betty Bowen Viewpoint:

Also, Queen Anne is famous for having some of the most beautiful houses in Seattle.  Just on this short ride, we pass everything from tiny Craftsman-style bungalows to sprawling Victorian mansions to ultra-modern loft-style homes.  We took pictures of some of our favorites- you know, just in case we win the lottery:

These super modern examples jumped out at us right away:

This one was more classic than what we usually like, but we both decided that this was our favorite house of the day:

You can’t see it in the picture, but this house had the most breathtaking view of Elliot Bay.

::sigh::

I’ll be honest, we are getting a little bored waiting for all of our stuff to arrive. There is not really anywhere to sit (besides the floor) and I spend a lot of time (in my head of course) lamenting how much unpacking I’ll be doing next week. Thank goodness we have a) our air mattress and b) internet. The combination of these two things has allowed us to comfortable get fully caught up on this season of “America’s Best Dance Crew.” Thank God we can get one vitally important task checked off the to-do list.

Even with the siren song of spending all weekend rehashing dance-themed television calling to us, we have managed to get out and explore the city a bit. Today, we went to Gasworks Park to check out a bicycle festival called “Tour de Fat.”

We felt a little lame driving to the Tour de Fat, since it was only 2 miles from our house and it’s main goal is to encourage people to bike more and drive less. Well, thanks to the lack of physical possession of any of our bikes and my infamous robot arm, we sucked it up and drove. Next year we’ll ride, I promise.

Once we got there, we didn’t feel so bad though. There were quite a few cars, even though many were a bit more colorful than our 4-door Ford Fusion (it’s a rental and Microsoft pays for the gas. Eh.)

But there were definitely a lot of bikes, too:

We really dug some of the more… creative bikes we saw:

But probably the coolest thing (and the thing that really made me really hate the robot arm more than usual today) was a special area where you could test ride some very special modified bikes:

Mike’s favorite was this guy: