Seattle Bike Blog turns 15! + Join us for a party pace ride Friday

15 years ago, I quit my day job to start Seattle Bike Blog with only a few months worth of savings and very little knowledge about bicycling or Seattle politics. All I had was an English degree with a minor in journalism, a bicycle older than I was, an iPhone 4, and a lot of youthful determination. I started writing about anything bike-related I could, posting as many as five times every weekday. I would wake up, make coffee, and start writing. Then I would bike around town, find interesting stuff, come back home, and write some more. I often worked until it was time to go to sleep. There was so much to learn and so many fascinating people to meet, it was all I ever wanted to do.

Join us for the Seattle Bike Blog 15th Birthday Ride Friday (July 11). Meet 5:30 p.m. near the Gas Works Park playground. Ride starts at 6. We'll circle around Queen Anne Hill and end at Gasworks Brewing. It will be an all ages (my 7-year-old will be riding), party pace ride about 11 flat and mostly car-free miles. If you have a portable radio (an actual over-the-air radio, no streaming apps or bluetooth since they will not sync), bring it on the ride so we can all tune to KEXP. Anyone who has ever read Seattle Bike Blog is invited, so if you're reading this now then that includes you.

Within the first few years of writing, Seattle went from sharrows to protected bike lanes. Bicycling went from a wedge issue in city politics (the war on cars!") to an issue that all city politicians wanted to at least appear to support. There were tragedies and triumphs, wins and losses, and the more I wrote my to-do list only got longer. When I started, I was a little worried I would run out of things to write about, but in 15 years it has never happened.

You are reading post number 4,438. After a few years of constant posting, I slowed down to about one post per weekday to give myself time to put more effort into each one. I also slowly allowed some non-biking activities into my life, but not too many. Riding a bike is just the most fun thing a person can do, and our part of the world is such a beautiful place to bike around. It never gets old.

Seattle Bike Blog has now been around long enough for blogs to go out of style and come back. We are proudly and fiercely independent, and we own all our own content. We don't sell readers' info or allow third party ad trackers, we don't receive any undisclosed funding, we don't lock our reporting behind a paywall, and nobody else has control over what we say.

Thanks to my amazing spouse Kelli for being a constant supporter of my work on this site, even though it doesn't bring in anywhere close to as much income as I could earn working some marketing job. Money isn't the only way to measure value. Seattle Bike Blog has influenced many major decisions that have materially improved bicycling conditions and funding. Kelli and I believe it has been very valuable even if it has never made us a lot of money, though I really should consider starting a retirement account at some point now that I'm 40.

If you want to get the site a birthday present, become a monthly supporter! I am so grateful to all of you who generally invest in this work month after month. You are the reason the site made it to 15. Thank you.

You can also get yourself some great stuff from our web shop (we make an excellent margin on stickers, so buying a handful is a great option for supporting this work). Or tell a local business owner that they should advertise on the blog. Or just sign up to get all posts via email. It's free! If you really want to commit to the bit, get yourself an RSS reader (I use Inoreader) and subscribe to our feed like its 2010 all over again. Independent media direct from the source. No big tech fascism required.

Here's to many more years of Seattle Bike Blog.