Instead we've got a beautiful skyline, a vibrant nightlife, and a buzzing economy. Imagine if the anti-growth hippies had won in the 1970's? Microsoft might be in Cleveland, and Seattle would be a sleepy town without even the Columbia Center to boast about. I'm glad we're moving towards a dense downtown a great new restaurants. Old Seattle sounds dull, dull, dull. Density is much better.

Relative to many parts of the U.S., Seattle isn't REALLY all that terribly off with respect to non-car-based transportation and population density. Try moving to suburbia, USA, after living in Seattle and you, too, will see what I mean. Obviously it could be better, but there are so many complicated factors involved in urban planning/re-designing that I think we should devote equal attention to studying and celebrating what has worked and working to improve things that haven't.

You also ironically need a car to reach most of the routes. Yeah, whoops.

We even did rides with Bill & Erin Woods (the authors of the book). He was a Boeing engineer, and they were meticulously prepared for every ride, while we showed up hung over and with one or more shoes missing. They taunted us by pouring themselves hot coffee from a huge metal thermos at rest stops.

The Burke-Gilman Trail was on the drawing boards but, in a prelude to the East Sammamish Trail saga, adjacent landowners were hollering about the threat of increased crime, and were busily trying to claim title to pieces of the rail corridor. Fortunately, it didn't work then, either.