Today was not the easiest day to visit the Seattle Center–for four-wheeled vehicles, that is. Cars and buses had to deal with a series of street closures for the Seattle Marathon, but my bike route was unaffected. I encountered one closed road, but the sidewalk was open so I was home free. A nice side effect was that the Center House and Children’s Museum weren’t as crowded as normally is the case on weekends. The Winterfest model train is up and running and it’s not always easy to get an unobstructed view of it on non-marathon days.

I’ve been too lazy to deal with my Denny Way bypass of Aurora my last few visits to the Seattle Center and have taken Broad Street’s sidewalk under Aurora. I met a couple finished marathoners on my way over and we fit past each other on the sidewalk, though it was a little tight. I don’t like inconveniencing pedestrians when I share the sidewalks so I might go back to my old route…but it’s hard to see the Space Needle so close and then have to loop around a mile and a half.

On the way home, we swung by Ride Bicycles to visit the new bike. The Xtracycle stoker bar isn’t black like the rest of the non-pink parts so we’re trying a black stem and bullhorn handlebars, which will get black tape. Edward offered to chop the handlebars to make them smaller, but I like them big.

So all that’s left is the super stable Rolling Jackass center stand and footsies…although it looks like the footsies might be a little too low to be useful yet. The new running boards look very cool, too, but sold out within a day of their release. They’ll also be too low for a foot rest, but will probably make climbing aboard easier.