I have ended relationships over steep inclines. I’m not kidding.
Back in my 20s I dated a man I’ll call “Bob.” He was a biking enthusiast and he’d regularly invite me on long rides along the trails and byways in and around Seattle. The problem was that Bob couldn’t seem to find a route that didn’t include at least one, and usually more than one, substantial hill. It was like he was a magnet for elevation. It was like he did it to spite me.
My knees have always been a little creaky – by the time I met Bob I’d already had three surgeries on them, thank you very much – so riding a bike up a hill was and still is my Least Favorite Thing. Yes, yes, I know all about the “granny gear.” Unfortunately, when it comes to pedal-pushing my knees are not granny’s.
So one day, about six months into the relationship, Bob invites me on a “relaxing” ride on Vashon Island. We’d hop on the ferry, he blythely told me, bike to the town at the center of the island, grab some lunch, and bike back. He used the word romantic and showed me the bottle of wine he’d stashed in his saddle bag.
Knowing his penchant for the uphill grind, I was incredulous:
“Wait a second, isn’t there a huge hill as soon as you get off the ferry?”
No, Bob assured me, “That’s the other island.”
In fact, the hill has a name: The Vashon Ferry Hill. It’s not a mountain. But it is nearly a mile long, climbs 400 feet, and cracks your joints with an 18% gradient.
In other words, Not For Me.
We had barely walked our bikes off the ferry before Bob jumped on his and sped away toward the road. I stepped on my bike and looked up, only to be slapped in the face by the steepness of the hill. I didn’t even hesitate. I turned my bike around, got back on the ferry, and rode out of Bob’s life forever.
The truth is, despite the fact that I have taken, and dream of taking more, long walks across countries and their mountains, I hate large elevation gains and high percentage gradients.
So you’d think I’d go to great lengths to avoid uphill rides AND big climbs, especially something like the Howe Street Stairs. The stairs lead from the road a few blocks from my apartment on Lake Union all the way up to Capitol Hill where many of my favorite walks originate. They are like the gauntlet thrown down between sea level and the top of that hill.
To be honest, for several months after I moved back to Seattle last year I actually got in my car and drove the less-than-one-mile it takes to get from my street to the top of those stairs. Then the guilt set in. How lazy am I? Is my dislike of upward ambulation more important than, say, my carbon spewing car’s impact on the environment?
The truth is biking uphill actually hurts my knees, even though everyone and their brother tells me it’s good for them. But I know doing stairs helps build the muscles that protect my knees. I know this because “lots of stairs” are what the physical therapist told me to do after those surgeries.
Last fall I decided I would start integrating the Howe Street Stairs — all 388 of them — into my walks. Turns out this climb is the longest staircase in Seattle (which has a lot of staircases, it turns out, due to our ridiculously hilly terrain). They rise 160 feet from top to bottom. Rain or shine, you’ll find Athleta-clad tech workers (guessed by the abundant spray of logos) huffing up and down them, sweat pouring from their brows. The crazy ones stop on every landing and throw in a set of squats. Ugh.
At first when I approached the bottom of the steps my mind would go straight to strategy – how many ways were there to get around them? I could go up a lesser inclined side street, for example, where I would not be surpassed by all that youthful bounding up and down the steps around me. Or, better, I could turn around and go home and forget the whole thing. It’s a pandemic afterall.
But eventually I decided to lean in. COVID had really restricted my activities and I was quickly losing the muscles I need to stay healthy and upright in my middle age.
I started by doing the full staircase once a week. A month into this routine I noticed I was no longer coughing up a lung at the top. So I expanded. Whenever possible I would use the stairs when I went to work up on the hill, which is several times a week. And now, after several months of that, the muscles of my bottom half are indeed strengthened. My knees hurt far less than they did after my first climb.
Nowadays I walk the Howe Street Stairs almost every day. I’ve come to embrace the stairs and, a little like the bar in Cheers, I think I may be becoming one of the “regulars.”
Several times a week I toss back a set with Alan, an elderly man who starts his climb at 9 a.m. He goes very slowly and I often slow down just to shoot the breeze with him – properly masked of course. Another man brings his overweight dog to the stairs around the same time. He races up and down, waving each time he passes. It’s like we’re clinking glasses. The dog tries his pudgy best, but usually gets in one set to his human’s four. Posie likes that dog.
The steps are more trafficked in the evenings. Lots of jog bras and barbells slugging up and down. Oh to care that much about a sculpted body! I am, thankfully, way beyond that. But I smile at the memory.
Posie loves the stairs. She trots up and down as if there’s no “up” to them. She weaves from the right to the left, forcing people to stop and let her by, and then sticking her nose in the air like the little stair snob that she is.
Looking back, I feel a little bad about Bob.
I mean, I think he genuinely enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment he found at the top of a long, winding hill. He often gave an enthusiastic shout and a goofy thumbs-up when he arrived – even whilst I cursed him under my breath. Maybe I should have just walked my bike up that hill off the ferry.
Or maybe I was right to pedal on. He was not a good listener.
Either way, I now get the attraction of upward exertion. When Posie and I reach the top of the steps, our lungs not only intact but maybe even expanded, knees in one piece, muscles strained and strengthened, we plop down on the curb and pat ourselves on the back for having met the challenge again as, weirdly, the words of Pat Benetar sing through my mind:
We are strong
No one can tell us we're wrong
Searching our hearts for so long
Both of us knowing
Love is a battlefield
I know you can hear them.
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