Obliteride to Complicate Your Weekend

One of the area’s bigger summer benefit events, the Fred Hutch Obliteride, is taking place this coming weekend—Friday & Saturday, August 12^th-13^th—and will affect parts of Wallingford.  The fundraiser for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center includes just about all of Seattle’s favorite participatory activities:  walking/running, biking, and partying.  In the ten years of its existence, Obliteride has funded an impressive $36 million of research over ten years at Fred Hutch—so definitely a worthwhile and worthy activity to post on the calendar.

That’s all well and good, you might be thinking. Hooray for them.  But what about ME? I hafta go to the store/take the kids to *stuff*/entertain my in-laws while they visit from Omaha. How does this wonderful but somewhat inconvenient event affect ME?

Well, Wallyhood is here for YOU!  The full menu of activities can be found here.  The Obliteride Friday Night Party is being held at Gasworks from 4:00-9:00 p.m. on Friday, August 12^th.  Expect big crowds, as there will be music and food, which is bigtime bait for many out-of-‘hood tourists.  On Saturday, there are three different distances for the bike rides, 25-50-100 km.  But all three routes involve our neighborhood (the north shore of Lake Union).  Expect a lot of congestion, spandex, and expensive cycling hardware. And oblivion about traffic norms in a civilized society.

Bottom line:  prepare for an influx of folks in the neighborhood this coming weekend.  Deal with it (we always do…).