I can’t sit on my couch.

The tick of spinning hubs is too distracting. It’s an all-day, every day parade past my front lawn during the summer. Old bikes clank, new bikes hum. Young, old, somewhere in between, they roll by smiling, a bit dusty, dogs in tow. Solo, in groups of six. Inevitably, someone will recognize my van and stop by.

“Wanna ride?”

“I just wanna watch the game, man. Maybe do some gardening. But yeah, I got time for a quick lap I guess.”

My street’s only a block long. It’s right off Birch, the main thoroughfare to the north side of Galbraith Mountain (officially part of Lookout Mountain). The hub of Whatcom County cycling, it’s right in the city. No more than a 20-minute pedal from most of Bellingham. The nickname comes from Galbraith Lane, where the first handful of folks starting building trails in the mid-80s. It stuck. They formed the Whatcom Independent Mountain Pedalers, or WHIMPs, when trail access became an issue.