The Counterbalance

1. You make my bum tigher when I am actually motivated to walk all the way up you
2. You are fun to sled down, except on someone else’s intertube because you didn’t let us go very fast. Thankfully the people that stand on you don’t mind giving strangers a push!
3. No one knows where to turn off of Roy at the bottom of you, but sometimes I can just pass all the people that don’t know of the free right and then take that left onto Roy again and I’m free!!!
4. You get me to all of the fun activities at the top of the hill when I’m bored of the bottom (top of the hill safeway, top of the hill starbucks, top of the hill bartells, very different from bottom of the hill versions…)

You are popular and I hate you!
The only cool thing about you is that one time like 4 years ago when it snowed and people were like using whatever they could find to sled down you and stuff! Remember that? That was cool! I didn’t do it because then I’d have walk back to the top and I HATE YOU! So instead, I shared flasks with strangers and watched the shenanigans.
Cool… but I hate you!
PS, what’s up with having two lanes in each direction and not having lines painted?! All the locals know it, but then we get frustrated and start yelling at the idiots that don’t get it that the seam in the concrete is the divider between lanes.
Work on that, will ya? Thanks

Steep enough to keep the riff raff off the top of the hill, two lanes wide for right lane passing, 20% grade that slows buses to a crawl, what’s not to love?
No, seriously, I actually do like the counterbalance. Coming down off the hill in the early morning sun and looking all the way out across the bay is worth the sacrificed gas mileage on the way up. I’m enamored with the idea that we used to have street cars run up and down the hill and that the original owners of my house probably had to use it just to get groceries. I hope Paul Allen’s boondoggle street car will catch on and we’ll have back and forth access from the top to the bottom that is more reliable than the #13 (obviously a much more pressing issue than the viaduct or 520).
I understand high school kids occasionally get caught down in the old counterbalance works playing dungeons and dragons or whatever it is that hooligans do these days. If anybody knows where the entrance is, I’m vastly curious.