With spring just around the corner, both seasoned cyclists and newcomers are gearing up for prime riding season — and in Seattle, with seven summits and a hill on nearly every east-west route, there's almost no avoiding an incline.

Why it matters: Seattle's legendary hills have long been something to avoid, and while some cyclists embrace them, e-bikes are making once-daunting climbs accessible to more riders.

By the numbers: The city's steepest streets, with grades ranging from 22% to 26%, include blocks of East Roy Street, East Boston Street, East Highland Drive, and Mercer Street, according to Seattle Bike Blog.

• Cherry, Madison and James streets (17% to 19%) are no joke, either.
• The Queen Anne Counterbalance — an early feat of Seattle engineering — was designed to help streetcars climb the street's 18% grade using a hidden rail system with weighted cars.
• By contrast, the world's steepest street is Baldwin Street in New Zealand, with a nearly 35% grade.

State of play: Cascade Bicycle Club board member and Best Side Cycling YouTuber Hanoch Yeung tells Axios that when he first got into riding during the pandemic, he couldn't make it up the hills without stopping.

• He embraced conquering them as a personal challenge and has become something of a celebrity in the local cycling community by filming himself scaling the city's steepest streets.
• Among Yeung's favorites, which he describes as rites of passage for Seattle-area bikers, are Juanita hill on the Lake Washington Loop, Discovery Park's lighthouse hill, and the famous zoo hill climb in Issaquah.

Pro tip: You don't have to mash up the hills, he says; it's all about zigzags and gears.

Between the lines: Not everyone is looking to push their limits, and that's one reason e-bike sales are surging in Seattle, Cascade Bicycle Club spokesperson Paul Tolmé tells Axios.

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The Vedder Cup is a real thing in West Coast baseball now.

State of play: The San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners announced Friday they've officially dubbed their six-game series each season the Vedder Cup, complete with a trophy to determine which city can claim credit for Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder.

Why it matters: Fans willed this branding exercise into existence, ever since a Padres blog in 2011 coined the phrase as part of a half-serious acknowledgement that Seattle and San Diego are not actually rivals.

How it works: MLB has for years paired AL and NL teams together as so-called "natural rivals" who meet every season. Many of those — like the New York Mets and New York Yankees — are, indeed, natural rivals.

• The Seattle-San Diego pairing, though, was more a result of two teams and cities left out of the fun at the end of a round of musical chairs, so fans reverse engineered a justification.

Between the lines: Vedder, a Chicago Cubs fan, moved to the San Diego area at age 8 and went to high school there, later forming the band Bad Radio there in the 1980s.

• But he famously relocated to Seattle in 1990 to join the group that would become Pearl Jam.
• Vedder was soon the frontman for the biggest band in the world, and helped make Seattle synonymous with the 1990s.

What's next: The Vedder Cup will begin with three games in San Diego from May 16-18, then finish with three in Seattle Aug. 25-27.

• The winner will take home a Vedder-designed trophy featuring a guitar he provided.

Yes, but: Before the teams settle the competition on the diamond, we wanted Seattle and San Diego to make their cases for rightful ownership of the Vedder legacy.

See us duke it out

📈 Trips taken on local public transit rose by 12% from 2023 to 2024, an increase of about 45,000 rides per day. (Seattle Times)

🚌 Seattle Public Schools superintendent Brent Jones plans to leave the district in September. (KING 5)

You shouldn't stress about filling out your office bracket this week, as one of the best things about March Madness is that previous knowledge of the sport is not necessarily correlated with success.

Why it matters: It probably doesn't! Nobody has ever filled out a perfect bracket.

• In the men's tournament, powerhouses with future NBA players are routinely upset by tiny schools that get hot, especially in the early rounds.
• As far as the NCAA can tell, only one person has ever even picked perfectly through the Sweet 16.

Yes, but: In the women's NCAA Tournament, there a fewer upsets than in the men's, so the margins for error on your bracket are lower.

The bottom line: If you're serious about winning your office pool this year, we've compiled a few general tips to follow.

• Men's bracket cheat sheet
• Women's bracket cheat sheet

Seattle is crushing our Axios Local contest to crown the best public art city in the Mountain West.

The latest: Both of the Emerald City's art entries have made it to the Final Four.

• None of the other seven cities in the competition (San Francisco, Boulder, Denver, San Diego, Portland, Phoenix or Salt Lake City) achieved that feat.

Catch up quick: In the last round of voting, the Fremont Troll beat Out of the Blue, a colorful whale that rises from a roundabout in Salt Lake City.

• Georgetown's Hat n' Boots, meanwhile, bested The Yearling in Denver.

What's next: Final Four voting runs through Wednesday at 11am.

Tell a friend to vote, too