My Transportation Diary

FREEWAYS AND POVERTY Last night I was reading a brief history of Oakland's San Antonio district, the part of Oakland where I am working part-time writing grants for an urban ministry--a ministry that has been working for over 30 years to "combat the cycle of poverty" in the community. It was interesting to come across this line in the history of the neighborhood:

"In the late 1940s, the construction of the MacArthur and Nimitz freeways isolated the residents of San Antonio, predominantly people of color, from the more wealthy white neighborhoods in the Piedmont hills. By stripping its commercial thoroughfares of traffic, the freeways had disabled San Antonio's commerce." The accompanying picture, circa 1900, shows International Boulevard as a pleasant-looking Main Street-like avenue, with shop awnings stretching over the sidewalks and an electric streetcar coming down the center of the street. (Quote is from OCCUR, "San Antonio Neighborhood Profiles." Quoted in the San Antonio Community Information Book 2001, produced by the Community Assessment, Planning and Education Unit of the Alameda County Public Health Department.)

CARS OVERTAKE DRIVERS In case you haven't already heard the news, the number of cars in the average American household now exceeds the number of drivers. Thanks to Deborah for sending a copy of this weekend's New York Times article on this and to Raymond for sending me a link to the San Francisco Chronicle article. (Note you have to register to see the NYT article, but it's free to register and they claim they won't sell your email address to anyone.)

THE TOOTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH (With my most absessed apologies.) Does anyone else find themselves (unintentionally, spontaneously) lying whey they go to the dentist?

You know, to those questions that, for some reason, feel like an incredible invasion of privacy: "Do you floss?" "Are you using your interdental stimulator?" "Do you wear your retainer every night?" (And as they ask, they stare down at you, shining that intensely bright light, with its robot-like metal arm, in your face.)

There are several response options. There's the shocked, hurt "yes" (the "How could you think otherwise?" yes, the "What kind of person do you think I am?" yes). Then there's the less bold lie, as you shift nervously under the light: "um, yeah, pretty much" (no one can see through that one). And finally, there's the resolute "yes"--an intake of breath followed by a strong determined "yes"--which is code for "yes, I'll be doing that as soon as I get home."

Of course, the ideal answer, if you can time it right, is the standard dentist-chair answer: "rrghmm."

*******

Yesterday involved a string of errands, starting with a morning trip to East Bay Restaurant Supply to get a price quote on a refrigerator for a grant proposal. It's in a large warehouse in the warehouse district just south of Oakland Chinatown and just east of Jack London Square, a half-mile south of Lake Merritt BART. It wasn't too bad to get to from BART on my bicycle, although the streets were a little busy near the freeway and tricky to navigate--it's a maze of one-way streets and you have to cross over four lanes of traffic at least once to make a turn. Not surprisingly, there was no bicycle rack at the store. I doubt many people shopping at restaurant supply stores come by bicycle.

This section of town, bisected from the downtown area by the 880 freeway, is in the shadow of a new five-story (?) industrial-style apartment building that advertises via a large banner across the top floor, pulled tight with four ropes but still flapping impatiently in the wind, "Condos from $400,000." Whoever first managed to "market up" industrial warehouse-living was brilliant: "You too can make-believe you are a starving artist* (*six-digit salary required)."

BUS RIDER, P.I. Sometimes riding the bus feels a little like being a private detective, trying to follow the clues to figure out impossible mysteries. It was like that yesterday when a bus stop simply vanished before my eyes. After offboarding the 72R at 14th and Broadway and walking three blocks to the #14 bus stop at 11th and Broadway, I stared at the sign, I walked around it three times, I read off the nine or ten bus numbers on the sign, I examined the layers of white tape pasted on the sign for signs of the missing #14. I could find none. I began to doubt that it had ever existed.

But no, I had printed out the schedule; I'm sure this was the bus I had taken before; all the pieces seemed to fit--except the missing bus. And another thing was missing--the elderly Chinese women, with their bags of produce, traveling from the nearby Chinatown market back to their homes in the San Antonio. I asked the lone woman on the bench, "Is this where the #14 stops?" "Yeah, that's what I'm waiting on." "...because I don't see the number on the sign." She gruffly shifted on the the bench and looked up. I looked again at the schedule--which I had printed from the Web site just last night because I couldn't find my old one--and saw that it listed a stop at 14th and Broadway. That didn't seem right.

It was right, though. We eventually made our way back up three blocks where we found the new #14 stop (looking as if it had always been there). I wondered how the hundreds of people who used to appear like clockwork at the bus stop found out about the change. Unlike when businesses move, there was no friendly sign saying "#14 bus riders: We've moved! Please visit us at our new home at 14th and Broadway!"

MORE NEXTBUS I finally got to see a working NextBus predictor on the Web site, for the 72 and 72M. You can even watch little buses on a map, hovering over the bus to get the countdown to the next bus stop. It's kind of exciting--it makes you feel like you're really there! (Without actually having to be waiting at a bus stop in the warehouse district of Oakland at 11:00 at night, which is probably an advantage). Somehow it's comforting (if a little big-brotherish, which should probably disturb me more than it does) to know where all the 72 buses are--it almost feels like a healing for all the times I've waited anxiously for the 72, always wondering, were they just around the next corner? or were they miles away? Am I going to be on time for work? Will I ever get home? Should I just start walking? (No! Because that's a sure guarantee a bus will come--always while you're between stops.)

But I wasn't able to see the 72R (rapid transit bus) working. Why not? Because it only runs on weekdays during the day--not at night or on weekends. I also checked the schedule online and it doesn't even give times for the different stops--it just tells what time it leaves Contra Costra Community College in Richmond and what time it arrives at 2nd and Broadway in Oakland. I guess in theory people aren't supposed to think in terms of schedules--they're supposed to think in terms of a bus coming "every 12 minutes" (like on Muni in San Francisco). Well, anyway, I'm getting more curious to see how well it works--now and in the future. Maybe I should sit on the street corner some day and time how often it comes.

By the way, I did see a working NextBus signboard once on the 22 Muni bus in San Francisco--when I took the 22 from the BART station on Mission to get to the Metronome ballroom--a really awesome swing dance place east of Mission. Unfortunately, BART stops running around midnight, while the Metronome ballroom is just getting into full swing (and who wants to be wandering around on public transit in the Mission circa midnight anyway?). So if I hadn't been meeting friends there, who could give me a ride home at 2:00 in the morning, it wouldn't have been as much fun. (Actually, without those friends there, it wouldn't have been much fun at all :-) But the point is that some of those friends had cars, allowing us to all stay longer.) So, that's the only catch about living without a car--those who have cars often provide a necessary link that broadens the choices of those who don't; our lives would be different if we all wanted to, or had to, live without a car. Sure, I could dance the night away at Ashkenaz, a five-minute bike ride from my house, or Montero's, the new salsa club at the corner of Solano and San Pablo, but I'm really glad I got to do it at the Metronome, just once, without having to run away before midnight, Cinderella-like.

THE FUTURE IS NOW...OR MAYBE TOMORROW There are only a few prototype NextBus systems around the country, as I understand it. These systems are definitely the wave of the future in bus technology--systems that can follow the location of buses through their routes using GPS technology, and provide supposedly-very-accurate ETAs for any given bus stop--delivered to your computer screen, PDA, or a screen at the bus stop. This was, in fact, the kind of "dream system" (OK, in my dreams, if in very few others') I wrote about in my final project for a Technical Writing class six years ago that I so cleverly (garg) titled "Where in the World is that Bus??!!"--with the friendly answer to that question being happily provided by your neighborhood GPS-connected system. And that friendly neighborhood system is here!! Four blocks from my house!! Except it's not connected yet and every time I try to use the Web site it crashes.

SLOW WALK This late afternoon I went for a slow, meandering walk--the kind of walk you can only take on a Friday afternoon--in search of cheap take-out. I didn't find what I was looking for--mostly because I didn't know what I was looking for--but I did discover a newly-planted traveller's kiosk at the San Pablo and Solano BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) stop. The shiny new kiosk had an LED NextBus signboard affixed to it--which didn't seem to be working yet.

I doubled back across Solano to read the movie posters at the arthouse theater, then walked very slowly up Solano to the grocery store, where, finding myself in the cookie aisle, I recalled but did not heed the adage, "Never shop when you're hungry."

STORIES WE TELL I'm really looking forward to the opening of "Stories We Tell," an art exhibit produced by artist Susannah Eloyse Prinz in collaboration with youth interns at Harbor House's Inner City Expressions. The paintings and accompanying text tell the stories of twenty women of diverse backgrounds living in Oakland. (Inner City Expressions also produced the "Children of Oakland" exhibit, which is currently on display at the Oakland airport.)

It's opening at Youth Employment Partnership at 2300 International Boulevard in Oakland. Opening night is Friday, August 22, from 7 pm - 9 pm, and it's open from 9 am - 6 pm Monday through Friday through September 5.

I looked at Yahoo maps today to try to figure out the best way to get there. I will probably go to the Fruitvale BART station and ride my bike from there--the Driving Directions say it's nine-tenths of a mile from BART. Unfortunately, my past experience with the area around the Fruitvale BART station is that it's not very bicycle-friendly, although perhaps that is changing now that a new transit village is being built on top of the parking lot. (I'm also looking forward to checking out this nationally-recognized project--which has been in the works for ten years and is, I've heard, within a year of completion. See a model of it or read about its history.)

I doubt that I'll try to go to the exhibit opening Friday night. Not being familiar with the neighborhood, I'm not sure I want to be riding my bike down Fruitvale's International Boulevard after dark. Any street name I've heard on the news is probably good to avoid hitting alone.

THE TRIP TO RICHMOND The trip to Richmond on Thursday was much as I expected. It took me 45 minutes all told each way--15 minutes to walk to the BART station; 6 minutes on BART and a minute here, there processing my ticket, waiting for the train; and 15 minutes to walk from Richmond BART to the Richmond Public Library.

There's nothing strikingly different about the Richmond BART station versus other BART stations, although returning to it, it was striking how it seemed to be the last outpost in sight, the barbed wire fence that borders the tracks rising up out of a browning grassy field. Coming out of the station, there was a nice tree-lined, woodsy path, going from the station exit below street level up to the street, where a large sign pointed me to the Richmond Public Library--"straight ahead."

The walk through the neighborhood is hard to characterize. It is clearly a neighborhood in poverty, but I knew that already. There were the outward signs of this: torn window screens, trash against the bottoms of fences, tall spikes at the tops of those fences. It was mostly quiet and empty in the middle of the day. I was impressed by the oasis of the public library, one of a string of public buildings, a simple one-level brick building with neatly-organized shelves and several different sections.

THE AMTRAK RICHMOND CONNECTION As I was exiting the station on my way to the library, I wasn't able to immediately see where the Amtrak connection was. There was a sign that said "Amtrak" over a large pull-down metal door--apparently leading to a ticket office--that was pulled shut. On my return, I looked again, finding an entrance that said "Elevator to Amtrak"--with the chain-grate also pulled closed. I started to wonder if Amtrak no longer serviced this station--but then I saw that next to the closed gate was a laminated schedule for the Capitol Corridor, posted under glass. Still puzzled, I was about to give up when I heard a train whistle. Following the sound around the curve of the corridor, I found the stairs that did indeed lead me to the Amtrak platform.

I went upstairs and studied the platform, the schedule, and the passengers for a few minutes before returning to BART to head home. I am still puzzled about where exactly you can go from this station--besides the small local radius of Capitol Corridor destinations. I assume it is possible to transfer your way to anywhere in the Amtrak system, but the posted schedule only gave information about the Capitol Corridor--the train that runs from Auburn, northeast of Sacramento, to San Jose.

GROCERY SHOPPING ON THE WAY HOME I stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up a few items. As usual, I got overambitious. The problem is that milk is unbelievably cheap when you buy it two gallons at a time. It's better to buy milk and other large or heavy items when I'm shopping by bicycle, but I'm more likely to do my shopping incrementally, on my way to and from other destinations.

I transformed my tote bag into a backpack, slinging one handle over each shoulder, and managed to fit most of the smaller items into it. Then one light grocery bag hung from one arm, and a gallon of milk in each hand. I've learned that milk gallon handles wrapped in plastic bags are easier to carry--or rather that they're painful to carry without the plastic bag--so as much as I hate the waste, I get the bags. It was interesting to see a nice-looking "wooden" bench outside the grocery store with a plaque saying it had been made from 3,900 recycled plastic bags.

I usually take it slow and easy when I'm loaded down like this, stopping occasionally to switch bags from one arm to the other. I like to take comfort in the belief that I'm building up bone density and preventing osteoporosis with this occasional heavy lifting. We'll see.

UPHILL ALL THE WAY Wednesday I had an appointment in the hills in the afternoon. I walked, one hour each way. This destination is obliquely placed for me within the public transit system; I could take two buses and take an hour or more to get there. Perhaps less if I got really lucky. Walking is much better than waiting for infrequent buses--more control, more predictability, less frustration. Bicycling up Marin Avenue (or even a corollary route) is out of the question--Berkeleyites know exactly what I mean. Bicycling down is also out of the question. By car it's 5 or 10 minutes up there at the most. But the road really isn't even designed for cars--a regular trip down Marin Avenue is the best way to thrash your brakes (probably only topped by half a dozen of San Francisco's streets)--and urban legends abound of people losing their brakes halfway down it. Rumor has it that Marin Avenue was designed for a cable car that used to run up and down its length--now long gone. I tried taking a taxi to this appointment once on a miserably drenching rainy day--the cost was $7 or $8 plus a nervous 30 minutes waiting for the late taxi which in the end I had to chase after and flag down when I saw him roaming up and down my street.

I count this walk as one of my exercise "units" for the week. That way, it doesn't feel like wasted time. And it's not--I get a lot of good thinking done on the walk. Though it does take a big chunk out of the day, which I have to plan for.

I intended to stop at the grocery store on the way home, but I had to get back home for a meeting with a co-worker who was stopping by. So instead I made a quick stop at the Chinese produce market and bought a banana, peach, and a handful of potatoes.

BICYCLING AND HAPPY SERENDIPITY ON A SATURDAY MORNING This morning, I fell into happy discovery of West Coast Live, a locally-produced NPR radio show, after a friend gave me some last-minute free tickets to the show. I'm sure Berkeley locals will find it incomprehensible that I've never even heard West Coast Live on the radio, much less seen it live. (I usually have my radio tuned to the other local public radio station on Saturday mornings when West Coast Live goes up against Wait, Wait and Car Talk in the same time slot.)

It is unbelievable, since it airs with a live audience only a short bike ride from my house, for $12 a pop (barely the cost of a movie plus Milk Duds), at the cozy Freight and Salvage Coffee House in West Berkeley, where there were, unbelievably, still empty seats available this morning for their 500th show. (Perhaps I'm not the only under-informed local resident).

At 9:10, I left my house and rode my bike 15 minutes to pick up my friend Melissa at the Lutheran Seminary housing near the North Berkeley BART station where she and her husband Josh live. It was only five more minutes on our bikes to "the Freight"--we arrived just after 9:30 when the doors opened for the 10:00 am show. There was a bit of competition for bicyle parking around the one three-bike rack, so I got the "No Parking on Street-Sweeping Days" sign--a slightly less-secure option if it were the middle of the night and clever ruffians decided to unscrew the sign from its post and lift the bicycle over the top (though this would probably require a ladder or complex pyramid acrobatics--I'd like to see it if it ever happens). I'm guessing a car is an easier and more appealing steal than my U-locked* bicycle--unless someone's actually looking for a challenge. (*One bicyclist I know quite graphically proclaims that any lock other than a U-lock is "dental floss" to potential thieves.)

Back to the Freight...Certainly there's something counterintuitive not only about getting up early on a Saturday morning but about spending two hours of it in a dark warehouse while the sun is shining outside. It was worth every minute of sun-deprivation.

Of course I've heard people mention West Coast Live. But they've usually mentioned it in passing and when pressed, seemed at a loss to describe what it actually is. I'm not sure how to characterize it either, except it might be very broadly described as Berkeley's answer to Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion (live from the fictional town of Lake Wobegon in his home state of Minne-soooo-ta), which I saw live 12 years ago in a packed auditorium at Indiana University, where I was in school. This was much more engaging.

I'm a sampler by nature--I love salad bars, the Internet, and the remote control. This was like (or rather was) sampling ten really cool acts in one two-hour show. The first act was probably my favorite. I was watching a "Support Public Television" bluegrass music special on PBS last week, utterly entranced, especially by the violins--and after watching banjo-strumming bluegrass singer Danny Barnes accompanied by an energetic bassist and incredible violinist live this morning from the fifth row, I'm chomping at the bit to learn bluegrass violin.

Of course this is a transportation blog, so I'd better include a few items relevant--however tangentially--to the topic. Here's an entry from the interlude "Audience True Life Adventures": "It was weird on BART this morning. An Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman got on the train. My boyfriend said 'What is this, a joke or something?'"

Another person emailed in that West Coast Live should consider doing a broadcast from RAGBRAI, the annual bike ride across Iowa where 10,000 bicyclists spend a hot week in July descending upon Iowa small towns, complete with beer-and-cocktail happy hours beginning at 7:00 in the morning. (Note: my Dad and I didn't partake of the drink-your-way-across-Iowa version of RAGBRAI, though we did do the all-you-can-eat-your-way-across-Iowa part: pork and steak and bacon and butter and pancake breakfasts and more pork and "salad" bars that typically consisted of five varieties of jello-and-Cool Whip, potato salad, and chocolate pudding. Just when we thought we might have to go an entire half hour without food one day, we found some farm kids around the next curve selling chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and root beer out of the back of their minivan. You don't gain any weight riding across a whole state on a bicycle--but you certainly don't lose any either. Iowa is, by the way, one of the major producers of soybeans--rivaling its hog production--but I wasn't seeing any tofu popping up anywhere.)

I was delighted to see one of the show's guests--actor/monologist and Berkeley resident Josh Kornbluth--pedaling away after the show on his foldable commuter bicycle. Others took off on foot--perhaps to cars parked a couple blocks away, but I'm guessing some were headed home on foot to nearby neighborhoods or making the trek back to the Berkeley BART station, 13 blocks up the hill.

PUBLIC TRANSIT ADVERTISING IN DENMARK I asked Peter M. if he remembered any of the pro-public transit ads he mentioned seeing in Europe (see August 6). This was his response:

"Yes, I was in Denmark in 1979, when OPEC raised its prices. I have some vague recollections of ads (posters and billboards; no TV commercials because they didn't exist at the time) about how trains and buses were a practical way to get around. The one that I actually remember, and which I thought was the cleverest (and may have been one of the commonest ones) was based on a pun. Side by side it showed:
- 'bil' (meaning car) and a picture of a car;
- 'billigere' (cheaper) and a picture of a train;
- 'billigst' (cheapest) and a picture of a bus.
(The word for cheap is 'billig,' which has a completely different etymology from 'bil.') Sorry it wouldn't translate here. :-)

"I think other ads were also about practicalities, like this one. Gasoline prices doubled in a year, so it became a lot more expensive to drive, and public transit became noticeably more crowded. I never understood why the ad said that buses were cheaper than trains, because the metropolitan transit system was integrated in a zone system, where you paid for the number of zones you traveled through,
whether by bus or by train."

MISCELLANY AND THE JOY OF CYCLING I plan to write about my trip to Richmond later on, but I need to first get some work done, and run one more errand, to the violin repair shop. In the meantime, I'd like to draw your attention to:

WIKI ON THE JOY OF CYCLING Check out Raymond's new wiki page on "The Joy of Cycling." If you don't know what a wiki (not a wookie) is, you may want to check out Raymond's blog. By profession (and by hobby I think it is safe to say), Raymond works on collaborative Web educational access opportunities for K-12 (The "Interactive University" project at UC Berkeley--did I get that right, Raymond?), and his blog has a loyal readership. The best example of a wiki is wikipedia, a public open source collaborative online encyclopedia. You--yes, you--can edit its entries!!

THE JOY OF CYCLING IN GERMANY Check out Christian Stimming's entry on Raymond's "Joy of Cycling" wiki page. Christian is a German friend who lived in Berkeley once upon a time. He comments that he has seen advertising from bicycle manufacturers that captures "the joy of cycling" (I wonder if such advertising is more prevalent in Germany--I can't think of the last time I saw an ad for a bicycle...certainly if I subscribed to a bicycling magazine I probably would, but are there ads that seek to reach the "outside" world?). And he describes the hybrid upright/recumbent tandem that he and his fiancee rented for a three-day trip. (RAGBRAI was, by the way, a great place to observe a variety of bicycle technologies--both standard and very individualized personal inventions.)

KUROSAWA'S MACBETH Check out Raymond's description of Kurosawa's (Japanese filmmaker) version of Macbeth.

RICHMOND, HERE I COME Tomorrow I'm traveling to the nearby (two BART stops away) Richmond BART station for the first time--I'm going to a Foundation Center workshop at the Richmond Public Library, a half mile from the station. I'm curious to see this station which, to put it bluntly, doesn't have a reputation as the safest place to be after dark, a reflection on the struggles of Richmond, a city that tends to trade off "honors" with Oakland for the highest national homicide rate. I'm traveling at 10:00 in the morning, so I'm not worried (yes, Mom, I'll be careful anyway), but I'm curious to see what the feel of the station and the surrounding neighborhood is like. I know that BART commuters who live in the nicer neighborhoods of Richmond and other Northern cities typically bypass the Richmond station, parking and starting their trip from the second station on the line--El Cerrito del Norte--knowing that they may be returning after dark (or sometimes going to work when it's still dark) and perhaps also concerned about vandalism or car theft--which seem to be common enough Bay Area crimes.

The Richmond station is a transfer point to Amtrak if you want to travel on to Davis or Sacramento or, I assume, other northern (or southern or eastern or western) locations, so I'm also curious to see how accommodating it is in that regard. It would probably be a little easier for me to get to the Richmond Amtrak station by BART than to the Berkeley Amtrak "station" (a bench beneath an overpass in West Berkeley) which is a little out of the way for me.

MACBETH Yes, I'm diverging off the path of transportation for the moment. I've just finished reading Macbeth, for the first time in my life, if you can believe that. I don't think I managed to escape any other Shakespeare in my classes, including even the very bizarre Titus Andronicus.

What strikes me about Macbeth is how small the seed of evil seems, how tentatively they (Macbeth and Lady Macbeth) walk into their guilt, almost closing their eyes to what they're doing (offing the king, for any who are unfamiliar with the story) in a kind of blind determination to get it over with. How much their thoughts and emotions seem to oppose it even as they are going through the motions of it. And how, though tragically they never repent of it, they display every psychological symptom of being overwhelmed by a guilt they cannot undo. (It occurs to me that the movie Fargo is a kind of modern-day Macbeth--that what makes Fargo so chillingly interesting is the same thing that makes Macbeth both psychologically fascinating and tragic--the "falling into" tremendous depths of evil by hapless people whose hearts aren't all into the evil--but neither are their hearts single-mindedly pursuing what is good.)

Macbeth doesn't seem evil at the opening of the play--in fact, he has just returned from battle, a valiant leader who has just quelled a rebellious uprising. It is in fact this good deed, and the honors that come soon after, that catapult him into the events that follow. The problem is almost that his evil is too weak--it has no conviction. He simply finds himself suddenly close enough to the top to taste the crown--and his appetite (and his wife's promptings) get the better of him. It reminds me of something C.S. Lewis says (I think in The Four Loves, but I can't find the reference) about the real tragedy of our sin lying in its "passionless" nature. In biblical terms, Macbeth is neither hot nor cold.

Of course, lest anyone should misunderstand, neither C.S. Lewis nor the Bible are advocating sin. The point seems to be that we must make a choice--something we often fail to recognize--a clear choice for good or a clear choice for evil. There is no in-between. (A challenging lesson for me.)

THE FUTURE IS NOW A few days ago, I mentioned the Web site The Future SUV, a spoof on the ever-increasing magnitude of the aspired-for Bambi-smashing behemoth. Frighteningly enough, today in the El Cerrito Plaza parking lot I saw a real live actual SUV with an uncanny resemblance to the caricatured SUVs of the future from the Web site. The front of this real-life SUV had the same semi-truck cab shape as the SUVs portrayed there. And it was humongous. I'm afraid I stared at it longer than might be considered polite, as it seemed to swallow up the miniscule parking spot it was pulling into in front of the new sushi place at the southwest corner of the mall.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION There are two things that make living without a car easier for me than it probably would be for most people in the U.S. The first is location. Living in a quiet but densely-populated neighborhood off Solano Ave. in Albany, an urban small town just north of Berkeley and just south of the side-by-side cities of El Cerrito and Richmond, anything I can dream up that I might possibly need or want is purchasable within walking distance. Within a one-mile radius of my house, there are five places to get a manicure, eleven places to get my hair cut, four places to buy a futon, two Starbucks's, one See's candies, three liquor stores, two dance clubs, three bars, a couple of laundromats (a 5-minute walk to each toting my shopping cart), half-a-dozen dry-cleaning options, four ice cream parlors, two movie theaters, five video stores, and (conservatively estimating) 62 places to eat, ranging from the very cheap ($2.99 Chinese lunch specials) to the astoundingly expensive (where you can get a $1200 bottle of wine with your meal, or tea at $115 an ounce). There are three pharmacies, soon to be four; two shoe stores; several clothing stores; two used bookstores and one new; a bath and kitchen superstore; and a wide range of options for buying toys, gifts, and cards. The one thing I do miss is the Salvation Army store--which closed down last year. Now I have to go to downtown Berkeley to "thrift" (at the Goodwill on University Avenue). Food-wise, there's an upscale grocery store, a medium-priced grocery store, and a cheap grocery store. There's a new Trader Joe's. There's a wonderful family-owned deli two blocks from my house, next to Happy Produce--the Chinese dry-goods-and-produce market where I can get tofu by the slab for 16 cents a serving. The library is one block beyond Happy Produce, but I often get lazy and renew my books by phone; I check out most of my books (and videos and CDs) online--they're waiting for me on the reserve shelf when I get there. One block from my house are two copy shops--essential to running a home business, which I think I'm attempting to do--and the local post office.

Location had a lot to do with my choice of church (though I can hardly imagine another group of people I would rather have as my church community). The small group I belong to meets at a house near the church, a 25-minute walk from my house. My usual habit is to stop at the 24-hour grocery store on the way home from small group to pick up a few grocery items, whatever happens to be on my current shopping list. People from church tend to live in this general area, and I often run into people from church--on BART, or when I'm walking or shopping--like today, when Chris B., driving through the El Cerrito parking lot as I was walking through it, stopped to wave and say hi.

Finally, it's a half-hour walk to Indian Rock for a chance to stretch my legs with a good uphill climb, check out the fog or sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge, and get a geographical landscape overview of Albany, Berkeley, Richmond, Oakland, Emeryville, San Francisco, and the edges of Marin County--skylines, towers, bridges, islands, the oval grandstand of the racetrack, BART trains winding like long electric-lit snakes along the tracks at the bottom of the hill where it levels off, and a lush landscape of trees all but erasing traces of the hillside and flatland houses they surround and hover over.

When I need to leave my immediate neighborhood, the BART station is a 15-minute walk from home, and there are a few different bus options within 5-minute walking distance, including the new 72R-Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) option direct to downtown Oakland, which I have yet to try. Most places I go are easiest by bicycle--just about anyplace in Berkeley is 30 minutes or less to ride to--so that has been an almost-daily mode of transportation lately. It might be time for a tune-up soon--the brakes are starting to rub and squeal and the gears are starting to creak and grind when I shift. My last big expenditure bike-wise was a new tire over a year ago ($37) after perfectly nailing a piece of roadside glass on an otherwise smooth and debris-free bicycle-laned road in Fremont. I take that back--that was my last mechanical, non-luxury expenditure. I've also purchased an odometer/spedometer (~$30--which allows me to proudly announce I've ridden over 1000 miles in the past year and that my top speed is 25 mph) and a new LED headlamp ($35, much brighter than the halogen lamp I was using before). I also spent a ridiculous amount of money for special bicycle pants, a top, and other misc. gear for my bike ride across Iowa last summer with my Dad. (The wicking top with back pockets was worth it, but there is probably no pair of bicycle pants in the world that I could be happy with after 48 hours on a bicycle. I bought a cheap pair of bike shorts for $5 on the trip that might have done as well. But of course the bike pants did look pretty cool and hid my knobby knees, which is the only thing that really matters.) None of these clothing items are relevant to the short local bike trips I take now, though I occasionally use them in hopes of convincing myself that it was a worthwhile purchase and for the kind oohs and ahhs of friends who say they make me look like a "real" bicyclist and of strangers who are easily misled into believing it to actually be true.

The second advantage I have is the fact that, right now, I work from home more days than not. My daily commute from my bed to my computer is a few small steps. For lunch, a few more steps to the kitchen (or a few blocks walk, as I did today). So I don't have to face transportation challenges as many times per week as the average person does. (It hasn't always been this way--and my daily one-hour-each-way commute by public transit, having to schedule my life around the vagaries of the transit system, was getting pretty tiresome toward the end of my last regular full-time job.)

I'm thankful for these advantages, but I also know they distort the "experiment" of living without a car. Though there are certainly days when living without a car is challenging enough despite these advantages, I hope to find opportunities to hear about what it's like to live without a car under less accommodating circumstances.

NIGHT RIDING Tonight I had dinner with Raymond, Peggy Sue, and Tibor at their house in South Berkeley. I rode my bike there and back--it's a trip I make often. Tonight was one of those deliciously warm nights, so rare in Berkeley--though we've had a lot of them this summer with what seems to be a general international heat wave.

On nights like this, there's nowhere I'd rather be than on my bike, enveloped in the softness and quiet of the late evening air, skimming in and out of the shadows of trees and the light of street lamps, riding fast or leisurely as I wish, with no traffic to stop me. Other than the rare car, the rare voices of shadows on the sidewalk, the only sound is the soft whoosh of my tires spinning and the tick-tick-tick-tick of the pedals when I'm coasting.

In Berkeley there are a lot of night-blooming plants, that emit often overpowering fragrances after the sun goes down; after the heat of the day they seemed to be going haywire. Block after block I was inhaling the sweetest air; jasmine is the only one I recognize but there was a lot more going on out there.

DRESS & SKIRT UPDATE Peggy Sue begged to differ with my opinions about the best dress/skirt to wear on a bicycle (see July 6 & 7). She said that she's found a long flowing skirt works best, using her special technique of grabbing the bottom of the skirt with her right hand, twisting it, and sitting on it. I asked her to send me detailed figure drawings of this technique, which I'm sure will be shortly forthcoming. She also recommends heavier fabrics, to which I heartily agree--light, airy fabrics, she says, tend to blow into her rear brakes. (For me, they've blown into the rear spokes too.)

We did have some discussion about the potential advantages of skorts and culottes (sp?), both things I remember being in style in the 70s. This elicited a series of questions from the guys, who were unfamiliar with these particular fashion statements. Finally Tibor--always having a deep deep need to get a pun into the conversation--put an end to the conversation by saying we were "skirting" the issue.

Capris are probably my favorite bike-riding gear--Peggy Sue finally helped me understand the subtle differences between capris, pedal pushers, and clam-diggers. I forgot about knickers! Those were fun too...that would be a fashion trend worth restarting for winter bicycling--corduroy knickers with argyle socks. Leg warmers would also be practical to bring back "in"--though I think they (and knickers, and argyle socks) probably wore out their welcome too recently--the fashion executives are still young enough to remember when they went "out" along with baseball shirts, neon brites, and Sassoon jeans. We may have to wait another ten years.

MORE ON ADVERTISING LIFE WITHOUT A CAR Peter M. sent in this comment: "It's interesting that public transit agencies here seem to advertise very little, maybe because advertising is seen as a frivolous expenditure while budgets are tight. In the 1970s, a lot of governments had ad campaigns promoting conserving energy--even in the U.S., I believe--and in some places, they also talked about the benefits of taking public transit."

Has anyone seen the "Take BART to the A's game" ad campaign? (They're along these lines: "A's fans: Thank you for taking public transit. Non-A's fans: Who said you could go out in public?")

THE SMALL THINGS Notebooks were 75% off at the grocery store today, starting at 19 cents, and so I bought eleven of them, of various shapes, sizes, and thicknesses. The little pocket-size ones I can pack along with me when I'm on the bus or train for people-watching, eavesdropping, and general recording of mishaps and wonders. How wonderful to put that little stack among the office supplies in my closet, its precariously leaning tower representing days and months (maybe years) of unlimited freedom to scribble and plot and think.

THE ROAD TO BURLINGAME Last week was the fateful trip to Burlingame. It all went pretty well, although waking up when it's still dark out has never been my forte. I left the house at 10 minutes to 7:00, just missing the 7:03 train, waited 13 minutes for the next San Francisco train (7:18). I didn't end up having to transfer--the San Francisco/Daly City train morphed into a Millbrae train halfway through the trip; they must have been having problems with one of the trains on the Millbrae line. A minor bonus for me. I like being able to stay in my cozy corner at the back of the car, engrossed in my book or editing (as I was today). "Please, don't get up." That's how I like life.

The train arrived in Millbrae at 8:25. I found the shuttle stop easily, but had just missed the 8:23 North Burlingame shuttle. No problem, since there would be another one at 8:40, "in a few minutes," as the driver of the other Burlingame shuttle assured me.

When the shuttle came, I was the only one on it. Long rows of squishy comfy seats lined all sides--I could have laid down and taken a comfortable nap (and I wanted to) but the ride was too short. The shuttle also had large "picture" windows providing a lovely view, mostly of the road, but still...

The shuttle driver went way out of his way to be helpful to people. When two different people got on the shuttle, he asked them where they were going and explained to them that they needed to take the Bay Side shuttle instead, not this one, and that it would come in a few minutes. I rarely see such thoughtful helpful service on shuttles or buses--though I frequently hear "Oh, sh--" or worse from people who have just realized that they're anywhere from twenty blocks to several miles out of their way, and very, very late--after getting on the wrong bus.

El Camino Real was a pretty busy multi-lane road--I don't think it would have been very fun on a bicycle, so I'm glad I didn't plan to do that option. When we turned onto the road up the hill to Mercy Center, the convent (?) and retreat center where the class was being held, the ride turned into a pleasant canter through a tree-lined residential area with early to mid-20th century houses, stucco and Spanish style, up to the more secluded wooded and thoughtfully landscaped area surrounding the retreat center.

Fortunately, lunch and everything we needed was provided on site, so we didn't need to leave to go anywhere in the middle of the day.

The class was over at 4:30, so I was able to catch the 4:35 shuttle in front of the main entrance (I had forgotten to check the shuttle times going back, so I got lucky--and the receptionist at the front desk had a schedule that she gave me a copy of when I asked, so I knew I wouldn't have long to wait and worry and wonder). I arrived at BART by 4:45 and caught a Pittsburg/Bay Point train shortly after. I transferred to a Richmond train at 12th Street. I had to smile at the train operator's attempt to make his announcement bilingual: "doh-say cal-lee" (Is the bilingual announcement mandated, I wonder? I've only ever heard it at 12th street.)

I saw a friend from church get on the train at Macarthur--chatted about his family's first camping trip with their two-year-old, to Sequoia National Park. She wasn't that impressed by the biggest tree in the world, he said, but she was very impressed by the "plop" sound little stones made as she threw them into the river, many, many of them.

THE FUTURE OF SUVs Here's a Web site worth checking out: The Future SUV--Today! Also check out one blogger's comments re. the fact that Congress recently cut funding for bike paths.

UN-CAR APPEAL I'm thinking I just need to keep prompting my friend Raymond to write about this issue--he wrote another great blog entry, about a question I've often pondered: Why can't they ("they"--"someone") come up with (and finance somehow--that's the catch) some great living-without-a-car commercials to compete with the car commercials? Raymond describes the feeling he has riding his bike in wonderful detail...I too want to add my second to what he says--that if it was possible to bottle the exhiliration I feel some days riding my bike (or walking or being on the train) and share it with others, wouldn't that be wonderful...

In fact, more than one thoughtful, articulate person in the focus group I was in at the MTC "Transportation 2030" conference had the same idea. I've fantasized about such an ad campaign for a long time--there have been a lot of great public service ad campaigns out there, that I think must do a lot of good, like the California "First 5" ads--that, in clear simple terms and images, encourage parents to interact with their young children to stimulate their intellectual and emotional growth. I was in the middle of writing this down on my response form when someone else began talking about the same thing--and then another, and another. It's encouraging that others are thinking in the same direction--so who knows, maybe it will actually happen someday!

THE RIDE HOME While it's still summer, I often leave work in the early evening--6:30 or 7:00. Coming down E. 18th Street, I round the curve onto Lake Shore and see people walking, jogging around Lake Merritt, taking leisurely evening strolls, kids riding their bikes; the sun is low in the sky--glancing off the tall-but-not-skyscraper buildings, buildings that are proud but not domineering, of the Oakland skyline that backdrops the lake. I round the curve of the lake, in the hum of steady evening traffic. Tiny lights are strung from lamppost to lamppost around the lake, and though it's too early for them to be lit, I can already anticipate their warm dancing presence. Vines climb the promenade and the gazebo at the far end of the lake.

I make my way over toward the Grand Lake Theater, and begin the steady climb up Grand Ave., to Piedmont, to where it becomes Pleasant Valley and then 51st, then up Telegraph to Berkeley where I can comfortably find my way home on Berkeley's network of bicycle boulevards. Riding through Ohlone Park, I see three small dogs chasing each others' tails in a continuous circle around a rock, squeaking urgently; their owners and some larger (more dignified) dogs look on, the owners in near-hysterics with laughter.

These are the things make me some days unable to stop smiling inside: When I pass a string of 30 young children all on bikes, orderly in a precarious but persistent way, all dutifully wearing helmets (and bookended at both ends and in the middle with a handful of brave adults), giving me shy hellos and smiles of recognition as a fellow bicyclist. When someone standing in front of their house, watering the lawn, or getting into their car, looks up and says "Good morning!"--and really means it.

TRAINS NOT SUVs Tragically, after the blog that discussed the SUV psychologist, power and war, SUV ads began appearing at the top of the blog. The ad-builder is smart, but not smart enough. What do I need to say to train it, I wonder? SUVs bad. No SUVs. SUVs evil. Bicycles bicycles bicycles bicycles! Trains trains trains trains trains! Pedestrian access Pedestrian access Pedestrian access...