[Bicycling] Dhani Jones lives carfree in Cincinnati

In an interview in Bicycling Magazine, we learn that Dhani Jones, the Cincinnati Bengals linebacker, lives carfree in Cincinnati and rides a fixie to practice even in winter.

(Cincinnati is close to my heart because my mother is from there.)

Visiting NYC this summer?

Have we got an idea for you!

Governors Island is a carfree Oasis.

Free bikes on Fridays

Fight, Flight, beFriend your bicycle

bikelovejones said today: "To that end, I'm going to stop fighting the wars I cannot win and instead begin to win the battles within reach." She's talking about saving the world from the evils of the automobile, but brought some ideas together in my mind.

KT recently bulk mailed an article on research that found that unlike men, women do not respond to stress with "fight or flight"; instead, they nurture and befriend. I have learned the hard way that this only works with some friends. Other friends can't stand for life's events to be about anyone but themselves. So, it can be efficient to have a complete melt down once every few years to find out who you can count on.

I get a lot of flack for not owning a car and basing my agenda on the time and availability of transit. On the other hand, I recommend it to anyone who asks. I don't like to preach, and I also don't like when people preach at me. There's already plenty of judgment out there. I'm trying to live one example. I don't want to fight about it; I don't want to avoid talking about it; I'm happy to socialize about it and bring you organic cookies on my bicycle if you're feeling sad (and I like you). That's the kind of advocacy that works for me. But I admire people who have energy for the fight. I'm just not one of them.

This is also related to another thing I love to talk about: Democracy. None of us could understand how half the country could have voted for George Bush either time but especially the second time. There was much call to action to talk with our friends and relatives in the red states about politics. Of course we surround ourselves with people we agree with, and talking with people we don't agree with politically is stressful, but can't we all just get along?

I'm not advocating re-friending people who've let you down. I'm suggesting, again, as usual, that (some) women have the special tendency to nurture and discuss in times of crisis, and that maybe more of us should be in positions of power. Yeah, I know, duh. Did you really expect me to say something new?

But back to cars and bicycles...given my home and work locations, it would be enormously more convenient if I had a car. However, cars are expensive, I have no place to put one, and I hate being stuck in traffic. I have a standard carpool, and they carpool with me bc: 1) I give them money, and 2) they can use the HOV lane for faster travel time. We all take the train most often tho bc we enjoy it. A friend was recently telling me she would love to have a car, but she has no place to put one. Another friend got a car bc her apartment came with a parking space. All this speaks to the necessity of creating policy so that it makes sense to be resource efficient... rather than inefficient like our current policy. If drivers paid the true cost of driving, they wouldn't do it unless it was really necessary. But this is still most convincingly related with honey... because transportation can be stressful. And we all know that fighting never led anyone to join hands and sing.

what i learned today...

My alarm went off at 9:30 this morning (after I re-set it when it went off at 6:30) because I had to move Marie Lyse's car at 10. Now I don't have to move it again until Tuesday. Amazing how easy it for this religiously carfree woman to slip into the concerns my car-full friends have.

I listened to NPR for a while this morning. They discussed the Story Corps Project in honor of the national day of listening when people are asked to spend an hour listening to their loved ones. One recorded story was of a couple, deeply in love, Danny and Annie. I jotted down a quote from Danny (may be inaccurate), "No matter how bad your day was, (when you're married) you always have a shelter to come home to....Being married is like living in color, you never want to go back to black and white."

The next Forum was about the Science of Happiness. They discussed all the usual things like doing things outside yourself, getting exercise and being grateful. I was a bit disappointed by the lack of new information, but I guess that means I'm now a happiness expert. My mother gave me for xmas the book How We Choose to Be Happy. I'll be sure to let you know if I learn anything.

Lamma Island (HK day 7)

This island is supposedly carfree, but I saw several internal congestion vehicles. In one case, a woman pulled her toddler out from in front of one zipping past on the tiny street. She scolded him. "It's very dangerous," she said. I felt sad that a child can't event toddle into the pathway on a carfree island.

My legs are about done, putting me in quite a predicament. I hobbled along the "family trail" and even climbed up to the wind turbine. Lamma has a rather large power plant (the beach provides an excellent view of it) and one large wind turbine. I didn't feel the slightest inclination to swim at the beach (very unusual for me) which was good, I guess, since I didn't have a swimming costume or towel with me.

Thoughts while waiting to board the plane to Paris

Today I walked around Brooklyn. It was much smaller than I expected. I walked from Ilana’s in Fort Green to Brooklyn Heights then back through Cobble Hill. The old parts of New York looks like Europe with attached buildings and cobble stone streets. When we rode through the more suburban parts of Queens on the Century, it looked just like Ohio with ticky tacky little houses made with brick and metal railings. Higher end homes were made with stone, also like in the Midwest. Our suburbs are quintessentially American.

Ilana’s friend Carly, who she met when they both lived in Nicaragua, is also trained as a city planner. She went to Cornell. But Carly does community work with a school. Of course, I don’t work as a city planner right now either. Anyway, Carly wanted to discuss the congestion pricing issue with me, bc she is very concerned about the impact it would have on the low-income. We discussed these problems and their possible solutions:
1) Low-income workers who need to have their cars in the city for their jobs would be adversely impacted. Of course, there are respectful ways to address this issue. The Universal Lifeline telephone program is a good example of an honor-system discount program that’s respectful to the recipients for that reason. Low-income workers who use a vehicle in the city would also benefit from reduced traffic because they would be able to get around town more quickly. For example, if a worker needs to drive his truck from client to client and he works for himself, he would be able serve more clients in a day with less traffic on the roads and therefore make more money.
2) Vehicles parking at the edges and crowding people’s neighborhoods – the current system has it’s boundaries primarily in low-income neighborhoods, which would mean that disadvantaged people would be more adversely affected. This is fixed by changing the boundaries. In London, they found that the edge neighborhoods did not experience a change in traffic and parking, but London is a sprawling city and there are thousands of access points. The access points to Manhattan are primarily bridges likely to cause clusters of street parkers at these bottle necks. However, the solution is easy – select the boundaries so that there are thousands of access points and there won’t be any clusters of parkers and accessors.
3) I am very concerned about the crowding on the subway. I suggested that more people would have to ride the buses. Carly said the buses are too slow because people are always looking for change, the bus has to lower itself at every stop, and because of the traffic. Obviously, the traffic would be addressed with fewer cars on the road due to congestion pricing, but an exclusive right of way would also help. A bus rapid transit system with pre-paid, elevated platforms would also speed up the system. This would be a capital investment, but funds for it could come from the congestion pricing program.

My plane just announced boarding for group 1. I’ll tell you the rest later.

Douglas Adams quote

"The disadvantages (of cars) involved pulling lots of black sticky slime from out of the ground where it had been safely hidden out of harm's way, turning it into tar to cover the land with, smoke to fill the air with and pouring the rest into the sea, all seemed to outweigh the advantages of being able to get more quickly from one place to another -- particularly when the place you arrived at had probably become, as a result of this, very similar to the place you had left, i.e., covered with tar, full of smoke and short of fish."
pg 162-163, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams