jbailey | End of week 1 in Santa Clara

In Santa Clara and still adjusting. The corporate housing that I'm in is nearly 4 hours by transit to the office according to the magic computers at 511.org. If I walk a mile on this side, and take a Google shuttle from the Caltrain, I should be able to get that down to an hour.

ahahahah, yeah right. I get a ride from Angie in the morning. It takes 15 minutes.

But *people*, c'mon.. This is California, right? Where are the people caring about the environment and hoping into mass-transit? Get out of your shiny Prius' and take a bus somewhere. Oh wait. You can't. Because it takes 4 hours to go 8 miles.

I'm thinking about this as I'm looking at churches and trying to decide if I feel like going to one this morning. I remember when I first joined the Beacon Unitarian Church, it was (as much as anything else) because I could walk to it. From the church, I could visit a half-dozen people who also lived walking distance from the church. How shall I build my community from inside temporary corporate housing in the middle of Santa Clara?

But we're starting to settle in a bit. We've swapped the van we used to drive across the country for a car. We've got a bank account. We've got a GrandCentral phone number which should follow us everywhere, and next we'll get an POBox so that as we move around a bit before settling in we'll at least have a permanent place to receive mail. It turns out that the State of California wants us to retake our written and road tests to move our licenses to here. That should be fun. Do you suppose it's an auto-fail if I yell "Christing fuck, people! Learn to drive!" as I merge onto the freeway? It's become a bit of a regular chant.

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Do you suppose it's an auto-fail if I yell "Christing fuck, people! Learn to drive!" as I merge onto the freeway? It's become a bit of a regular chant.

I feel your pain. Portland is one of the favorite spots of Californians to move to, and so they all congregate around our freeways. I've come to the point where I've rolled down the window and hollared, "EVEN IN IOWA WE KNOW HOW TO MERGE, YOU FUCKING IDIOTS!" or, my favorite, "It's ok, people! If you make room to let ONE car merge, I PROMISE you won't be later to work or getting home!"

*lol*

8 miles would be an hour by bike?

Half an hour - maybe 40 minutes.

That's actually the plan. I'm still short a helmet and a pile of reflective gear that I'll need before getting out on the streets, though.

And I haven't biked in ages. I'm sure I'm more than a bit out of shape. =)

Since when has California been about transit? Outside San Francisco itself, the entire bay area has horrible transit, as does LA.

The reason California leads North America in emissions standards and the like is because there are so many cars, not because they're (in the majority) environmentally responsible.

Ah, interesting point. I hadn't thought about it that way. I remember reading that LA would've been a smog pit even when the natives were there since it's a big bowl, and forest fires, camp fires and whatnot would've had the same effect.

At least there seem to be bike lanes all over the place, so with a bit of effort I'll get to using them.

True, yeah, cycling makes a lot of sense in .ca.us since you can trivially do it year 'round... the distances make it impractical in many cases but not in your current one, it seems.

Welcome to the West Coast! Beacon has moved as I imagine you heard. Now we meet in PoCo at Shaughnessy and Wilson. Moving is Hard. Hope you find a fine church and can carpool at least.

Thanks!

I'd heard that Beacon moved. How has that affected the membership? IIRC, Beacon was in New West for it's first couple of years before settling in Place Maillard. That leaves a nice opportunity for a new church in the Burnaby / New West area, which could also be nice. If it were just off of the skytrain line somewhere, I suspect it would get a decent membership from folks who just can't make it to the other ones.

I don't do much driving these days since I've been in New York, and I don't miss it one bit. Good luck with everything!

Thanks, it's much appreciated!

Ouch. Hope the biking thing works out. Sounds like it ultimately could be a nice commute, not to mention a decent way to stay in shape.

If you have a spare GrandCentral invitation, a certain miles dot erickson residing over in gmail-land would surely appreciate checking it out. He's been quite itinerant of late and is contemplating less dependence on the t-mo number.

Cheers!

I'm hoping so. It's mostly a matter of getting to where I've got all the safety gear that I want. The bike that I'm borrowing is a touch small, too, so the whole thing might be best to just wait until I get a paycheque in a few weeks.

I've sent the invite to you, hope it works out!

hahaha... you should read this recent post by my sister who's temporarily moved to the States for her PhD. Walking is just not done in the USA apparently. I think it might even be considered somewhat scandalous.

http://jaleengrove.livejournal.com/19055.html

I live in Redmond and commute to Seattle for work. I'm considered lucky because I only have a 15 minute walk at each end of the bus line, and the bus comes every 10 minutes or so. The walk to the bus from my apartment could be more like 5 minutes, but that would require cutting through some private condos and climbing down the side of a very steep hill (Heaven forbid the city establish walkable pathways from where people live to where the buses are -- although if I wanted to pay more in rent, there is an apartment block at the base of the hill).

I do cut the walk to the bus down a bit by taking an unofficial cut across a switchback of the road. Most pedestrians use it, but since pedestrians don't exist, no-one from the city has thought that it might be useful to put in stairs or a developed walking surface, so with the 8 months of rain here you're guaranteed to end up with mud-caked shoes, if you can keep from falling on your face or into the brambles that line it.

I regularly have to scramble out of the way of maniacs in cars who think pedestrians don't exist, or stand at a marked crosswalk waiting for the one driver in 20 who remembers that I have the right of way. Police will stop pedestrians for jaywalking, but I've never seen a car stopped for nearly running me down.

The only thing that I can think of that would be more insane than walking here is bicycling -- bicycles share the road with cars (sometimes with a 2-3 foot "bike lane" which offers no comfort at all), and they're regularly struck and killed. There are many pleasant bike paths for recreational use in the area -- but try to actually use your bike for travel and you're playing Redmond Roulette.

The cyclists I see hit most often seem to be the stupid kind. No helmet, no reflectors, not stopping for red lights.

It sucks that the cyclists are as stupid as the drivers. =(

This is precisely why I simply refused to move to California and remain only on the east coast of the USA. I don't care if most of the tech industry is there. If most of the tech industry doesn't use mass transit reasonably, I don't want to live with them. :)

End of week 1 in Santa Clara

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Use a bike?

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Too true

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