End of week 1 in Santa Clara

[jbailey]

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.

Comments

[angorian.livejournal.com]

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

Too true

[(Anonymous)]

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.

Re: Too true

[jbailey.livejournal.com]

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. =(