Magic Spot Flowing

I didn’t notice this at the time, but Chris Smith posted our presentations from the December 3rd Traffic and Transportation class session on his blog at Portland Transport.

If you’ve been waiting for me to get my act together, wait no longer — the PDF is available there. A few entries later is David Sweet’s NE Fremont project, which truly was the most impressive in how much he had already accomplished. It was inspiring to me to see how much time and effort he had put in, how many people he had spoken to, and the creativity he used in securing funding.

I’ve been working on a post about my experience in the class, but it needs some cleaning up. I’ll try to get there soon, as a complement to this post.

I noticed this morning that in a conversation yesterday I used the phrase “some ones that” when I could just as easily have some “some that” (or “ones that”):

I bought new gloves
some ones from REI that are lobster-claw

I was curious to see if this is common. It’s at least common enough that most of the top ten Google hits for “some ones that” are for this construction. It gets fewer hits than “some that”, which is clearly the more straightforward and official construction (all the “some ones that” hits are clearly from user-created content, compared to “some that” which brings up titles of articles, books, etc.

It may not really be produced intentionally — perhaps we are going to say “some [nouns] that” but realize that the referent is too close? I’m not always a fan of assuming people don’t intend to produce what they produced, but I don’t see otherwise why “some that” wouldn’t be produced instead.

BikePortland this morning pointed to another musing on the ‘cyclist’ label from Streetsblog, which itself links to one from BikeSnob NYC. I like BikeSnob NYC’s definition too: someone who rides a bike when they don’t have to, and owns a floor pump. Though as a commenter points out, if you own a Topeak Road Morph G you don’t really need a floor pump. Oops, did I just out myself as a cyclist?

There’s a meme developing in the transportation community (especially the cycling community) that suggests that instead of using labels like “cyclist”, “pedestrian”, and “motorist”, we should talk about people and what they do. People walking, people cycling, people driving. The theory is that the labels create the idea that there are three separate groups of people with very different needs, behaviors, and perspectives. The fact is of course that we are almost all pedestrians at least some of the time, and many of us accommodate all three labels: we drive, cycle, and walk at different times. The groups are flexible and overlapping, rather than the separate entities that the labels seem to create.

While I agree that describing groups of people taking actions may be more effective in developing transportation advocacy and policy conversations, I can’t agree that there is no such thing as a cyclist, pedestrian, or motorist beyond the mode choice of the moment.

Last night before falling asleep, I was thinking about how I know lots of people who cycle sometimes, but not all or most of the time, and was wondering why they do and don’t cycle at various times. The key seems to be that they cycle when it is the most convenient (fast, effective) or the most enjoyable way of getting somewhere. Short trips are easy and fast, and longer trips are fun when the conditions are good.

Common reasons for not cycling are that it’s too far (ineffective), or that it’s cold, rainy, windy, or dark (unenjoyable), or that there are no appropriate facilities so it takes too long or feels/is dangerous (ineffective and unenjoyable).

I also know people who ride practically everywhere. Why do they ride practically everywhere? Because they think that cycling is always, or nearly always, the most effective or enjoyable way of getting somewhere. To me, this is what a cyclist is: someone who thinks that cycling is always, or nearly always, the most effective or enjoyable way of getting somewhere. A pedestrian and a motorist are likewise people who feel that their mode is the most effective or enjoyable way of getting places. I definitely know both pedestrians and motorists as well as cyclists.

Since I prefer not to drive (it’s never enjoyable to me, even though I sometimes decide it is the most effective mode) I suppose I would have to call myself a cyclist-pedestrian. Or maybe I’m just a rather pedestrian cyclist.

Which one are you? Or are you a mode-agnostic, equally content with any effective method of getting places?

Before making this post, I searched my archives to find out if I’d ever said anything about the fact that I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. Apparently not. I don’t, in fact, make New Year’s resolutions. Maybe I read too many books as a child, but they have always seemed to me to be something that you try to do (every day, N times per week, whatever), but fail, and usually because you miss one day and then you’ve BROKEN your RESOLUTION OH NOES!!! And you have to be sad and give up and feel useless. Which is silly. You aren’t going to magically turn into a different person in the day between December 31 and January 1, but you might turn into a different one between January 1 and December 31, if you try.

So I do make goals for the year, which I think is what most people do in real life anyway. I have some ambitious goals this year, so I decided that in addition to just having the goals, I would make an effort to every day do something, however small, that would either advance my goals or be pleasant and restorative for me. The everyday intention is neither hard enough to be prohibitive, nor easy enough to be trivial.

Granted, we are only five days into the New Year, but what has come out of this so far is not just progress on my goals, but a view of my days as containers to hold positive efforts and experiences, rather than as trials to get through. I was really stressed and not in a very good place for the last month or so of 2009, and had been having trouble viewing life positively, even though I recognized in my mind that aside from certain stressors, things were going well. A vacation was called for, and I was lucky to have a restorative time with my family back in New Mexico, which allowed me to get out of the rut I was in and get my perspective turned around for the better for the new year.

I was very impressed by The Urbanophile’s post on what’s killing California. He takes a look at the general issues behind the current problems, with a level of analysis that pushes it far above most of the reading (and all of the talking) I’ve done on the topic.

Hat tip: Jeff, for sharing items in Google Reader!