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!
Last night I went to Plan B (SE 8th and Main) for “An Evening with Roger Geller”, an interview of Roger Geller, PBOT’s Bicycle Coordinator, by Jonathan Maus of BikePortland. The main subject was the draft 2030 Bike Plan, which is likely to be adopted by City Council in January. It was a good conversation — by turns personal, wonky, political, and funny. My two favorite quotes, which I posted on Twitter during the evening, were:
You build for the future you want.
and
We’re talking to the choir a bit here, but it’s still important for the choir to show up to church.
The second one perhaps needs a little more context if you weren’t there. He was speaking in response to the concern that the conversation about the Bike Plan and cycling in general is not happening enough outside the ‘bike bubble’ of interested, active cyclists. Since despite my newcomer status in Portland, I’m certainly already inside the bike bubble, I don’t really have any idea, but I liked his point here and the analogy is fun.
You build for the future you want. Let’s build it out. Let’s get 5000 (clothed) cyclists to rally at City Hall. Let’s get more funding, so it’s not bikes or streetcar; or sharrows or bike boulevards, but both/and. Bike everything, all the time. Okay, maybe not, but I’m wholly enthusiastic, and particularly happy to know that they are planning to use all available traffic tools to manage the newer bike boulevards they will be building. Portland’s bike boulevards are sometimes more notional than actual, and still get crazy traffic. Put Ellen Fletcher Bike Boulevard-style diverters on them, take away the superfluous stop signs, and you’ve really got something great.
I found it interesting also to watch Roger’s deflection of fundamentally political questions. I don’t fault him for this, as it is really up to us, as citizens, to get politics and political will and funding stuff going, but it was interesting to see. At one point he commented rather simply “no” when asked if there was tension between being a cyclist personally, and believing in cycling, and building out infrastructure with all its many challenges and compromises. I saw in that an admirable passion for doing concrete things to advance cycling, even if it’s sometimes unclear which concrete things will be the best in the long run.
Tonight was a view from a different level: Gordon Price presenting at the Portland building, as part of my PSU/PBOT Traffic and Transportation class. Our coordinator had promised us a really great presentation, really great, but I have to admit I was skeptical. We’ve sat through a lot of presentations, many of them interesting, in the eight sessions we’ve had.
But this one was really fantastic. I was incredibly impressed by Mr. Price, in both style and substance. It probably helps that he totally reminds me of my dad (who is also a balding, sixtyish Canadian professor, albeit one who has mostly lost his Canadian accent over the years).
He had a comprehensive presentation about the development and state of the auto-dependent society, and not one that totally relied on numbers and text but which effectively used images of all kinds — photographs, maps, 3D maps, charts — to tell the story of the auto-dependent landscape vs. the human-scale landscape. He took examples from all over the US and Canada (even San Mateo, CA, where I used to live).
What I was most impressed with was the way his presentation explained what the auto-dependent society gives us that we want. We want privacy, space, autonomy. Obvious, right? But it’s overlooked so often in discussions about transportation and land use; it’s seen as obvious that we in fact don’t want suburban sprawl. Or if we do, we shouldn’t because we are bad people to want something that is so clearly bad in its end-stages. But it comes out of human impulses, human desires. No, it doesn’t work, but it’s important to respect the point. Even in high-density areas, he pointed out, household sizes are tiny. People occupy a ton of space per person compared to what they used to, so in order to fit enough people in, we have to go up, up, or otherwise be clever about space usage.
Some favorite quotes:
“Motordom never really worked on its own terms.”
“…an urban region designed for the car.” (a perfect description of 95% of the Bay Area)
“They laid out a continent that way…we walk in chains.”
“Congestion is our frind. You’re going to have it. Where do you want it?”
“If they can do it in Detroit, there’s gotta be hope.”
And the most interesting for me personally:
“As a cyclist I am not a big fan of rail in the street.”
Last, a relayed Tom Robbins, that I liked because of my interest in systems:
A truly stable system expects the unexpected, is prepared to be disrupted, waits to be transformed.
Dear Facebook,
You know all those people with whom I have mutual friends? The ones you like to suggest I befriend? Did you ever wonder if there might be a reason why I am not friends with those people?
Please stop telling me who you think I should be friends with, or suggesting that my friends need more friends.
Also, please stop telling me who to poke. That sort of thing is best left to those of us with a speck of human judgment.
Love,
Non-Poker
Dear OKCupid,
Thanks for telling me, on my receipt of a message from a new sender, that you think we both like “Vegetarian”, “Ender’s Game” and “Hiking.” Because there’s no possible way I could figure that out for myself.
Also, “you both like Vegetarian” is not grammatical.
Love,
Adjectives are not Nouns
Is anyone else annoyed by the way social networks seem to be positioning themselves as knowing far more than their users do about who their users want to interact with?
I don’t think I’ve had a week with this much mileage since I moved to Portland, since so many of my rides now are in-city rides and I usually only ride a few days a week.
This week, after taking Monday off (horrid weather and luckily I didn’t need the bike), I rode about 10 miles on Tuesday, five miles on Wednesday, seven miles on Thursday, and five on Friday. Saturday I rode another ten. All of those days it rained at least some, although not always on me as I was riding.
Today I rode about 37. The fact that today totally wiped me out is on one level a little disappointing, considering that a day in the range of 35 miles with a chunk of climbing used to be totally do-able without creating that kind of exhaustion (the kind where I just want to climb into bed). One of my favorite long rides in the Bay Area was one I used to do for training that was 34 miles with almost 2000 ft total climbing.
On the other hand, I haven’t been riding much, so the fact that I was able to do today, after a week of regular mileage (37 miles), and still on the tail end of a cold, is pretty good.
My adventures this week were to a friends’ house in NE (~5 miles each way, up the Broadway Bridge and Williams to Dekum); to work and downtown for an appointment (~2 mi each way down to SW Stark and 3rd); to work, PSU, and SE Portland (1, 2, and 4 miles); back from SE Portland and to home (4 miles and 1 mile); to NE to have brunch (6 miles) and then down to SE (4 miles).
Then today, back from SE; downtown, back to SE, and way, way far out to Gresham, then north almost to I-84 (Halsey) and out on the Columbia River Highway to Dabney State Recreation Area. The return trip, we went up Stark, which I had no idea even existed way out there. Eventually in Gresham we picked up the MAX and took a shorter trip back, to the great relief of my tired legs. (The total climbing for today was 1800 ft just for the trip from home to Dabney and back to MAX, so really not too much different from my big old training ride back in the Bay Area.) The weather was chilly but cleared up after noon and the sun coming through the trees by the river was quite beautiful.
A stop at Vanh Hanh Vegetarian Restaurant (SE 82nd & Division, near the MAX Green Line Divison stop) yielded tasty Vietnamese vegetarian food to fuel me for the MAX trip and short ride back home. Yum!
Taking the new MAX Green Line was also fun. I was excited to get off at the new stop on Glisan and just roll up Glisan to get home (switching to Johnson at 14th).
I’ve been curious about the cycletrack on SW Broadway since it opened a few weeks ago, and today I decided to go check it out on my way back from SE.
My impression of it was overall positive. It’s fairly clearly striped, and most of the left-turn boxes seem to be well-placed, although one of the first ones didn’t seem to line up properly with the road it was turning onto. It’s nice to be out of the flow of traffic a bit, especially going uphill like that, although as someone who’s accustomed to being in traffic I also found it kind of weird and disorienting.
However, the placement of signals isn’t ideal. The traffic signals are primarily over “in traffic”, where the cars are. It would be helpful to cyclists, who no longer have the cue of “oh, people next to me are stopping” (because there is an intervening row of parked cars) to have the signals moved closer to the cycletrack, or a new signal installed. Otherwise I predict some clueless red-light running. Though now that I think of it, maybe it doesn’t matter if you run the lights, since all the streets there dead-end into PSU campus. It’s very much like the situation on Evelyn in Mountain View, where the train tracks stop the streets from going through. U-turns or sloppy left turns are the primary danger on Evelyn, but Oregon is a prohibited-unless-permitted state for U-turns.
Although there isn’t noticeable signage warning pedestrians about the cycletrack, I did witness several pedestrians (on a quiet Sunday) clearly looking twice before stepping into it — luckily for me, and possibly for them as well. Still, I would feel more comfortable if the hatch-marked area and the sidewalk included a warning or two.
These are relatively minor quibbles, but I also have two major quibbles. The first was that a car was parked in the cycletrack. Just parked right there. This was also reported by some BikePortland commenters in the linked entry above. Clearly some people are missing the message. Enforcement would be good; possibly better would be having the special green striping throughout the cycletrack. I thought they had done this actually, and was surprised to find they hadn’t. It’s a special facility; why no special paint? This could also serve as the pedestrian warnings I feel would be useful, killing two birds with one stone. Green = bicycle = no parking and watch out.
The second major quibble I had is the beginning of the cycletrack. It starts at an intersection where the rightmost car traffic lane is right-turn only. The intersection has a green-painted bike lane and a bike box, as well as a sign I have become unfortunately familiar with whose meaning is “You’re about to turn across a bike lane, yield to cyclists”, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s really bad design to have through cyclists to the right of a right turn lane, especially right where a cycletrack starts so that most cyclists are almost certain to be going through and the area clearly has heavy bike traffic.
I have a feeling that I have a particular dislike for this configuration that doesn’t afflict PBOT’s bike facility designers, because this setup drives me nuts in two other locations I frequent: the approach to the Broadway bridge where Broadway crosses I-5, and the exit from the Hawthorne Bridge to city streets in SE Portland (actually an exit lane vs. a right-turn-only lane, but it’s the same basic problem). It may be because I’m accustomed to setups where the bike lane generally jogs to the left before the intersection, or where the bike lane is dotted to indicate that traffic should be mixing according to destination direction instead of by speed or vehicle type (vehicular cycling behavior). I just don’t believe that you can make cyclists safe in this situation by painting the road. Right hook situations are dangerous and in my experience are best managed by good merging behavior, not by paint and faith.
But aside from those major quibbles, this is an interesting facility and I look forward to seeing how it works and how it evolves.
I’m planning to send my written comments to PBOT through the PortlandOnline system, which took me a while to figure out how to do, but you can also call them at 503-823-CYCL.
The password-protected post, for those who are curious, is no longer protected. Thanks to those who gave me feedback on the initial version; it’s a better post because of you.
I’m experimenting with a post that I anticipate eventually publishing fully. In the meantime, I’ll be giving the password to a few people who I’d like to see it before I publish it for everyone. So hang onto your hats for now. :)
This is a post that I’ve been allowing to incubate for a long time, to the point where its title almost has an extra meaning! I usually don’t write about personal, potentially controversial subjects on this blog, but I think it’s time for this post to exist.
About two and a half years ago, I went to see a therapist, and was diagnosed with dysthymic depression (DSM-IV 300.4). When I first saw the diagnosis (which was actually a while after I started seeing my therapist, although she told me intially that she thought I was depressed), I wasn’t exactly sure what it meant. So I did some Google searching and found that it basically means I was having, and had had for a while, chronic mild-to-moderate depression. This wasn’t a huge surprise to me as I have struggled with depression on and off, with one serious episode each in high school, college, grad school, and my working life, all of which were preceded and followed by varying durations of more minor symptoms. I’ve seen counselors before, but this is the first time I’ve gotten genuine, thorough, lasting help from a professional.
What made me want to write about this, way back when I first conceived this post, was when I found a particular page about dysthymia that said “Dysthymia is a condition that tends to develop early in a person’s life, but most people delay approximately ten years before every [sic] seeking treatment.” And I thought, that rings a bell. I was first depressed when I was about 16, and I was 26 when I finally got serious about getting help. I wish I had gotten effective help sooner, and I don’t want other people to have to do what I did and struggle by themselves for ten years, not knowing they have a recognizable, diagnosable, helpable disorder. Going up and down with each new problem, struggling to keep going, to get out of the hole. Self-medicating, not sleeping well (or too well), not eating enough (or too much), maybe hurting themselves in other ways.
Part of the difficulty for me in getting my problems identified and diagnosed is that I remained largely functional through even my worst times. There were never the falling grades and slipping engagement in chores and activities that are classic symptoms of major depression. Instead, I kept pushing myself through the days or weeks when I looked up at a blue sky and felt a big gray blanket between me and my beautiful surroundings, when doing anything seemed pointless, when I felt simultaneously restless and yet paralyzed, unable to find anything to attach my restlessness to, and even when crushing and inexplicable pain and darkness seemed to crash over me, as happened on a few occasions — once, memorably, during a music theory class.
Finally, one morning in April 2007, I was passing through Burgess Park, looking up at another beautiful Bay Area day but feeling gray, and I thought, this is just not working. There has to be a better way to do this. And I started researching therapists.
I’m simultaneously grateful to and resentful of the part of me that kept going through all that. Without it I might have been diagnosed sooner, but without it I might have given up sooner, too.
I know that depression is not uncommon. I know a number of people who have been diagnosed with depression of some kind, and you probably do too. Some have seen therapists, some not, some have taken pills, some not. Yet I often haven’t shared much about my experience with them, or vice versa. Back in high school I was embarrassed to tell people I was seeing a counselor, and it’s still something that I’ve generally kept private, for reasons both personal and professional. Struggling with daily life the way I do when I’m depressed feels shameful. Why should I find it so hard to get things done, something that everyone else does to all appearances every day without trouble? There can be a significant stigma on it.
I found it really reassuring to know that I have a pattern of symptoms that’s recognized. My perspective on depression is a little uncommon, since I don’t regard my depression as an organic illness, based on brain chemistry — with some perspective to look back on it, it seems to me it was temperamental and/or habitual (in the sense of resulting from habits of thought), and indirectly, situational. But dysthymic depression, regardless of its origin, is a syndrome with recognized symptoms, different from other manifestations of depression, and thus with its own particular challenges, including the challenge of recognizing it in the first place. And it’s awesome that I finally found someone who told me what it was and who could help me with it.
I wish I had known ten years ago that if I kept looking I could find a helpful therapist, and that there wasn’t something unidentifiably, unpredictably wrong with my ability to cope with life. I wish I had known that life without depression would be possible for me, if not easy to achieve. And I wish someone who had experienced these problems and found possible solutions had come out in the open and told me that, and given me their knowledge and their experience and their hope. Told me that someone much like me had struggled and had suffered and had succeeded.
My life today, after two years of therapy (yes, that’s a lot, but I think of it as an investment in my future) is happier than it has been in many years, happier than I thought it would ever be again, and I look forward to more happiness in the future. Therapy helped me unwind the muddle that my thoughts and emotions had gotten into, and identify and change unhelpful ways of experiencing and thinking about myself and my life. Changing the way I approached the situations I was in naturally led me to change some of the situations as well (the indirect situational component), but in many cases it just led to feeling a lot happier about the same situation.
I still struggle at times with a tendency to think or process experiences the way that I used to, and it’s hard for me to say whether that’s just habit or an inherent, temperamental tendency, although it feels like the latter to me, so I do sometimes wonder if there will always be a bit of uphill struggle for me to avoid those patterns. But on the scale of things it’s a relatively small struggle in a life of much awesome.
So that’s why I’m coming out of the darkness. To be the one offering my experience and my hope, as I wish someone had done for me. It’s not just you struggling. It’s a recognized problem, and one for which there are solutions. The solution I tried may not be the right one for you, but there are solutions. If you’re stuck or floundering, keep trying — and ask for help. The right solution is out there.
This morning I went on the Portland ByCycle Autumn Adventure to Vancouver and back via the two I-Bridges.
In a previous entry I described the ByCycle rides thus:
These rides are awesome. They start after work and end before dark, are hosted by incredibly friendly and knowledgeable city staff, and explore Portland’s bicycle infrastructure and nifty places.
This was a special ride, happening on the weekend rather than after work, and longer than the after-work rides: 25 miles rather than 5-10. Since it says 25 miles right on the description, and I knew perfectly well it was four or five miles from my apartment to the starting point, you’d think I’d be pretty clear that it was going to be a longish ride. But somehow I wasn’t: I kept thinking 20 miles, because it says 2 hours and the usual PBC pace is ~10mph.
Furthermore, yesterday in Portland it was in the eighties and sunny — a perfect, warm, late summer day. But today proved true to the “Autumn” epithet of the ride. Even now at 3:30, it’s only 68 degrees. This morning it was 58, and raining. I also somehow had a hard time believing it was really going to be wet and yucky out there, even though it said so clearly in the forecast.
So my brain was not really ready, and the adventure was more adventurous than I anticipated. I was wearing long shorts and a short sleeve jersey and jacket, and my summer gloves. My jacket was soaked through before I even arrived at Peninsula park, although I was doing fine staying warm. But after we started out at the group’s slower pace, in a continuing rain, and headed out toward the Columbia river with its associated wind, I got colder and colder, and my left thumb actually went numb — I couldn’t feel it properly when I rubbed against it. It became clear that I should have been wearing leggings and fall/winter gloves, and possibly arm-warmers as well. (My legs were warm enough, but most likely keeping them warm made it hard to make enough heat to keep my immobile hands warm.)
Fortunately, one of the wonderful Transportation Options staff managing the ride, Janice, lent me a pair of winter gloves that she wasn’t wearing. I was infinitely grateful for these as we went up the I-205 path: a bike path sandwiched in between two four-lane freeway segments. The path itself was like a normal bike path (blocked off with a low fence, two-way and about 5 feet wide in each direction) but was very, very wet, and very, very loud: probably one of single the least pleasant cycling experiences I’ve ever had. I felt deaf and headachy for a while afterward.
After we got over to Vancouver, it stopped raining for the most part, and with the gloves I felt more comfortable and enjoyed the paths we took along the river. Unfortunately, one person broke a chain, and then another later took a spill on some diagonal railroad tracks. I was very impressed with how well the staff handled everything — they were totally calm and cheerful about it. I was able to offer some band-aids that I often bring with me on rides (though no neosporin; it was in the cabinet at home).
On the way back, it finally cleared up and I was mostly dry (except for my poor sopping wet gloves, socks and shoes) by the time I got back. As the Ecotrust Hot Lips Pizza was on my route back, I decided to stop there and dry out and feed myself. Yum.
The whole ride was quite fascinating even aside from the weather. The first section was through low-traffic streets in North Portland, and then in an area west of the airport that seemed like it was almost in a different city/decade — quiet, semi-rural roads and houses. Very nifty. Then Marine Drive and the Marine Drive path to the airport and the I-205 path — a narrow bike lane, and a nice wide multi-use path, but very wet and windy.
The approach to the 205 path was quite well signed and designed — the street crossing of Marine Drive wasn’t signalized, but it was signed, with a light-activating button, and junctions were fairly clearly marked. Getting off on the other side was the same way — the path came down, veered left, and abruptly we were in a quiet neighborhood full of trees, then on a quiet street.
The paths on the Vancouver waterfront were impressive, wide and smooth, with new condos behind them and lots of trees, bushes, and other plant life. We went through several parks and saw lots of signs for the path showing that a lot of effort was recently put into it to revive the waterfront area.
The I-5 path was a totally different story. Although plenty of signs (similar to Portland’s green bike route signs, with distances and directions) directed us there, once we reached it we had to cross the street in a random and nearly unmarked spot. The path itself is set to one side of the bridge, and is one-way on that side (I assume there’s another side but didn’t see it). It’s a shared bike/ped path that is not even wide enough for a bike to pass a pedestrian unless the pedestrian ducks to one side when a pillar isn’t in the way. Still, the experience was less inherently unpleasant than the 205 path (quieter, because you’re to one side and have some steel supports between), and the bridge itself is certainly more attractive — like the Hawthorne Bridge on crack, kinda. (I can’t believe anyone wants to replace it with a 12-lane monstrosity, but that’s another story. ) But when you get to the other side, the access is TERRIBLE. Words are inadequate to convey its TERRIBLENESS. You have to get off the path, go around in a confusing way, cross the street a few times, ride on the sidewalk, cross the street again, and finally you’re on a path, which then curves around confusingly again. I have no idea where we were, and I’m so glad that I did it with a group led by someone who knew the way.
The fact that it’s so completely easy to take I-5 in a car to Vancouver (I’ve never done it but I can tell you how to do it from my place) and so completely confusing to navigate and/or unpleasant to do it on a bike is a classic example of how our transportation system is set up to encourage driving. It’s easy to drive; on a bike, it takes dedication to navigate and a certain amount of chutzpah to deal with the unpleasant noise and limited facilities on offer.
The freeway-crossings part of this was sufficiently educational that I’m glad I went, even if I did get wet and cold. I do like riding in the rain — I just don’t like doing so at 10mph when I’m underdressed. Can I suggest an optional, but planned, mid-route coffee break next time?
I’ve been wearing my FiveFingers around town (mostly to work and back) this week and last week, on and off. Flat concrete remains a tough surface for me to walk on. Every time I start again, I feel like I’ve gone back to square one, with the hurting heels. But there have definitely been moments when I’ve gotten everything in sync and walking feels totally different but very comfortable. It’s the same general principles as I listed before — shorter strides, more hip movement, better foot usage. But sometimes it only seems to ‘help’ (I still feel uncomfortable, but less so) and sometimes it all lines up and everything feels just right.
It reminds me a bit of what used to happen when I took Feldenkrais lessons — everything would get lined up for a while and moving would feel really cool and comfortable, then it would go back to normal. Line up, go back, line up, go back. I’m not sure I ever got any of the neural rewiring from Feldenkrais to really ‘take’, probably mostly because I didn’t keep practicing it — it was easy enough to keep moving the way I was moving (and the serious problem that I was trying to address through Feldenkrais and other movement therapies, my RSI, was eventually addressed through another method entirely). There’s a great temptation to go back to the habitual patterns of movement because the transition is slow, difficult, and sometimes uncomfortable. But knowing that from Feldenkrais I’m more willing to keep trying with the FiveFingers until it finally clicks in (for good, or at least for most of the time). Or it doesn’t. But it’s a fun experiment.
For now though, my heels are sore: back to my Keens.
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