The Boulevard at Dawn

After a week of northbound I-5 lane closures, it's exactly what I predicted; a non-event. There was more congestion 1,500 feet above the construction zone by all the news choppers than vehicular traffic on the ground. This region's commuters...survived. We survived! Now the freeway is back open for a week and we can get back to the serious work of commuting again.

Whew.

Indeed, the closures modified my behavior as I didn't take the bus at all this week, and instead opted to ride all five days by bike. I thought it a good thing to try, to see if I could do it, and yes, I did it, but it was pure drudgery. There is no way I could exist by bicycle alone.

I was featured in an article on the SMUD intranet last week with a bike photo, as someone who commutes regularly. I became a SuperStar. I got hit with numerous e-mails from other employees looking for their own way to commute by bike -- "what kind of bike should I get?" "I also live in the Grove and want to commute in, too...What route do you take?" "Can you help me find bus service where I live?" "How long does it take you?"

It's actually kinda cool to hear people finally see biking and bussing as viable modes. What I would like to see, but will not in my lifetime, is a decision by our local leaders to take away one, just one, north-south road and convert it into a scooter/horse/bike/jogging path. Convert just one of these damn roads and with sustained high energy prices you'd see thousands, thousands! of people use it. The single biggest thing people want is an area free of automobiles.

When you get away from it all, on holiday, on a weekend or whenever, I'd bet you get away to an environment free of vehicular traffic. The beach, a festival, Disneyworld, Great America, an airshow, hiking, a riverboat cruise, a casino, the mall, a concert, museums, historical points of interest. The one thing all of these have in common -- no automobiles. We need all these places to escape to, to flee from the environments we live in.

When you go to an art display, how often do you see cars and freeways present in any of the work? People never paint cars, always something else: flowers, fields, animals, other people, barns, sailboats, sea creatures, farm implements, mountains, and outdoor cafes. Even the Boulevard of Broken Dreams doesn't have a car in it. You might find a motorcycle from time to time, but not cars and freeways. For something that dominates all our living environments, you'd think we'd have them more developed in our culture -- in song, in sculpture, in theatre, in literature, and in art. Nope. Nowhere to be found.

So I'm gonna start posting photos of my own environment to make up for this apparent oversight by our nations artists. Franklin Blvd. at sunset. Highway 99 at dawn. The Laguna Pavillions parking lot with a fresh winter's frost.