Leaves And Volts

In preparing for next week's Eppie's Great Race I've taken the bicycle most days to work and haven't carpooled with the neighbors. Indeed, yesterday was the first time in three weeks, during which time they've undergone a schedule change to get their kids to daycare/school.

We're in west Elk Grove, where their new plan is to drive southwest towards I-5, drop off one kid, then head east along Whitelock, past Franklin High School, then further south to drop off the second kid, then start the trek (now some seventeen miles distant) north along Highway 99 to work. They will be leaving 30 minutes earlier, starting Monday, to get to work on time. I think I'll just stick with the e-Tran #52 from now on; I've used it many times before but now it will be my primary option.

What I didn't realize was just how much of an automobile sewer the 'new' subdivision tracts of Quail Ridge (where there's no quail, and no ridge) and Bilby Meadows (where there's no meadow) are. Damn. These 'new' subdivisions in this part of Elk Grove are total automobile dominated suburban wastelands, but, as it is, are the most desirable places to live in Elk Grove because the trees haven't yet leafed out, the housal unit exterior paint hasn't yet been discolored from the patina of automotive emissions, the schools are shiny and new with no hint of graffiti or vandalism, the sod in the parks are still homogeneous, no Crab or Dallis grass infestations...that is, the houses look like they've just emerged from the autoclave, sterilized; in other words, they are idyllic and beautiful places to live.

They are. So long as you don't mind the mandatory ownership of the 2.3 vehicles needed to get yourself in and out of Shangri La, so long as you don't mind having to compete with the 12,000 other Shangri La'ians who are also trying to get in and out of there, so long as you just live and don't mind playing, working, and consuming elsewhere, and so long as you don't mind having to deal with the thru-commuting of a west Elk Grovian family driven by a speeding impatient man trying to shuttle his kids from one side of this suburb to another.

My neighbors were 105% car dependent before having to take the scenic route through south Elk Grove, but now they are even more so. One only hopes that Nissan and Chevrolet manage to build Leaves and Volts that accelerate as quickly as their gasoline powered models or we're going to have a national riot on our hands, if our tens of millions of thru-commuters can't take the 25-mph curvilinear streets at 45, or can't take the 40-mph collector roads at 60 to get their kids to softball or tuba practice.

I have to hand it to our Elk Grove city council -- can't imagine how a rotating group of five people could fuck things up so badly as to build a city so car dependent and so devoid of jobs to pay for it all. But they did.

I have to hand it to our Elk Grovian residents -- can't imagine how a rotating group of a hundred forty thousand people could fuck things up so badly as to be so enamored with car dependency and traffic, living nowhere near their jobs to pay for it all, living nowhere near their stores, their GameStops, their Asian foot massage "therapists." But they did.

And I have to hand it to my neighbors -- nice individuals, to be sure -- but I can't imagine how it is that they've just assumed that driving 60 miles a day is just...simply...normal, that we'd have to fuck up our sounds, coasts, beaches and marine life so badly in the relentless extrication of oil needed to power their normal.

But they did.