PHQOPEC

I wish I could capture and post on my monologues all the faces of all the Prius drivers that pass me on my bicycle.

I'm pretty sure there's this silent competition going on...Prius drivers are one-upping every other straight gasoline car out there, and they know it. That's why they put on vanity plates like LES GILT, PHQOPEC, or bumper stickers like "Stop Terrorism -- Drive a Hybrid." But I am one-upping every one of them, and they know it. I know it, because the looks I get from them are unmistakable.

If these drivers were really so fucking concerned about oil dependence, war, global warming, etc., etc., they'd be demanding living arrangements that aren't so god damned dependent on a vehicle. It doesn't matter what the power source is...you still have a 3,000 pound concoction of steel, rubber, toxic heavy metals and toxic fluids usually motoring a solo white occupant across six lanes of asphalt or steel reinforced concrete.

It isn't the car that's the problem. It's the American driving it, who thinks that because it's a Prius they have the right to live thirty two miles from work, the right to solo motoring alongside two hundred million other solo motorists. If every one of these were a hybrid, would we really be any better off? Would we? We'd still blow a few hundred billion man-hours stuck in traffic, we'd still retain all the social problems of suburbia, we'd still squader all our national energies on vehicle dependent sprawl that has no future, and we'd still be as fat and as depressed a nation as ever.

We would gain very little. But we'd think we were saving the planet, now wouldn't we?

Bike Rentals

I am admittedly struggling, struggling, to find a bike to rent in Dusseldorf.

My plan is to fly in, take some sort of public transportation/cab to the town center and find a bike to rent for the week. I need to find a good bike because the plan is to bike the 40 kM to Gelsenkirchen and stay there for most of the week, biking to the Rock Hard festival, and the Monday when I leave, I'll bike back to Dusseldorf in the morning, drop off the bike, find a way to the airport, board the plane at 1:00 PM and fly home.

Sounds like it would work?

Actually, it sounds like a pain in the ass. It would be a particularly sharp, stabbing pain in the ass if it rains. Imagine boarding a plane for a 19 hour flight home soaking wet, if they'd even let me on board.

Of course, all of this hinges on my ability to travel to Germany by backpack only...perhaps with a small side bag that I could bungee to the bike. I can't say I've even come close to trying this at home, let alone in a country whose language is completely unintelligible to me. I speak all of three words of German, can't read a word of German, and can't write a word of German.

There is potential. The good news is that most Germans speak very good broken English. I can eat anything, so if it came to ordering by finger, I'll eat whatever they give me. I can say "Ein Bier, Bitte," which will take me far, my friends, it will take me far. Biking is a viable form of personal mobility in Dusseldorf, unlike my hometown, homestate, or homenation. I can bring my own tyre pump and tyre kit. I could see a large swath of Westphalia that I would never be able to see by car on the A2. I could save money...rental cars are outrageous.

I am extremely hopeful that this outfit will be open and will rent. Otherwise...I don't have a whole lot of options, because I can't seem to find much. Dusseldorf has a NextBike bike sharing network, and this might also work...but I have severe reservations about biking 40 kM on a bike made for intowners while plastered with a billboard underneath it to a thrash metal concert.

Active Ignorance

I watched the national news this evening where Brian Williams in the second segment hurriedly rushed through reporting that the top Afghanistan general is out, David McKiernan.

My family, myself, and two relatives were all just downstairs watching the comedic ventriloquist Jeff Dunham. That guy is funny as hell, but as soon as that was over, everyone scattered while I turned on the news.

I was struck by how the reporting of the changing of the top war commander was handled with all the flair and interest of a coaching change for a ball team, how matter-of-fact this was presented, and how my family (and, frankly, I) couldn't give a rat's ass about it.

Afghanistan is a forgotten war to the vast majority of Americans. I put myself into that camp this evening when I realized, flopped out on the couch, how totally disconnected I am, someone who self-proclaims to keep up with current affairs. I am as unconcerned about a change in the top leadership in our major war as much as I am unconcerned about who's coaching the Clemson men's basketball team.

But it dawned on me...there are a hell of a lot more Americans who can tell you the Tiger's coaches name or the pit crew leader for Jeff Burton rather than what general's in charge of our war(s).

Cognitive Dissonance

I am going to leave a few tons of carbon in my wake when I travel to Germany later this month. This seemingly completely contradicts my personal covenant to tread lightly.

All my biking, all my bus riding, all my solar share and personal solar production, all of it, will be thrown out the window with one single airplane trip. I will contribute more carbon (.18 kG per mile) than I have saved over the past year and a half.

I suppose it's a good thing that I've never fully embraced global warming...otherwise, the cognitive dissonance would be paralyzing. For now, it's just a little nagging that's going on inside my head, but I can deal with that. I haven't embraced global warming because it's a ridiculous thing to worry about while we continue to build local living arrangements that mandate that we will squander all the remaining carbon stores presented to us. Regardless of whether anthropomorphic warming is true, we are mandated to convert that stored carbon into diffuse carbon dioxide. Yep, we're gonna burn every fucking drop of oil we can before we accept that it's the commuting thirty one miles one-way to an office-park and back and it's the filling of our homes with imported merchandise that's a source of global warming.

Or...recreational trips to see a thrash metal concert in a foreign country. I have long touted my use of recreational oil. How can this dissonant tune be muted?

Halal

Finally, after four years, I convinced my wife to try the Afghan restaurant on Franklin and Laguna. And it was sublime.

The strip mall "complex" at this corner is probably the worst design any suburban architect or urban planner has ever come up with. At major intersections in every damn city in America all we get are these clusters of shopping centers, strip retail and supermarkets. But Elk Grove has taken the cake with the design here at the northwest corner by creating a dozen strip retail outlets that face...the parking lot. Not visible from the street. While there are six hundred and ninety two thousand vehicles driving by these strip stores monthly, the vacancy rate has exceeded 60% since it's been built and will remain an utter fucking wasteland for decades to come because it's a noplace, unknown to all pedestrians and vehicles.

In this wasteland have come and gone about three dozen local retailers, but one that has surprisingly stood the test of Elk Grovian ineptitude is the Afghan Kabob Palace. This makes sense, as places like this always tend to survive due to word of mouth and a culture that values the company of each other rather than the company of material goods. We walked into a stripmall storefront as barren and desolate as you can possibly find (wondering if it was even open) into a restaurant full of locals, bustling with activity, full of patrons...essentially thriving. The Kabob Palace actually rents two stores, with the wall to the adjacent store removed providing for a banquet or large seating area for parties and such.

I was so glad to finally try this place...aside from a penchant for exotic food, I am so in favor of buying local products from local merchants. While the raw materials might not be of a local origin, I can never really be sure in a restaurant to begin with, but a locally owned store at least has a much higher probability of sourcing local raw materials than any chain restaurant. The lamb might come from a Halal butcher in the East Bay. Cilantro from the Capay valley. Jasmine rice from central California.

Anyway, there is no closer a restaurant to my house than this place, and for four years I've not once tried it, but I've must have thought about it twenty score times. And my wife liked it. Someplace close for us to continue to get good food while keeping more dollars in the community.

Shop Local

Elk Grove, in their monthly newsletter, is promoting the "shop local" line.

This is as mendacious as it gets. There is virtually nothing about Elk Grove that's local. Nothing. If there happens to be a local store owned by local residents, their products they sell are almost certainly non-local. In these cases, any value-added contributions to non-local resources are indeed local, but name me an establishment that does this?

The obvious connection is sales taxes. This contributes to Elk Grovian coffers, yes. But when I go to the TGI Friday's on Laguna Blvd and order from their menu that was designed by some focus group on the fifth floor of their corporate headquarters in Dallas, TX, I am most certainly ordering from a menu from a corporation that doesn't give a flying fuck about what sorts of local foods Elk Grove produces, what local area farmers produce, or even what this state produces. If some eleven dollar an hour twenty six year old "sampler taster" on the fourth floor says the chicken products from Arkansas are what she prefers, and the accountants on the seventh floor agree that nationwide distribution from these particular Arkansas chicken wholesalers meet the company's basic tests for quality and product repeatable reliability, then Arkansas it is. 600,000 pounds per month are "procured," distributed by TGI's 7,000 tractor-trailer "warehouses on wheels," and delivered as signature Jack Daniel's flavored chicken products.

This is local? Because I bought the end result in Elk Grove?

Salmonella Sam

Almost every morning on my bike ride up Franklin Blvd. there's a taco truck parked off the road just past 47th Avenue, across from the Campbell's Soup plant. If you ever eat from roach coaches then you'd know what a 5-speed is. They are awesome.

But...the problem I have with this one is that while it is parked off the sidewalk and curb, parked in about a 20 foot space between a fence and the street, its patrons park in the bike lane right on the fucking street, and it turns out that I am almost always faced with having to ride in the traffic lane with traffic coming off the traffic signal. And the signs posted all around couldn't be any clearer:

This is about one of 7 "choke points" on my bike ride where I never feel comfortable. Every morning I scan the intersection looking for police to point out the obvious infractions but I never seem to come across a cruiser at that intersection. This mobile truck can be seen on Google Maps; it happened to be there at the time of the scan along with three cars, one of which is parked illegally on the road, forcing me into the lane.

Again, it isn't the gut truck...it's the patrons. They refuse to walk the 60 extra feet to legally park on 45th. Each of these overweight Americans roll up to the Trick Truck (the Trichinosis truck) driven by Salmonella Sam, and open their doors and roll themselves out, forcing me right into the traffic lane.

Now here's an interesting sidebar. The City of Sacramento issued an ordinance that will effectively ban mobile catering trucks from occupying any given spot for more than 30 minutes. Apparently, this ordinance is the death knell for many mobile trucks in the city, because quite a few of them are parked semi-permanently. Nine trucks were grandfathered but only until 2012.

Trick trucks, in my opinion, are rather seedy looking affairs, but in the context of food as a culture they represent something that's completely lacking in our supermarkets, in our chained restaurants...these treat food as a commodity, without any flair in preparation, with no culture. When I go to Raley Field and watch a River Cat's baseball game, I can only eat the same hot dogs, the same licorice ropes, the same salted pretzels with mustard that I'd find at a King's basketball game, or an Oakland Raider game, or even a high school wrestling match. A trick truck at the Folsom auction might sell a carne asada torta that I'd never, never! find anywhere else in such a public venue, and the loss of variety is just one more thing we choose to lose when we ordinate trick trucks out of existence for the sake of ensuring repeatable property and sales taxes from brick and mortar restaurants.

Soon, the only 5-speed you can get will be an imported Fiat.