I was going to tell you about the afternoon I intended to take the bus into Seattle again. It was an event at the Seattle Public Library. I was on a roll. No inertia here. I could really rock this resolution to have a smaller carbon footprint.
Cool!
I knew how to get to the Seattle Public Library on the bus. Simple, right? I printed out my itinerary and the fare, gathered my change, and double-checked my calendar for the time.
The place!
It wasn't at the downtown library. It was at the Greenlake branch instead.
Crap!
I still had plenty of time to get the new bus schedule.
Crap! I would have to either take two buses to ride two hours to get there and another two to get back, or I'd have to take three buses at an hour and three-quarters each way. The fare almost doubled.
I clicked the address into my navigator map on my phone. Thirty-four minutes with a toll and forty-one without.
What is my time worth?
These days, my time is my most precious commodity. Yeah, and I'm a frickin' housewife. How the hell do working people have time to ride the bus?
I've always complained about the buses in the Seattle area. They're great if you want to get from Seattle somewhere and back. The airport? No problem. The University of Washington? Piece of cake and you can study on the bus. Bellevue or Issaquah? I know that works great! I used it for jury duty and for the Seattle Art Museum. I was excited to use it for the events at the Seattle Public Library.
Going north and south through Seattle, King County Metro is a pretty good choice. Plus, there's the light rail, north and south only. Is it just my perception that going east to west took a whole lot longer to develop and hasn't reached a pinnacle yet?
There used to be a bus stop near my house, but during one of the recessions, it disappeared. Do you remember when Tim Eyman sounded smart by reducing the amount of money we spent in Washington state? It seemed like that man bankrupted the state. After his first initiatives passed, public transit seemed to shrink, we had to pay five dollars to walk our dogs at a state park, and the state looked like it stopped fully funding public schools and haven't yet figured out how to fund them yet. Is all that Tim Eyman's fault? I could be wrong, but it all happened right after he passed his initiatives. It seems like we're still trying to recover from that. Just ask a teacher how much he spends on school supplies for his students. It took a few years but eventually, a couple of park and rides opened up.
The Issaquah Highlands park and ride is minutes from my house and looks very pretty in a breeze.
I'll tell you about that a little later.
But I never did get proficient with the east/west buses even when they began to develop.
Blame it on needing comfort as a mom. No mom wants to be stuck on a bus with a screaming sweaty baby in a wet diaper..
Nick is seventeen. You can see how long I've been thinking about this.
If I were in a car and Nick was fussy, I'd just drive straight home no matter where I was. One time when he goobered his last diaper and the shorts he was wearing, I drove to a grocery store, wrapped his naked butt in a baby blanket, and bought an oversized T-shirt and a box of disposable diapers. Then, we went right back to the park where we'd been playing. Piece of cake. I didn't have to figure out schedules. I didn't have to balance a stinky baby, a diaper bag, and a phone to figure out how to get where I was going.
I'm a little claustrophobic, just a little. I like to be able to leave a place if I need to. If I can't just walk, ride, or drive away, it bothers me.
Especially with a young child.
It got harder to imagine when he learned to walk. Who wanted to walk across all that traffic in Seattle even if we weren't jaywalking? I took him to parks, lakes, and rivers. Where are the buses to those parks, lakes, and rivers? The Discover pass was an integral part of my itinerary.
The Metro had barely network enough to get me from one town to another, let alone to get me from one lake to another.
We drove everywhere. I forgot about the bus, even when we went to the Pacific Science Center. I totally could have managed that. But it's a mindset, don't you see? A groove. A way of thinking, moving, and being.
I live in a car mindset.
It's hard to change that.
I'll be honest. I have little experience with buses and trains. Before I got my license, I learned how to ride the bus into my small hometown. It was great! I could stop at the library, the grocery store, have a piano lesson, walk around the university, and have a great time as long as I didn't borrow too many books to have to lug back home.
Later, when I lived outside New York City, I rode the subway only if I was with people who knew where they were going. I would never have gone there myself. The worst part was the smell on the landings half way down into the subway. The NYC subway smelled worse than a portapotty. And it was so confusing. One time, I was sure we were getting off when my friend grabbed me and pulled me back on at the last second. The next stop had an almost the identical name. Plus, you had the opportunity to get off in a bad neighborhood by accident. After that, my friends flanked me so I didn't get my naive ass lost in a place I didn't know how to handle.
When I was near NYC, my sister lived in DC. Any time I visited her, we totally took the train to go anywhere. It was easy to use, clean, and the stops were color-coded. I could understand color-coded. If I lived in DC, I would be a transit rider. I know it.
But not in Seattle, not yet.
Seattle has the excuse of nearly being an island. Elliot Bay and the Puget Sound flank the west side. Lake Union and the Chittenden locks cap the north. And Lake Washington and parallel with that, Lake Sammamish, block it from where I am further east.
Who the hell planned a city here?
I know the deep harbor is a big draw, but it is full of transportation bottlenecks, especially going east and west.
So, the other day, I was driving in my car - just sit back and feel the irony - and I heard David Hyde talking about whether Seattle should declare war on parking to lower its carbon footprint.
Go on. You need to listen to this. I can wait for you to come back.
See, despite our almost unanimous environmental patriotism, the Seattle area hasn't managed to shrink its carbon footprint since the phrase was coined by William Rees in 1992 and someone began the calculations for the city.
I'd be the first to argue that a city that has grown as much as Seattle has in the past twenty-six years might have some considerable trouble shrinking a carbon footprint when its population was exploding. Can anyone say Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, and Starbucks?
But that doesn't mean we can't try, even if we have to work to manage to ride the bus more often. I don't like trying to park in Seattle anyway. Those parking spots are tight and getting expensive. Maybe when I want to go somewhere and can't, I should contact King County Metro to tell them of the need. I don't have to be mean about it, just persistent. I just have to get out of my comfort zone, at least a little.
Some time, I'm going to tell you about how I could be biking to church on Sundays. These days, my excuse is that I'm too damned tired or lazy or late. And who wants to be a big fat sweaty mess in church?
Thank you for listening, jules
Cool!
I knew how to get to the Seattle Public Library on the bus. Simple, right? I printed out my itinerary and the fare, gathered my change, and double-checked my calendar for the time.
The place!
It wasn't at the downtown library. It was at the Greenlake branch instead.
Crap!
I still had plenty of time to get the new bus schedule.
Crap! I would have to either take two buses to ride two hours to get there and another two to get back, or I'd have to take three buses at an hour and three-quarters each way. The fare almost doubled.
I clicked the address into my navigator map on my phone. Thirty-four minutes with a toll and forty-one without.
What is my time worth?
These days, my time is my most precious commodity. Yeah, and I'm a frickin' housewife. How the hell do working people have time to ride the bus?
I've always complained about the buses in the Seattle area. They're great if you want to get from Seattle somewhere and back. The airport? No problem. The University of Washington? Piece of cake and you can study on the bus. Bellevue or Issaquah? I know that works great! I used it for jury duty and for the Seattle Art Museum. I was excited to use it for the events at the Seattle Public Library.
Going north and south through Seattle, King County Metro is a pretty good choice. Plus, there's the light rail, north and south only. Is it just my perception that going east to west took a whole lot longer to develop and hasn't reached a pinnacle yet?
There used to be a bus stop near my house, but during one of the recessions, it disappeared. Do you remember when Tim Eyman sounded smart by reducing the amount of money we spent in Washington state? It seemed like that man bankrupted the state. After his first initiatives passed, public transit seemed to shrink, we had to pay five dollars to walk our dogs at a state park, and the state looked like it stopped fully funding public schools and haven't yet figured out how to fund them yet. Is all that Tim Eyman's fault? I could be wrong, but it all happened right after he passed his initiatives. It seems like we're still trying to recover from that. Just ask a teacher how much he spends on school supplies for his students. It took a few years but eventually, a couple of park and rides opened up.
The Issaquah Highlands park and ride is minutes from my house and looks very pretty in a breeze.
I'll tell you about that a little later.
But I never did get proficient with the east/west buses even when they began to develop.
Blame it on needing comfort as a mom. No mom wants to be stuck on a bus with a screaming sweaty baby in a wet diaper..
Nick is seventeen. You can see how long I've been thinking about this.
If I were in a car and Nick was fussy, I'd just drive straight home no matter where I was. One time when he goobered his last diaper and the shorts he was wearing, I drove to a grocery store, wrapped his naked butt in a baby blanket, and bought an oversized T-shirt and a box of disposable diapers. Then, we went right back to the park where we'd been playing. Piece of cake. I didn't have to figure out schedules. I didn't have to balance a stinky baby, a diaper bag, and a phone to figure out how to get where I was going.
I'm a little claustrophobic, just a little. I like to be able to leave a place if I need to. If I can't just walk, ride, or drive away, it bothers me.
Especially with a young child.
It got harder to imagine when he learned to walk. Who wanted to walk across all that traffic in Seattle even if we weren't jaywalking? I took him to parks, lakes, and rivers. Where are the buses to those parks, lakes, and rivers? The Discover pass was an integral part of my itinerary.
The Metro had barely network enough to get me from one town to another, let alone to get me from one lake to another.
We drove everywhere. I forgot about the bus, even when we went to the Pacific Science Center. I totally could have managed that. But it's a mindset, don't you see? A groove. A way of thinking, moving, and being.
I live in a car mindset.
It's hard to change that.
I'll be honest. I have little experience with buses and trains. Before I got my license, I learned how to ride the bus into my small hometown. It was great! I could stop at the library, the grocery store, have a piano lesson, walk around the university, and have a great time as long as I didn't borrow too many books to have to lug back home.
Later, when I lived outside New York City, I rode the subway only if I was with people who knew where they were going. I would never have gone there myself. The worst part was the smell on the landings half way down into the subway. The NYC subway smelled worse than a portapotty. And it was so confusing. One time, I was sure we were getting off when my friend grabbed me and pulled me back on at the last second. The next stop had an almost the identical name. Plus, you had the opportunity to get off in a bad neighborhood by accident. After that, my friends flanked me so I didn't get my naive ass lost in a place I didn't know how to handle.
When I was near NYC, my sister lived in DC. Any time I visited her, we totally took the train to go anywhere. It was easy to use, clean, and the stops were color-coded. I could understand color-coded. If I lived in DC, I would be a transit rider. I know it.
But not in Seattle, not yet.
Seattle has the excuse of nearly being an island. Elliot Bay and the Puget Sound flank the west side. Lake Union and the Chittenden locks cap the north. And Lake Washington and parallel with that, Lake Sammamish, block it from where I am further east.
Who the hell planned a city here?
I know the deep harbor is a big draw, but it is full of transportation bottlenecks, especially going east and west.
So, the other day, I was driving in my car - just sit back and feel the irony - and I heard David Hyde talking about whether Seattle should declare war on parking to lower its carbon footprint.
Go on. You need to listen to this. I can wait for you to come back.
See, despite our almost unanimous environmental patriotism, the Seattle area hasn't managed to shrink its carbon footprint since the phrase was coined by William Rees in 1992 and someone began the calculations for the city.
I'd be the first to argue that a city that has grown as much as Seattle has in the past twenty-six years might have some considerable trouble shrinking a carbon footprint when its population was exploding. Can anyone say Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, and Starbucks?
But that doesn't mean we can't try, even if we have to work to manage to ride the bus more often. I don't like trying to park in Seattle anyway. Those parking spots are tight and getting expensive. Maybe when I want to go somewhere and can't, I should contact King County Metro to tell them of the need. I don't have to be mean about it, just persistent. I just have to get out of my comfort zone, at least a little.
Some time, I'm going to tell you about how I could be biking to church on Sundays. These days, my excuse is that I'm too damned tired or lazy or late. And who wants to be a big fat sweaty mess in church?
I have a lot of excuses, don't I? See what I mean about inertia? I drove to the Greenlake branch of the Seattle Public Library.
Thank you for listening, jules
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