the dot connection in new mexico

The most wonderful side effect of my "summer project" is that I'm actually starting to feel more fit and get "hooked' on exercise. Exercise for exercise's sake has never been able to hook me. But since I've started using my bike daily for basic transportation, I'm beginning to feel the exercise "high" that others report from running or working out at the gym.

It's getting easier and easier: to ride up hills, to go faster and further. It's also getting easier to ride on city streets. I'm quite comfortable now on streets that at first seemed treacherous. And I'm learning that there are ways to be safer and more effective riding on city streets.

The Great Taming of Lead Coal Gathering last Friday, July 15, was the first action I participated in around pedestrian issues. Around 60 folks gathered at a corner of Lead Ave in Albuquerque’s Nob Hill neighborhood, bringing their bikes, their kids, their lawn chairs, and signs to remind the drivers speeding past at highway speeds that people live here, people who want to walk, bike and play safely in their own neighborhood.

The overall feel was that of a neighborhood gathering, which indeed it was. The majority of the participants came from the Nob Hill neighborhood, many living right on Lead and Coal where they daily experience the hazards of life along a major traffic arterial.

I finally bit the bullet and headed out on my bike into dreaded NE Heights territory. I had several errands out that way and have wanted to get past the sense that I "must" drive when I simply must go into the Heights. I've seen some of those streets marked "Bike Route," and it doesn't much look like some of those cars want to share the road.

I chose Griegos/Comanche as my best route out, and it wasn't half bad. It goes back and forth between bike lane and bike route (a bike route is where there is no separate lane but cars are reminded by signs to share the road.) Most of it felt fairly comfortable.

The city of Albuquerque has a tough job when it comes to providing public transportation due to the low-density, sprawling suburban subdivision nature of most of its neighborhoods.

For this reason, Albuquerque's transit department mission statement encourages intermodal transportation as a way to increase use of public transportation and decrease single-occupancy-vehicle use. The Bike and Ride program offers bicycle racks on the front of all city buses to make it easier for transit users to ride their bikes to and from sometimes distant bus stops.

I'm starting to get pissed about how difficult it is to really switch from car-driving to more environmentally-friendly modes of transportation here in this lovely but highly unsustainably planned city of Albuquerque.

Today I'd intended to take the bus to TJs camera to bring in my print order. Looking at the bus schedule, had to concede that a four hour bus ride to perform a two minute errand 8 miles away is a way too inefficient use of my time. If I could combine errands it would be different, but even to do the two errands I need to do out in the NE Heights would probably turn it into an 8 hour, 8 bus ride prospect.

So I went in to my local Walgreen's yesterday to find out who to talk to about the possibility of getting a bike rack installed. I didn't have to ask the clerk, as there were three supervisory-looking types standing conspicuously together talking.

They looked pretty open to approach, so I approached them directly. Turned out two of them were this store's managers. The other was apparently a higher-up over all the local Walgreen's.

I asked about the possibility of bike racks, expressing not only that I bike there and that there is no good place to lock up my bike, but that I know this shopping center is slated for redevelopment, with plans to make it more pedestrian friendly, and that this would be a good start.

I came across this article about the Mayo Clinic developing and promoting workstations where people walk on a treadmill or stand rather than sit--a pretty cool idea and one that makes a lot of sense.

Since I work in the public schools, this got me to thinking about the obesity problem in children in the US. How come, in spite of the link of obesity to sedentary lifestyles, schools are still promoting a paradigm of sitting to work?

I mean, kids are being asked to sit still a lot younger and a lot longer than they used to. At the preschool level, some classes now spend the majority of their time sitting to do "pre-academic" work.

I've been doing pretty good with getting around my neighborhood by bike. It's been harder, when I'm neeing to trek out a little further, to make the time to ride the Albuquerque bus. It's so hard to choose what might be an 1 1/2 trip all told when you know it's only 20 minutes by car!

Today I wanted to go to the Patriot Act Town Meeting (www.reformthepatriotact.com) at the Peace and Justice Center (A two bus ride for me), and had plenty of time before and after, so I decided it was a good day to go for it.

It took just under an hour to get to the University area, which gave me time for a pleasant pit stop at El Patio before the meeting. I enjoy riding the bus. It's nice to not be driving and not be hurrying--to have the time and space to just space out. Good people-watching also. It reminded me of what I like so much about riding the subway when I visit my sibs in NYC.

This is a pretty simple one--the solar your mother used to use. I'm really into promoting solar energy on the larger level, but have I been using it to dry my clothes? No! What a waste of all that New Mexico sun!

I understand that clothes dryers consume a lot of energy. Finally, I get around to making the change. I walk to Hacienda Home Center. Walk home with a clotheline and a bag of clothespins. That's all I need for my solar project. When I do my laundry now, I just tie the line between a pole on my back porch and a tree.

When I started my "summer project" I still held the assumption that if I really wanted to live a more pedestrian lifestyle, I would have to move to a more pedestrian and bike-friendly neighborhood like Nob Hill or the University area.

I live in the Los Ranchos in the far North Valley of Albuquerque, not a pedestrian kind of a berg (tou don't see folks strolling down North Fourth), nor a hopping retail center. Nonetheless, I thought I'd give it a try--see just how much I would be able to meet my consumer "needs" in my own neighborhood.

Suprisingly, since I started this a week ago, I've so far been able to make all my purchasing treks by bike or on foot. It just required a little shift in my thinking: Why automatically assume I need to go to a big box like Home Depot with its overwhelming choices when the much more modest Hacienda Home Center just a mile from me. Not to mention Chase Hardware, a little hardware store that somehow manages to have just about any obscure thing one might be looking for, wirh a person just waiting at the front to help you find it.