the dot connection in new mexico

so i'm completely hooked on flickr these days. i've known about flickr for a few years now but in the past month i've started trying to take a picture a day. and now i'm hooked on making collages...yikes. oh well. i could have worse addictions.

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.

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.

We took the Rapid Ride to Pridefest on Saturday, then caught the 66 bus back down Central. More examples of how using public transporation can move us away from insulation and towards connection--and not just with those who are very like us--which is who most of us tend to connect with in our social affiliations, but with whoever happens to be there in the very public space that is the city bus.

Waiting for the bus on the way back, a man who was also waiting spoke with us. He told us he'd been living on the streets for three days. He identified himself as Navajo, and showed us his ID from Shiprock. He asked, "Wasn't there some kind of parade here today, a gay parade?" When we told him yes, and that we'd been there, he told us that he has a cousin who is gay, told us his name, as if we might know him.

I like to go on little trips by myself--Normally in my car. Last week I made a little trek to the Grand Canyon and left my car at home. I travelled by foot, city bus, Amtrak and shuttle.

The hardest part of the journey was the 1/4 mile on foot schlepping all my luggage. Though the public transportation where I live (Albuquerque) is not the greatest, I timed it well, and arrived at the bus stop just as it was coming down 4th street.

The bus took me straight to the downtown Alvarado Transportation Center, right next to the Amtrak station. I was a half hour early, but the train was already loading--everything went without a hitch.

in working on putting together a few web sites -- one for a neighborhood association and another for a group of activists organizing to calm traffic on a few streets -- i've found that i come back to drupal-based civic space labs project for my web content managment package of choice. i think that going with straight drupal migh be a good thing, except that they don't have an easy installer like civic space does. drupal also requires that you do too much manually in a shell, and my web hosting package just won't do it.