Shek's Footprint

I am fairly car light if you read my Car Dependency page. It is a pain to be paying what I do for my car. The car in question is a 2007 Saturn Aura XE bought brand new with minimal down-payment. The sixty month payment schedule is hefty but reasonable if I use it a lot. I dont. Moreover, I have only had car insurance since the beginning of 2006. There are no violations in my record yet but I havent established myself as a safe driver to get a sub-hundred dollar insurance payment. If you do some rough math, I am paying upwards of $500 to park the car under my apartment every month.

The best option would be to sell the car and use the non-existent public transportation of the great city of Jacksonville FL! My other anchor is Laya. She is a fairly large dog, just as female greyhounds are. I need some mode of transportation in case of emergencies. Once these problems are creatively solved, I will be able to live car free. There have been thoughts of selling my car and buying a sub-thousand dollar beater-car for emergencies but that line of thought is a work in progress.

I am reading “How to Live Well without owning a car” by Chris Balish. It is a brand new book borrowed from the library with my brand new library card. Lets see if I can pick up something creative from that book.

Johny Jones was killed crossing a road on a bicycle in Jacksonville. Thanks to the efforts of Matt Uhrig, this accident has been brought to the attention of a news channel that was ready to do some real investigation contrary of this channel (please read their comments) and this one.

Please see the news report and video here: link

A ghost bike has been planted on the site as a quite statement to remind us of who we lost and to remind motorists to be more careful. More info on ghost bikes here: link

(picture courtesy First Coast News)

I am picking up this line from one of Ron White’s shows. It goes something like, “Marry intelligent! Plastic surgery is a wonderful thing but there aint a pill in this world to fix stupid!”

Bike Commuting Tips blog has this post earlier today: link

It talks about how accidents with cyclists have increased as more cyclists get on the road without adequate knowledge of bicycle safety. I read it in the afternoon and thought about all the safe steps I take, the safest of them all being knowing my bicycle and its limits. Controlling the lane when necessary is also very important. As I was coming back home at 8:45 pm (fairly dark), there is a section of road that is only two lanes, no shoulder and very unsafe sidewalk. Three or four cyclists were traveling in the opposite direction. No lights, front or rear which is against the law and no reflective strips and clothes. They were just asking for an accident to happen.

Not only an accident, they are also contributing to motorists discomfort towards cyclists that I have to deal with when I am on the road tomorrow. I do occasionally flip a bird at agitated motorists but it is not adding to their frustration. Then ones that blare their horns and pass me at impatient speeds have already decided that I am the scum that is holding them from going 40 in a 35. Flipping a bird is merely self satisfaction.

Another day, I saw a man riding his bike with a kid (10-14 yrs old). The boy was not wearing a helmet, neither was the man. They were riding on sidewalks and not even waiting for the walk signal. All this drama at rush hour traffic. I was waiting at the light to cross and yelled at them to get the child a helmet. Not only is that unsafe for the child but he is also learning bicycling the wrong way.

The irony is to talk about saving the planet when people arent going to take an extra step in their own safety!

Yehuda Moon has a funny article on this:

Why should we wear a helmet!

This is the only reason that I would never buy a single-family-home in a suburbia type environment. Even though the values of single-family homes appreciate more than that of condos, I’d pay the price in stress, overweight, diabetes or heart disease. Living in a closer packed environment is a lot better for the mind. You get to step out of your door and be a part of the society instead of enclosing yourself in a capsule and driving 2 miles to just get out of the neighborhood.

I wish my work moves Downtown so I can move to San Marco or Downtown and live a more healthy life. Till then, it is me on my bicycle and irritated suburbia-living-drivers wondering how I can be on the road with them!

This post appears in my other blog. I have more to say about being environmentally conscious and bicycling and mundane things like that. So sheksfootprint was born.

Strip-malls are probably the most iconic sights of North America after SUV’s and McDonalds! Jacksonville FL probably is the Mecca of such iconic sights. The vastness of the city area has given the developers and planners untrammeled opportunities to build flat out inclusive of massive parking lots to park those gas guzzlers.

Even the more recent up-scale construction projects like the prestigious Town Center Mall is nothing but a glorified strip mall. You don’t create quality by replacing a Chinese Takie-Outie with a P.F. Changs and the mom-and-pop-Italian-restaurant by a Maggiano’s. In their defense, there is a prestigious condo complex attached to the mall that even in today’s market is selling at $300,000 plus prices. There is this one lane inside this strip mall that is brick paved with no cars and a little pond with colorful fish in it. Makes it look all cool and European. You almost want to wander into those streets and shop at the designer stores and be sure that they are paying for common area maintenance for these stylish streets and are charging you for it!

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