Shek's Footprint

I have been working on a few things to enhance my bicycle commutes.

The first is a traffic light improvement. I wait on an average of two cycles at the eastbound intersection of A. C. Skinner Pkwy and Southside Blvd for the light to change to green. Unless a motor vehicle, usually a car or truck, pulls up in the lane next to me, the light refuses to cycle. This involves waiting under the blistering noon heat for over 7 minutes for the light to change.

I called The City of Jacksonville with this maintenance issue Monday before 11 am. The number is 904 255 8970. It has been two days and I have not noticed any changes. I will wait till next Monday to follow up on the maintenance issue.

The second thing that I have mostly delegated away is to get a sign that says ‘Bicycles Take Full Lane’ (see image below courtesy Cyclelicious).

I want to see these installed on narrow (less than 14 feet wide) two lane roads like the service road that I live on and Touchton Rd which seems to harbour even more insolent motorists than I imagined. Per section 316.2065(5) exception 3, bicycles are not required to be ‘as close to the right as practicable’. In such narrow roads, it is unsafe to continue along the right hand edge.

Thirdly, I have acquired a riding buddy for 80% of my ride home from work. Jose works in the office building next to mine and commutes around 7 miles one way. We ride two abreast on the and make a strong statement of bicyclists position and status on the road.

I have been lightly active on twitter. Follow me on it to get more recent updates. It works like the status messages on Facebook, except that is all it does. I am beginning to like this application.

http://twitter.com/abhishek_m

The Car is up for sale. I am following sale techniques from here: (link)

I have put it up on Craigslist with a link to my sale site. Next in line is to put it up for sale on Autotrader, Cars.com and Cars4Jax. I will wait for a few days to see if I get any response from Craigslist though. Some color printouts of the sale site will go up on the apartment complex notice board and the break room at work too.

Update:

Cars.com ad: link

Cars4Jax ad: link

See sidebar for my new page (link). I keep getting asked why I am selling my car. I have written a short essay to lay down the logic and the math before people raise controversies over my multiple reasons…

Happy reading.

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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