Life After Grad School

I’m not being sarcastic, really. Commuting without a car is so much better in so many ways than having to drive to work. Trust me, I’ve done both. I’ve noticed a trend among local bloggers to write about the strange behavior of fellow transit riders or the shortcomings of the T, which in itself is testament to how much more interesting it is to commute by transit. When I drove my car to work - on the other coast back in the days when I had no feasible transit option - the only distraction from my own thoughts were the news on NPR (which were usually depressing) and traffic jam induced road rage (even more so). Now I still listen to the news on my walk to the T thanks to my nifty MP3/radio combo, enjoy watching people on the subway and buses, occasionally have a conversation with a random person, read books and listen to music. Sometimes I’m annoyed by the T’s nebulous interpretation of on-time performance or stunned by the behavior of fellow travelers, but much more often I am amused and entertained.

As a bonus I get exercise by walking to the station, I always know exactly what the weather is really like outside and can complain about it in an informed manner, I see the first crocuses and snow drops optimistically break through the soil in the spring (apparently unfazed by single digit wind chills) and shuffle through fallen leaves in autumn feeling about 8 years old. How could commuting by car possibly be better than that?

We drive on parkways, park in driveways and more often than not parking is a pain. Too little of it and we either spent way too much time or money to park, too much of it and it destroys any city’s atmosphere. Planners, architects, business owners and drivers constantly argue over parking.
Too bad that parks, our beautiful recreational oases, and parking share the same word even though they have nothing in common. Or do they? A group of creative folks in San Francisco set out to create a park in a metered street parking spot.
Turns out that parking does not exclusively apply to vehicles. So, why not park a park? Or “pahk a pahk”, as they say in Boston. Here a link to the project including do-it-yourself instructions.

Apparently Google doesn’t let you down after all. When Google maps first came out I refused to be impressed until they had added transit lines and stops to their maps. Now they’ve gone way past that by developing a transit trip planner. It includes schedule and cost information and makes it easy to compare transit to driving. Currently it’s only available for Portland, OR, but they are working on other cities as well. Can’t wait for Boston to become available as the MBTA’s trip planner is far from optimal.

As a good daughter I’ve been planning my parents’ trip to Boston and environs and just experienced, once again, how cool Zipcar is. Not only does it serve well for those monthly grocery shopping trips, but it’s saving me $80 on a planned 3-day “leaf-peeping” trip to Vermont (I know, President Bartlett found that term humorous as well). Since for unknown reasons no cheap car rental is to be had in the Boston region (in CA you can get deals of less than $20 a day, in Boston the minimum is $40, and that will put you in a shoebox on wheels), I priced Zipcar instead and the result was amazing. All in all we’ll be paying $200 instead of approximately $280 and I can pick up the car a block away from my apartment instead of having to treck all the way to the airport (since local rentals are even more expensive). No paperwork to fill out, no business hours to plan our trip around, gas and insurance included.

I have never been sympathetic to complaints about high gas prices and that hasn’t changed. In fact, for those who voted for the current administration, this is all I have to say: do you really think gas prices would be this high in the first place without a war in Iraq? Don’t complain to me. Granted, Katrina could not have been prevented, although the government has shown incredible incompetence in prevention and relief efforts, and there may be price gouging going on by gas station owners and oil companies (or should we call it a free market economy?). But the next time you complain, think of the people left in New Orleans who are in this situation and getting less help than victims of disasters in the third world because most of the National Guard is in Iraq, FEMA has been underfunded because all the money went to the war and according to George W. nobody could foresee that the levees would break. Right. Explain to me again how the war in Iraq assures homeland security?