Carpunching
Just time for a quick rant today as I promised myself I'd go easy on screen time tonight.
It was cold here today. Very cold. Even though the unusual hue of my wife's face didn't escape my attention as she came back in the door from having walked the children to school, I decided to do the usual -- walk to work. My small concession to the elements was that I chose an alternate route that avoided my having to clamber up and down icy embankments to get through the parking lots and large divided roadways that separate my home from my office if I go by the shortest and most interesting route. Instead, the safer choice (or so I thought) was to take a slightly longer route that took me through vast tracts of connected parking lots (it astonishes me how a university campus can provide so little amenity for pedestrians) but included very few changes in altitude and all road crossings took place at stop signs or traffic lights rather than medians ridden with icy chunks of brown stuff spewed up from under the wheels of the semi-trailers hauling pallets of Doritos to the student eateries. Safer. Or so I thought.
The first road I have to cross is a rather nasty intersection with multiple flashing green lights, short changes, four lanes of traffic in each direction, a few interesting turn lanes and one-way streets thrown into the mix. I think people in cars stress out at this intersection because it's not quite conventional. That'd be the charitable interpretation of the carnage that takes place there. I've seen people stand and wait through two or three light changes, not daring to set foot on the pavement. I've seen bicyclists swept aside in the mad panic of harried morning commuters trying to squeeze in that last cellphone call while enroute to jobs they must hate, judging from the steely grimaces on their faces.
I have to cross both of these roadways to get to the nice path through the park that forms the middle of my route to work. On the opposite side of road that was my second crossing this morning, there's a right turn lane. So cars are turning right from the road facing me, and then crossing in front of me -- if you get my drift. There is always a lineup of cars waiting to turn, so the game seems to be that as many of these cars as possible pass in front of me before some poor sod has to step on the brake and wait for the 4 seconds it takes me to get safely across the lane and onto the curb. This morning, the last car to turn should have stopped. The driver sat warmly in his oil-sucking cocoon, nursing his coffee, avoiding eye contact. I chugged across the road leaving a long trail of condensing breath behind me in the frigid -38 degree air. I'm a big guy. There's no way he didn't see me. His front tire missed my big toe by less than 10 cm I'd say.
Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at a smaller intersection -- a simple stop sign on the small road that runs in a loop around my campus. I've always thought that all cars except for service vehicles should be banned from this road. University campuses are for walkers. Alas, the university administration feels differently, refusing to even put proper crosswalks on much of this road because it will impede traffic flow. But at least where I was crossing, I had a stop sign. I had the right of way. I took it. A car turned into me. The driver only failed to run me over because, even though I'm a big guy, I'm light on my feet when I have to be (such as when a car is about to squish those feet into something that would look a bit like proscuitto). So I punched the car hard enough to dent it. The driver stopped. I looked back. He drove off. I suspect he thought he had hit me. Good, I thought.
I spent the rest of my walk wondering how many of those cars scuttling around me, pushing me around, knocking me off balance, raising my blood pressure, were occupied by people who didn't have as far to go as I did. Then I had this sudden flash of recollection of something I read many years ago about cigarette smoking. Some pundit in, it must have been about 1980, wrote that the day would come when cigarette smoking would be a social stigma, not much different to cocaine or even heroin use. I laughed in 1980 but it's obvious he was not far off the mark. One could hope that the day will come when people sitting inside steel carapaces, exhausting the planet's air, not really going anywhere useful or even interesting would feel the same sting of accusation. But it's doubtful. We'll choke the life out of the entire planet before we'll give up our cars. Shouldn't be too much longer now in the grand scheme of things.
It was cold here today. Very cold. Even though the unusual hue of my wife's face didn't escape my attention as she came back in the door from having walked the children to school, I decided to do the usual -- walk to work. My small concession to the elements was that I chose an alternate route that avoided my having to clamber up and down icy embankments to get through the parking lots and large divided roadways that separate my home from my office if I go by the shortest and most interesting route. Instead, the safer choice (or so I thought) was to take a slightly longer route that took me through vast tracts of connected parking lots (it astonishes me how a university campus can provide so little amenity for pedestrians) but included very few changes in altitude and all road crossings took place at stop signs or traffic lights rather than medians ridden with icy chunks of brown stuff spewed up from under the wheels of the semi-trailers hauling pallets of Doritos to the student eateries. Safer. Or so I thought.
The first road I have to cross is a rather nasty intersection with multiple flashing green lights, short changes, four lanes of traffic in each direction, a few interesting turn lanes and one-way streets thrown into the mix. I think people in cars stress out at this intersection because it's not quite conventional. That'd be the charitable interpretation of the carnage that takes place there. I've seen people stand and wait through two or three light changes, not daring to set foot on the pavement. I've seen bicyclists swept aside in the mad panic of harried morning commuters trying to squeeze in that last cellphone call while enroute to jobs they must hate, judging from the steely grimaces on their faces.
I have to cross both of these roadways to get to the nice path through the park that forms the middle of my route to work. On the opposite side of road that was my second crossing this morning, there's a right turn lane. So cars are turning right from the road facing me, and then crossing in front of me -- if you get my drift. There is always a lineup of cars waiting to turn, so the game seems to be that as many of these cars as possible pass in front of me before some poor sod has to step on the brake and wait for the 4 seconds it takes me to get safely across the lane and onto the curb. This morning, the last car to turn should have stopped. The driver sat warmly in his oil-sucking cocoon, nursing his coffee, avoiding eye contact. I chugged across the road leaving a long trail of condensing breath behind me in the frigid -38 degree air. I'm a big guy. There's no way he didn't see me. His front tire missed my big toe by less than 10 cm I'd say.
Fifteen minutes later, I arrived at a smaller intersection -- a simple stop sign on the small road that runs in a loop around my campus. I've always thought that all cars except for service vehicles should be banned from this road. University campuses are for walkers. Alas, the university administration feels differently, refusing to even put proper crosswalks on much of this road because it will impede traffic flow. But at least where I was crossing, I had a stop sign. I had the right of way. I took it. A car turned into me. The driver only failed to run me over because, even though I'm a big guy, I'm light on my feet when I have to be (such as when a car is about to squish those feet into something that would look a bit like proscuitto). So I punched the car hard enough to dent it. The driver stopped. I looked back. He drove off. I suspect he thought he had hit me. Good, I thought.
I spent the rest of my walk wondering how many of those cars scuttling around me, pushing me around, knocking me off balance, raising my blood pressure, were occupied by people who didn't have as far to go as I did. Then I had this sudden flash of recollection of something I read many years ago about cigarette smoking. Some pundit in, it must have been about 1980, wrote that the day would come when cigarette smoking would be a social stigma, not much different to cocaine or even heroin use. I laughed in 1980 but it's obvious he was not far off the mark. One could hope that the day will come when people sitting inside steel carapaces, exhausting the planet's air, not really going anywhere useful or even interesting would feel the same sting of accusation. But it's doubtful. We'll choke the life out of the entire planet before we'll give up our cars. Shouldn't be too much longer now in the grand scheme of things.
posted by Colin at 8:28 PM
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