gonewest

I’m sitting in the St Lazarre station waiting on my train to Caen. I did not end up doing much in Paris this time around except for a visit to the Arc de Triumph (jet lag got me good this trip).

I should be in Caen in a few hours.

Got into Paris about two hours ago. Took a train down to Gare du Nord but then decided that I did not have the energy to devote to getting to the hotel via train/metro today so I took a taxi for the rest of the trip.

Now I am sitting in front of the hotel with about two hours to burn until I can check in (I need sleep!).

Maybe a walk or two around the block…

Took a shuttle down to SeaTac since the clutch is still out in the Miata (three months without missing the car — I’m leaning toward selling it now). I got here way too early and discovered that the Air France counter doesn’t even open until noon.

So, now I have to cool my heels in a little coffee shop for three hours before I can check my bags and get into the airport proper.

Sucks.

My one year lease at the current apartment (and my first year living in Seattle) will be up in just about two months. I’ve been quite happy with the current pad: the rent is much higher than I want to pay (everything decent in Seattle is) which makes buying a boat in the near future much less likely, but it is a nice unit in a good neighborhood and within walking distance of downtown. My lease here was one of those “specials”, however, which basically means that you can count on a rate hike after the lease runs out.

I did not plan on staying in this apartment long term; this place was a snap decision made on a very short apartment hunting trip, and so I assumed that I would find a better deal or another neighborhood that I would prefer once I had been up here a while. Still, I have gotten quite tired of the whole pack-move-unpack routine and was hoping to stay for at least two years before moving on. Basically, I had decided that if the rent raise was $100/month or less then I would definitely stay one more year and if it was $200 or more I would definitely leave.

Well, I got the renewal notice a few days ago and they came down smack in the middle of the grey area between stay and go. I haven’t made a decision yet, but my mind has been frequently wandering to the topic of new areas to try out since I got the notice, so I guess my unconscious mind is already made up and the only real question is where do I move to next?

I am not ready to consider leaving Washington yet, so I can either try to stay in/near the Seattle metro area or try some other part of the state — I definitely want to stay close to the coast, however. I would prefer to stay near Seattle, but the whole reason this apartment is expensive is because everyone else does too and so finding a much better rent (why do the move hassle just to keep the rent the same?) in this area means that I would either be renting a so so apartment in a questionable neighborhood (not interested) or have a long commute whenever I wanted to go downtown (the whole reason to stay close to Seattle). A long commute would not be that bad since it would not be a daily work commute, but if I have to deal with the hassle of driving, traffic jams, and paying for parking when I finally get downtown, then what really is the difference between a 30-60 minute drive and a two hour drive aside from the increased car-radio time? Either way, if I can’t walk to downtown Seattle, I doubt that I will go there more than several times a year rather than several times a month as I do now and so the reason for staying close more or less evaporates.

At the moment, I am doing a little web research on Bellingham and am thinking about making a drive up this week to scope out the town (less than 100,000 people) to see if there is enough of a there there to keep me contented for a while. As for satisfying the occasional need to wander about a large urban center, Bellingham is roughly midway between Seattle and Vancouver so I would actually have two to choose from. Amtrak even has stations in or near the downtown area in all three cities so I should be able to forgo a car on those outings; the commute would still be a couple of hours each way, but I understand that the train hugs the coast for most of the route so it would probably be a very pretty ride. Real estate prices have been increasing fairly rapidly in Bellingham in recent years (apparently leveling off now), but it seems that the rental rates should still be much lower than Seattle which gives me the option of renting a decent place and still being able to buy a boat in the next year or two (the main reason I moved to Washington).

Oh yeah, Bellingham is apparently very close to the San Juan Islands, so it just might have a lot more to offer, not to mention some very very good sailing, than I would normally expect from a city of its size. I’ll just have to check it out and see.

Here is the schedule for my upcoming trip to Memphis. If anyone is interested in getting together during any of the few timeframes that are still free, please let me know.

Dad came out for a short visit a couple of weeks ago, you can go here to see some more pictures.

FUH2

It’s no secret that I am a proponent of pervasive mass transit (my preference is for monorail or grade separated metro systems) and that I would prefer we return to the well defined urban/rural divide with small, walkable suburbs like we had for most of this country’s history (believe it or not, the car-centric culture did not arrive in the US until sometime around 1930, and suburbia did not take over until after WWII). I am not against suburbs per se, it’s just that I believe that the vast suburban wastelands that our recent auto-centric culture has created offer few advantages and have huge downsides.

I have often read that automobiles are the least efficient way to travel (excepting air travel, of course, but this post isn’t about long distance travel), but numbers have been hard to come by. Finally, I have found a source for comparison between some modes of travel that demonstrates just how bad autos really are.

A car is the obvious fastest (and easiest) way for a person to get from point A to point B, but what would surprise most people is the fact that autos are actually a pretty lousy way of moving people from point A to point B. This is because, while a car can get you to your destination at high speeds in little or no traffic, cars and the space between them needed for safety make road ways a very low density avenue of travel; and as everyone knows too well, when you try to increase that density more than a little bit, traffic can quickly grind to a halt.

Look at the figures for persons per hour in the link: while someone in a car can get one mile down a road in a minute (assuming little to no traffic and a speed limit of 60 mph), a pedestrian would require 20 minutes to walk the same distance (assuming a reasonable walking speed of 3 mph). That same roadway, however, has a capacity to move over 20 times more people down that one mile stretch each hour if they are walking rather than driving [it would be interesting to calculate at what capacity the travel time for autos and walking converge, but I don't have the time or energy to figure out the math for that right now, maybe I'll post on that later].

Now, while most people (we Americans, anyway) would not want to walk that mile, that isn’t our only option: looking at the reference numbers reveals that auto travel is unique in how bad it is at getting large numbers of people from place to place. The next rung up from auto travel is biking which would be much more palatable to people (especially if using e-bikes) than walking for short distances and would get you down that one mile road in six minutes (assuming a leisurely 10 mph ride, and with an e-bike, you could do 20 mph with little effort) while still moving about 9 times more people per hour than autos. The other choices just get better with metro topping the list.

As bad as cars are at getting large numbers of people from point A to point B, the energy efficiency of auto travel is much more relevant to today’s concerns (i.e. rising energy prices) and autos are the worst of the lot here too. Even buses are twice as efficient as cars (to be fair, we should assume that this figure requires that the bus routes are used close to capacity). And bikes are the clear winners for energy efficiency — can you believe that it is less work to ride a bike than it is to walk?.

With these figures, I think it is obvious that the best way to move people short distances (say less than 10 miles) is with e-bikes (or light electric scooters), preferably models that don’t require pedaling so that even those that are in very poor shape can use them with ease. For any route travelled heavily enough to warrant the investment, a light rail or monorail system should be installed (grade separated if possible so that it does not interfere with other modes of travel) to handle the truly massive numbers that dense urban corridors can generate. This not only increases the capacity of routes, reducing traffic congestion, but saves energy as well. There will always be a need for some auto traffic, so urban centers would keep some of the roadways, but they would be devoted to commuter bus, utility vehicles, and commercial cargo traffic. Personal auto transit would, of course, remain available but it would stay where it belongs: in rural areas where mass transit and alternatives like bikes just don’t make sense.

After reading this, you may think that I have something against car-culture, but the truth is that I am just as fond of cars as the next American. The difference is that, while I always want to have a car handy (my own or easy access to a rental), I don’t ever want to need a car. To me, a car is a symbol of freedom. It is a means to get out of town and away from the rest of the world when I want to take a break from the day-to-day routine. A car that is required to get to work or the grocery store or to handle everyday needs isn’t a symbol of freedom, it’s just another expense.

The plan was to make a quick trip up to Seattle to close a deal on a place for my move in early March.

The plan was to find a place with more room and amenities than what I have now so that working from home is more pleasant than it is now.

The plan was to find a place that is much less expensive than what I am paying in San Diego to make it easier to buy a boat and keep it in a slip in the area.

The plan was ruined by my foolish decision to go look at a place in Queen Anne even though I knew the price was significantly over my target.

So I will not be saving much money by moving up to Seattle which makes the prospect of buying a boat this year very low. On the good side, I found a very nice two bedroom unit that will be nice to work from and that will be much easier to put up guests in if anyone decides to visit.

I have been seriously considering a [hopefully 3-6 years temporary] move up to the Seattle area this summer. As much as I love San Diego and southern California in general, there is a high premium for living here and because of that I am not able to pursue another love: playing the salty sailor and putzing around in a comfortable sailboat.

Now, thanks to an annoying notice from my apartment complex, I will be rushing to move in early March.

My original intention was to wait several months before moving so that I could enjoy at least part of another summer in San Diego. I received a lease expiration notice the other day, however, informing me that if I do not renew for another year (with the usual small increase in rent) and switch to month-to-month instead, they will jack my rent up by $400. Oh, and there is also the added insult that, while they “strive to maintain the highest level of customer service,” they don’t consider themselves to be liable for anything they do that damages my property but will, if I damage theirs, sue my ass off so I have to now provide proof of at least $100,000 in liability insurance before I can renew my lease (OK, so they didn’t use those exact words, but I am plenty smart enough to know what that notice meant).

The rent I pay now isn’t too bad considering the area that I am in, but the month-to-month rent would be higher than what I paid for my last apartment which was a very nice place in a very new building in what was likely the very best spot in downtown. To pay that kind of rent here in Pacific Beach for a 30 year old building that still has asbestos in it (I have a copy of the signed notification letter to prove it), even for a month or two, is simply outrageous and an obvious attempt to force me to make a long commitment to them or get out — so I’m getting out ( :-r to you, Avalon).

Technically, there should not be any problem in arranging for the move up to Seattle by my lease expiration date; but there are many details to handle and with work and other things going on, I don’t have much time to waste. Thank goodness for apartment hunting sites like HousingMaps, ApartmentGuide, and Apartments.com to make pre-screening apartments easier and travel sites like my newest discovery (thanks Amy), site59 to make planing a last minute hop up to Seattle to close a deal [hopefully] less expensive.