So yesterday my mom walked on that sidewalk that no one walks on and took the bus to her church. She was impressed by all the places she could go on the bus. I tell you, you just got to get the people on the bus once…

AustinContrarian has an interesting post on banning plastic bags. I’m definitely against this ban even though I have grown to absolutely despise plastic bags. I get in fights with Julie and/or the bagger almost every time we go to the store. But I think the ban will just inspire a massive anti-environmental front setting back attitudes by decades. I imagine it would have the same effect culturally as if someone had banned smoking in 1975.

YerMama has a post about the Village going VMU. I can’t really get nostalgic about that hole of a property although I do like a lot of the businesses. The VMU should be nice though. Hopefully it will inspire some of the other businesses in the area to move towards the street. It’s nearly impossible to see any of the businesses off of Anderson. Julie has been trying to describe to me (unsuccessfully) for months where Sun Harvest is on Anderson. That neighborhood is one of the worst “strip malls with tiny little signs dwarfed by huge parking lots” in existence. I’m surprised any of the businesses survive. I think they’re all subsisting on word of mouth. I’m hoping the Alamo will stay in the new VMU though. They’d be fools not to try to keep it as an anchor. I think 90% of the shopping traffic on Anderson is probably related to the Alamo. And if they make the sidewalk nicer I could see actually taking the bus up their to do some window shopping. Julie used to live in the area, and I miss spending time their.

So there’s my opinion, but what do you think?

For the past two nights I’ve taken the bus to the Dougherty Arts Center where Julie is rehearsing for Loaded Gun Theory’s production of Little Murders. I’ve bundled up Stella and her stroller, and we’ve taken the bus the rest of the way home. Last night things were crazy. It was one of those traffic days. You have an inkling of these days when you’re a driver, but they’re much more apparent when you’re a pedestrian. People were running lights. There was lots of backed up traffic for no reason. People were making U-Turns in the middle of busy roads. That sort of thing.

So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I had trouble crossing Barton Springs. I walked with the signal and got half way across the road. At this point cars turning left are unprotected. They see me in the middle of the street and don’t attempt to turn left. You know, because I have the right of way and all that. But last night a car turned in front of me. No big deal, I figured that one car just didn’t see me and the neon green stroller I was pushing. But then another car went. Then another. Six cars. The last one was a Mini. I was figuring, surely the Mini won’t leave me stranded out here in the middle of the road. It turned too. I still made it across the street in time, and there was a concrete median I could have hung out on if I hadn’t made it in time, so I wasn’t in danger.

I disliked being a driver in a world where most people don’t know the traffic laws, but it sucks even more to be a pedestrian.

The reason I had to pick up Stella was that my mom went to the city meeting where they discussed the plans for improving Westgate and Davis. They have lots of interesting ideas (and some that would be horrible). One of the poorer plans would be having Westgate be a 4 lane road, while Davis intersects it as 2 lanes with no middle turn lane. I can only imagine how backed up that would get.

So my mom was talking about the meeting, and she said, “They don’t really need sidewalks on both sides of Davis. No one I know of ever uses that sidewalk.” I demanded, “Who said that?” She said, “I did. That was my comment. That we don’t need sidewalks on both sides of Davis. They should just extend the sidewalk on the south side.” I nearly spit out my dinner, “You don’t know anyone who takes that sidewalk? I take that sidewalk every single morning to walk to the bus! I have to jaywalk across the road at the top of a fairly blind hill, then cross again at the light.” She mentioned that she thought I took the trail. My mom, while frequently going on recreational walks, is definitely not a pedestrian.

The Grand Oaks trail does indeed go from Davis Lane to Manchaca. But the first place you can get off the trail onto a real sidewalk is almost equidistant between two southbound bus stops. You have to backtrack about 1/8 of a mile to get to the light. And that’s just if you want to take the #3 route. If you want to take the #103 there is currently no sidewalk or trail to get there. Which is one of the reasons I don’t take it.

Sometimes you realizes why representative democracy is really important. Otherwise we’d have all sorts of crazy roads and sidewalks that didn’t go anywhere. A patchwork of ideas that were good for one person or another, but don’t connect in any meaningful way.

They are currently providing two sizes of disposable plastic umbrella bags in our lobby. To put your umbrella in. A disposable bag. Someone should point out that they wouldn’t need the umbrella bags if they hadn’t decided to put marble on the floor of the elevators.

Picture of Stella and I waltzing that I should have posted yesterday:

We took Stella to the Town Lake park to run in the sprinklers again. It was fantastic. We let her just run around. There’s really nowhere she can go that we can’t see her, so rather than following her around like we normally do we just let her roam. She had a lot of fun. She really seemed to enjoy the water jets this time. Actually getting into them. They didn’t seem to frighten her that much. She made a friend too. And then proceeded to take her hand and lead her around the park showing her all the things she had been doing. It was super cute.

But on the way home we encountered a crazy driver. This is the second time this week I’ve seen someone do this (different cars), so I have a fear it is a trend. Basically we were the lead car in the right hand lane. The lane could go straight or turn right. We were going straight. There was no one in the left hand lane. The guy behind us honked at us. Then pulled into the left hand lane and turned right from the left hand lane – directly in front of us! I saw this earlier in the week at another stoplight. What’s up with this?