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There were tickets in those days…

It’s late-breaking but I’m suddenly very very excited by Sunday’s long-awaited opening of the Gold Line rail extension from Union Station down through Little Tokyo and then across the Eastside. So much excited am I that my double-darned damnedest will be required so that Susan and I may include an exploratory excursion all the way out to the end of the line at Atlantic Boulevard — even if it’ll be a bit redundant seeing as how we’re planning a trip out to Montebello tomorrow morning for a seasonal visit to Broguiere’s Dairy to load up on the best egg nog in all the world directly from the source.

This amongst various other regular responsibilities such as sunrise porch-sitting, the requisite yard and house work, a Costco run, some bike riding, watching Alabama whup some Mississippi State tail, and shaking my head at the fact that “2012″ is probably going to meet or exceed box office expectations.

Oh yeah: After learning about the BikeGlow bike frame lighting system in my favorite bike mag, Bicycle Times, I found that Chubby’s Cruisers near the office on Sepulveda carries them, and splurged on a pair of strands that I wrapped the frame in before leaving work tonight.

Whatcha think?

Even better: here’s a little taste of BikeGlow’s groovalicious blink mode:

Wow: A tool that exponentially increases both motorist awareness and FUN. That is so absolutely chock full of win I can barely contain myself.

Thanks to my buddy Ted at BikinginLA tapping my buddy Damien at Streetsblog LA on the virtual shoulder and saying “Take a look at what happened to Will”  last Tuesday, Damien not only re-posted my my timelapse video of my bad bus driver encounter on his indispensable blog, but because he knows actual people that work at the MTA and who return his phone calls and emails, he forwarded my rantings to a guy there who replied to him in decidedly measured bureaucratic tones advising Damien to rest assured knowing that attention would be paid to my complaint across the proper channels.

In fact, shortly after the Streetsblog post, I received this unsigned email from customerrelations@metro.net:

Dear Mr. Campbell
Thanks for the follow-up email and please accept our apology for the regrettable incident described below.  Rest assured, your report will be entered into our database and a copy sent to management staff for investigation.  It should be noted that although your Customer Relations email was just opened, however, your earlier inquiry this morning to Dave Sotero prompted an immediate follow-up by the Division manager responsible for Line 333, Bus #8115. This matter will be thoroughly investigated and the appropriate corrective measures taken.

It needs noting that it was Damien who contacted Dave Sotero; until Damien picked up the ball and ran it into the endzone, I’d never heard of Sotero.  It also bears stating that in my imperfect retributive world, I’d be invited to that “appropriate corrective measures”  meeting and get the opportunity to give the bus operator a big ol’ real-world perspective that he couldn’t ignore and dismiss so casually from atop his air-cushioned throne inside his bus while pointing to where the bus number was painted and oh-so-casually daring me to complain.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

But I digress. Because the point of today’s post is not to get all riled up about the past, but instead  to admit that I go both ways. No not those both ways, gutterbrain. The both ways involved in being able  to deliver the bitter as well as the sweet.

Witness today’s sugar regarding today’s bus encounter shared at the MTA’s online customer comments form:

As I consider it equally important to highlight bus operator behavior both excellent and inexcusable, following the complaint I filed (No. 3896) earlier this week regarding the inconsiderate operator of MTA Bus No. 8115, I wanted to write in to commend the operator of bus No. 3011 who this morning while westbound on Venice Boulevard approaching Hauser demonstrated excellent awareness and consideration for me on my bicycle in the Class II striped bike lane. Similar to No. 8115, No. 3011 approached me on the left from the rear, but instead of honking and forcing her bus across the bike lane to the curb she instead came to a stop in the traffic lane, leaving me with the right of way and allowing me to proceed safely to the intersection. It may be a minor matter, but I greatly appreciated it and the operator should be recognized for doing her part to share the road.

Here’s the timelapse video snip of her doing the right thing. And below is a “Goofus & Gallant” side-by-side images stills of the two, with No. 8011 on the left fully occupying the solid striped portion of the bike lane as I brake and go toward the curb, and No. 3011 on the right staying completely in the traffic lane — bonus kudos for doing so when she had the broken bike lane line she could have legitimately crossed over into (slightly biggifiable if clicked):

Via the LADOT website I filed this complaint after almost being smushed by the impatient and reckless driver of Dash Bus No. 99058, between it and parked cars on Fountain Avenue last evening:

I am a commuter bicyclist and was riding home eastbound on Fountain Avenue yesterday (May 21) evening. Having crossed Highland Avenue at approximately 6:55 p.m. traveling in what’s commonly referred to as the “door zone” alongside the cars parked on the south side of the street I was overtaken and passed by Dash Bus No. 99058.

Demonstrating a total disregard for safety and the law, the bus driver accelerated and passed me less than a foot away from my left shoulder forcing me to stop in order to avoid either being hit directly by the bus or pinned between the bus and the parked cars to my right.

Any precious time saved in this dangerous and entirely illegal and unnecessary manuever was negated by the four-way stop sign a couple blocks further east that we arrived at almost simultaneously. And while keeping pace with the bus all the way to Wilcox, when I looked to the driver for any kind of recognition of her wrongdoing all I got was a defiant attitude and some unheard words in return.

Though clearly the driver is not aware of either the proper and legal way to pass a cyclist nor the potential consequences of her inconsiderate and reckless actions, I trust that the LADOT can comprehend that had I not taken evasive action I could have been severely injured or killed because of her impatience and utter dismissal of my legal right to the road.

Therefore it would be in the best interest of the LADOT to reinforce upon this driver — and all your vehicle operators — a respect for cyclists’ rights to the road.

A couple years or so ago I had been hopeful that I could limit driving my truck enough so that it could roll past our 10th anniversary this coming July 7 without having yet hit the 100,000 mile mark.

To be honest, it’s totally silly and I should just get over it because there’s no real reason for all the drama other than I like the idea of having driven the dependable thing less than 10,000 miles per year. Yes, even if its 9,999.9999999 per year.

Realistically speaking, it’s probably not going to happen or to make it so will take a supreme alt-commute effort, because with just less than three months to go and a fresh extension on my El Segundo gig potentially stretching to the end of May, the odometer stands right now at 99,650.

But at least for the next several weeks until our vacation in May I’m going to give it one helluva nondriving try by pretending I don’t have a truck and alternating between biking and mass-transiting to work and back. When I absolutely positively might need a vehicle I’ll either beg Susan to let me borrow her’s or employ my long-dormant Flexcar membership. I don’t expect I’ll be using it that much, in part because it seems a touch retarded  to spend upwards of $50-plus to use a Flexcar vehicle for a workday in exchange for keeping 40-50 however precious miles off my odometer, but with one of their hybrids stationed as close to me as 1st and Vermont, if I need it to run a couple hours worth of errands on a weekend, at $8 an hour that won’t be at all ridiculous.

The good news is that with yesterday’s work commute my year-to-date mileage tally stands at 164.9, meaning in the first half of February I’ve already vastly improved on all of January’s slow start of 67 miles.

Trouble is I’m still three miles below where I should have been at the end January 31, which means that to get back on track I’ve gotta roll 170 miles these last couple weeks of February — a short month, too.

While that’s totally doable, it’s not like it’s the last month of the year and I have to all-or-nothing crank it out to catch up. So in the interest of common sense, patience and moderation I’m only going to aim to put another 80 miles away by February 28 and then work it out so I’m all balanced or even in the black by March 31.

Bonus props: I said I wasn’t going to put a work-commute-related mile on my truck this week and I didn’t. Besides biking yesterday, I mass-transitted Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and today, keeping practically a gas tank’s worth of 200 miles off my odometer.

Ed Begley Jr. would be proud.

And tomorrow I’ll be downtown at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion where I’ve been selected to participate in  L.A. Storytellers: A Collection Of Downtown Memories, a series of two workshops being put on by the Music Center and the Cornerstone Theatre Group. I have little idea what’s involved other than a lot of creativity in action.

If you want to read a 3,000-word draft written a few years ago (and dug out of the depths of my hard drive) of the downtown memory I’m contributing, I posted it here.

And of course, I’ll be biking down there.

Just a brief vidclip of the moment of truth at the beginning of the Blue Line when it cacophonously emerges from underground to street level near Staples Center.

A few days ago I voxed apoplectic about discovering a single busline – MTA No. 439 – that would get me from Union Station to its destination a couple long blocks away from my present temp gig in El Segundo, a far less disjointed journey than the multi-transferring one that involved the No. 2/4 bus, the Blue Line and the Green Line to get to the same exact point.

Seeing as how I fared so poorly utilizing mass transit last week (driving four days and riding one), I vowed that this week would be an all alt-commute week. None of this drive one day and ride the next crap. Instead, this Monday-to-Friday stretch won’t see me adding a single solitary work-travel mile to my trusty old truck.

So far so good. Sort of. Monday morning I smoothly bus-rail-railed it and 85 minutes and 60 pages of two-time Edgar award-winning T. Jefferson Parker’s totally engrossing ”The Fallen” later I strolled into work a cool 15 minutes ahead of schedule.

It was the getting home part 8.5 hours later last night that left a lot to be desired and a lesson learned. Exiting at 5:15 I marched the half mile down Imperial Highway fully intent on rail-rail-busing it back home. But when I arrived at the Aviation Boulevard station I saw the No. 439 bus roll in to its slot and instead I what-the-hell’d it and decided to get a front row seat to witness if that particular line and I had a future together.

The short answer is: not so much…. mainly because it took me 2.5 hours to get to my front door. That’s right, I left the office at 5:15 p.m. and wasn’t standing at the front door of the house until 7:45 p.m. And as much as I’d like to say this was due to really crappy traffic or a breakdown or a sudden onslaught of frogs falling out of the sky, the fact is that give or take 10 minutes, that’s about as fast as that trip’s gonna get.

Even the amount of additional pages of “The Fallen” I put behind me weren’t any consolation.

And the busdriver was surprised I went the duration. As we approached Union Station she piped up and said that a quicker way for me to go would be to take the shuttle into the airport and catch the nonstop LAX Flyaway bus back to Union Station.

“It’s three bucks, but it’s much faster.” I thanked her for the info, declining to go into any detail about how this  was essentially just a scouting expedition.

Exiting at MTA Gateway Plaza I wasn’t done yet, because I still had to make my way up to Cesar E. Chavez and Broadway to catch the No. 2 for the home stretch, but at least coming through Union Station and across Olvera Street I had some interesting stuff to look at (and snap of course).

But man was I beat when I finally de-bused at Parkman and Sunset and made it those last few hundred steps home. Live and learn. Bus and burn.