Riding Writer

2011-07-06T13:59:00.000-07:00

First Crossing!

This morning marked my first ride across Issaquah's new I-90 at SR900 pedestrian overcrossing. The structure, estimated to cost $4.4 million, actually topped $6 million, but luckily the fed put up 88 percent of the money.

This is looking northwest from the end of existing auto bridge where it joins the new section.

2011-03-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

Future Neighbors Passed

I happened across this forward-looking sign while riding Snoqualmie Parkway back to I-90 yesterday. In another month, it will be completely invisible behind the spring growth. When I moved to the valley in 1998, there were no homes on the 1,300 acre parcel that would become Snoqualmie Ridge. Now there are perhaps 6,000 households and nearly 20,000 people - or rather there were. Hundreds of properties are in foreclosure, and almost every homeowner on the ridge owes more than their property is worth. This “Future Neighborhood” appears to be a decade or more away.

2011-03-25T15:26:00.000-07:00

Your Panhandler Donations at Work! As you're sitting at the traffic signal, reading that pathetic sign and feeling sorry for the poor slob that's begging you for anything (except food, a job, a blanket, assistance for the children he abandoned, etc.) and asking God to bless you, consider what that gentleman will be up do once his long day of panhandling is over.

This is a pretty little spot along Issaquah Creek, or at least it was a pretty little spot. As Mick Jagger sang, "Pile it up! Pile it high on the platter!"

2011-03-25T15:01:00.000-07:00

Here's that Confounded Bridge!

More than two years later I am unapologetically once again exhuming this blog. A lot has happened, but this isn’t a diary.

Back in the spring of 2008, I had this terrific idea for the City of Issaquah. It was an idea that would have tied two of the city’s most popular commercial areas together with an iconic footbridge over I-90. It just made too much sense.

Anyway, here we are almost three years later, and Issaquah will soon open its $4.4 million I-90 pedestrian bridge, which really only crosses the westbound onramp of I-90 at SR900.

That’s right, $4.4M for a bridge that crosses one 12-foot roadway! Read about it here.

It lies on the far west end of town, so it really isn’t convenient for anyone but the few of us that catch a bus at the park & ride. But hey, compared with the mess they have us trying to negotiate right now, it’ll be pretty sweet. It should be a decent little climb, at least.

2008-10-27T15:52:00.000-07:00

The “Whizzard” of Blogs

If this blog seems to lack purpose, that’s because it does. I like having a blog, but I hate “diary” style blogs, and I just don’t care enough about politics, news or sports to dedicate this space exclusively to such trendiness.

When I had the old Mount Si Bridge dream, I had a purpose here, but since then I’ve either not bothered writing, or more recently, I’ve just bounced around from topic to topic. That’s fine, since no one reads this thing anyway, but now I’ve found a new and highly under-reported topic to which to dedicate this site: urine.

A coworker, my one-and-presumably-only visitor to this blog in recent months, mentioned that he liked my new banner, which features a “wino-bomb” that I photographed at the Issaquah Transit Center a couple of weeks ago. The term wino bomb is derived from the well-known “trucker bomb,” which is typically a plastic urine-filled bottle that is cast out of a big rig by a harried truck driver who is just too busy to stop at a rest area or other facility.

The trucker bomb can detonate upon impact, but more often it remains along the road as a kind of I.E.D., and is then set-off by a highway worker running a lawn mower or other mechanical device.

The wino bomb primarily differs in terms of deployment. Since the urinator in question usually doesn’t drive, wino bombs are simply left sitting wherever the perpetrator decides to ditch them. As a result, they pose a much lower explosion danger to the general public. Other than the maintenance or janitorial worker that must pick them up, the only persons placed at risk by a wino bomb are winos themselves, who may mistake the liquid in the container for something other than urine.

The one critical exception to the decreased detonation possibility of wino bombs is that the containers used can vary wildly, and some were never designed for the purpose. My first example is glass, which while posing a higher breakage quotient, won’t soften and release its contents like some other delivery modes. Imagine a paper urine-filled cup with lid that’s been teetering on the floor of a warm bus all day. Once it gets rolling under hard braking, spillage is inevitable.
So now that you know where to come for all the finest examples of public urine disposal, share the fun and invite all your friends. And rest assured, I’ll be out there every day vigilantly seeking new and unique urinating stories. Let the pissing match begin!

2008-10-24T09:17:00.000-07:00

The Fabulous Fungus of 2008

As bad as all the news is lately, what with the complete and utterly irreparable collapse of the world economy, the usual war, terrorism, disease and the like, this has been one magnificent season for chanterelles, those nutty, golden buttery fungal artworks that sprout from the dank forest floor in autumn.

This weekend promises to be another exceptional one for the hunt, but after clipping two to three pounds on two quick hikes over the past few weekends, the wife and I are sick of ‘em already. So instead, I’ll be cleaning the garage/stained glass studio.

If you go hunting in the western Cascade foothills, take a stick, a bag and a pair of scissors. It’s best to cut chanterelles than to pluck them, thus leaving some of the organic material. I’ve had better luck on eastward facing slopes, usually in the dark holes under logs and ferns.

Some areas are picked clean by people that sell chanterelles to restaurants. Last I checked, they were $18.50 a pound at the grocery store. But the fungus grows pretty quickly; a picked over area can yield again in just a few days.

2008-10-23T16:40:00.000-07:00

Do or Die Weekend for the Ducks

The University of Oregon football team takes its rather unimpressive 5-2 record into Sun Devil Stadium this Saturday night to battle Arizona State, a team that appears to be sinking like a rock.

Oregon should win this game, but as the trite old expression goes, "should never did." The Ducks haven't beaten a decent team, but the Sun Devils aren't one of those. Dennis "G&T" Erickson's squad has dropped four straight and the proverbial wheels look to be rattling off of their wagon. Of course, Oregon has a suspect passing game and a defense that's been burned by every respectable quarterback that its faced. If there's one thing ASU has, it's a respectable QB, even though I can't stand Rudy Carpenter.

It's probably going to up to LaGarrett Blount to carry the load for Oregon, and hopefully make ASU overcommit to stop the run. If that happens, and if Jeremiah Masoli can start connecting with his ice-handed receivers, and if Oregon's defense can put some pressure on Carpenter and possibly cover a receiver or two, Oregon will win. Unfortunately, that's a lot of ifs.

The game won't be televised live anywhere, and that's probably just as well.

2008-10-21T09:29:00.000-07:00

Back on the Blog

So it’s been another five-month hiatus from this fabulous blog, but I’m attempting to get back to it occasionally.

My wonderful plan for moving the old Mt. Si Road bridge to Issaquah died at about the same time as my last post here. The bridge was purchased by a holding company for a whopping $102.51, and it will probably end up as scrap.

Meanwhile, as Mayor Frisinger reported in her email to me back in May, Issaquah will spend more than $4 million on a “boardwalk” over I-90 adjacent to the SR 900 overpass. It should be lovely.

After ten years of riding it regularly from North Bend to Issaquah and back, my bus line has changed. Metro’s #214 has been replaced on its east-of-Issy run by the new #215, which serves the yuppie horde that lives on Snoqualmie Ridge. For them, and for Metro, it’s terrific. Ridership is way up, and the house-poor socialites that live beside the golf course have a series of convenient stops.

For me, it sucks the big one. The bus is packed-up tight by the time it leaves the ridge, and it makes no stops from there all the way to the fabulous new Issaquah Transit Center (artist's idealistic rendition pictured above).

This completely eliminates my flexibility in terms of where I can get on or off with my bike: no Sunset Ave., no High Point exit, no Preston. So, I’m looking forward to riding on the slippery new plastic boardwalk over to the ITC all winter long, and then committing to riding the distance most days when the weather improves again.

Speaking of the new transit center, my new header image was taken there last week. Check-out the “wino bomb!” Yes, that’s a 1.5 liter Sutter Home merlot bottle mostly-filled with what appears to be urine. I tell ya, we bus riders are a top-shelf bunch, aren’t we?

I haven’t written about my favorite football team yet, so maybe my next post will address the struggling Oregon Ducks. That should be pretty scintillating.

2008-05-07T11:21:00.000-07:00

Mayor Frisinger Responds

The following is Mayor Ava Frisinger's response to my suggestion that the old Mt. Si Road bridge be used as a pedestrian crossing of I-90 in Issaquah:

Thank you for your email on April 30, 2008 suggesting a pedestrian crossing over I-90. The City agrees that an additional crossing is needed and has been looking at options and working to make that happen.

The existing locations to cross I-90, from East to West in the City, are at Sunset Way, Front Street, the Sammamish Trail undercrossing, and SR-900. All locations have sidewalks on one or both sides of the road, while the locations at Front Street and SR-900 lack specific bicycle facilities.

There is a multi-use boardwalk paralleling SR-900, which the City identified as a vital connection over I-90 to continue the SR-900 multi-use trail. Currently, we are reviewing the design and we expect to go to ad with the project in November, pending funding. It is substantively funded, four million dollars, already with a reasonable expectation that the remaining funds will be in hand by the time we are ready to advertise.

The City has also identified a need for further pedestrian connections across I-90 through their efforts in the Central Issaquah Plan. Through workshops with citizens, we identified different pedestrian crossings in addition to the proposed SR-900 crossing and other existing connections. We will be working to include these new connections, if adopted as part of the Central Issaquah Plan, as part of our Capital Improvement Projects for the future.

The idea of reusing King County’s Mt. Si Bridge is an interesting concept. Unfortunately, the existing bridge deck is currently structurally deficient and would need to be replaced. To relocate the structure would require significant work to disassemble it, remove and dispose of the lead paint and repaint it, inspect and refurbish all connections, transport it to the proposed site, and then rebuild it. The cost for disassembling and relocating the existing bridge are more than our current estimate for building the new SR-900 pedestrian bridge. It also assumes that there would be no issues with this concept from the Washington State Department of Transportation.

Once again, thank you for your interest in traffic and pedestrian safety. Should you have any questions you can call the Public Works Engineering Department at (425) 837-3400.

**********************************************

It would appear that the mayor of Issy doesn't think my idea can work, but notice that she mentions $4 million already designated for the SR-900 pedestrian crossing! Four million dollars? I mentioned in a previous post that the City of Portland is estimating a $5.5 million cost for moving the old Sauvie Island Bridge, but that is a far more complicated project than cleaning up and trucking this old bridge.

It's time for some grassroots marketing I guess.

2008-05-01T13:06:00.001-07:00

The Mystery of the Old Mt. Si Bridge
Sounds like a Hardy Boys book, doesn’t it?

Shortly before I posted the previous entry in this blog regarding the potential use of the old Mt. Si Road Bridge as a footbridge over Interstate 90 in Issaquah, I wrote a quick note on the subject to the mayor of Issaquah. Her assistant wrote back the following day, and told me that Mayor Frisinger would reply to me once she had spoken to her staff.

Oddly, the very next day (yesterday), King County removed its Web page regarding the auction of the bridge. I assume this is all coincidence and that the bridge has probably already been sold to another bidder, but so far King County hasn’t answered my inquiry. The county estimated that the bridge has a scrap value of approximately $170,000, but since the purchaser is responsible for its removal and disassembly, I can’t imagine that selling it for scrap would be profitable.

So I’m left to wonder what the heck is going on. As no one actually reads this blog regularly, I’ll keep myself updated here as soon as I know anything new.

2008-04-29T16:08:00.000-07:00

Mt. Si Bridge to Issaquah?

I’ve been reading lately about my hometown’s plan to purchase the center span of the old Sauvie Island bridge for re-use as a pedestrian and bicycle crossing of Interstate 405 in Portland. The plan is generating plenty of controversy, but overall it stands a very good chance of happening. While the project will probably be more expensive than a conventional pedestrian bridge, it has many inherent advantages. Among them, it’s wider, it’s historically significant, and it illustrates forward thinking and concern for resources.

Now, King County is auctioning off the old Mount Si Road Bridge, which is being replaced, and bidding starts at $1. The City of Issaquah should purchase the old girl and use her to span Interstate 90, which completely bisects the town.

I’ve lived in the suburbs east of Seattle and worked in Issaquah, Washington for the past ten years. Through all of those years, I have primarily commuted to work by bicycle, bus, or a combination thereof. As a result I’m very familiar with getting around Issaquah without the use of an internal combustion engine, and let me tell you, it might be the most automobile-centric city I’ve had the displeasure of navigating through. There are places in Issaquah where a pedestrian must traverse as many as six crosswalks in order to walk four blocks. Some signals cycle through all directions of traffic twice before the “Walk” sign activates; which results in a waiting time for pedestrians that can exceed four minutes. That’s fine on a sunny day, but as you might expect, those days are rare at best.

A footbridge between the Gilman Blvd. and Pickering Place retail areas would re-connect Issaquah to itself. If that bridge is also a historic structure it would become a landmark, and an icon of the city of Issaquah.

It wouldn’t be cheap, but nothing worthwhile ever is. As the above-linked article mentions, the bridge is in poor condition, and it’s covered in lead-based paint. Restoration will be expensive, but clearly the bridge would never again have to bear the weight of 40,000 lb. trucks, so a full restoration wouldn’t be necessary.

Issaquah’s leaders need to step up and provide some real forward thinking to address the city’s transportation problems. This project would prove that they’re serious about alleviating the city’s maddening traffic congestion, and would reduce its well-earned reputation as a developer-friendly, environmentally neglectful government.

Some analysts suggest that gas prices may double yet again in the next 12 months. For a city that has bent over backwards to accommodate single-occupant vehicle lifestyles, that spells trouble. Issaquah’s economy is intrinsically tied to the automobile, and in a transportation crisis, the town would be effectively abandoned as a destination for anyone outside the city limits.

As it stands now, Issaquah is identifiable to the average passerby only by freeway ramps. Those same ramps and interchanges cut-off the city’s commercial areas from one another. Unless something is done to make it more friendly to those of us that prefer “alternative” forms of transportation like walking, Issaquah can look forward to an exodus of residents, and a lot of boarded-up storefronts.

2008-04-18T12:22:00.000-07:00

A Big Day for this Little Blog

I received three comments on yesterday’s blog entry, which basically represents the first three visitors ever to this page. So I’ll start off by saying thank you Mark Ragan, Steve Crescenzo and Jim Ylisela of Ragan Communications for stopping by! As Jim mentioned in the seminar to which I referred, blogs are basically diaries, and up until yesterday this blog may as well have been a little pink book tucked under my pillow, because no one had ever seen it anyway. So again, thanks guys!

I need to point out that while I was critical of the seminar in terms of its usefulness to my company, that has more to with my employer than it does with Ragan’s content. For one thing, my employer quite obviously has a higher percentage of “unskilled” and unconnected labor than any of the other firms represented at the workshop.

Beyond that fact, I’ll be the first to admit that my company is a knuckle-dragging Cro-Magnon entity when it comes to embracing new technology, especially where employee communication is concerned. Number one, they don’t want to spend any money, and number two, their favorite question during the “approval process” (sorry guys, I’m still stuck with that term, too) is this: “Do our employees really need to know that?”

At one point during day one of the seminar, Steve made this remark (I’m paraphrasing): “Some Companies think they can put a kiosk in the break room and employees will spend their free time checking out the Intranet; they won’t.”

My lead reporter and I looked at each other and laughed, because our company just spent millions last fall doing almost exactly that, except in our case it’s even lamer. Our “break room Intranet” is really little more than an Etch-A-Sketch, because our paranoid legal department decided there too many “sensitive” documents on the real Intranet for hourly employees to see. It serves only one important purpose, which to make our in-house job bank accessible to all employees, and that was only done because we’re getting sued by former employees that rightfully claim we didn’t offer them access to posted job opportunities.

I also mentioned in yesterday’s post that I did get some “golden nuggets” out of the seminar. Ragan armed me with several very solid arguments for at least establishing some kind of “outside the firewall” Internet presence for employee communication. I’ll be presenting that to the steering committee next week, and I’m grateful to both Jim and Steve for providing me with some potent ammunition for that battle. Additionally, my lead reporter had never attended a Ragan seminar, and she loved it and found it very useful.

I certainly don’t want a refund. Yeah, I wondered if it was worth the cost, but heck, anymore I wonder the same thing every time I buy a tank of gas or a bunch of asparagus.

So thanks again Jim and Steve. You can bet that I’ll be in your audience again, probably sooner rather than later.

2008-04-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

A Grand Event

This week, my lead reporter and I attended a two-day seminar presented by Ragan Communications, a Chicago-based consulting firm. The seminar was titled “Advanced Internal Communications,” and is intended to help those of us in the employee communications business improve our publications and take advantage of new technologies.

I attended the same seminar six years ago, but presenters Steve Crescenzo and Jim Ylisela have updated the workshop to include the exciting new category of internal communication known as “social media.” This includes “new” communication channels like blogging, podcasts and video, all delivered to employees via the company’s Intranet. Of course, while Steve and Jim were updating their workshop, the company I work for was doubling in size – from 65,000 employees to more than 135,000.

It took me about two minutes to realize that in reality, nothing had changed with Ragan. The simple truth is that they don’t aim their message at companies like mine, in which about 95 percent of employees have no access to the Intranet at all. They cater to companies that are composed of cube farms, in which every (or nearly every) employee has regular access to the company’s Intranet.

This isn’t to say that I didn’t glean a couple of golden nuggets of wisdom from the workshop - I did, but I’m not sure it was worth the $1000 bucks that it cost for two of us to attend.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the workshop for me was that in roughly 14 hours of oratory, neither of the presenters used the word “morale” even once. Have we completely given up on it, or is that word just too “old school” to even mutter anymore?

2008-01-31T16:29:00.001-08:00

The Decay of the Emerald City

The Seattle Times this week ran an episodic article detailing the travails of the 2000 University of Washington football team, which under Rick Neuheisel won the 2001 Rose Bowl. As might be expected, Husky alumni and fans are livid, and accuse the times of cheap tabloid journalism, among other things.

What I find interesting about the article is its timing. Just last week, the University proposed a $300 million renovation of decrepit Husky Stadium, a.k.a. “The Mistake by the Lake,” $150 million of which they requested in public funding.

If you’re familiar with Seattle at all, then you know that the city is facing something of an infrastructure crisis. The Alaskan Way Viaduct and the SR520 floating bridge are both in dire need of replacement. The city’s indoor sports facility, Key Arena, is considered sub-standard by National Basketball Association standards, and not replacing it wil likely cost the city its NBA franchise, the SuperSonics. On top of all that, Seattle’s light rail system is woefully inadequate, and the ancient monorail is little more than an historical tourist attraction.

Given those challenges, it isn’t surprising that state and city leaders would be reluctant to pony-up $150 million for the UW football stadium, and they are, but there is also a growing contingent of residents that simply don’t understand why Seattle needs two state-of-the-art 65,000-plus seat football stadiums less than five miles apart.

Husky Stadium collapsed during its last renovation in 1987. That may well be it’s final fate in the not-to-distant future.

2008-01-30T17:10:00.000-08:00

12 Feet of Snow!

Well, yet another shut out on the morning bus today, so I rode back home, went back to bed, and didn’t show up at work until 10. This is not a good thing. I think I’m going to break out my recumbent this weekend and prep old Ike for the full riding commute.

There’s just one thing. Since I’ve owned it, I’ve been sworn to not riding it in inclement weather, and there’s little hope for any improvement anytime soon.

Snoqualmie Pass, a mere 18 miles from home, was closed for more than 24 hours beginning yesterday for avalanche control. They finally re-opened it at about noon today, but it was closed again by 3 p.m. Why? That’s right, an avalanche!

Maybe I should take up cross country skiing

2008-01-29T11:10:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the final year of the Bush regime!

Roughly two years after I opened this blog, or even posted to it, I’m lamely attempting to revive it.

One important lesson that I’ve learned about blogging, by not blogging, is that one must have something to write about in order to successfully produce a blog. While I have a number of interests, including my family, words, cycling, beer and the University of Oregon Ducks, I never really felt much like railing away to no one in particular about any of these subjects.

Now, however, I’m suffering something of a commuting crisis, so I have reason to vent.

I live and work in suburban Seattle, and for the past six years I’ve commuted to and from work about 85 percent of the time by bicycle, or a combination of bus and bicycle. My commute is about 17 miles one-way, so in the cold and wet months, I often ride the fabulous King County Metro Transit System for portions of it. In truth, it’s not a bad transit system, but for cyclists, it’s going to be far less convenient this year.

In years past, Metro buses were equipped with racks capable of holding two bicycles. In good weather, when more people were willing to ride bicycles, the bus would occasionally have a full rack when it reached my stop, which would leave me to either wait for a later bus, ride the distance, or (in the morning only) go back home and get my truck.

Fortunately or unfortunately, the rising cost of gasoline has vastly increased the number of riders on my bus line, thereby making it more and more difficult to get a space on the bike rack. In 2007, Metro started to install new three-bike racks on many buses, including the line I ride, which really did help to reduce the number of times I was “closed out” of the bus rack. Earlier his month, however, the new racks were removed from all Metro buses.

The end result of all this is that I’ve been closed out of the old two-position bike racks four times already this month, and it’s January! I can only imagine what June will be like. Clearly I am now resigned to riding the distance most days when the weather improves, which is great for my health, but will probably be exhausting.

Regardless, I will never go back to full-time single-occupant vehicle commuting. Never

2006-03-13T14:36:00.000-08:00

Calling all Ducks!

2006-03-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

Hello and welcome to the Riding Writer's blog. I've got nothing so far, but that could change ... or not.