Car Free Stuff and Bike Lockers

I left work at 4 and went to Pleasant Hill like I do every day but on this day for whatever reason, I had trouble finding a locker.  I went through the whole area to look and barely made the train.  When I finally found a seat and had rested up I called the CSR and tweeted about it too but in the end I heard nothing.  This was the first time that this had ever happened and I think that it was no coincidence that it happened that day.  I think that at the end of the summer people return from their vacations and start classes again and want to start off on the right foot.  I know that this day was special because the incident didn’t happen again.

During that period I had been trying to get people to come to Happy Hour at Zeitgest.  I had met a lot of people via Twitter and I wanted to get to know them.  The whole affair was the result of a post I made about the Car Free Happy Hour last July.  A number of people had mentioned wanting to go.  About three weeks later I noted that I had contacted a bunch of people and made plans for the 28th.

Those that were able to come were a broad array of personalities in business, law, data, art and design.  We had gotten to know each other through the local car free scene and social media.  I noted that each one was relatively well connected in their various areas and had all garnered a modest following among their peers.  We had a pitcher of delicious dark beer and said hello to a number of other people—geographers, cyclists—from other tables that we knew.  I learned about SF2G (aka San Francisco to Google).  I also heard about the progress being made on cycling infrastructure in Oakland, commuting to Diablo Valley College for work and Google MapsGL.

When ever I do this kind of thing I always take a step back afterwards to ask, “What happened?”  In all, the effort to organize the event was difficult.  While I do inevitably fret about the experience, the effect of any successful event can leave me feeling good about myself.

I wrote another post about car free stuff about a week later when I went to a dinner put on by YPT a Madre Mia in the Mission.  We had all paid in advance.  We introduced ourselves and had a general discussion of our jobs.  For instance there were about 5 people from MTA, someone from the Bicycle Coalition, a car share person, a geodata person and a person from Code for America.  The meal was good.  I talked to people about jobs and plans for grad school.

The speaker at the meal was an administrative aide that talked about how bikes need to be “cool” and that women need to ride more.  There was also some discussion of how difficult it can be to build overhead wires for transit because the engineers are not available.  When the conversation turned to local ballot measures the conversation became especially contentious.  While some decided to keep their political views to themselves others were especially outspoken.  However, I noticed that while it might have seemed that people’s opinions were either for or against a particular measure there was subtle nuance to them.  For instance, I noted that one person was especially strident in people keeping the same opinion and another was especially well versed in managing opinions.

I started writing this piece on 082714.  It is part of an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.