Cut Out Game Pieces

On November seventh I wrote that the day before I had left at 430.  I took the train to Embarcadero and then went to Mejita.  I had a taco and then went to the Port Offices at Pier 1 for the Embarcadero redesign community meeting.  There I saw a friend from Twitter.  He told me about his bike ride and we talked about our Twitter friends.  I looked at the MTA displays.  When I talked to my twitter friend again a moment later I learned that someone had just stolen his bike light.  Then the forum began and we sat for a brief presentation and then we sat down with a facilitator and discussed one area of the road near AT&T Park.

There were three road users that were motorists and one of them identified me early on as a problem.  Two others were less so.  We cut out game pieces and arranged them on a road way.  I didn’t like the two way bike lane.  There was a lot about putting walls around bike lanes.  Two people—motorists—said they wanted to explore other non-game piece ideas.  There was a pedi-cab driver that took a centrist view.

We broke up for presentations.  Our pedi-cabbie represented our approach—the current alignment without the parking.  I was amazed at how easy that was.  In fact all of the groups eliminated parking straight away.  My Twitter friend’s group included the two way bike lane on the promenade side but also included a lane on the other.  I realized this was a great idea when he described it.  My other Twitter friend texted me around then and I helped her find the place.  She had gotten a haircut in the time since I had seen her.  I liked it.  I asked her about her gmail photos.

Afterwards the three of us talked for a bit.  In the middle of it one of them got a parking ticket on her work fleet car—sad face.  I walked with them out to the roadway and gave her a hug.  I went to a taqueria on Columbus and had a terrible taco.  I talked with a friend I had met from Toronto a week earlier about a Saturday ride. I asked my friend at City College about getting a ride together for him but the response was that he wasn’t available.  I went to Visuvio.  My frind from High School indicated that he would move to Portland if he had a chance.  I said hi to the bar back.  She said that she had taken to riding a bike.

This is 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.