How To Use LAX's Taxi, Lyft, Uber Lot

LAX's new system for taxis, Uber, and Lyft began rather disastrously at the beginning of November this year.  We'd heard it was a little better, but weren't sure how we were going to negotiate it.  Turned out to be reasonably easy.  There are big light green signs all over telling you how to get to the new lot - via shuttles that stop on the inside lane by those same green signs.

We asked an employee about when to order the car.  J has Lyft and I have Uber (which I got last summer when we were in Argentina and there was no Lyft).  She said to do it before getting on the shuttle.

Shuttle came quick and wandered through a maze of curving roads.  (It was 8:30 pm on a Monday so we decided not to take the bus.)  I ordered the Uber on the bus and got a code number and instructions to go to 2A, 3A, or 4A.  When we got off the bus there were lots of people helping people figure out what to do and where to go.

Taxis were in one place, Lyft in another direction and there were long lines of cars waiting to pick people up.  Not that many people.

At the front of the line there was someone guiding people into cars.  We got into the next car and gave the driver our PIN.  With the canopy and lights, and all the staff directing people, it felt like going to some big event with crowd control.

So the difference here is that you aren't ordering a specific driver - just the next one in line, like in a taxi line.  And the driver said, from his perspective, he doesn't get to screen the customers.

Normally, Uber drivers, he said, anyone with a rating of less that 4.8 (out of 5)!  That's a pretty high standard I thought.  But here, he has to take whoever is next in line.  Of course, we don't get to pick drivers either.  I asked what got people a good rating.  Tips* and then whether you're decent people.  I suspect it's more about whether you're a jerk.  But still 4.8 out of 5 is a high bar.  If you've taken as few Ubers as we have, one 2 rating would make us untouchables.  If you had a hundred rides a few big negatives wouldn't matter, but I'm not sure how a jerk would get enough rides to render a 2 from someone not a big deal.

I asked what our rating was.  Turns out were a 5, but that's only out of three rides.  Ali, our driver, was a 4.95.  He said we could find our own rating, but I haven't figured out how.  But, of course, Google to the rescue.  Turns out you need 5 rides for your rating to show up on your profile.  We aren't there yet.

Anyway, it was easy, one-third cheaper than a cab (though I don't know if their price has gone down since Uber and Lyft are now here big time).  Though when the crowds get really bad next week, not sure how easy this will be.

And I'd note that the big red and white billboard in the back was for My UBER Lawyer, offering to help with accidents and other problems with Uber.

*I tend to tip cab (and Uber and Lyft) drivers generously since I drove a cab out of LAX long ago after graduating UCLA and before Peace Corps training resumed.  I needed to earn some money and this let me beach during the day and then work the 4pm to midnight shift.

Going From One World To Another

We’re in the international terminal at LAX.  Before too long we walk down a corridor and through the door to the plane.  When we get out we’ll be in Lima International.  Then another door and another plane, and we’ll be in Buenos Aires.  Jets take a lot of the geography out of travel.  If we went through different doors we’d end up in Asia or Europe or Africa.  But the voyage would be similar.

When we get out of the airport we’ll be in a different world.  (Well, of course, it’s the same world, you know what I mean.).  We’ll be in a part of the world we’ve never visited.  We’re on the threshold.    Imagination and reality will soon merge.

And I checked after yesterday’s post.  Others have had the same problems I had trying to use blogger on an iPad.  So expect posts where pictures are not well integrated with the text.

Renaming LA Memorial Coliseum To United Airlines And Dealing With Statues For Disgraced Causes

[In this post, perhaps more than most, I'm stepping into my brain and tracing events in my life that affect how I think about this topic.  Be prepared to meander.http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2010/06/meandering.html]

From an LA Times article 

The University of Southern California’s $69-million sale of naming rights for Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum is being criticized as dishonoring the historic stadium’s dedication as a memorial to soldiers who fought and died in World War I just a few years before it opened.

(USC took over control of the Coliseum in a 98 year lease in 2013.  More details here.)

I personally became concerned about selling naming rights back around 1965 when UCLA built a new basketball stadium on campus and named it Pauley Pavillion, for the oil mogul who paid for naming rights instead of for John Wooden who had recently worked miracles with his Bruin basketball team.

When I was growing up, stadiums and other public places weren't plastered with billboards.  You could watch sporting events without being bombarded by corporate logos.  In fact, corporate branded T-shirts and other such swag were actually given away to people.  It was part of companies' advertising budget.

Since then, companies have somehow convinced people they should become human billboards for their products, but the billboards, not the companies, should pay for the opportunity.  But that's another blog post.

The Coliseum naming gave me an idea.  Why not let corporations or even individuals, buy the naming rights to all the offensive statues still standing in the US.  In most cases, there are few if any  people still living who knew the statues' models or would recognize their faces.  You could have the "[Insert Name Of Corporation] Horse and Rider."  Instead of spending money to tear the statues down, cities and towns can make money from them.

But my favorite option, one I came up with as a UCLA student, is to have plaques next to buildings and statues that tell the reader all the shady things the donor had done to make the money being used now to name the building.  And offending statues, whether built to commemorate defenders of slavery or killers of Native Americans, or polluters of the air and water, or the swindlers of the poor, could have the deeds listed that make the statues embarrassing today.  If we erase history, it's hard to learn from it.

My understanding of this was broadened as a sixth grade teacher in Los Angeles.  My students were all black and we figured out a way to work with each other so they learned something and I felt reasonably productive.  One day I was was reading from one of my favorite childhood books, The Story of Doctor Doolitle.  I had my own copy with me in class.  We were a few chapters in and I was reading out loud to class.  Dr. Doolitle and Polynesia were in Africa when the good doctor used a racist term for the native peoples.  Whoops.  I didn't remember Dr. Doolittle as a racist, but it was clear now it was part of his culture.  I stopped in mid-sentence and told the students it was time for our next activity.  What I SHOULD HAVE DONE was explain why I was stopping and then had an authentic conversation with them about racism.  They would have understood.   They were angry with me because the Dr. Doolittle book disappeared.

I should also note that I went to day care, K-12 schooling, college, and graduate school in Los Angeles.  When I saw the LA Coliseum on television during the 1980 Olympics in LA, I realized that it was one of the landmarks of my life.  I spent time at the Coliseum all the while I was growing up.  It was the setting for a diverse array of activities from rodeos and boy scout jamborees, from early LA Dodger games before Dodger stadium was built, to UCLA football games.  And it was just south of campus when I was a grad student at USC.  So there is a personal connection to that structure that is important to who I am.  And last December when we visited the Tutankhamun exhibit at Exposition Park, we walked over to the Coliseum ticket office that was surrounded by wooden barriers during the Coliseum's reconstruction.  But I do have this list of rules that I certainly don't remember from my childhood visits.

I, of course, am a supporter of keeping the old name.  My alma mater, USC, has become one the best fund raising universities in the world in the last decades.  That money credo has improved the academics, but it has also made money more important that ethics and other human values - like respecting history.   (For those who have missed it - USC, who now manages the Coliseum, has been wracked with scandals in its medical school as well as other programs, most recently the admissions scandals.)  So, the idea of changing the name of the Coliseum for $69 million is not even a decision.  It's a given.  It's been their modus operandi for a long time.  For a price, we'll do anything including looking the other way.

Is there a point to all this?  Yes.  Remembering good things, like the Coliseum as a Los Angeles memorial to WW I dead and NOT  auctioning off its name to the highest bidder, and dealing with the statues of fallen heroes or the misdeeds of corporate branders are all of the same issue.  I think I advocate for dealing with the past as openly as we can.  I don't mean 'can' politically, but rather 'can' in the sense that we are aware enough of the good deeds or misdeeds of whom or what is being remembered.  Let's acknowledge our collective misdeeds of the past as well as our collective good deeds.  And where we don't agree, let's sit down and talk about values that these people, entities, events embody and how they connect with who we are as a nation today.

[Yes, this could use a couple of rewrites before posting, but I've got posts waiting in line to be written and I've got grandkids to go pick up right now.]

Let's March

Seattle, where we've spent most of the month, had one of the coldest Februaries on record and including one of the snowiest.
San Francisco, where we spent part of the month, was rainy and February temps were well below normal.
And the LA Times says today that LA had its first February since they've been keeping records ( "at

least 132 years") when temperature never reached 70˚F.  The average was down from 68˚F to 61˚F.

Meanwhile Anchorage started February a little warmer than normal and ended a little colder than normal.

So, does this mean Trump is right and Climate Change is a hoax?  Weather is NOT Climate.  Weather is what happens short term.  Climate is the larger overall trends.  And Climate Change is about change.  That doesn't mean just getting warmer (though that's the overall trend).  It also means more extremes, more volatility, and changes that will affect how much water areas have, whether traditional crops will survive, whether heat and floods will change the landscapes.

Climate change is real and businesses know it and are concerned.   Only ideologues who reject science for vanity and ideology don't believe it.

But meanwhile, Let's March.  Let's enjoy this month.  Our last full day in the Seattle area is beautiful.  And I'm looking forward to getting some sunny wintertime in Anchorage tomorrow.

Leaving LA. Arriving Seattle. Then On Home To Anchorage

The rain stopped during the morning in LA and we had periods of sunshine.  We even got a rainbow while waiting on the plane to take off.











And here are all those beaches I've been posting pictures of.  This time from the air.  The line out to see at the bottom is the north side of Marina del Rey.  Then comes the Venice Pier, and beyond that is the Santa Monica Pier.  Strange light close to sunset time.

I spent most of the flight trying to catch up on my reading of Abramson's Proof of Collusion.  I'm trying to imagine the explanations we'll get when current Republican Senators write the memoirs.  Murkowski might write something like, well, I opposed when I thought it would make a difference, but I had to balance getting things for Alaska vs losing all leverage vs being attacked and cut out completely.  I waited until there were enough other Republican senators to act in ways that would make a difference."   All the pictures of her I see nowadays have this terribly pained expression.  Is that her current look, or is that what the editors think is the most likely to get readers' attention?

Abramson tells a bunch of different stories that all tie together to explain Trump's historic and more current ties to Russia, gives details on the key players, and a massive backup of footnotes, of sources.  He doesn't make extravagant claims.  He mentions things that are missing in the evidence.  One can't help but wonder how the Republicans piled up on Clinton, yet the evidence of Trump's collusion is overwhelming.  Yet they do nothing, letting him stay in the country's cockpit pulling the levers.  If there was a hint that a pilot had a drinking problem, he'd be suspended until it was determined if it were true.  If a teacher were accused of inappropriately touching a child, he'd be out of the classroom immediately.  Yet the Republicans allow Trump to keep tearing apart the United States' political and physical infrastructure, honor, economy, and ideals while they let Mueller gather the details.  (It's not bad that they let Mueller do his work.  I'd like them to protect Mueller from being removed, and protect his work from being buried by Trump's new Attorney General.)  But in the meantime they let him continue to do his damage.

I do recommend the book for anyone who isn't quite sure of how and why Trump will be found guilt of colluding with the Russians to get elected in exchange for wrecking Western alliances, removing sanctions, supporting Russia's annexing of Crimea, pulling out of the Paris Climate Treaty, and on and on.

And then I noticed we were flying over downtown Seattle.  You've seen enough pictures of all the buildings.  Here are a couple of more impressionistic pictures.

The wide shot.









And the closer shot.  (The green is the ferris wheel on the waterfront.)











Eventually we caught the next flight and made our way home to Anchorage where it feels a lot warmer than our outdoor thermometer's 14˚F (-10˚C) reading.  The temperature at the drug store sign up the street seemed a bit off in the other direction.  It said 42˚F.

Visit To The Eye Doctor - Fancy Frames And Inside Closeups

I first went to Dr. E - as he reminded me yesterday - in 1975.  His office is in Beverly Hills, but the prices don't reflect that.  We came down to LA often enough to visit my mom over the years that I could get a check up every year or two.  He's a great doctor - considering how well my contacts work - we get along well, and he plays real jazz in the background.  Not only am I one of the patients he's had the longest, but he also appreciates that I come all the way from Alaska to get my eyes checked.

The waiting room had mostly ordinary glasses on display.  But there were also several very splashy ones.

Dr. E has gotten a new toy since I was here two years ago - it's a machine that takes pictures of the inside of your eyeball.  Here's what I look like inside - at least the way the machine paints it.

The blue at the bottom is the macula.  And he pointed out where a few bits are breaking off.  He didn't seem to worried at the moment.  I couldn't make sense of this at first but he explained it was at the back of the inside of my eye.   This picture I got online might help.  

Image from dreamstime

 The Macular Society tells us this (there's also a video there):

"The macula is part of the retina at the back of the eye. It is only about 5mm across but is responsible for all of our central vision, most of our colour vision and the fine detail of what we see.
The macula has a very high concentration of photoreceptor cells that detect light and send signals to the brain, which interprets them as images. The rest of the retina processes our peripheral (side) vision."

It's pretty important.







If I understand this right, the white spot in the darkish area is the macula.  Then there are other areas and layers of the eye as you can see in the chart above.

Here's a different view.  

I need to wrap this up because Alaska's being given a bad rap again - a storm from the Gulf of Alaska is headed for (maybe already there) Northern California and we're supposed to get rain here in LA tonight.  So I want to go for my bike ride before it starts.  It's already pretty gray out.  

Mar Vista Wall Art

I Biked over to the Mar Vista post office yesterday and there was a surprising number of murals on the way.  

@madsteez or his website

Philsantosart

Pink Riches

@Poetrylane

It's cool that artists can tag their work now and you can find them easily online.  Unfortunately I wasn't paying enough attention when I took the pictures and I didn't get all their links.

King Tut

My daughter had gotten tickets for the King Tut exhibit at LA's California Science Center.  This was the Museum of Science and Industry when I was a kid.

Here's part of the old facade.

It was all pretty overwhelming.

The Mercury capsule that took the US' first chimpanzee into space is there.

So is the Space Shuttle Endeavor.


The museum itself is free - in contrast to the Science Center in San Francisco.  So that means a lot of lower income families can come in and experience all he exhibits.   And during this holiday break, it was very crowded.

I'm still trying to process the exquisite craftsmanship of the items buried in Tutankhamen's tomb in 1300 BC.  It was really kind of crazy in the darkened rooms full of people and baby strollers crowding around the glass display boxes.

`But I thought I' share a little bit here while I think about it.

Scooter & Bike Shares And Other Transportation Around Venice And Santa Monica - Updated

Over the last couple of years when we visited LA, I've notice the scooter thing.  First it was my bewilderment at seeing scooters just sitting, seemingly abandoned, on the bike trail along the beach.

The bikes had stations like this one, where you could use your phone to rent a bike and you had to return it to another station.

But the electric scooters had gps and could be left anywhere and rented anywhere you found one.

This didn't go without controversy.  People complained about scooters menacing pedestrians or being abandoned where they block sidewalks.  There have been reports of vandalism against the abandoned scooters.


The picture shows two Jump scooters (Uber) and a Bird scooter.  I've seen Lyme and Lyft scooters as well.







When the bike trail along the beach goes from Venice (a neighborhood that is actually in Los Angeles) to Santa Monica (a separate city), there's the sign banning scooters.









I've seen some scooters left there at the border,




like this Bird and the others in the background just before this sign.















But I also see a lot of folks riding their electric scooters along the Santa Monica beach bike trail.

Two riders on this scooter.

An electric skateboard.

 An electric mini bike.

Selfie bikers

A speed biker overtakes someone just cruising along.

Non-motorized tricycles.

 Just for fun I'm adding in a couple of forms of transportation that don't actually take you anywhere - the rollercoaster on the Santa Monica pier,



and this guy who was swinging so high and for so long that I was wondering if he was chemically high as well.

And a non-motorized race to the top.   

Besides the beach, there are lots and lots of people riding around the streets of Venice and Santa Monica on these scooters and bikes.  I think it's a great idea whose time hasn't actually come yet.  That is - the streets, bike trails, and sidewalks aren't geared for all these different vehicles going at different speeds.  The idea that you can pick up an easy means of short transport - say two or three miles or less - and just leave it where you end up, is a great alternative to the car.  And a great connector from buses to your final destination.

People are working out how to do this without endangering pedestrians or blocking people's way.

Here are some Jump scooters that found a good spot to park, not far from my Mom's house.

I think this could be a big part of everyone's future.  We just need to redesign streets to accommodate these slower options.  I'm a bit concerned by the lack of helmets among riders.  I haven't seen anyone crash yet, but I've seen a few people looking scared as they come around a curve faster than they were ready for.  

And I'm not sure what the City of Santa Monica intends to do about motorized scooters on the beach bike trails. There sure doesn't seem to be any enforcement at the moment.   When rules are not enforced and then suddenly enforced or selectively enforced, they're a lot easier to challenge.  

I don't know what's happening in the rest of the LA area.  I suspect because of the beach, Venice and Santa Monica have more scooters, but I'm not sure.  I haven't noticed them much when we've been out of the area.  

[UPDATE Dec 22, 2018 7:50 pm - well, it seems the scooters are doing well in the Westwood area where we had a Persian dinner tonight.  

It turns out there's a company doing the same thing with electric cars.  My granddaughter and I passed this place this morning near the Santa Monica Saturday market. 

I looked up Ioniq and got this website for Waive cars.  It says you get the app, locate a car nearby, book it, and drive it for two hours FREE!  They say they make their money from advertising.  After two hours it costs $5.99 per hour.]  There were six or seven more in this lot.]