Critical Mass Bike Ride Anchorage Today

Image from BikeAnchorage

 People gathered at Loussac Library at 11 am.

My very rough count near the flag poles was 150 - 200 bikers.  They said the previous ride - in 1971 - had 300 riders.  But in 1971 there were a lot fewer competing events in Anchorage.  But also a lot fewer people overall.  People kept coming.

The point, according to the organizers, was to increase awareness of the need for better accommodation of bikes and other non-car vehicles and pedestrians in Anchorage.  I rode near the front of the pack.  Here we were waiting for the light to turn left from 36th onto Denali.  

It was a little sketchy at some intersections.  Volunteers blocked traffic at some points, but it all looked pretty loose.  Fortunately, drivers seemed patient and many waved and honked (short taps, not long angry ones).  

Here's looking back on Northern Lights, waiting for the light at Arctic, I think.  The lights did break up the long train of bikes a bit.

Almost back at our starting point. 

It could hardly have been a nicer day - sunny and in the low 60s - but there was a strong south wind. As we got back to Loussac people peeled out of the crowd of bikes.   

Port Of Oakland and Chappell Roland Hayes

After dropping the kids off yesterday morning we took BART out to Oakland to visit long time friends.  And they took us to Middle Harbor Shoreline Park.

From The Port Of Oakland website:

"Middle Harbor Shoreline Park is built on the site of the former Oakland Naval Supply Depot, an important supply center for the Navy's Pacific Fleet from World War II until 1998, when the depot was closed and transferred to the Port of Oakland. This 541-acre facility was equipped with dozens of warehouses with a combined floor area of over 7 million square feet. The Naval Supply Depot that stood on this land played an important role in the World War II war effort--civilian and military workers processed and shipped a wide variety of cargo, including aviation material, electronics, weapons, clothing, food, fuel, lumber, and medicine and medical equipment."

The park looks out over San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge into downtown San Francisco.

This is a naked eye view from a tower in the park.

This is with a little zooming with the camera.

And this is with help from the telescope on the tower.

The cranes are part of the Oakland docks.  A dockworker was eating lunch on the tower.  He said he eats there every day and it's always as deserted as it was yesterday.  Except when there's a concert.  As an Alaskan I forget that deserted isn't normal.

He also said that ll shipping to and from China has been halted.  Shipowners here, he said, are afraid their ships will be quarantined.



I also learned about Chappell Roland Hayes.

I found more about him here (where you can read it all)

"Visionary Hayes Honored by PortSunday, January 25, 2004
by Paul T. Rosynsky, Staff Writer
Oakland ~ During his brief 45 years of life, Chappell Hayes inspired hundreds and changed the lives of thousands with his stoic leadership of West Oakland's never-ending fight for environmental justice.
As an outspoken critic of governmental policies that favored industrial development over community cohesiveness, Hayes stood as a beacon of hope for thousands of disenfranchised residents who neither had the means nor the knowledge to fight against the destruction of their neighborhood.
So it was fitting Saturday, exactly 10 years after Hayes' death, that his nemesis, the Port of Oakland, dedicated its prized environmental achievement to the man who made it happen.
In an emotionally stirring ceremony, more than 100 family members and friends, including his wife, City Council member Nancy Nadel, and daughter, Sele Nadel-Hayes, helped the port turn a new observation tower at Middle Harbor Shoreline Park into a monument celebrating Hayes' life and achievements.
"The naming of the observation tower is very fitting for Chappell," Nadel said, wrapping up a two-hour dedication ceremony. "With his feet on earth and head in the clouds, he served as an inspiration to me and Sele. Now, he has the ability to inspire us all to infinity."
Hayes, who died of cancer in 1994, is credited for helping West Oakland begin its long and continuing battle against polluting industries and the governments that support them. . ."

It was, as you can see, a beautiful day.  Got into the low 70s in Oakland.

Reading On The Bus, Five Modes Of Transport Yesterday

Like the other school days in San Francisco, we left with the kids at 7am to catch the bus.  We got them settled and took the bus back.




Lots of the San Francisco bus stops have electronic monitors that tell you pretty accurately how long it will be for  the next two buses arrive.

I took this picture because of the woman reading on the bus.  That's fairly uncommon nowadays.  Most people are busy with their cell phones.  How many screens can you see in this picture?  (I see five, not counting the guy with the earbuds who had just put his away.)

I decided to blur the face of the woman looking right at me.  I learned last year in an OLÉ class on photo journalism that one benefit (for photographers) of taking pictures with your cell phone is that people tend not to pay attention.  But she seems to have figured it out.  And I don't know think people should have their pictures 'stolen' if they don't want it to happen.  So I blurred her somewhat.  She then started to do her eye makeup.

Next was BART to SFO.  There are lots of places, it seems, where there are escalators up, but not down.  With my tricky knee and a suitcase and backpack, that was slow.  And I couldn't find the elevator.   If you click on the image below, you can see it much more clearly.  These are the email messages I got from Alaska Airlines (in chronological order):

• Your flight is on time
• Your gate has changed
• Your flight is delayed

The delay turned out to be nearly an hour.  That seems to happen a lot out of SFO.   In Seattle it seemed like the cloud cover was down to about 30 feet when we landed at SEATAC and snow was blowing horizontally.

Fortunately, our two roll on suitcases were already coming onto the baggage carousel as we got there and the snow wasn't coming down either.





We got to the Link light rail station at the airport where an employee was telling people the train was no longer going past Pioneer Square.  To go further you had to get off and transfer to another train.  But that's where we were getting off anyway.

This construction began January 4. They're adding new lines and you can find out more here.










Then we walked down the hill a few blocks to the ferry terminal.  There's been construction there, it seems, forever.  I told J I'd take both suitcases up the elevator if she took the steps and got the tickets.  We were getting very close to departure time and they usually shut off the walk on passengers five minutes before the ferry leave.  But there was no elevator to be seen.  Grrrrrr.  As I start to haul my suitcase up while being careful not to move in a way that would cause pain in my knee, a young man reached out to help me carry it up.  I thanked him and pointed him to J who was just ahead of me.  By the time I got to the ticket booth, J had our tickets and we managed to get the 4:15 ferry.

It felt good to sit down and look out the window with the part of the Seattle skyline that includes the Space Needle, not to mention the reflections in the glass.

Finally, on the other side, our son-in-law was waiting and took J's suitcase and we walked to the market where our daughter and granddaughter were waiting.  They told us the elevator was in a new place now.   We decided that we'd just all get something from their take out offerings and eat in their modest dining space.

Today I walked with my daughter and granddaughter to her school.  Saturday she has a birthday, which is why we stopped here on the way home.

A Chilean Student's View Of Chile's Current Upheaval

This a follow up to yesterday's post on Chile's protests and government response.  It's based on a Skype chat with Sebastían, my college student friend in Santiago.  He was the catalyst for yesterday's post.  I'll use some images of the Skype chat to give a sense of this 'interview' but I've abbreviated it somewhat to cut out repetition and side conversations. I've made the images as big as I think I can fit them here.  You may have to work a bit to read them, but the visual of the chat seemed to capture our chat better than just the words.

I began by letting him know I'd posted about our previous chat (he'd said it was ok),  about the protests, whether he had any comments, (he did) and  by asking how he got to school today if the subway stations were damaged.

[Note:  OCDE - mentioned below- is Spanish initials for OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ]

Let's look at that picture of crowd for a subway train in Santiago at peak time a little larger.  

Also, some clarification - "minimum salary is 300,000 clp (Chilean pesos).  300,000 clp would be (today) $413. That's per month.  Here's a chart from wage indicator.org that shows 300,000 clp is below what a single person needs to live.  

Data for Chile Sept. 2019 - From wage indicator.org

Let's catch up a bit. First he sent me to an instagram that shows Chile's current president Pinera saying "Estamos en guerra" or "We are at war." Then it shows president Pinochet saying almost the exact same words 30 years ago. [I couldn't figure out how to get the GIF from Instagram to here (this is just a screenshot, but if you click on the image below, it will take you to the GIF.]




And an Instagram response:

(We are not at war)

Then he sent me to this video on Twitter, shot from a window above, of police or military, who could be snorting coke.  Or not.  You can judge for yourself.

PACOS JALANDO! pic.twitter.com/lByZsJcXo8

— gonzalosoyyo 👑 (@gonzalosoyyo) October 20, 2019

And this video Esto pasa en Chile - This is happening in Chile.  It begins with the president saying we are in war.  Then it has shots of the police attacking citizens.  Some particularly troubling ones include police cars intentionally running over people fleeing.

 

There is so much conflict around the world now:

• Hong Kong 
• Kurds in Syria
• The British are in knots over Brexit
• Venezuela 
• Yeman 
• Refugees in camps around the world
• US president facing impeachment

It's easy to not pay attention to what's happening in Chile.  But one of the Instagram sites Sebastían sent me to had this message:

"Friends of the world TV is not going to show this, help us to make visible. THE POLICE AND THE MILITARY ARE KILLING PEOPLE!"

Which included this:

"KNOW THAT IN CHILE TODAY, OCTOBER 2019 THE PEOPLE TIRED AND THE PIÑERA GOVERNMENT IS REPRESSING IT WITH DEATH, THE SAME AS IN THE PINOCHET DICTATORSHIP.."
[Translations from Google Translate.  Overall it's a messy translation so that's all I'll offer.]

Here's the Spanish from the Instagram, but I can't seem to get the link right on my Mac - it works on my phone.

que nosotrxs no lo vivimos, nosotrxs lo estamos viviendo. Amigxs del mundo la tv no va a mostrar esto, ayudenos a visibilizar. LA POLICÍA Y LOS MILITARES ESTÁN MATANDO GENTE! DESPUÉS DE UNA SEMANA DE MANIFESTACIONES DETONADAS POR EL ALZA EN EL TRANSPORTE PÚBLICO, QUE INVOLUCRARON LA EVASIÓN EN EL PAGO DEL MISMO, INFILTRADOS EN LAS MANIFESTACIONES COMIENZAN A REALIZAR MONTAJES TANTO DE INCENDIOS, BARRICADAS COMO DE SAQUEOS, PARA ASÍ EL INCOMPETENTE QUE TENEMOS POR PRESIDENTE, TENER EXCUSAS PARA DECLARAR UN TOQUE DE QUEDA Y SACAR A LOS MILITARES A LA CALLE VELANDO POR "EL ORDEN PÚBLICO" QUE SUS MISMOS PERKINES HAN DESTRUIDO EN BASE A MONTAJES. HOY ES EL 3ER DÍA Y YA HAY FALLECIDOS Y GENTE DESAPARECIDA. QUE SE SEPA QUE EN CHILE HOY, OCTUBRE DE 2019 EL PUEBLO SE CANSÓ Y EL GOBIERNO DE PIÑERA ESTÁ REPRIMIENDOLO CON MUERTE, IGUAL QUE EN LA DICTADURA DE PINOCHET. .HERMANX QUE ESTÁS AQUÍ SI TE TOMAN #DITUNOMBRE GRITALO! Y QUE APAREZCAN TODXS LXS QUE HOY NO ESTÁN! ..NO QUEREMOS MÁS MUERTES NI MÁS DESAPARECIDXS. NO QUEREMOS TU MIERDA DE DOCTRINA DE SHOCK!!! FOTO: CONCEPCIÓN @afpphoto

Travel Thoughts As We Leave Paris

1.  Package tour or on your own?

With the exception of a few short trips where a package was a better deal than booking on one's own, I've never really been on a package tour.  As I think about the time I spent figuring what hotels and train and rental car to book and how and when, I can understand why people like package tours where all those decisions are made for you.

But when I've looked at package tours offered from various organizations - from alumni groups to Costco - the daily individual price (not including airfare) ranges from $200-$400 double.  That makes a hotel room around $200-600 per night.  Our hotels - not five stars, but not shabby either - averaged about $100 per night.  There were a lot of good deals on-line if you look a little.  Even if you make some mistakes, you're still way ahead.  The only surprise from my online shopping was the rental car out of Brussels.  I never saw anything about a €50 site fee.

It was also nice to go at our own pace, not a group's pace.  We linger or rush off as we pleased.

Tours do give you more opportunity to meet folks, but half our trip involved people we knew who live in Paris, Brussels, and Germany.  And we met a number of interesting people - though there were lots of people on the Metro I would have liked to talk to, but didn't think I should.

I was lucky to get a good start on traveling solo when I was a student in Germany.

I would say there were a number of times of indecision and some concern, but that only means we were pushing ourselves into unknown territory and learning.  For instance, I felt terrible about not being able to speak French and I tried a bit, but people preferred English.  And I wasn't sure in the cheese shop if I could get just a few slices, but it was no problem.  And waiters were helpful in the restaurants.  The Metro was easier to figure out than the buses, but the buses were well marked at the bus stops and on the buses.  It was easy to figure out what stops you were at.

2.  Paris has a great bicycle system - Velib.

I only used it once, because J would rather walk, but it looks great and lots of people were using the
bikes.  You can sign up for a day or a couple of days or a year.  It cost about $2 for a day.  There are stations everywhere.  You can check online for ones near where you are going or where you are and find out how many bikes are available or empty spaces (if you want to return one.)  You can ride for 30 minutes free, then then start charging you, I think it was €1 for the first hour and then it goes up.  The idea is to keep as many bikes in circulation as possible - not to take long rides.  But you could just find a new station and drop a bike off before 30 minutes and get another.

The map shows where there are bike stations - these are staggeringly close together.

3.  Food

Seems a little higher than the US, but it was also really good.  Basics, like French bread and yogurt and packaged salads of all kinds, even sandwiches are available everywhere - there are restaurants and bakeries wherever you look.  And little markets.  And sidewalk restaurants have fixed price lunches and dinners.  Some were very reasonable, others a little pricier.

Here's the menu - the formula is €12.50 about $14.   You could choose a salad and the main plate or a dessert with the main plate.










Here's the melon salad.

And the au gratin fish with vegies.  It was sort of lasagna like and really good.

Our plane is now boarding for Reykjavik, so I'll post this now.  Really sorry to leave, but looking forward to the much cooler weather of Anchorage later.  

Good Design Or Just An Accident?

This was the view from the room where the complexity presentation was held.  It's really a peaceful landscape.  What impressed me was . . . well look at the next picture.

Yes, there is a road that goes through this landscape.  But from this room, at least,  you don't see the road.  When there's no car, you don't even realize it's there.

So, I was wondering - was this designed this way?  Or just an accident?  From the second floor, you won't have this same illusion that it's just an unbroken field to the trees.

Now, on the way to the presentation, I did pass an accident.  There were at least two other cars behind me that were also involved.  I didn't see an ambulance and you couldn't crash much closer to the emergency room than this intersection right between UAA and Providence hospital.   Not sure how this car got in this position.  Well designed intersections have fewer accidents. 

 
And putting some thought into land use can avoid making terrible mistakes too.

At the complexity talk, Dr. Jamie Trammel's presentation was titled: Alternative Landscape Futures: Using Spatially-Explicit Scenarios to Model Landscape Change.

OK, that title sounds pretty academic.  Basically, he was looking at ways to look at land use by gathering data, then projecting maps of the landscape with different possible futures based on different conditions.  If you, for example, see where threatened species live, leave wilderness corridors, look at the best land for urban areas, you can make maps that show different possible land use patterns.  He gave examples from Australia, Las Vegas, and the Kenai Peninsula.   This slide probably gives a better sense of how this works. 

Clearly Trammel's work is to try to bring some sense and order to future land use rather than letting things just happen haphazardly.

This was the slide that I didn't quite understand and I didn't have a chance to ask him to explain it more fully.  But it's a diagram, as I understand it, for developing these alternative futures so that people can visualize all the data that normally is too dense for most people to make sense of. 

USS Anchorage To Be Commissioned In Anchorage May 4 After May 1 Block Party

USS Anchorage - screenshot from video below.

The USS Anchorage (LPD 23) will be in town this week.  She was christened in New Orleans on May 28, 2011 when she was 85% completed.  Looking online I see that the commissioning was originally scheduled for last fall.  But PRWEB has this announcement: 

"Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has approved the date of May 4, 2013 as the day of commissioning for the Anchorage (LPD 23). Early this year it was announced that the commissioning would be held in Anchorage, a first for the city and the state of Alaska.
The commissioning is a formal ceremony in which the ship officially becomes a unit of the operating forces of the United States Navy. It is the final, most significant event, and the occasion when the ship "comes alive" and becomes a United States Navy Vessel."

The USS Anchorage is a San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship.  Don't know what that means? Or why it's LPD 23? These terms and lots of other interesting tidbits are in the Navy's FAQs  I've posted at the bottom of this post.

Actually, this is the second USS Anchorage.  The first one is sitting on the bottom of the sea off of Kauai.  She  was used as target practice in 2010 after being decommissioned in 2003.  She was commissioned in 1969.  You can read more about her here and here.


Before the commissioning on Saturday (May 4), the Port of Anchorage is throwing a block party at Town Square on Wednesday (May 1) from 5-9pm.

And there are Public Tours:  

Thursday, May 2 starting at 1:00 p.m. and ending at 8:00 p.m.
Friday, May 3 starting at 2:00 p.m. and ending at 8:00 p.m

Or you can go on this cool video tour from the ship's website.


Tickets for the commissioning itself are sold out, but you can watch the ceremony online.
 It's at 10am - 11am.


Here's some technical data from the ship's website:

Length: 684 feet (208.5 meters).
Beam: 105 feet (31.9 meters).
Displacement: Approximately 25,586 long tons (full load).
Speed: In excess of 22 knots
Crew: Ship’s Company: 360 Sailors (28 officers, 332 enlisted) and 3 Marines.
Embarked Landing Force: 699 (66 officers, 633 enlisted); surge capacity to 800.
Armament: Two MK 46 Mod 2 guns, fore and aft; two Rolling Airframe Missile launchers, fore and aft: nine .50 calibre machine guns.
Aircraft: Launch or land two CH53E Super Stallion helicopters or two MV-22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft or up to four CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters, AH-1 or UH-1 helicopters.
Landing/Attack Craft: Landing/Attack Craft: Two LCACs or one LCU; and 14 Amphibious Assault Vehicles.

From what I can tell, the ship cost $134 million plus another $18 million modification of the contract.


Here's a video of the christening.  On the video you'll hear from a number of folks including the ship sponsor.  If you want to know what a sponsor of a ship is and more about Mrs. Conway, the sponsor of this ship, there's a bio on the ship's website.  She's scheduled to be in Anchorage for the commissioning. 






The document below comes from a Navy website.  It was put up before the date and location of the commissioning was launched. 

USS Anchorage (LPD 23) FAQ

Capital Bikeshare - Very Cool DC Bike Sharing Program

OK, I don't really know how cool it is because I only just saw it for the first time last night and I haven't tried it.  But it looks cool, and it has a cool website, and I want it to be successful.  It's called Capital Bikeshare.

Here's the station across the street from our hotel.  For $75 a year you can check out a bike any time.  You have 30 free minutes to get to another station.  Over 30 minutes and they charge you $1.50 and it gets higher the longer you keep it.  The idea is to encourage short rides so that as many bikes are available as possible at any given time.

I know I cut off the prices - $5 for a day and $15 for five days.  

There are 110 stations in DC and Arlington with 1100 bikes. 


The website shows all the stations and you can click on a station and see how many bikes and empty slots are available at any given time - so you can plan where to get or drop off a bike.  You can read the blog in 42 different languages, like Hungarian for Ropi or Spanish for Tomás, though they cold do fine with the English.

Here's their video explaining how it works.