Even in Kyoto

It has been on my agenda for a while to sit down and read through Michael BlueJay's How to Buy a House guide. Over the years, I've found various resources on his website to be tremendously helpful, and so far this case is no different. In any case, being trapped in the Quarantine Room yet again, with insufficient brainpower to do more substantive things, turns out to be a good time to tackle this project.

Interesting things learned so far:

-The "how much house can you afford?" calculators inform me that, unsurprisingly, even with a decently large down payment saved up, at the moment with my current income, I can't really afford all that much house. This calculation may start to change once I'm through the tenure and promotion process, but it's not going to change dramatically. My colleagues and I are advocating for cost of living increases, but our college is reluctant to provide them because of the squeeze that tuition increases put on students. (I'm not even going to get into the tuition "discount rate" games here, ugh). The reality is that it's pretty unusual in this day and age for any single-income person or household to be able to afford much of a house, even with all of the existing "First time homebuyer" resources that are out there.

-I'd be much more inclined towards a 15-year mortgage compared to a 30-year mortgage. If you do the math, I'd be in my 70's before I'd be finished paying off a 30-year mortgage if I only made the minimum payments. In general I just HATE the idea of giving away money for free, anyway.

-It looks to me like current mortgage interest rates are maybe about as good as one could ever expect, moving forward. This graph of long-term trends for 30-year rates is interesting, although I'm not sure why it cuts off at 2016, and from what I understand, 2016 is as astronomically low as one could ever expect: https://www.hsh.com/mortgage-rates/30-Year-FRM/

Collectively, this all has me thinking that my best short-term financial strategy is to focus on continuing to stockpile funds. At the same time, I'm thinking I should do at least a little work to scout out rental opportunities that are closer to campus. My current total daily commute time is at least 20 minutes over Marchetti's Constant, and the effects of the extended commute time have been cumulative over the years I've been living here. And that's on non-snow days. On snow days, it can easily take me an hour and 15 minutes each way. Ugh.

I am still very much committed to bike commuting. I would not trade this longer bike commute for a shorter auto commute. That just sounds terrible, and expensive.

Anyway, time to try and work on other things now.

Short disclaimer: I tell the following story to provide some first-person perspective on what it can be like for transit-dependent people to commute in a suburban-rural place like the Capital District during inclement weather. I have the privilege of control over my work schedule, so most of what I'm recounting reflects relatively mild and voluntary inconveniences. But I hope it also provides a sense of how hard life can get for all of the people who live in my area but who do not have the kinds of privileges that I do.

Our campus is technically going to be closed for a break for the next two weeks, although I will still need to go in to at least check on and take care of the animals. I suspect the next two weeks will feel like the early to mid-COVID period in that regard, where the animals are the main reason and time I actually leave the house.

Because of the closure, I'd arranged to have the next cricket shipment arrive one week early, to ensure we'd have enough crickets to feed all of the reptiles and frogs over the break. The arrival was scheduled for...you guessed it...yesterday.

I generally don't try to ride my bike immediately after it has snowed any more than about 3 inches, so I resolved myself to taking the bus for the first time since before the spring lockdown began. I donned my tall, bright green Doc Martens, which have seen me through many a snowstorm, and stepped out to say goodbye to scrottie, who was still outside at 1:30 pm. While we chatted for a moment, he said he wound up helping bus drivers shovel out two stuck buses along Quail Street, a north-south street at the end of our block. Apparently Quail hadn't yet received a full plow treatment by that time, just a preliminary narrow plowing. He also observed an ambulance getting stuck, but in that case, a second ambulance showed up shortly thereafter and the second ambulance's occupants helped to free the stuck one.

So then I set out in the opposite direction, to the east to work my way towards the stop for the bus to campus, which is a good 1.5 miles from home. One of the benefits of my easterly walking route, I've discovered, is that it goes past the hospital, and the hospital workers are consistently careful about quickly clearing a meter-wide path along the sidewalks that surround the hospital. Very helpful when needing to social distance while walking through the snow.

In contrast, our next-door neighbors who live at the pointy end of our block had used a snow blower to clear the sidewalk in front of their house, but had apparently decided they did not need to actually clear a connecting channel out to the road from the end of the sidewalk for anyone who might actually want to use the sidewalk to get somewhere. I need to make a mental note to self to go back and do that.

I observed similarly haphazard shoveling / non-shoveling efforts along the rest of my walk, as I've observed in previous winters out here. Things were extreme enough that I had to figure that nothing would be cleared at all across Washington Park yet, so instead I decided to try walking along Lark Street to get to the bus stop. By virtue of this route decision, I encountered one of the bike mechanics hanging out in front of the bike shop, who (jokingly) said to me, "What, you're not riding your bike today?!" So that was fun. I haven't been over to the bike shop in quite some time, given the pandemic and everything.

Walking around in the snow during a pandemic continued to be a challenge. The face masks that I have make my glasses fog up badly in cold conditions, so when I'm bicycling around I've basically given up again on trying to wear a face mask - I just wear a balaclava and try to give everyone a wide berth. I don't really have that option when walking around, though, so at multiple points I had to choose between trying to minimize infection risk and being able to see where I was walking. My general choice was to take off my glasses, but this also meant I couldn't really see what was going on with the people I was trying to skirt around - i.e. whether they were glaring at me or had more neutral facial expressions. This was stressful enough that I wound up walking in the road several times, and was especially awkward when trying to figure out how to deal with the guy who asked me for money.

As it all turned out, I made it to the bus stop right on time for the bus to campus, hooray! That felt like an accomplishment. People on the bus were universally masked and spread out, although due to the cold temperatures no bus windows were open. The bus ride to campus was otherwise uneventful. I got a bit of knitting done.

The main walkways on campus were plowed, but when I reached my building I discovered that the access paths to my building itself were untouched. So I concluded my journey by bounding through the snow once again, and had to clear snow from the doorway with my (gloved) hands to get inside.



Probably needless to say, the cricket shipment didn't show up.

I did manage to take care of some other time-critical insect care tasks, though, so the journey was still necessary and not a complete waste of time.

I then had to hustle, though, to make it back out in time to catch a certain bus home so as to get home in time to attend to a couple different time-dependent tasks. Give my success with the campus-bound bus, I had to figure the return bus would run close to on time, too. I gave myself extra time to make it back out to the bus stop because I've learned from experience how frustrating it is to get *almost* all the way out to the campus bus stop only to see the bus go by, and then have an awkward 30-minute gap which isn't quite enough time to make it back to my office before having to turn back around to head back to the stop. Classic "last mile" problems.

The sidewalk out to the traffic light and return bus shelter weren't plowed out yet, either, so I had to walk along the shoulder of the plowed highway and was grateful that traffic was light and relatively slow-moving. Unfortunately, the shoulder on the side of the highway where I needed to wait wasn't itself plowed, so I had to stomp out a small niche to stand in and wait and not be in the vehicular traffic lane.

After some time had passed, I checked the bus stop website again to check on my bus's status. That's when I discovered that the 4:42 bus that had been listed when I'd viewed the schedule in my office had mysteriously vanished. I know I didn't miss it because of when I walked out to the stop, but at that point there was nothing else to do but keep waiting.

It was chilly enough and uncomfortable enough being that close to traffic that I decided it was now worth it to stomp my way into the bus shelter, so I did.* All told, I spent a full hour out at the shelter, doing a little dance to stay warm while waiting for the bus.

The sidewalks were in slightly better shape for the walk home, and I was also able to finally stop in and check out Lark Natural Foods, which was nicer than I'd expected. Now that I know that, I'll take advantage of it more often on my commutes home.

I'm not sure yet whether I'll try to go in to campus today. I'd expect the time investment today will be shorter than yesterday (grand total of about 3.5h of my day yesterday), but getting to and from the bus stops remains a hassle, and yesterday was also a reminder of how obnoxious it is to be forced to plan my life around the bus schedule. While I waited out there yesterday, I kept thinking about how I now know that it only takes around 2 hours to walk the full distance from campus to home, and about how if I'd had a folding bike with me, I could have used it at least in places to make forward progress instead of feeling stuck waiting.

So I guess I'm going to keep a folding bike on my shopping list. The buses here DO have bike racks but for a half-dozen reasons I've concluded that an actual folding bike would be more versatile and convenient for my lifestyle. I have to imagine they're still rather hard to come by, though, at this point in the global pandemic.

I am also pondering the utility of some sort of folding shovel. I'd rather not acquire yet another unitasking tool, but on the other hand it would have been helpful at multiple points yesterday to have SOME sort of implement.


*S notes that many bus shelters in Minnesota have heat buttons; New York ones don't appear to have these. However, the shelter DID provide relief from the wind!

For some reason, I found this article in the NYT deeply satisfying:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/nyregion/holland-tunnel-decorations-christmas-tree.html

Heh heh heh hehe. Oh, the humanity.

(I had to go and vote on the matter, out of principle).

I'm reminded somewhat of the story of this guy in LA who made a freeway sign.

And while I'm blogging about transportation, this is fun, too: you can help WSDOT in Seattle to decide whether to go ahead and replace the protective plates over the expansion joints on the 520 bike-pedestrian bridge here at their "rate the plates" site. Apparently the new plates could be less jarring for bicyclists, which can have a big impact on ride quality.

So, yesterday I went up to Sonoma State University to give a colloquium. Google Maps' default bicycling directions would have led to a distance of around 62 miles, taking about 6 hours, which is a bit too long for a daytrip. If I had rented a car and driven, it would have taken just over an hour. But why would I do that when I could take public transit instead and leave the driving up to someone else?

You see, I live in a region with decent regional public transit, finally.

Here's the part where I struggle with the Goog's integration of things. It took some finagling to work out that I could ride my bike up to the El Cerrito del Norte Bart station/transit center, where bus 40 originates, and take bus 40 to the other end of the line at the San Rafael Transit Center. At San Rafael, I hopped onto the number 101 bus, which follows Highway 101 to the north. I missed my stop in Cotati, though - it occurred to me to start checking the map just as we pulled back onto the highway. So instead I rode the rest of the way up to the Santa Rosa, and then backtracked on the 48 to the 10. For the return trip, I walked the 2 miles back along Cotati Ave so I could catch the 101 back to the 40 and to my bicycle, and then rode in to campus to take care of some cricket work.

The outbound trip took around 3 hours, and the return trip also took about 3 hours, including the walk. Total cost, $20.30. I might have paid slightly too much because the buses here have you tap in *and* tap out with your card, and I didn't tap out on one or two of the buses. Otherwise you pay the full fare to travel the length of the entire route. Three times as long as the direct drive isn't that bad for public transit, and 20 bucks seemed like a good price to pay to have someone else do the driving. The buses weren't overly crowded and the passengers were pretty tame. I only wish I'd brought a book - not so I could read on the bus, but so I could read while waiting at the transit centers. Oh, and I wish I had a better bladder. I might have been able to find places to pee midway through the route if I'd looked.

As with the times when I drive to get places, I am grateful I don't go on this sort of long-distance commute on a regular basis.

I think my talk went reasonably well.

A friend-of-a-friend up in the Seattle area has been posting photos recently of his bike-bus-trail run triathlons. Our family tried to take public transportation to Issaquah once to go hiking, except our guidebook was too far out of date so we couldn't find the trailhead. This other guy appears to be having more success with the combination.

Under other circumstances it probably would have been useful to have brought along a bicycle for the trip.

View from the flight in to Seattle (with unavoidable glare) - TOPOGRAPHY! Mt. Rainier on the right, and some of those other glorious Cascade mountains back behind it. I've missed you, my Washington mountain friends. The flatness of Texas inspires desperate, foul language. I never really feel like I know where I am when I can't orient on mountains.



When I arrived, I learned that the light rail was closed for the day so they could make system upgrades in preparation for opening light rail stations at the University of Washington and in Northgate. They had complementary express bus service set up as an alternative, so I was able to walk right up and catch a 97A to downtown Seattle (one of only two passengers - luxury limo!), then I bumped on home on the 43, studiously ignoring the purple-haired goth guy sitting next to me. Hello, Seattle.

Had dinner with my parents and aunt L, then got up early this morning and caught a 43 back to downtown so I could make my way over to King Street Station to catch the train to Portland. When I left the house at 6 am, we could hear the jackhammers at work on the Bridges to Nowhere in the Arboretum; the 520 bus routes aren't operating today while 520 is closed. King Street still looks like an incredibly glorious wedding cake:



From what I've seen, many of the train stations in the midwestern US aren't nearly so nice. The Austin train station, for instance, resembles most of the Greyhound stations I've ever seen.

On the airplane trip in, I sat next to a woman who was all elbows, for the entirety of the four-hour flight.

The train is empty this morning, and there are power supplies at every seat and complementary wifi. Also, the conductors announce over the PA system that all phone calls should be kept quiet and brief, and that the cafe car is open with breakfast foods and coffee. Plus, the views! Not quite as incredible as the high-speed rail in Korea, but I'll take it.



This state has a vastly different relationship with public transit than Texas.