Friday, May 16, 2008

As Bike Week Winds Down


I've been sort of lax about writing about bike week. Mr. Big and I have ridden our bikes around the area every day this week, and in general, my family uses our cars very little. Take a minute to watch these videos showing the bicyle boulevards in Berkeley and Portland. Even if you're not that into bikes, don't these videos get you at least a bit excited for what we could do here?

As for Berkeley and Portland, should you ever see a "for sale" sign in my yard, you know I'm either heading back to Berkeley or up to Portland. One observation I have made is that people who love Pomona also love Portland, and vice versa. Why do you think that is?

THE END

4 comments:

Garrett Sawyer said...

That is soooo cool! I would totally ride a bike more often if Pomona was like that, I hope the city reads your blog. It doesn't seem that hard of a thing to do either. Most of the work will be in creating awareness of proper use of such streets. I would just be happy with bike lanes on major streets (residential streets are already pretty bike friendly) instead of people parking cars on the side just to make a quick run into a building, what a waste of space! If the city sets up parking meters they might be able to afford creating such bike enviornments for residents.

me said...

The City does read the blog, but I don't think I'm supposed to know that! :)

There's talk of speed bumps and stop signs on M-M-M-M-My Pomona right now, but these bike boulevards might be another way of diverting through traffic to main drags where it should be.

Why aren't more bike-minded Cal POly graduates with planning degrees getting hired by our city? Is it that they've not applied, or that they're not hired? I realize there is a hiring freeze now, but I know these positions regularly have openings.

G of P

Garrett Sawyer said...

Yeah, I'm sure...they probably don't know the city's ISP shows up on the sitemeter! HA! I've seen it appear on my stats more than a few times. Oh well. Someday I'll one of the city's blog readers to leave a comment. lol.

Those graduates probably move on to bigger better cities, not to say Pomona isn't a nice city, but there are some better opportunities out there than to work with some of the City of Pomona staff that can be somewhat dimwitted at times in my opinion. Oh, and they end up "down-hiring"...lol. I write that because I and my family have had some not-so-pleasant experiences with service and have had run-in's with certain city policies that are compleatly bogus!

For instance, our water line was damaged at the meter by tree roots from a 30-45 y/o tree planted practically right next to the meter box just about two feet away (not to mention it keeps pushing up the sidewalk no matter how many times they reset that section)....Anyways, it was a small fortune to replace it, they made us pay for it because supposedly it was broken on "our side" of the meter (whatever that means). They spent at least a couple hours determining only that of which side the damage was on (how thrifty of them!) then they told us it was on "our side" and that it's our responibility to maintain "our side". Our argument was that it was the city's tree and that we had nothing to do with it and that roots "from the city's side" came to ours and broke it...lol! The water just ran down the street, increasing our water bill for months until they finally came out to look at it. So yeah, my parents gave in and paid for the replacement and the labor and then they asked if they could remove the tree or if it would make any difference if they went through the proper procedure to get it removed and they told my parents "No, the city doesn't remove old trees, even if they cause damage to your property".

That doesn't sound right to me, it's not fair! It seems like every year there is another perfectly good tree gone from our street and they want to leave the only one that is actually doing damage and get rid of the ones that cause people the trouble of having to rake up leaves in fall? lol.

I think they removed one from one of our neighbors parking just because it kept attracting bee hives...LOL!
I HATE THE POMONA WORKS PEOPLE! It's just not f!@*&#% fair! We have the only stupid mulberry tree on our street which drops all these nasty berries on the sidewalk and street we have to clean up and or not clean up when we don't feel like it and they wont get rid of it, even if we pay for it to be replaced with something else! The birds eat the berries and poop all over our property and theres berry colored poop splatter all over everything!! That tree also "prevents" certain trash men to pick up our barrels on trash day, at least the tree is marked as the cause on the red doo rhanger they leave occasionally. AHHHHH!
/end rant

calwatch said...

Ironically, I've lived in both Berkeley and Portland. I went to school in Berkeley and spent six months during two summers in Portland. I like Berkeley but I hate Portland with a certain pride. Portland is the worst of European froo-frooness and white trash put together. Nowhere can you have a latte sipping, tram riding population and just a few miles away have the guns on the pickup truck, PBR drinking, Tonya Harding supporter crowd. I could not find good Chinese food or Mexican food in Portland. Even when I drove down to Woodburn, the alleged center of the Mexican migrant community, the food and experience just didn't seem right. The people at Freddie's were way too friendly for my taste as well. That's why I ended up quitting the job in Portland and moved back to My Pomona.