Take Luck

One of my favorite comedy routines of all time is a live routine by Brian Regan released several years ago. In it, he explains the meaning of the phrase "take luck"....which is a combination of "take care" and "good luck" that got smushed together in a hasty mid-stream sentence switch.

I think it's a good phrase though, since it encompasses both of these concepts. After all, who wouldn't want to take luck with numbers like this?


chart courtesy of the Speaker of the House of Representatives

Dear friends, as we enter unchartered economic times, I hope everyone out there takes luck wherever you can get it. In the meantime, I'll be over at my new Web site, the GreenDesignCollective.com, where I'll be blogging and trying to save the world. So to speak. Feel free to drop me a line if you, too, are saving the world, or biking, or living in Los Angeles without a car, etc., etc.

Take Luck!

-emily :o)

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

If you are actually reading my blog, there's a good chance you've seen this already on another blog, but its coolness factor implores me to share it again here: it's a concept for a bike light that laser projects a bike lane on the pavement around you as you ride. I think this is probably the neatest thing that any biker could ask for, and it could save a heck of a lot in infrastructure upgrades. If it were only on the market.



I think that this bike light will at some point come to fruition, and if so, I'll be in line to purchase it, for sure. Unfortunately however, unlike that laser thingy, I feel like LILAWAC is going nowhere, fast. It's not that I've purchased a car or anything - I'm still Living In LA Without a Car, for sure - but it's hard for me to blog about this topic when there's so many other people living in LA without god-knows-what anymore. For instance, how many people could start a blog about "Living in LA Without a Job"? Or "Living in LA Without a Home"? The crash of the economy and the housing market has left me feeling a bit hollow - like, who cares if I don't have a car?

All of this is to say that LILAWAC is going on hiatus. I'm going to be switching gears to focus on my new project very soon, and when that is released, I'll post it here so you know where to find me. In the meantime, if anyone has anything they want to share, ding me so I can add you as an "author". I want to leave the information out there in case it could help someone at some point.

So long, good luck, and Happy Obama 2009.

Getting back into bike shape

Winter break in the Midwest was not conducive to staying in shape. Between the holiday eating and the lack of outdoor activities (it's hard to take a walk when it's 5 degrees outside), I am now trying to get back into bike shape. And it's fun, but I've got muscles that hurt that I didn't even know I had! The one really great thing about Los Angeles though, is that it stays great biking weather all year round.

One thing that I am interested in doing sometime soon is a critical mass ride. It looks like such fun but I have still never done one. Isn't that ridiculous? Anyway, I will be perusing the Midnight Ridazz calendar for upcoming cool rides, let me know if there is one I should pay attention to...

Asphalt

Happy New Year!

I'm back in Los Angeles and reveling in my utter lack of funds. Oh the joys of being a grad student before the next semester's loans have been dispersed.

So I was listening to my favorite NPR podcast, APM's Marketplace, from yesterday evening (since it's free) and they were talking about asphalt. As in, that black murky stuff they use to make roads. And they were basically saying that Barack Obama wants to upgrade the country's infrastructure but that might not work very well if we have an asphalt shortage. It turns out that the price of asphalt has been inflated for the past year or so, causing many state and local governments to cancel infrastructure upgrades. And the reason the price of asphalt has been so expensive? Because it's made with oil!

I guess at this point I'm thinking:

1. Do we have anything that's NOT made with oil?
2. Is there something else we could use?
3. Can't we come up with a substitute for asphalt that's not made with oil?

I mean, is this too much to ask? To have something that we can rebuild our roads with that's not made with oil?

Living in Cincinnati Without a Car

Ok, well I'm not really living here, but I'm visiting my hometown for the holidays, and I'm relying on the courtesy of my family and friends to shuttle me around. It rather feels like I'm in their "custody"... currently I'm in my Mother's custody but will be in the custody of my best friends over the weekend.

Cincinnati is a car-centric city, for sure, even more so than Los Angeles, believe it or not. At least in LA, I have the option of the bus or the subway, most times of the day. In Cincinnati, most people I know do NOT take the bus. And if I were in a part of town where I could, I would definitely try to take the bus, but the public transportation system here just isn't robust enough. The good news is, if I hadn't been in a Target parking lot earlier this week, I would never have seen this gem....



Indeed!

I get around ... sort of

Friday night I tried to get home (to Downtown) from the Westside (Venice-ish) and I had thought there was a bus that ran all night that I could catch. No, it wouldn't have been the smartest thing I've ever done but damn it, I wanted to sleep in my own bed. Besides my friend was there, and although she was too tired to drive me home, I was fully prepared to make her sit there and watch me at the bus stop until it came. Well, it didn't come because ... there was no late night bus. I mean, my goodness! Don't people need to get around for jobs in the middle of the night? As a city, isn't this supposed to be an option? Last time I checked, I didn't live in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say I remain as cynical as ever about the public transportation options in this city.

What I am not cynical about is biking, however. I still love it. Haven't been able to do too much of it lately though, which is why I'm considering going on C.I.C.L.E.'s 3rd Annual Toys & Mittens Ride this Saturday from 11 am to 2 pm. Looks like fun and it's for a good cause!

Also if I could take this thing with me on the ride, I totally would. It's so cute! And its hybrid electric! I could have used this on Friday night....

Discriminating against bikers ... in the drive-thru

I have long wondered what would happen if I got a hankering for a "fourth meal" at Taco Bell late one night, but needed to take my bike because, well, I don't have a car. I never tried it because I knew what would happen... I've heard the stories and the urban legends, I'm sure you have too. They won't serve you. At one time I heard that serving a person who was not in a car was deemed "a security risk", which if you think about it, is probably the dumbest reasoning possible, because if someone really wanted to rob a place, they could unbuckle their seatbelt, jump out, and/or turn the car around and ram it through the flimsy front wall of the place. But I digress.

Recently a young lad in the Northwest tried to test this theory, on a bike no less, and not only was he turned away, he was arrested. Observe:

The employee said her manager had told her not to serve people on bicycles, because of the safety hazard. She explained the policy to the bicyclist, but he refused to leave and told her, "Go ahead and call the police. I'm making a stand."

Good for him! I mean, what's the big deal, anyway? It's a guy on a bike. Not a guy on a tank or a mobile missile launcher, for crying out loud! If anyone could explain this mystery to me I would appreciate it because clearly I'm missing something, and like the dude in the article said, we all have "a right to chicken strips."