Metro Bikeshare arrives in Pasadena

I have to write about my experience with Metro's bikeshare. I was totally pumped to try out the new docking station right in front of Pasadena City College, since I'll be teaching there again in the fall.  Here's what happened...

(1) I bought a 1 month pass online using a TAP card I already had.  A day later, I saw all the codes for one month free and felt like an idiot for paying.  ooops!

(2) It was easy to walk up to the kiosk, which sent a code to my phone, and borrow a bike.

(3) The bike was so heavy, the first thing I did was drop it.  ooops!

(4) I didn't realize the front basket was hinged.  It looked REALLY small and my bookbag didn't fit and I thought "Why did they equip these with such a pathetically small basket?"  Only upon returning the bike did I realize that I could've expanded the basket and fit my entire bag in there.  ooops!

(5) After I started pedaling, I had to stop twice to adjust the seat height.  I ended up leaving it at a 7, even though that was a wee bit too high for me.  The bike was SLOW and I wanted as much leverage as I could get. And I stopped in the middle of Del Mar Blvd to adjust the seat.  ooops!

(6) Then I realized that I had no idea where I was going.  I had no plan.  I didn't know where the bicycle network was.  I was rolling on a bike that wasn't mine through city streets with moving traffic and the bike was SLOW, did I mention that?  I wasn't lost, it just wasn't easy to locate preferred bicycle routes so I made a loop on streets with no bicycle infrastructure.  ooops!

HERE is where you can find/return Metro Bikeshare bikes

(7) Along Del Mar Blvd, some cars/trucks/vans didn't want to give me 3 feet.  Scary!  And even more scary to be on an unfamiliar and SLOW bike.  It's really hard to keep up with the speed of traffic.  Honestly I felt the safest on Walnut when I was taking the lane.  I guess it's OK that the bike is slow since I wasn't wearing a helmet, but a car could still have hit me going fast and I could have died.  ooops!

(8) Before arriving to Bikeshare, I read "Generally speaking, there are relatively few bike lanes on the busy arterial streets in Pasadena but there are some pretty mellow residential streets that are great for riding. If using Google Maps to navigate, you may enjoy taking a route that is a little longer but uses quieter residential streets." So I took one. But El Molino was as terrifying or possibly more so than the arterial because there was not enough space for cars to pass safely.   ooops!

(9) I was looking for stations to return the bike, but I didn't see any until I was back where I started. https://bikeshare.metro.net/stations/  Maybe a person has to get used to the network and where the stations are, and this familiarity will come with time, but I couldn't return that bike soon enough.  I was looking everywhere for a docking station.   ooops!

@bikemetro #Pasadena not smiling because this was a terrifying experience. Video to follow.

A post shared by bikecar101 (@bikecar101) on Jul 14, 2017 at 5:03pm PDT

(10) I'm confused... As for some ideas about how to use Metro Bike in Pasadena and where to ride: •Gold Line Allen Station to Pasadena City College — If you don’t want to ride on busy Allen, take the bike lane on Maple to Sierra Bonita to campus.
I don't see a bikeshare station at Gold Line/Allen, but I do see one at Gold Line/Lake.   ooops!

I'm not saying you should't try Metro Bikeshare for yourself... definitely try it.  But I do feel like Bikeshare is better suited to a bike path (Waterfront), like down by the beach.  When you don't have the infrastructure on your streets, it's just unsafe.  Maybe the map on The Source's website could be somehow attached to the bicycle or posted on the kiosk so that people can more easily locate a safe bike route.

It's kind of crazy to me that Metro is suggesting you use Google Maps to navigate when there's no place to put your phone.  Maybe if the bike had a built-in smartphone cradle, that would make sense.  It's hard enough to manage navigating an unfamiliar bike in an unfamiliar place.  Add to that navigating from a phone that you have to hold in your hand... that's a recipe for an accident.

Since I have a month pass, I'll try it again (maybe Downtown LA).  What I've been saying since the beginning of Bikeshare's launch is that it's safer to take your own bike.  It's cheaper too.  $20 x 5 will get you your own bike.  $20 x 30 will get you a pretty good bike.  I find it hard to see how bikeshare fills a gaping hole in the transit network.  And I fear that when/if Metro offers bikeshare ubiquitously they will try to ban bikes on trains.

Bold and Sassy

Dear Students,

Stop trying to be nice.  "Nice" doesn't ensure you understand the material.  "Polite" means that you don't interrupt the professor when you need more help to understand what we're talking about.  "Gentle" means that you shy away from contributing to the group in discussion.  "Kind" means letting everyone else speak first, and then feeling relieved when the class time is up and you haven't had to say anything.  Being a "good listener" isn't the same as synthesizing your own concept and communicating it to others; one is passive and the other is active.

When I'm tough on you, I expect you to be tough on me right back.  By pushing each other to be better than we were before, we can both improve ourselves.  If we both sit back (at rest) and shrink away from opportunities for personal growth (goal-setting and taking on new challenges) then we run the risk of slipping further into ignorance and decay.

An expert in the field of research on shyness, Bernardo J. Carducci, writes about stereotypes of masculine and feminine traits in his college-level textbook The Psychology of Personality: Viewpoints, Research, and Applications.  I see both men and women in my courses being too shy to "bother" me with questions.  I felt that way many times, too.  When I was a student, I didn't go to the professor's office hours because I knew that professors are "busy" people and I didn't think they had time to help me with my learning.

I have noticed that shyness tends to be more pronounced in women, but it is also associated with cultural norms that are independent of gender.  Carducci explains Social-Cognitive Theory: that identity occurs through the process of a child observing what others are doing, receiving instructions from others regarding what is appropriate behavior, receiving reinforcement when such behavior is performed, and learning to self-regulate the expression of appropriate behavior in order to receive such reinforcement (p. 507).

I say -- TO HELL WITH THAT!  You gotta break the mold.  Rise to the occasion of being evaluated. Stop being "modest" and get focused on ACHIEVEMENT.  Think positively.  Aim high.  Know your worth.  Know that you are capable of achieving anything you seriously and wholeheartedly put your mind to.  Even if nobody you know has done it.  There's a first time for everything.  

Research shows that cultural factors account for gender differences in career advancement, leading to what is called the "paradox of achievement." Although women score higher in verbal ability, most critically acclaimed writers are men.  Those women writers who become well-known are unmarried, childless, and well-to-do... meaning that they focus all their attention on becoming better writers rather than falling prey to societal expectations of motherhood and caregiving. 

As for mathematical ability, males are treated differently in school.  Teachers encourage men's abilities and interest in mathematics.  The same could be said for racial and ethnic groups. Prevailing viewpoints (stereotypes) held by teachers that one group has more or less potential than another is going to hurt the group that is thought of as having less innate ability.  This is unfair.  THERE ARE NO GENDER (OR ETHNIC) DIFFERENCES ON MEASURES OF GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. We all have equal potential.  AND I would add that it's not too late to start changing YOUR behavior right now.  Your future success will be the positive reinforcement you need to continue personal growth in a new direction.

Consider selecting a few traits from the "Masculine" column of Table 12.2 (above).  

• Aggressive
• Competitive
• Decisive
• Independent
• Never gives up
• Nonconforming
• Stands up to pressure
• Tough/Coarse

Try it on for a week.  "ACT AS IF THAT IS YOU" until you master the behavior so that it becomes second nature.  Forget trying to be "nice" and GET CRITICAL. (Braxton, John M. Influences on College Student Learning: Special Issue of Peabody Journal of Education, 2003) You're not going to get happy faces drawn on all your papers, nor should you.  If everything were perfect and you already knew the material, you wouldn't be in a university.  You need to shatter your world-view in order to transform yourself. It's a metamorphosis. The meek and mild earth-bound caterpillar must give way to a fierce and beautiful soaring butterfly.

Sincerely,

Dr. Kaiser

Advantages to Tiny House Living

It's been 3 months since we vacated our tiny house.  We have 3.75 times more space.  We have 3 bathrooms instead of 1. We have a 2 car garage instead of none.  But still, there are some things I miss...

1) When you live with your partner and you can hear/touch each other no matter where you are in the house, you have a level of intimacy that is not only desired but required.  There is no such thing as privacy.

2) Our tiny house was 2.5 times older than our current condo.  There's something beautiful in the old style windows (huge) and doors (huge).  With a single tiny AC unit, we could cool the place down in about 20 minutes.  I always felt like it was the "house of bricks" in the 3 little pigs story.  No matter how strong the Santa Ana winds blow, that tiny house provides safe shelter.

3) A tiny house is less work to clean.  The tiny vacuum we bought to clean the tiny house is inadequate to care for the expansive upstairs bedrooms in the condo/townhome we now occupy.  And who puts carpeting on a staircase?  Seriously, it's really annoying to vacuum the stairs and that's where most of the dirt accumulates.

4) Smaller carbon footprint.  In so many ways, I feel like the tiny house had a smaller ecological impact.  We had fewer toilets and showers to clean, therefore using less chemical cleaners.  We had less space to cool, therefore using less electricity.  We didn't have a dishwasher, therefore we were able to save on water and electricity AND reuse the greywater to nourish the garden.

5) When you have a dark and depressing (oppressive and cramped) tiny house, you always AND I MEAN ALWAYS want to be somewhere else.  It made it super-easy to go walking, running, biking, vacationing, camping, etc.  It was always fantastic to stay with family or in a hotel because EVERY room was bigger than our house.

6) We had proximity to Los Angeles, Griffith Park, and the LA River Bike Path.  Also we walked through streets filled with artfully landscaped tiny houses.  Here in Northridge, it is decidedly more suburban (sprawling) and the sidewalks are lined with large retaining walls or extreme privacy hedges rather than cute houses with cute yards.

But on the flipside...

1) We have space to spread out.  I've already unpacked the majority of our books and started to turn the closets in the guest bedroom into the library we always dreamed of.  (Thanks IKEA).

2) We can work on our bikes in the garage.  The tiny car we have takes up barely 1/4 of the space, so there's still a lot of room for bicycle storage and maintenance of the growing fleet.  The other day, I was in the garage working on my bike (in the shade) whereas I used to have to do that outdoors on our tiny back patio.

3) With the space comes mental clarity.  Instead of having half my closet in storage and half the clothing in our house, we have all AND I MEAN ALL of our clothes in a single walk-in closet.  This past weekend, we took 3 large trash bags of clothing to be donated.  It's like having more space makes it easier to let go of things that really don't belong.

4) I've been enjoying the larger kitchen and entertaining space.  Even though the stove has electric burners and it's summer, so I hesitate to cook (and heat up the place), we've already had some friends over for dinner and work-sessions.  The expansive dining area makes the table we've held on to for about 10 years finally fit perfectly.

5) The living room is large enough to do yoga.  I took my sister rollerskating and when we got back, we spread out 2 yoga mats and stretched out AT THE SAME TIME.  That's been a dream come true!

6) We can run more than two appliances at once.  The tiny house had such old circuitry that you couldn't run the toaster oven and the washing machine at the same time.  If you did, it would trip the circuit breaker and shut down everything.  You also couldn't wash dishes and take a shower at the same time because the water supply would become unreliably hot or cold.  Flushing the toilet when someone was in the shower was pre-empted by saying, "Bombs Away" which meant -- get away from the water because it's about to get really hot.

It sounds silly but I always wanted to have a wellness center.

I came to a major realization... I don't need to have a 10 bedroom wellness center to accommodate a bunch of sick people.  All I need is a room to accommodate me.  I'm the in-patient.  I now live in a wellness center for 1 person -- me.  And this new place is giving me plenty of breathing room.