The Wheels Go Round and Round

We talk about all the ways we can travel but the one we keep going back to

Today’s post was written partially in a CarMax waiting room and the rest on an empty train ride into San Francisco because most of the Bay Area is at home in their pajamas on Mondays.

Musings

• Why is Instagram’s search feature so terrible? People are going to Quora’s bot responses to help them figure it out. IG search seems to only be good at helping you find exes and your old high school teacher’s photo dumps. Stop it @zuck. I’m married and only want to find that Oreo video from last week to share with my wife but couldn’t so had to use TikTok’s Search and found it in one try.

• I got a ticket for $640 USD and have to take a defensive driving class thanks to Fremont, CA and Kirkland diapers. If you’re wondering if you’ll get a ticket for speeding past a red light to get into a Target parking lot to change the shit off your kid, you will.

• (New Yorker paywall links ahead) Ted Chiang wrote a piece for The New Yorker on how our current understanding of AI is actually not what some might consider intelligent nor is it able to create art but it’s not stopping companies from attempting to brute force it with money and time.

• (NYtimes paywall links ahead) There seems to be a lot of corruption cases popping up across the country with Governor Hochul and former Governor Cuomo’s Deputy Chief of Staff charged with taking bribes from China, LA City Council member Huizar pleading guilty to racketeering, and Jersey Governor Bob Menendez convicted of taking bribes from Egypt. Is it because it’s an election year?

Getting Around Town

I used to bike to work when the weather was nice from my apartment in Queens to Times Square or Chelsea. I would get doored by people getting out of cabs and ram into pedestrians who weren’t looking both ways. I’d pick fights with trucks who didn’t share the lane only to ride in front of them and come to a complete stop as we entered the box to bait a ticket for blocking rush hour. Most days I would catch the train, bus, or walk to where I needed to go. Not to avoid stress or confrontation because those can be found on any mode of transportation in New York but for the variety and options. I could catch the LIRR from Penn Station, Q60 bus from 60th St, or even the Roosevelt Island tram if I didn’t want to take the subway.

When we moved to the Bay Area in 2018, I reached out to a few people to ask what my public transit options were to get to work and go about my day-to-day. “None,” was what most people said. Our first apartment in California was in San Mateo, a city with a walking score of 68 and public transit score of 39. So we bought a little Honda sedan and drove it around like most Americans on a highway full of identical Teslas and corporate buses shuttling people from one miserable box to another.

By the time the pandemic hit, we were ready to leave and crossed over to the other side of the Bay to start a family. We moved to a neighborhood with a walking and transit score of 89/71 - and a bike score of 96! I was so excited.

I started taking the train and bus again. I hovered over people to see what they were reading. Saw that kids were still getting off at malls to probably get piercings at Claires while eating a Wetzel’s Pretzel. I watched to see who would finally ask the woman eating cantaloupe out of her tupperware to move her bag that was taking up the window seat. I tuned up my bike and started exploring the neighborhood - picking up milk and dropping off library books.

I was so excited to share this world with Oliver. I didn’t want him to only know the inside of a car. We drove 2 hours to pickup a Burley Kid’s Trailer from a man I met on Craigslist behind a Starbucks I had never been to. We bought a kids helmet and pounds of snacks. I hitched the trailer to my bike and shuttled Oliver to the grocery store, library, and daycare. Oliver hated it.

We waited a few months to try again. Maybe it was the trailer. Maybe he wanted to be higher up. Maybe he needed something less bumpy for his bum. Casey Neistat, who was also struggling with this problem with his two daughters after moving back to New York, found the solution in a cargo ebike saying the “[ebike] might be the perfect means of transport.” ORLY?

So we went to an electric bike festival and got a Tern Cargo eBike. If the MSRP doesnt make you sweat already, we also got a full set of panniers, a kids seat, and a bike lock that could be used to lock motorcycles. Oliver still hated it.

And so I gave up and told myself I would try again later. Instead of riding our bike to daycare, we now drive a Toyota SUV after trading in the ol’ Honda. And instead of enjoying scenes from the neighborhood, we listen to Blippi Monster Truck.

There are certain feelings and emotions that I cannot convey with my skill level of writing. The torment of driving with your child listening to the same song for hours on end while there are better transportation options available is one of them.

Things I Want to Know From You

For Next Week
We talk about food. How do we feed these little humans and ourselves without turning everyone into meatsacks made out of mac & cheese and grapes?

• What is always in your fridge?

• How do you figure out what you’re eating any given day?

From Last Week

People are very vocal and opinionated about car shopping.

Elon seems to be one of the few people out to solve the car shopping experience whether intentionally or not. Almost everyone I talked to about trying to find a good experience pointed to Tesla as the most painless solutions out there (new and used).

Other helpful feedback was to avoid luxury cars in general. The maintenance and reliability of them seem to be more of a headache and money sink than their worth.

Finally, CarMax lets you test drive and sit in any of the cars in their lots. You can also make requests on their website to ship a car to your local CarMax to try out.