Sabotage

I never got around to participating in a protest demonstration while I was in college. It has been on my list of things to do for a while now. Since my accident, I have educated myself on the design features of light rail tracks. It has become glaringly obvious that the city built the S.L.U.T. in haste, pressured by the dangling dollars of Vulcan to produce the toy train that would help sell condos. The alignment that they ended up with was cheap, easy and unfinished compared to what they could have done. Especially with regards to bicyclists, at a time that the city is touting its fancy new Bicycle Master Plan.

So for the opening of the streetcar yesterday at lunch, I printed out a sign from a bicycle advocacy group's website, for a protest ride that they were doing later in the afternoon. It looked like this:









I folded it up, carried it to Westlake and 5th where the opening party was taking place, and held it up over my head. As the laughing, smiling, shmoozy crowd got a look at my party pooper's sign, they looked away nervously, nodded with a perplexed face, or came over to tell me that I was being silly. "The city needs transit and there's really nothing that could have been done differently, right?," they said.













Some photographers took my photo and the reporter from the Times came over to ask me a few things. When I told him that I had already fallen and broken my jaw, he was interested enough to take my number and a few facts down. So here is my claim to fame, for now. Check out these stories!

My name in print
Skinny Tires
PI Article

As I walked to a lunchtime appointment today near Westlake, I thought I would make peace with the S.L.U.T. and try her out. I set out walking in the right direction, thinking that I would jump on, if and when it came by. After 15 minutes of walking to my destination there was no sign of the train. After my appointment, I thought, surely I can take it back down to the office. I looked down the road about a 1/2 a mile - no sign of the train. By the time I had walked back to my office, checked my email, microwaved my lunch and walked back to my desk, the S.L.U.T. arrived at the stop where I would have gotten off. She's just not there for you when you need her.

And in case you were wondering, I did not sabotage the train and put the ball bearings in the track. I can respect and even participate in a good protest, but that's beyond me. According to Wikipedia,

Sabotage = a distinctively French word coined in railway strike of 1910, when workers destroyed the wooden shoes, or sabots, that held rails in place — took place at the start of the morning commute.

Looks like the railways have been causing trouble for some of us for a long time now.