A land planning alert from Roy Earnest

The Department of Transportation has several Ester-area projects on its slate. Roy Earnest sent me this note about the plans:

The STIP (Statewide Transportation & Improvement Program) is money set for the future at best and money that can be pulled at any time when it is at its worst. Please keep in mind that nothing is for certain when looking at monies set to future programs. The Gold Hill Bike trail in probably the firmest of the three projects that fall under STIP. Futher letters from the community are helpful but the ranking (or points given to the program) are high and the project looks like a go.

The Old Nenana and the Potter road project are both well place point wise but letter or comment to the DOT (specifically to Margaret Carpenter) are needed and necessary.

First, the Potter road to Destiny Drive (Name: Cripple Creek Road upgrade has an ID number 24522. The upgrade will use asphalt concrete to pave the existing gravel surface, including realignment of the substandard series of curves. The road will give better access to VFD and residents. The project is slated to begin and end work in 2010. If this upgrade interests or affect you directly please let Ms. Carpenter know at margaret.carpenter@alaska.gov.

The Old Nenana/Ester Hill Rehabilitation Project has an ID number of 7461

Project Description:
Rehabilitation along the ONH will include improving shoulders, drainage, signage, and guardrails.

Issues:
1. The Old Nenana Highway has steep grades, narrow roadway (20-22 feet), poor pavement conditions, and steep slopes. The sharp curve at the bottom of the hill is an issue to the DOT so they are looking into safety-related improvemnets. Because this area is especially hazadous in the winter when the road gets icy, there is probably going to be some kind of change in this area.

2. Recreation traffic on the ONH has increased ten-fold. The UAF ski team, Fairbanks Cycling club and walkers are all users of the road. A bike trail would be the most safest answer the money nedded for this kind of upgrade is large.

3. Fairbanks North Star Borough continues to sell off large tracts of land. They are in the process of trying to build a subdivision with 31 lots on it. The increase trafic load in the next 5 years alone are staggering.

Answers:

Widen the ONH wide enough for driver visibility and recreation users dafety. Upgrade the road to a asphalt surface that does not come apart every year due to substandard chipseal and poor foundation. Either a trail on the side or standalone seems appropriate.

The deadline for public comment is Friday, October 16. Please comment!

Wind

It's so blustery and windy that the Fairbanks Open Radio and the Annex signs got blown right off the signpost. So we won't be doing any bonfire tonight, and we're closing up early...to retire to the Golden Eagle. Look for us there!

Note: burn permits are required as of April 1 (found this up when I called up the EVFD earlier to let them know that we'd be having a fire and not to worry). This came as a surprise to Hans and me, as we thought they'd be needed only after May 1. That must be studded tire removal day...

Two of the Big Three are full of crap

and we shouldn't fund them. At all.

I heard an interview the other day on NPR with the current Ford scion, who told Melissa Block that the Ford company will be bringing its European models to the United States. FINALLY! Y'see, in Europe, to be a) legal and b) competitive, cars and trucks have to have decent gas mileage. This doesn't mean a measley 26 mpg, like our Honda Element gets, this means 50, 60, 70, 80 mpg. Miles per gallon, not just liters. But those models haven't been available for sale in the US, even though Ford makes them. How stupid is that? So it's about freaking time that they start making and selling them here.

Chrysler and General Motors, on the other hand, are still suing states to attempt to prevent them from requiring cleaner car emissions and more efficient models, and Chrysler is shutting down one of the two plants it makes hybrid vehicles in. Of course, those hybrids aren't doing so well, partly due to the credit crunch, but I imagine that all that effort Chrysler has been putting into resisting improving their automobiles has something to do with it.

At least Ford has been thinking a bit more sensibly, gearing down to produce smaller vehicles.

I'm with Peregrine Wood: we shouldn't be bailing out the companies that have been digging in their heels for decades on environmental and efficiency standards, making bad business decisions, and spending lots of money on lawyers and lawsuits so they can continue to artificially restrict states to going along with those bad decisions. And we've given them a bailout already this year (and there was that bailout of Chrysler back in the 80s, don't forget). It certainly doesn't seem to have helped them see the error of their ways. Are we sure we want to do this again?

Running in place

Well, not really. But it sure feels like it. Both Hans and I have been sick--that deceptively mild cold that gives you a runny nose and makes you tired, tired, tired--and yet a ton of things seem to be happening, or not happening. I'm up to my eyeballs in things to do. Lessee:

1. Car froze up. Or rather, the lock did, so it wouldn't start. Put key in, no turning. Hence, no ignition. We had to get it towed to the car dealership, where it will sit until October 9, when the part comes in, and maybe will be ready at some point after that. Part of our warranty includes a loaner car while we wait for our vehicle to be repaired. So Hans went in (taking a cab to do so, $35 one way), but guess what? He hasn't got a credit card, so no, the warranty won't be applied to our situation. Imagine a very very very steamed Teutonic type carpenter guy. With a cold, and a beard, and bits of sawdust all over him starting to smoke. He took the cab back (another $35), because the shuttle guy was off work. We are very unhappy with dealer. They aren't going to reimburse us for the cab ride. Not even half of it. But they didn't tell us we needed a credit card. So now I'm going to be calling our insurance and the Honda national service center about this. Automobiles make a tremendous difference in day-to-day life and livelihood.

2. Readers on the Run. Happening this Sunday. Yer friendly library volunteer is not yet starting to panic, but she'll get there, never fear. Marjorie Kowalski Cole has volunteered to be our magnetic poetry judge. I've got to come up with an appropriate costume for the event: something warm, since I'll be outside from 9 am on! Ed assures me that runners are indeed cracked enough to race on snow (my description, not his--he thinks it a sane event).

3. the Annex Gallery show opened last Friday. This meant madly trying to get something together for that. The first plan, a glass bookshelf, fell through, but Hans is still working on it. I ended up making two window/glass collages. I rather like them. Didn't go to the opening though because I a) was sick and b) had no transport (see #1).

4. Actual painting happened in the kitchen. I couldn't stand it. I had to finish something, anything, paint in bright colors. So I did, yesterday. Photos will follow.

5. InDesign course. I'm already behind. Somehow this happened even though I was ahead last week (having caught up from being behind the week before...). GACK!

6. Work. Perpetually behind on that, don't you know. Well, I go in tomorrow and we'll see where I get.

7. Self-defense for women. There are two classes here, one this Sunday, yesterday, that I bagged out of that to go paint (see #4) and next Sunday, which I might actually get to. Been a while since I've done martial arts or self-defense practice.

8. Republic. Behind already on this month. Gack again!

Hence, hardly any posting on the blog in the last fortnight. Will attempt to rectify this, although my fans don't seem to have noticed that I'm not here...drat.

Solar-powered car in Fairbanks today

The Power of One project, featuring a solar-powered experimental car that is making a trip across the world, will be at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center today at 10:30 this morning, in about 15 minutes.

I got a call at about 10 pm last night about this, and then forgot all about it. Alas, I am not able to go see it.

Addendum: there's a story in the News-Miner on the car.

Now HERE's an interesting car...

Covered in cloth! Lousy on the theft prevention, of course, but extremely cool, and a little creepy (it can wink!) Check out the film:

The ashen aftermath of Brutus

Brutus' rear was the best-preserved part (hindsight is always 20-20, of course).



And the contrasting end. Note the relative good condition of the license plate.



Note the remains of the rear view mirror (that melted black mass by what used to be the side window).




And the remains of the interior.

Flames shooting nine feet high

Yup, our faithful Brutus is no more. Our 1997 Mazda/Ford pickup went down in classic, conflagrationary style last night.

We were down at the Eagle last night and, since it was, oh, 30 below or something, we had the car warming up for a bit. Hans went out to turn it off when we decided we would stay a bit longer, to discover the hood steaming away in clear signs of overheating. So he turned it off and came back in. We hung out for about fifteen minutes, and then went back out again to go home and watch a movie we'd rented from Gold Hill (Zoom: Academy for Superheroes, starring Tim Allen). Car seemed fine, temperature gauge was midrange. So we go driving down the road, and we're about halfway home when steam starts rising again. Halfway, of course, is partway down Alpha Way. But the gauge still doesn't seem too hot. We get to the corner, about 150-200 feet from our house, and the gauge suddenly shoots up to HOT. We figure, what the hell, we're almost there.

So we go the rest of the way, turn off the car, and go into the house. After about five minutes, Hans goes back out to plug it in. He comes back in. Another five minutes, and he's putzing around in the entryway, and notices light coming from outside.

HUGE flames are shooting up into the air from where a vague car-shaped form is. Hans whoops, runs outside with the fire extinguisher, shouts at me to call the fire department (takes me three tries, but I finally manage to correctly type in 911). He's pitching buckets of snow on the hood as I'm frantically trying to find another bucket, but by the time I do, he's given up. We can hear the sirens going. Bob LaChaussee, noble neighbor that he is, comes over with his 20-lb fire extinguisher, but we frantically shout at him to get the hell out of there because it's going to blow up (at least half a tank of gas in the thing). He scoots. Poisonous clouds of smoky melted car are billowing all over the place.

The EVFD comes to the rescue inside of two minutes. We're cowering behind the other side of the house by this time, watching the spectacular flames shooting up into the branches, melting plastic and whatall dripping down the front of the truck, flaming tires, hearing the occasional BOOM! as something explodes. I called Mom right after I called 911, sort of hysterically saying "Hi, our car's on fire, do you have one we can borrow, don't worry, the fire department's on its way, ha ha....". Then I called the bar to warn people away from that end of the village, and Judy and Bob, and Dan and Jennifer (no answer--turns out they were attempting to leave for the airport at just about that time--had to wait until the fire trucks left).

The only things that survived the fire were the license plates (both fore and aft, amazingly), the rear tires (at least, they look okay on cursory inspection), and the slightly smudgy tailgate, complete with bumper sticker collection. The gas tank, fortunately, never exploded, but the windows all shattered (as did the headlights), the interior and cab and pickup bed are ash, the battery went kaboom...I heard at least three explosions. The engine, of course, is, um, toast.

I didn't sleep too well last night.

Sarah Wolfe, Mark Simpson, Ryan Williams, Torie (the new station manager), John Debbaut, and I think Cameron and another guy whose name I can't remember were all there. They hosed the car down good, and some brave soul pried opend the fused door so they could drench the inside and make sure it was out. There are rivers of ice all over the driveway. They had face masks and oxygen tanks, which is a good thing. Hans got a whiff of smoke and was coughing last night. His throat is still sore, but he's stopped coughing.

I am SO grateful that my neighbors volunteer as firefighters. They may have prevented both a forest fire and a house fire by getting there so quickly...

This morning, down by the Eagle, we could see what we couldn't last night: radiator fluid on the snow. It looks like we sprung a serious leak, as it was just pouring out, even as we backed down after the engine had cooled. I'm going outside now to clean it up in case any dogs decide to taste it.

Road kill

This week's Carnival of the Green has a story on it by Jacobito about a personal experience with a hit-and-run driver who (probably) killed a bicyclist right next to him. Jacobito muses on the daily sacrifices to the almighty automobile that we make:

We seem to think secular society gave up sacrifice years ago, or that sacrifice only occurs by soldiers in war to consecrate the nation. I don't know though. More people die in car accidents than all our wars combined.

Who are the real victims of sacrifice? Who is really consecrating the nation, making it sacred? Or are we consecrating something else? What? Cars? Transportation? Speed? Oil? Technology? Individuality? What is the meaning that all these bodies, like the one I saw last night, give and to whom or what do they give it? Its easy to say thats its meaningless death. I don't think so though. The consistency, normalcy, complacency, and universality of such deaths in the USA are too blatant to ignore. If the highway is our national graveyard, the cars the tombstones, the police and ambulances the priests, then what is the prayer that ties it all together?

I've been bicycling quite a bit this summer, to and from work about 5 or so miles each way. The road is littered with corpses: hares, birds, squirrels, voles, wasps, bumblebees, butterflies, dragonflies...our roads are paved with deaths, most of which we don't notice. There are the deaths from impact, the deaths from air pollution, the deaths from oil spills, the deaths from cancers caused by chemicals made from oil, the deaths from wars over oil.

We drive Death to his appointed rounds, enablers and apprentices, all of us. Switching to ethanol, or electric, or hybrid, won't relieve us of this. Driving less, or more slowly, will. Yet, the car has given human beings an incredibly valuable freedom, and this is why all those bloody, flattened corpses are ignored. The ability to leave one's little hamlet and go somewhere else without taking all day to get to the next little village, or a week to get to the next city, is a driving force in our vibrant modern cultures. The ability to move, to go, to explore is now available to the mass of people, not just the wealthy or crazy few.

Still, cars are expensive, in more ways than one. Bicycles give a similar freedom, although not as fast; so do scooters and motorcycles and small cars. These all cause a lot less damage then do the big cars Americans seem to love so much.

Small is beautiful!