Category: bipedal

transcontinental

garrett street
(Charlottesville Bicycle Pedestrian Coordinator) Amanda Poncy out for a morning walk with Buddy, five year old tricolor hound. Coincidentally, Poncy is walking on the 1976 TransAmerica Bicycle Trail, a 4247 mile transcontinental trail established for the Bicentennial.

belmont store
One of my favorite aspects of snow is the momentary reclamation of the street, the commons, the several square miles of our city which we ceded to the automobile in the last century.


Pedestrians momentarily rule. People see and speak to each other. Smartphones are stored.

infrastructure
A calmness prevails. A chance to look around and see all we have created.

silver maple
Walking about, everything is almost black and white, a most salutary condition.

standards and design-fire engines

for the comfort of the fire truck
Municipalities have cook books for those interested in adding to City infrastructure. How to make a ramp, how to build a curb, how to make a fire engine cozy.

Some Cities include in the cook books specifications for green infrastructure. How to plant a tree in an urban environment and obtain its ecosystem services, how to build a road that won’t hurt the river, how to infiltrate rainwater into the ground near where it falls.
Search your City’s standards manual for the words green, narrow, sustainable, pervious, woonerf…

Chancellor Street


Recruitment day at the sixteen member sororities of Virginia’s Inter-Sorority Council.

Saturday, January 19th
Event Length: 45 minutes
What to Expect: Potential new members can return to up to 7 houses. This round allows you to get a first-hand view inside all of our beautiful chapter houses as they give you a full tour. As you tour around the house or do a philanthropic craft, they will have food and drink available to you! This round’s conversation is much longer and more in-depth. You should be looking for certain attributes you want in your sorority and your sorority sisters. Listen carefully to decide if the achievements and activities you both discuss are also important aspects of your college goals. Ask the women you meet about their sorority, and use this information to help narrow your choice of which chapters could be right for you!
What to wear: Business formal attire (nicer dresses, skirts, etc. – an outfit you might wear to church, or to a fancy dinner with your boyfriend’s parents)

bipeds
Chancellor Street was made one way awhile back. Good move. A traffic calming measure that is in the City toolbox, no legislative approval required. A herd of pedestrians is an even better traffic calming measure. Peter Norton would be proud. Reclaiming the street!

DMZ


Walking in the County southeast past the shops at Stonefield. Enjoying the new sidewalk and trees. Headed home. Arriving at the “Main Street” of the County, US Route 29, the neighborhood model takes on a new light. How is the pedestrian meant to cross into Charlottesville? Carefully. Not sure exactly how many lanes there are, standing on one side they are a challenge to count. Big asphalt. Twelve lanes?

run!
There are lots of hashmarks scattered about the intersection, providing guidance to motorists about how to negotiate the DMZ. I didn’t see a crosswalk.
It seems that “transit” in the county means four wheels and a motor. If you have the misfortune to engage in bipedal locomotion, be fleet of foot. What momma said. Look both ways before crossing this road.

In an alternate reality.


road trip

wheelchair
This is a posed picture. My mom can walk. Works on it everyday. Big cerebral event two months ago. She hadn’t been in a car in nine weeks. What American does that? Beautiful weather, I proposed a test drive, “where would you like to go?”
She said, “I’d like to see my brother.”
So we did.
Drove across town.
Pausing for a
photo.