what was that? is that all there is? who is this? this is it.

The anxiety manifests in a dream taking place in the basement of a medium sized mid century apartment building where all the action apparently happens in a large windowless room filled with antiquated mismatched coin-op laundry machines.  Your load is in the wash almost finished and you cannot find an available dryer. You also have another load to wash and there’s a lot of competition from the 14 other people milling around who seem to be in the same boat. They’re all characters from your past. Some vaguely familiar. Some disturbingly close to home and all up in your face.  

lint filters

dryer ducts

quarter slots

fabric softener

color safe bleach

change machines

people magazines

handmade signs

slathered in scotch tape

OUT OF ORDER 

dim digital readouts

blacked out

spin cycles rocking

racking    clacking 

ticking

timers counting down

It’s all just an extension of sound transit’s anxiety inducing connect 2020. Bikes restricted at the Pioneer Square station where all passengers must exit to continue their trip and there’s no fucking way you’ll get back on with a bike at the International District stop and good luck at University Street. Crush capacity 4-car trains every 12 minutes somehow do not equal 3-car trains every 6 minutes bro. And to top it all off their new recorded messages being barked loudly repeatedly repeated in an annoying middle manager type trying to be authoritative white guy voice telling me to stand behind the yellow line and show proof of payment and not to even think about bikes in Pioneer Square. I prefer the non descript computer generated female voice clearly clear of the uncanny valley. I had the commute dialed in like clockwork and now it’s not and my clothes are wet and there don't seem to be any dryers available and there are so many people up in my face. 

jump bikes 

available near you

form of payment 

proof of payment 

can’t sit down

can’t move 

can’t breathe 

exit to my right 

on demand bike lockers

ticking timers

counting down 

4 Comments

All you hardcore cyclist out there (all 3 of you) are probably saying, quit whining and just ride your fucking bike to work. And I’m saying, been there, done that, designed the t-shirt. When I was your age...blah, blah, blah. Why don’t you ride on down to Skyway some day, after dark, in the rain and we’ll talk about it when you get here. The light rail horseshit just might inspire me to ride more and more especially when the days get a little longer and the nights get a little shorter.

Personally I find the bikes on light rail thing to be kind of stressful. There's a lot of jockeying for position to get a spot plus, I feel the stink eye from "regular civilians" when it's busy and people really don't want to make room for me to swing my shitty and filthy bike tire a few inches from their face as I hang it up on the hook. UW games, Black Friday, Seahawks games etc. etc. There's often some reason the train is fucking packed when I'm not expecting it to be. On a couple of occasions I haven't been able to exit the train because it was so busy and people don't give a shit that you're trying to get out. They're in their own "$350, over the ear headphone" world, trying to pretend that that they're not jammed in a tin can surrounded by a Tokyo style mass of humanity. The "connect 2020" debacle that's happening right now was the last straw for me/ Now I ride from Columbia City to Ballard for my work commute and cut out "the middle man". Takes me more time, but at least I have my dignity intact when I arrive. I'm so tired of being treated like a second class citizen just because I choose to ride my bike. Seattle talks a lot when it comes to providing real and usable cycling infrastructure, but it is rarely up for the moment when it actually comes down to brass tacks. Durkan is mostly all talk and no action. She's looking forward to the next election and already looking to get votes lined up. By the way, I was just wondering, is it raining....?

Alistair you summed it up very well. The light rail crush feels to me like a symptom of a bigger problem and I’m not sure exactly what it is but it involves a lot of brogrammers and tech bros and the cost of living and the growing pains Seattle has felt for the past 10 years. I know I’m a luddite but it’s for real. Really. The on-demand bike lockers appear to be the best part of this connect 2020 shit. It’s actually cheaper to leave my bike in a locker overnight than it is to ride a Jump bike for 7 minutes. And by the way, what year is it? Just yesterday I downloaded what kids these days call an app. My first app. I had to turn on the location of my fucking phone and give those sonsabitches more of my personal info. But I did it and rode a Jump bike to the light rail station. more on that shit later

If only I was a writer, the stories I could write about my daily bike rides through the South Lake Union complex and the behavior I observe by people who are heading to work in that area. It's all part of the bigger problem you mention above. Quite fascinating in some ways, deeply troubling in others. Madness really.

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