Río de Porciúncula

So a little history on the LA river, which was described as beautiful paradise with abundant game. It still is, but our current situation is quite out of context for a group of Spanish explorers in 1781. I was able to kayak a 6 mile stretch of this river a few days ago. In the summer time it is filled with treated sewage water, which comes out quite warm and disgusting, and the flow was very shallow, in some places I had to get out and drag / push the kayak. I tried to film it but only got a few minutes before the film ran out. I was an excellent introductory experience, more scouting is needed to find the deepest and least rock filled water. More to come.

Dog Harness

Canines were the first animals domesticated by man (some would argue they domesticated us), and continue to be used more commonly than any other animal for companion and service. Dog mushing is a very climate specific phenomenon. It historically has occurred mostly north of the 45 parallel.

I met my dog Irwin very close to the 45 parallel, in northeastern Vermont (The North East Kingdom) but he was from Montreal. He is a mixed breed of hunting dog and mountain (sled) dog. He pulls against any collar, harness or contraption by nature and seems, by all accounts to enjoy it. Recently we have immigrated south to Los Angeles, where the warm climate in summer makes his long double coat and big paws and head hot and tired.

A few unfortunate encounters with hot concrete, glass and asphalt has led me to use the urban skateboard sled harness in the late evening and at night with lights. I have spent many hours, researching, using, seeking out and building different collars and harnesses. After a few different designs, I feel somewhat comfortable with the current incarnation of two weight lifting belts riveted together with copper studs and two goat reins. 

Can you guess what this is? It is a map, a map of the bike paths in Los Angeles county. What is it missing? A central connection. There are 4 main arteries that come towards downtown Los Angeles from Northeast, northwest, southwest and southeast. They all stop short of being functional beyond a recreational element. Downtown Los Angeles is a broken bottleneck of freeways, choking on it's own excess concrete and smog, failing to yield to new ideas beyond the realm of the automobile. Investing billions into a subway that barely puts a dent in traffic, the only other viable options are walking and bicycling more. Investments put into human scale infrastructure are much more valuable and pay back more rapidly, but to whom? The payback goes to the community, in the form of higher quality of life, which is usually the sacrificial lamb in the name of construction jobs, car jobs, and maintenance crews. So how do we make a lucrative situation for the city businesses and governments to consider more bike paths and safe bike lanes? If industry is the only answer they will accept, should we put huge banner billboards up along the bike paths to fund them? Line it with ATMs, vending machines and hot dog carts? Make people pay a toll to ride their bikes? How about tax gasoline to fund bikeways? Hmm doesn't seem like a popular idea right now. But people ride bikes anyways on the street, so is it really dangerous? Yes, a drunk driver hit 6 people at once about 2 weeks ago less than a mile from my house. This is not an uncommon occurrence. Cars hit bikes all the time, Some even do it intentionally. I have been hit, i have seen people being hit and the driver running off, luckily I've never been witness to a really bad accident, many people walk away, but the fact is, bikes and cars were not particularly designed to coexist on small streets with fast speed limits as is the case in Los Angeles. While there are 527 miles of bike lanes, it scarcely compares to over 22,000 miles of streets in Los Angeles County. Many of these bike lanes have been nick named "death lanes" due to cars being parked on one side, while traffic zooms by on the other. With people pulling in and out of parallel parking spaces and opening their doors right into the bike lane, there is often not enough room or time to react, and it is one of the most common types of bicycle accidents.

The LA River Expedition

Since it dawned on me to pursue any and all possible options of getting around in Los Angeles, one of the first ideas I had was to navigate the Los Angeles River, which is technically not a river but a seasonal creek by flow volume. It is under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineer, which controls all waterways in the US deemed navigable. Since no vessel larger than a canoe or kayak has ever successfully traveled the river, this poses an interesting question, as the Army's decision has impacted the water in such drastic ways, channelizing it with concrete after the severe flood of 1937. So yesterday, I bought a kayak and a waterproof video camera.

As a distant goal of this project is to eventually lead tours with different modes of travel to showcase environmental, social and economically sustainable businesses, communities and how they interact with natural features. So it behooves me to introduce someone who is a little ahead of me, already beginning to offer expeditions on the river. Here we have LA River Expeditions whose mission is to "lead guided recreational/educational canoe/kayak excursions down the more pleasant, soft-bottomed stretches of the LA River".

first mixed commute

          Yesterday I went downtown to the central library to look at oversized maps and aerial photographs of early road systems. Both of my family members work downtown, so a ride was easy to come by. I caught the subway into North Hollywood where I visited the local High School. It's the only one left in LAUSD (Los Angeles Unified School District) with an agriculture program. I was able to take some photographs and videos of both the ambiance it lend to the campus as well as some of the dilapidated conditions.

           The subway was pretty clean and efficient, but still does not serve most communities. I was happy to see the diverse ways people get sound here, and on the way down the west coast from Olympia, there were hundreds of bicyclists, I felt embarrassed that I was driving such a large vehicle, but I also noticed that they had vehicle convoys that helped them carry stuff so I didn't feel so bad. Many were carrying large panniers, and I remembered riding my bicycle fully loaded down the same highway (101) for hundreds of miles. I don't think I'd bring much more than a wallet and credit card if and when I do it again. It's nice to be prepared with camping stuff for all the elements, but if you want to get somewhere and really enjoy the process it's best to be as light as possible.

           Google maps is a great tool that I use often, however one frustration is that while you can plan a route by foot, bike, public transport or car, and have multiple destinations, it does not recognize that you may be switching transportation forms. It does tell you to walk from bus stop to destination, but unless there is some advanced option I'm not aware of, you can't do that.

Firework Cities

As I rode my bicycle in the beach areas of Los Angeles this past Monday, I couldn't help but notice the fireworks. I didn't think much of them, other than the lack of opulent displays that pepper the beach in times of economic excess. It seems the city of Los Angeles canceled almost all of their large displays, so that people were going greater distances (mostly by car, often drinking) to see fireworks.

Then today, as I was in the historical map section of the downtown public library putting dozens of over-sized early maps of the city in chronological order, it dawned on me that the cities and their surrounding fiefdoms, were like fireworks, that explode from a central point, radiate out, and linger and often fade away, only to be replaced by other explosions at different times. Seeing all the clusters of development explode in a timeline made a city that didn't always fit together in it's different sections, not to mention obstructions like the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains, breaking up the grid of development.

Weekly Study Plan

Week 1: Contract approval, meeting with sponsor, refining contract, setting up website. 

Week 2: Travel arrangements, reading selections, historical review, route planning

Week 3: Historical map research downtown Los Angeles public library, readings, LA update

Week 4: Two mapped routes, with stories, photos and explanations, review of literature

Week 5: Pre screening of bicycle film festival entries and written review of 2 films related

Week 6: Two mapped routes, with stories, photos and explanations, designing travel accessories

Week 7: Kayak / bike trip down the LA river with documentation and journal entries

Week 8: Final Paper draft and or outline posted on blog, one walking trip by beach with report

Week 9: Work on final paper, dog powered travel and written review of experience

Week 10: Complete final paper, video of experiences completed and posted to blog