As If I Needed a Reason

When I worked shitty cashier jobs in gas stations right after graduating high school, we had signs up telling people we couldn't break anything bigger than a twenty. I almost got canned for bawling out a guy who repeatedly came in with fifties and, having already pumped the gas, made me empty the register to give him change (he did this on a weekly basis, Sunday afternoons when we were slow, which made it worse; I'd asked him nicely to stop doing it several times before I lost it).



Of course they don't release the pump before you pay anymore, so I guess that eliminates the drive-off, the even worse sort of asshole I dealt with in those days, too. And it's impossible to show up to the gas station with a 'big bill' they can't break when filling an economy car (my fiancé's Corolla) up is north of fifty bucks.

Right after I met Corinna, I remember a Facebook quote she made about how more highway lanes to solve congestion is like bigger pants to solve obesity.

Then, this evening after I sat through life-draining gridlock on I-435 with my honyocks, I thought, Maybe bigger pants are okay.

Tonight, I lost thirty minutes of my life to a three car fender-bender that as far as I could tell couldn't possibly have resulted in a human injury, and if there were four or five lanes instead of three at the busiest interchange in Kansas, that wouldn't have been a 33% reduction at rush hour's Max Q. And I didn't have a whole lot of choice about being in the car at that moment.

I've been re-reading A Confederacy of Dunces lately, and Ignatius is in denial about his obesity, referring to his physique as 'rather grand.'

Ignatius never considers that he should cut back on eating more hot dogs than he sells from his Paradise wagon or taper off the Dr. Nut. Perhaps my own trap is as obviously solvable but, at the moment in question, a thousand previous choices I made in life boxed me into that infernal traffic jam as surely as Ignatius was stuck with his piratical costume and French Quarter hot dog route.

Corinna recalled the KDOT folks visiting the MARC with their plans for this exchange, expanding it to a hundred lanes or whatever it takes, and how the bike advocates in the audience were sickened by the plans. The transit you could do for that money, that sort of thing.

Maybe so, but a lot of the congestion I'm contending with is College Boulevard Corridor stuff, and those are good jobs, where guys like my neighbor/mayor can not only afford a car but even a German luxury car. And it takes a lot more than gridlock to get someone in that situation, in America, in the burbs, to take the bus.

I figured out on the Jo's bus rapid transit that I could bike/bus to work from out here in Gardner, but it would mean two hours each way minimum and the only reason I'd consider it is I enjoy the bike that much and, if I was stuck in this interminable gridlock, at least I could read or sleep or something.

I have a similar time commitment on my bike commute days from Corinna's, and I never pass up a chance to do that, though no bus is involved.

But nobody is going to ride their bike or the bus just because you give them reasons. Even if they think their driving is leading to alligators in the Arctic Circle, a theory I am agnostic about, they don't think they have a choice in the matter.

So we either have to show those folks how much fun they're missing out on or put free strippers and illegal drugs on the bus. Flooded cities and endangered polar bears sure as shit won't bring it.