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If you think expanding regional high-speed rail is a good thing for the country, then you may want to reconsider voting republican…

Republican Wave Could Spell Trouble for High-Speed Rail Projects from Coast to Coast

I recently posted to my facebook status: “my real life is getting in the way of my digital one,” and that’s not such a bad thing. So much is new since I last posted. It may be the longest gap in blog posting since apple juice’s inception back in the early oughts. Let me bring you up to date on one area of my life.

One of the original themes of the blog was my car, a beloved 2003 Golf TDI. Dear friends, Bogey is no longer with us. Yes, sadly on the commute to work two weeks ago, I was in a car accident. Luckily, I am fine. Bogey didn’t fare so well. I rear-ended a pickup and his bumper became entangled with my engine. (No, I was not on my phone, fiddling with the radio, picking my nose, etc. I checked my blind spot to change lanes and when I looked back, traffic was coming to a complete and utter stop in front of me.)

The car was declared a total loss by my insurance. Thus, the search began. I’d love to have just walked into the VW dealer and bought a new 2010 Jetta Sportwagen TDI. They are looking quite nice. However, it is a bit more money than I had to spend.

After driving a few gasoline fulled 1.8T Jetta Wagons, I decided that I simply had to find a diesel. I find explaining diesel cars like explaining Macintosh computers to people in the late 90s. Until you drive one, you just won’t understand.

Nothing was showing up in Minnesota, so I widened the search. Other metro areas were canvassed, the eastern seaboard was searched (thanks, Jean!). I was ready to hop on a plane to Denver to investigate one potential vehicle when I found a 2005 Jetta Wagon TDI in neighboring Iowa.

I have the car back in Mpls now, and I’m hoping this one picks up where my Golf left off. It has a slightly more powerful 100HP engine (whoa, triple digits!), and I’m guessing slightly lower highway mileage. It only 87,000 miles, and like my Golf, I’m hoping to achieve at least 200,000 miles with this car. I’ll get a picture up soon. It’s beige, but not in a bad way. Manual transmission, heated seats (key in Minnesota).

It’s so silly to become attached to things, I have to remind myself of that. However, cars become such a part of our lives, (what car did I drive wife and daughter home from the hospital in? The Golf) and you can’t help but weave their stories into yours. I’m hoping this new (old) Jetta weaves a few new stories into our lives.

Sidenote: If you know me at all, you know the nerd inside of me. I just signed up for a new site called Fuelly, that helps track your fuel usage. They have a simple mobile site accessible from your iPhones, Blackberries, Nokias, etc. Enter the odometer and fuel amount when you fill up. Easy as pie. See neato badge to the right. Join and we can be fuelly friends. Seriously, it’s like the new twitter and facebook rolled into one.

“Protesters who attended Saturday’s Tea Party rally in Washington found a new reason to be upset: Apparently they are unhappy with the level of service provided by the subway system.

Rep. Kevin Brady asked for an explanation of why the government-run subway system didn’t, in his view, adequately prepare for this past weekend’s rally to protest government spending and government services.

Seriously.”

(Via Wall Street Journal.)

Awesome. Protest government spending on one hand, and complain about the lack of government services on the other.

“When lunch break comes at the construction site between Shanghai and Suzhou in eastern China, Xi Tong-li and his fellow laborers bolt for some nearby trees and the merciful slivers of shade they provide. It’s 95 degrees and humid — a typically oppressive summer day in southeastern China — but it’s not just mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the midday sun.

Xi is among a vast army of workers in China — according to Beijing’s Railroad Ministry, 110,000 were laboring on a single line, the Beijing-Shanghai route, at the beginning of 2009 — who are building one of the largest infrastructure projects in history: a nationwide high-speed passenger rail network that, once completed, will be the largest, fastest, and most technologically sophisticated in the world. “

(emphasis mine)

(Via China’s amazing new bullet train.)

How’s that for a stimulus? 110,000 workers? The article goes on to say that China is spending $300 billion dollars on the project, which will take 15 years to complete.

We are way behind…

“. . .Japan’s zip through the countryside at an average of 180 m.p.h. One difference, of course, is that governments overseas have put big money behind these forms of transit. Spain, for example, plans to invest about $140 billion over the next decade to develop a network of 6,200 miles of high-speed rail lines.”

(Via Editorial – America’s Not-So-Fast Trains – NYTimes.com.)

Spain plans to invest $140 billion dollars on rail in the next 10 years.

Where is our plan for high-speed rail?

it is a minnesota state law that you must yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, correct?

actually…

Where traffic-control signals are not in place or in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall stop to yield the right-of-way to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within a marked crosswalk or at an intersection with no marked crosswalk. The driver must remain stopped until the pedestrian has passed the lane in which the vehicle is stopped.

nobody seems to obey this law.

i’ve taken to standing and pointing at the sign, while staring disapprovingly at the cars driving past.

it’s called a parkway for a reason.

slow down.

“Why American drivers should learn to love the roundabout.”

(Via Slate Magazine.)

The narrative the author cites is exactly the same story I heard from someone at a recent community meeting here in Minneapolis. The article cites Golden, CO as an example (which I remember everyone professing to hate).

I love roundabouts, for all the reasons listed… the only thing I don’t like is people who can’t figure them out.