Perfect weather and perfect to go out and do stuff in, right?

So I got the urge to get out and about the Bay area during this past week and – just to humor myself, I checked PSTA‘s web site in order to see if there was a bus route I coudl take to get elsewhere in the Tampa Bay metro area. And herein lies the mockery of mass transit options in Tampa Bay or poor use of tools that have been newly employed on local web sites.

So earlier in the week I wanted to go across county lines to downtown Tampa and meet up with a friend to hang out. Cynically, I already knew the chances of me finding anything were slim to none (means to get into the other county) or impossibly out-of-my-way… But I decided to humor myself and just go to the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority’s website and see what I could find…

What jumped out right away on PSTA.net (besides horrid flash animation that serves absolutely no purpose, and stupid cartoon characters that seem to marginalize and mock riders and workers alike without really realizing it) was the list of 100x-300x buses. These three buses are all express buses between counties to serve the commuter set. I knew this before hand but I figured I would check out there schedules. Serendipity maybe and just hit paydirt without even trying and such…?

Yeah, right.

The 200x line is closest to where I live in North Pinellas – following that way-out-of-my-way motif of leaving from a softball field area at Drew Street and McMullen Booth intersection called the Eddie C. Moore Complex. I know the place and have passed it many times before while bumming rides off other people…

The Moore complex itself would amount to being a 15 to 20 minute bus trip… If I could find the damn thing in the PSTA trip planner to begin with. yup, the new automation that PSTA has implemented to make it easier to follow schedules and take advantage of them doesn’t even recognize the Eddie C. Moore complex park-and-ride.

That was a moot point anyway. Even if I could make it to said park-and-ride lot, the 200x route boasts a total of just five round trips all day — three in the early morning, two in the afternoon.

I realize it’s for commuters specifically but good god damn, this is a joke.

There is no other cross-bay option that I am aware of via public transit. While you can get to the Hillsborough County Line via Route 93 on PSTA, HART (Hillsborough Area Regional transit) doesn’t make it very clear where there map starts and ends.

So in that regard, anyone wanting to cross the county line is in a bind unless they drive on their own – which i don’t.

So that faded out of my memory and instead, while relaxing today I thought it would be cool to take the bus to Clearwater Beach — hey! it’s in county and shouldn’t take much extra time and effort to get there… So lets try the ole’ route map and give it a whirl huh…?

I flubbed around with that most of the afternoon and I found out that “Clearwater Beach” is not listed as a landmark. “Pier 60″ is not listed as a landmark. I kept trying combinations to find a route to Clearwater beach and kept being told that you couldn’t find that there is no bus.

Of course, that’s not the truth. the problem is the route map just doesn’t accurately define things.

I went back to the rout map tonight and found some interesting things — for example both Pinellas and Hillsborough county addresses and intersections are placed within the route finder. Of course you can’t get there from here but that’s already been touched on. What was also discovered is that every single PSTA bus stop is marked off on the map with a little widget. you just ahve to zoom in close enough to see things.

After discovering that, trying to plan my trip was a snap — just drag the map over to the exact location you want to venture to and presto… It’ll take an hour and 13 minutes to get from my neck of the woods to Clearwater Beach. That ain’t so bad. The reverse trip ain’t so bad either. Just less than an hour (barrign traffic incidents in both directions).

Just thinking about this sorta peeves me. It’s such a minor detail, usability. I don’t know if people at PSTA are truly aware that they are using jargon in trip planning in some instances — no one is looking for Stop #201 Mandalay Blvd. They’re looking for Clearwater Beach.

Of course there is also the problem of commute time that makes PSTA a hassle more than a help… 2 and a half hours or more from Palm Harbor to St. Petersburg, 3 hours from St. Petersburg to Tampa International Airport, etc.

Something’s gotta be done about this mess — because the impossiblity of getting there form here is why the roads are congested and people shun the bus.

That’s our cat actually, and hearing the news hurt.

Amber was a cat we rescued from the North Pinellas Humane Society last year about this time – it’s within a few days of the one year anniversary of getting the cat. Jenna had just moved into her apartment at Sabal Walk and wanted to get a feline friend to compliment her brood of dogs in the apartment. Meanwhile, I had the inkling of getting a cat for my brother Andy’s birthday – but I soon retreated on such an idea as they (at the shelter) said – giving animals as gifts isn’t such a bright idea.

Me and Jenna had gone to the shelter on a Sunday morning… I can’t exactly remember the details leading up to getting inside the shelter — I think we cleaned out her van in the shopping center across the street from the shelter as we waited for it to re-open — but I can remember inside. The cats were all penned into seperate fenced in areas. Some had unhealthy looks in their eyes from being in captivity too long. Several had been their for years, while others had been their for months on end. Me and Jenna had taken to a few sweet tabby cats that had been inside for a while… It was a pity party of sorts. I started making a list of preference cats in my head as we moved through the building, but every selection was a pity selection more so than a prized discovery.

Then we came to the last cage in the cat area… We were interested in looking at the dogs soon – just for the hell of it — but wanted to see the cats within the pen. It was crowded in their – maybe 12 or more cats all tucked into it. It was mostly longhairs. Several didn’t want to be touched and several were only interested in keeping their position in the cage.

I had basically given up on the the pen and was ready to move on when Jenna noticed a cat tucked away inside a cinder block. The block was already basically hidden under a platform that held several cats… The block was also surrounded by other cats lounging…

Jenna pulled the cat out from the abyss and lo and behold we found the prize of the Humane Society. The Needle in the haystack if you will. Her hair was mostly white with tints of brown and orange… It would be an elegant coat if not for the cat being in a dank cell and her hair matted against her body. She was a ragdoll.  We looked over the chart outside the cage to try to find the name of the animal. It wasn’t quite clear to me which of the dozen+ animals on the list it was… Though it seemed to be one of three or so, and most likely a cat named “Idgie.”

Idgie had been in the shelter for only a few days compared to the other cats. She was terrified in that cell, she would hiss when held near other cats or over other cats. She’d struggle to get out of your grasp and run back into her hiding space from time to time…

But she also had the demeanor of an animal that didn’t belong in a pen like that. She seemed violated and desperate to escape.

We browsed around the dogs – Jenna took to a golden retriever that was up for adoption, but my mind was on “Idgie.” Would she even survive a few minutes without us? We had to get her out of there… I mean we just HAD to do it.

And that’s just what we did.

The adoption only took a few minutes and “Idgie” was brought out in a cat carrier. It ran through my mind a few times what this cat must have gone through and must be going through. Her papers said she was six and that she had been put up for adoption because of a new baby at home where she had lived. She was already declawed and though she was a tad volatile in the pen, it was obvious she wasn’t an aggressive animal by nature.

We got her out to the car — she was adopted officially by me but she’d be Jenna’s cat — and decided right there she needed a new name because… Well, Idgie? There are uncommon names and then their are REALLY uncommon names. Idgie didn’t even look pronouncable on the information sheet we had been given, let alone was it something that either of us would willingly call an animal. We decided upon “Amber” as her new name.

And that was the begining of her new life — andn that life would only last a year.

She was sweet, that much I can remember. She was scared when we brought her into Jenna’s apartment and she hid inside Jenna’s closet most of the time. I was always concerned for the cat because of the change of situations she was facing, but she came out fine. We cleaned her up and indeed she was a beautiful longhair. I’d almost think that she was a show cat because of how smart she seemed to be.

But now she’s gone….  Though the memory lives on….

At any rate, I vented about Ferry travel the other day — not just on der Stonegauge but through Bayciti.net’s comments — and suffice it to say I think that he idea is sound. And I expect no one in government to even think about the idea.

….so Im taking the idea to government.

I’ve printed out copies of a letter to the Clearwater City Council and the Mayor just to send out feelers over the idea of Ferry transit between Clearwater and Clearwater Beach. I plan on ammending the letter and then printing out copies and sending it along to HARTLine, PSTA, The Hillsborough and Pinellas MPO’s, and other government officials…. ALl because I’m tired of having ideas and having them sitting in my head or in a blog….

To be continued.

I started thinking about the ferry idea after focusing on the Memorial Causeway Bridge snafu on Tuesday — the fact Clearwater Beach has no ferry service between the mainland and the beach, which only promotes more driving and does not give an alternative when the Bridge goes out (as it has from time to time for a very long time)

I started thinking how Clearwater is not only wasting it’s great asset — the water — but it’s also not providing an alternative to those trying to get to the beach. You either have to cross the bridge by foot or by car. That creates a big problem when the Memorial used to get stuck in place — messing with the traffic pattern of all of downtown. Yes the new bridge wille alleviate that problem, but that’s still not solving the problem of only one means of getting to Clearwater beach.

And then I thought about the traffic pattern to the rest of the Bay area and that we depend on the bridges to get everywhere between counties, and that there is no real great bus systems on either side of the bay (HARTline sucks, PSTA sucks — all with thanks to the Bay area’s suburban layout).

What do you have to do to get Ferry Service in Tampa Bay? Forget just between the mainland and Beach destinations — how about between Pinellas and Downtown Tampa? How many people could actually RELAX on their commute instead of having to get stressed out because of traffic?

Rail is still something I am very keen on but Ferry service should be simple and easy…. Something not too tough to promote, and an asset to the community.

Well, I have it right now — rented it form Netflix.

I can go into detail about the synopsis of the film but that’s not exactly what I want to talk about. What I wanted to talk about because of a scene that just passed was John Lennon and how not only the movie portrayed him but how I know him from what I read… How different he is from myself but how much of the same he is too.

I’m into astrology a bit and I like Libras from what I have encountered. I know I can fight with Aries, I know I can have a good time with Gemini’s and Pisces’s, but it’s Libra’s that I can most identify with… I feel sort of a kinship with them even though we come from different backgrounds and different trains of thought in life – it all comes back to certain underlying personality traits to me.

John’s a Libra — Born 2 days after myself — well, but 39 years before me…

At any rate – there is a rage in Lennon in this portrayal by Ian Hart (who does an absolutely superb job. He looks like Lennon as a teen in the famous Wooten-Fete photograph) which coverts up known facts about Lennon – his insecurity, his troubled past. John’s father left him when he was young, his mother left him as well — dropping him with his Aunt Mimi.. She (John’s mother – who was immortalized in the Beatles song Julia) was later killed when she was hit by a car. John often covered this sense John’s anguish – his loneliness — is displayed well by Hart, especially in the face of the possibility of losing best friend Stuart Sutcliffe to a local girl (world famous photographer Astrid Kirchherr). The slow lose of Stu to love drives Lennon mad.

How many times have we all be jealous of losing someone to the world?

How many times have you been jealous having someone move on in life when you ant very much for them to stay?

I can identify with that quit ewell… But this isn’t the first movie that I could identify with one of the characters….

And to take John’s send off to Stuart and Astrid at the end of the movie:

Love me tender…. Love me sweet…. Never let me go…. Yiou’ve made my life complete, and I love you so…(followed by a “fuck it, lets go” )

Yes, it’s another journal entry. Feel free to move on to the new web page that actually provides content besides my daily life…..

……

What? You’re still here? Shame on you! :smile

So I have a full work week in front of me — which is sort of cool and sort of bothersome… Bothersome because Bill quit Target in a hissy fit and I feel like I am getting –

Getting ahead of myself with negative thoughts. BAD BAD BAD. I want to have this job and I need this job and I need something to do every day instead of sitting at home on my ass in front of the computer, waiting for Bill to tell me another story about his niece Jillian and her life sus-far, or about his dog Bradley becoming Ernie-the-Hound-dog’s bitch….

Then again, I could also write. I started working on a story again that I started pre-9-11…. 9-10-01 to be exact. I had plans to finish it the next day but you know how that went…

I also had thoughts about a cool concept business that I do not have the capital to start up. I like the concept that I pieced together but I don’t know if it would work or not. Basically it’s a charter van that drives between downtown Tampa and a fixed location (locations? plural?) in Pinellas County. It can be used to commute to downtown Tampa or as a way to get to St. Pete Times Forum and other venues nearby. I figure it can be hired out by retirement homes and local associations (or schools?) to shuttle people around to fixed areas too….

At a flat cost compared to a Cab, though.

Meanwhile, I want to make note that Tampa/St. Pete is the second worst metro region for Pedestrians in the US of A…. How many times have I found this out to be the truth in person? :sad