The fall Transitarian Diet

Today was a gorgeous day, with giant fluffy clouds scuttling along and the temperature straining to reach 70 degrees -- perfect weather for the Transitarian Diet, that merger of good-for-you walking and good-for-the-environment transit riding that makes you look good and feel good.

And muddy and a little bloody as well.

This is the second week of my vacation. This morning the kid was at school and the wife at work, and I needed to visit Blockbuster, get a haircut and read a chapter for a class I'm taking at City College. Since I could accomplish all three tasks at Town and Country Village at Fulton and Marconi I decided to tie it all together in a transitarian outing.

Getting from my house to Town and Country by bus is fairly simple, but it can require three different buses. With the fantastic weather and no real time constraints, I decided to walk a little less than a mile to Auburn Boulevard, where I could catch the No. 1 bus. After a short ride to Watt and Auburn Boulevard, I would catch the No. 26. The No. 26 runs from the Watt/I-80 light rail station to Auburn Boulevard and then down to Fulton Avenue.

And so I packed my backpack with videos to return and books to read and set out walking.

Which brings us to the perils of walking in suburban Sacramento County.

The sidewalks in my neighborhood are intermittent. For one long stretch of my walk to Auburn Boulevard, I was forced to walk in the street. I was thankful for the bike lane separating me from the traffic.

At one point the unimproved drainage ditch made way to a rounded curb and gutter -- and mud.

I remember seeing the mud in the gutter. I recall seeing my foot step in the mud. I even remember thinking that I could get out of the gutter and back in the street and avoid the mud.

And then the foot in the mud lost traction and I spun and collapsed in the street, scraping a knee and bloodying the palm of one hand.

Laying on my back in the street I wondered what it could be about sidewalks that suburban developers found so inconvenient back in the 1960s. What was the attraction of lawns that run all the way to the street?

Have a nice trip? See you next fall!

Fortunately, there wasn't any traffic at the time. I brushed myself off and continued my trip. I made my bus connections, never having to wait more than five minutes. I completed all three of my tasks and even added a lunch at Noah's Bagels while I read the chapter in my textbook. And I made it home equally accident free.

Melting

OK. So maybe I was just a little naive when I wrote on May 2, "People don't melt." It was easy on a cool, rainy day to write, "Hard as it may be for people who live in this semi-arid region to believe, the rain won't hurt you. And if you do get wet, you'll dry soon enough."

Even steely resolve to merge transit and walking to create the Transitarian Diet can start to melt when the temperature outside is on its way to breaking a record set 76 years ago.

I've lived in Sacramento since 1982. I know it gets hot. I know the temperature can reach triple-digits for successive days in the summer. Still, there's nothing like a full-body sauna while on an afternoon walk to burn in the reality.

This year I've been walking every afternoon when I get a break in my daily workload. During the winter, I prided myself on walking in the rain. But I'll admit it does seem a bit more deranged to continue the practice when the temperature is 105 on its way to 108.

So today I compromised: Instead of drinking hot, bold-roast coffee from Starbucks at the midway point in my walk, I stopped nextdoor at Jamba Juice. I'm not convinced the energy boost will work as well as the caffeine to get me through the remainder of the day, but at least it will take a little less time for my fan to dry me out back at my office.

Fighting global warming

A woman and man are seated immediately behind the driver on either side of the bus. The three are chatting as I board and take my customary seat in the rear.

No one else is on bus.

During the school year, the No. 82 bus that departs American River College at 7:19 a.m. would be full of Mira Loma High School students when I board. They get off at Eastern and Edison and then the students from the Winterstein Adult Center and Sacramento State fill the bus. It can be a crowded, noisy bus -- exciting in a transitarian way.

Not today.

The bus rumbles past stop after stop on this summer Friday morning. No one is waiting. When we turn onto Watt, we're following close behind a No. 84 bus. At each stop, it sweeps up the Watt riders, leaving nothing behind for us.

Not until we get to Watt and El Camino do we pick up another rider. I recognize him as a regular rider. He shops at Wal-Mart and then returns home. He's carrying a bag of items from Wal-Mart as he boards..

We must wait to catch up with our schedule. The driver and the two passengers in front continue their conversation.

Now is the time when people should try taking Regional Transit to work. In today's Bee, Stuart Leavenworth has a commentary in which he encourages the governor to do more to encourage people to do their part to fight global warming. "Hey, governor! State needs anti-warming pitchman," the headline declares. But it's a bit too far fetched to imagine The Evil Transitator taking up the cause of public transit.

Who speaks for riders of Regional Transit? I have asked the question before. The Sacramento region has an organization that speaks for disabled riders. The bicycle riders have more than one organization making sure their special needs are met. But I can find no group that represents the people who ride Sacramento Regional Transit buses and light rail.

No one.

By the time the No. 82 bus turns onto Fair Oaks on its way to Sacramento State, the bus has at least one rider in every seat. The crowd encourages the driver, who adds an extra syllable as he enthusiastically announces "Fair Oaks and Ca-dil-lac-a." He's a cheerful driver. Sometimes he whistles as he drives.

Transitarian diet and exercise

"You get a little exercise in the morning, huh?"

I was boarding the bus, and it took a step or two before I figured out what the bus driver meant.

"Yep," I said. I flashed my bus pass and a smile and moved to the rear of the bus to take my regular seat.

It's nice to have a regular driver, and especially a friendly one. It makes the Transitarian diet that much more enjoyable.

I'm also enjoying the benefits of the Gmaps Pedometer, an online means of measuring how much you walk using a Google Maps interface.

As the driver had noticed, I don't always take the bus stop closest to my house, a distances of 0.0415 miles. Instead, I walk to a point two stops later, which Gmaps Pedometer says is 0.202 miles away, and wait.

As I've mentioned in previous posts about Transitarian exercise, I also have a choice of how much to walk on my way to work.

If I take the No. 30 bus from Sac State to downtown and remember to get off at 22nd and L (more than once I've missed my stop due to my book reading), the walk to work is 0.48 miles. If I go to the end of the No. 82 bus line and take light rail from the 65th Street station, the walk from the 23rd Street station to my office is 0.1951 miles. And on those mornings when I'm looking for a little exercise and I get off at 29th Street, the walk to work is 0.6966 miles.

This weekend I was playing with Gmaps Pedometer and mapped out a 2.4925 mile route from my home to the Starbucks at Watt and Kings Way. I walked there, enjoyed a coffee and then coordinated my return trip with the weekend schedule for the No. 82 bus. An excellent Transitarian weekend adventure.

Now, if only I could combine this nifty exercise with a sensible diet.

Back to the future

Ever on the lookout for further evidence of the great value of the Transitarian Diet, I was amused to read The Bee's story in the Business section today about the new vogue of building homes with detached garages. The photo caption explained:

Builders and civic officials hope the arrangement will boost home affordability and encourage more walking.

I suppose walking from the garage to the house would constitute "more walking," but judging from the photo we're still talking about communities that require two-car garages.

For 14 years, I lived in a Sacramento County development built in the mid- to late-1940s for workers at what was then McClellan Air Force Base. My house, like most in the neighborhood, had two bedrooms and one bath when it was built. All of the homes came with an attached one-car garage.

Today, as I ride light rail along the R Street corridor and as I walk around midtown, I pass a number of new condo projects that feature units with one car garages. It's back to the future.

Before I became a transitarian, I would never have considered a house with a single-car garage. Now, it seems like a no-brainer.