La folie des grandeurs... En réponse à ce cher Alain...

Spring Sprang Sprung

Spring is here! Finally! I didn't even sit through a whole winter, but its been quite a shock to go from California where it was 70-80 degrees, to Pittsburgh where it was 12 degrees, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, the weather here shot up to the 70s, even the 80s! Its been great though...we've had a few 'hot' days...they weren't so much hot as they were humid. I think coming from such a dry area I'll need some time to get used to that, but I'm excited about spending a summer where 100 degree days are the exception rather than the rule. No more 120+ days! Hooray!

Me and Yannis are making a lot of progress on our apartment. We've managed to begin furnishing the 'office', probably now my favorite room in the house. We had a field day at Ikea. I love that place. Yannis, not so much. He's always excited when we first get there, but halfway through, usually in the desk section, he starts to get antsy and cranky and I have to threaten throwing meatballs and lignonberry soda at him if he doesn't snap out of it. We managed to get a really cool desk though, and we finally have an actual 'office.' I'm not sure how much work will get done here, but at least we have a place to keep our computers and books. I finally have a sewing area set up (kinda) and we've got the easel propped up and the paints out. We have a lot of big ideas for the house, and this room specifically. We plan on painting but need to decide on colors, and we want to install a cork wall to hang up photos, 'inspiration', reminders, whatever. We've got a lovely view of our neighbors brick wall, so some non-hideous curtains are in order too. I think this room might become our favorite place to be. Its a lot warmer than the living room, which might be nice when winter comes roaring back.

Winter. Eugh.

Here's some pics of our place!



































There it is, folks! We'll post more as we do and re-do the different parts of the house. We're pretty excited about the cork wall, though.

Carpooling in the steel city

Ok this one will be in English. I would like to apologize first for all the grammatical/vocabulary mistakes i will make.

I thought about this topic while i was carpooling back home and i sadly noticed all these i-m-alone cars complaining about the (really bad) traffic. I tried to understand what would lead people to carpool more and hopefully to decrease the traffic.

Surprisingly there are not a lot of information about carpooling in Pittsburgh. I could only find two relevant websites (excluding craigslist). That is really not a ton comparing to Europe!

So the first website is like the one i have at home but a way less user-friendly. look at by yourself! http://www.erideshare.com/carpool.php?city=Pittsburgh . Only 54 ride share are proposed among millions of inhabitants we have in Pittsburgh area... wooo.

The second one is a little more interesting. http://www.commuteinfo.org/comm.shtml They have more information about what is carpooling, how you can do it, etc. You can carpool or vanpool. The van is provided by the organization and you pay a fixed price every month.
But again, the list of available carpooling doesn't exceed 5 and 30ish for van pooling for not only Pittsburgh area but people coming from outside this area.


the lack of carpooling information doesn't explain entirely why it does not work. From what i saw i think there are two majors issues:

First, the distance are so long between ride-sharers. I experimented that because i am carpooling with a co-worker who lives 3 miles from my house. It is not actually that far but i live right across the freeway and he lives middle of the traffic and pretty far from the freeway. So it means i have to pick him up which adds me at least 30 minutes to my regular drive. I can tell that i am starting feeling exhausted, especially knowing that i can avoid all this extra-time/traffic by taking the freeway next to my house.
I am pretty sure that the way roads are build and the housing spread-out doesn't incite people to carpool. It does not become profitable at all.

Second, i have the feeling people are afraid of carpooling. And that's not something only for carpooling i noticed. I have the impression most of Americans are afraid of strangers especially the ones who enter in their private area (including car). I don't know if it's because all the safety issues related to the little screen or something else. Anyway, i definitely think people don't have the willingness to share a daily drive with someone they don't really know. They would rather get use to the traffic. And i can tell you i am amazed every morning how people can handle the traffic on the other side of the road (i am on the "good" side :) )

In conclusion, I don't it will change that much and thinking about some carpooling hub is worthless at this time.
I guess we have to wait the expected gas increase over the next decade/century in order to might see things changing.

But for now, let's pollute and get stuck in traffic!