Breakout from the job hunt

Tuesday, 28 February 2012

Finally today I broke out of my cycle of breakfast-computer-lunch-computer-dinner-computer work to find a quick replacement for working at Kodak. The replacement was only for an hour-long ride along the Creekside Trail, but it served to break the monotony I had set up since leaving Kodak on February 20. It was a monotony tinged with depression, though I haven't felt depressed.

I know that it's for the best to be out of the work environment at Kodak. First, the atmosphere was toxic and every opportunity was taken to tear down my confidence as a writer. Second, the technologies in use to write documents were solidified and not forward-looking. Third, opportunity for advancement was absent. Fourth, the company's continuing failure to succeed meant that wages were stagnant, and I had taken a financial hit of almost 18% over five years.

I needed this kick in the pants. For some four years, I asserted that I should move out of Kodak. But never did I take resolute steps to do so. At first, in 2008, I was busy guiding the implementation of single-source writing. That program proved its viability by using a single set of files to support three parallel but separate products. But after two years, the progress was pulled back to traditional processes, and another team lead was chosen to do this. It took two years to reset the single-source files into three separate and independent books. Now I've been let go, once the status quo has been re-established. And I now have two months of salary without a requirement to work at the office. I use every moment for developing prospects for my next work situation.

Now perhaps I've come to a point where I can pull back a bit on the focused searching. I have resumés placed with many temp agencies and contracted services. I have search profiles set up with an array of job search engines. I have initial contacts with a network of professionals in the area. Perhaps the next major step will be to set up a similar framework for a possible job in the area around Palm Springs ...just in case. But for now, after ten days away from commuting by bike, I have both time and weather in my favor.

And I took the same route that I have as a commuter, down to the Miami River Bikeway, up the Mad River, and south on the Creekside Trail. But a change: I realize that I've reached the extent of a half-ride at Airway Boulevard, and I turn around to head home. With the turnaround, I head back to work ... at home.

Ride conditions
Temperature: 49 to 55°F at 15:00
Precipitation: none
Winds: 5 to 10 mph from the  southeast
Clothing: Skinsuit, longsleeve undershirt, ankle socks, open-finger gloves
Bike: Trek 850 27x30-48x12 hybrid
Time: 00:57:07  for  13.80 miles
Heart rate: 130 bpm HRave, 150 bpm HRmax
Bikeway users: 2 cyclists, 1 pedestrian
Playback of the ride

Accessibility by bike from the Miami Valley bikeways

At the dinner meeting of Dayton Bicycle Adventures, I asked several people if they planned on commuting to work by bicycle. —Now I didn't ask everyone there, just those few sitting near me.— Most replies were along the lines of "I don't have a way to freshen up after the ride." "The distance is too far." "The bikeways don't connect directly enough." "The streets from home (or to the workplace) are too busy."

The last two reasons are a heart breaker for me, since we often celebrate the 300 miles or more of bikeways in the Miami Valley. But the reasons reveal an essential truth.

How the Bikeway System Fails the Suburbs
Here is the Dayton-Xenia bikeway system plotted over a Google Earth map. The brighter green paths are the Great Miami River Trail (GMR) and the Little Miami River Trail (LMR). The pale green paths are the Creekside Trail that connects the GMR and the LMR trails and the Ohio to Erie Trail that connects toward Columbus and northeastern Ohio. The blue paths are various trails that are presently incomplete, with plans from the MVRBC and Metroparks to complete them.

Click the image to see a larger version. Then click Back on your browser.

 With those incomplete trails, the Dayton area has these conditions.

•  Much of Kettering, Oakwood, and Centerville are cut off from the bikeways. 

• Northwest Dayton and Trotwood are effectively cut off from the fully-connected system, with the poor state of the bikeway adjacent to McGee Boulevard.

• Englewood and Union are similarly cut off, with the lack of a connector from Englewood Reserve to, for example, Sinclair Park.

• Huber Heights has access to the bikeway, but only at the extreme west edge of the city.

• Fairborn is also cut off, due to the inability to develop the right-of-way through Riverside and the Dayton well fields that otherwise would connect to the Huffman Reserve and the Huffman Prairie bikeway.

• Two of the four largest potential sources of enthusiastic, year-round bike commuters—Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Wright State University—are poorly served by gaps in the bikeway system.

• And finishing our clockwise survey, the Iron Horse Trail edges toward The Greene, then feints westerly before it disappears in the recreational facility around Delco Park. Thus Bellbrook, once the area renowned for superb cycling roads, is left isolated, even from the Little Miami Trail.

I'm one of the very lucky cyclists, for whom home is less than two miles of quiet residential streets from a bikeway (in my case either the Wolf Creek Trail or the Great Miami River Bikeway) and work is less than a mile from another point on the bikeway (in my case Research Park from the Iron Horse Trail).

But I too look forward to the day when all the trails are contiguous. Some day the system will look like this, with the violet paths connecting the green and blue bikeways that exist now.

Click the image to see a larger version. Then click Back on your browser.

How the Bikeway System Fails the Commuter
or the Errand Runner 
I'm also lucky in how well my bike commute correlates to my auto commute. My 12.5-mile commute, which has 85% of it on the bikeway, is an ideal distance for combining transportation and exercise. With very little exertion, it is a commute of an hour and 10 minutes. With a training intent, it is a commute of 45 minutes. On the other hand, my most direct commute by auto is 9.5 miles and takes about 20 minutes. The same route by bicycle takes about 30 minutes at the highest intensity. (Though that timing is from my experience of more than 15 years ago, when I was much stronger—and less cowed by auto traffic.)

I know of only one cyclist who regularly commutes between Miamisburg and the Research Park area. I see him (Jeff) only during the "rush hours" of long Summer days, since his bike commute requires more than an hour door-to-door.*Corrections at the break.* I estimate that his auto commute is 15 miles, and that his bike commute is 20 miles. He follows the auto route in outline, going north to downtown Dayton, east, and then south to Research Park. But his bike route goes to the Dayton hub on the north side of downtown, while the auto route goes to the freeway junction at the south side of downtown. That lack of correlation would dissuade most cyclists from commuting. Other cyclists consider this 20-mile distance much too far for commuting, and I believe Jeff commutes by bike frequently only during the Summer.

The regional bikeways follow a modified hub-and-spokes design. The design has two hubs: Dayton and Xenia. Each of these hubs have five spokes. The Dayton hub spokes are...

• GMR trail north to Taylorsville Reserve and on to Troy
• Mad River and Creekside Trails to Beavercreek and Xenia
• GMR trail south to Miamisburg and Franklin
• Wolf Creek trail eventually to Trotwood and Verona
• Stillwater River trail through DeWeese and Wegerzyn Parks to Sinclair Park and eventually to Englewood

The Xenia spokes are...

• LMR trail north to Yellow Springs and Springfield
• Ohio and Erie trail to Charleston and London
• Ohio Mound trail to Jamestown and eventually to Washington Court House
• LMR trail south to Waynesville and Loveland
• Creekside and Mad River trails to Dayton

The hub-spokes system works well enough if you want to ride from the periphery to the center, or from the center to one of the spoke ends. But what if you want to bicycle for an errand to a neighboring town, for example from Miamisburg to Centerville, or from Vandalia to Englewood? Then you have to bike to the hub and out on an adjacent spoke.

I'll offer an idea in another post.