A Note About My Absence

It dawned on me today that I haven’t written a MetroRider article in a month. Much thanks goes out to the other authors who continued to contribute in the face of my unexplained absence. Where have I been? First and foremost I got slammed with billable work this month (I work as a freelance graphic designer) and since MetroRiderLA doesn’t pay my bills I had to put it on the backburner. I feel guilty because I actually had big plans for MetroRiderLA this month, specifically because on June 7th 2006 I wrote the first MetroRiderLA post ever. That’s right, this blog is a year old this month. My plans were to reveal an updated look and feel as well as a retrospective and a tighter posting schedule. Alas, the opposite happened. I still plan on doing these things once my schedule lightens up (which may not be for another month unfortunately), but until then I’d like to go ahead and thank every reader and contributor and entity that links to MetroRiderLA. This blog started at as just an experiment, a place where me and my roommates (who all live car-free/public transit oriented lifestyles) would write silly stuff that no one would really read. It grew into much more. Transit gurus like Wad came on board to write some of the most informative articles. Others came onboard to share their opinions or talk about transit in their neck of the woods. A great number of people participated in heated discussions in the comments section, furthering the ideas brought up in our articles. Prominent Los Angeles and national blogs linked our posts and opinions. We even got the attention of Metro itself, and the Metro Librarian has become a great resource for information and support. In other words, MetroRiderLA became sort of legitimate.

MetroRiderLA set out a year ago with the ridiculous mission to change the culture of Los Angeles. To create and promote a Public Transit Lifestyle in a place where the Car Culture pervades every aspect of life and public transportation is seen as little more than a sad joke. We’ve still got a long way to go, but thanks to the continued support of the minority that do believe in the Public Transit Lifestyle, we’re going to continue pressing on.

My apologies once again for my absence, hopefully in the near future I will be able to contribute fully again.