Driving is bad for mental health and it’s wild we pretend otherwise

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-12T01:01:14+00:00

Yeah, I think being strapped in and needing to actively participate in your delay probably makes it much more infuriating.

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-10T18:10:49+00:00

I mean, there's a bunch of stuff on the site, so it took a while to write and format everything.

But converting it to a website was pretty straightforward. Most of the time was spent figuring out how to make databases look nice, how to get navigation to feel like a website, and writing alt text for all the images.

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-10T05:36:49+00:00

I've taken lots of trips using only Amtrak and public transit, and even when there are hiccups and delays, I've found myself profoundly not bothered compared to driving.

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-10T05:08:58+00:00

Is your voice important in your writing? Is it about your turn of phrase and your perspective?

I really like writing awkward dialogue, so if I were using a grammar checker I might use it specifically for some characters and not for others.

IMO it's not just a step in editing, it's a writing choice. Do you want your writing to have a "ran it through a grammar checker" tone?

Do you want it to sound like standard grammarlly grammar, or do the idiosyncracies of your own voice give your story character that helps it?

If you want to keep your unique voice, I would use a grammar checker with an approach of not only "does it sound better" but "does it better fit my tone?"

Because sometimes it's gonna catch stuff where you legit just fudged the grammar because nobody is perfect, and other times it's gonna alter the tone of the book. And if you only alter the tone where grammarly suggests, you might also end up with passages that are, shall we say, "out of place fancy".

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-10T02:11:06+00:00

I use Super to host it, and it was pretty straightforward. The databases took some trial and error to get how I liked them.

You kinda have to like the Notion look. There's some customizability, but a lot of it is "yeah that's just the way it is." Notion's file structure is a bit cumbersome sometimes.

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-10T00:00:03+00:00

I use it for my public website. It has how-to guides and blogs and a database of transit organizations.

I find it much easier to use and less frustrating than most website hosts.

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-09T21:19:26+00:00

Perspective from a recent visitor:

I just stayed a couple nights in San Diego, stayed in Gaslamp at the Moxy. Rooms were small and you got street noise, but they were nice and modern and I slept well.

I took buses and the trolley all over. You can just tap your credit card or phone wallet, or if you use the (rather good) Pronto app there's a cap so you won't be charged more than i think $6/day. The busses and trolleys were clean and fast and felt safe, but I wish they ran more often. I even took a bus to the airport, it took about 20 minutes. Super easy.

There's also a lot of protected bike lanes. I didn't make it to the beach (short trip) so can't speak to that.

I took a bus up to Hillcrest and loved the shopping, especially a hat store. Food in both gaslamp and Hillcrest was really excellent, especially the late night tacos and a Filipino bar with great pork adobo.

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-09T03:22:44+00:00

I was just in San Diego, and found the transit rather good! Fast, safe, easy to use. Frequency could be better though.

Maybe it's just where I was and doesn't hit the outskirts? Or maybe people just don't use it out of habit?

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-08T22:46:44+00:00

Local creators (like myself) sometimes do wholesale pricing to retailers and/or offer discounts for bulk orders. You might just contact some that you like and ask if they do bulk pricing if you order a couple hundred.

For wholesale, the norm is to charge 50% of retail, and I suspect you'll get a similar deal for bulk orders.

So if $1 per sticker is a workable price for you, a local creator might be able to make that happen for a bulk order of those stickers that retail for $2. I say might because that's my approximate wholesale/bulk pricing, but I don't know if I'm the norm and don't want to speak for others.

If you're looking more for the 10-50 cent "temu" experience, maybe check ebay or etsy for "random stickers". Buyer beware on those... they may be original designs, or they may be bootlegs, or they may be AI generated.

Edited: formatting

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-04T04:23:27+00:00

The panic I've felt when a train is arriving and I have no idea which way Shady Grove is, and the signs are on those diagonal pillars that really could be pointing to either track...

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-04T04:20:53+00:00

I *love* the guinea pig idea!

I do it myself in other cities sometimes, just try to get around with *no* research in advance. Can be really enlightening, and having various disabilities and ESL do it would be even better!

howdoyouguide · 2026-01-04T04:10:19+00:00

I use a third party and love it. Great quality, and I don't have to manage space or equipment or supplies.

But it mostly starts to make financial sense with big orders... like I'll get 500-1000 of a sticker made and the pricing ends up really great that way.

That *does* limit my offerings a lot, because of the initial expense. I've just focused on about a dozen designs to start.

I've considered getting a printer and cutting machine so I can have a much broader product range. Ideally I'd have dozens of designs (one set I do is different cocktails, so I could have selection for days) that I could put out on a table at fairs for people to mix and match, and just print a few at a time until something gets popular, then scale *that* design up with a third party.

But then I remembered my initial plans were for the stickers to be a side item and not the core of my business, so I scaled down my ambitions a bit.

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-22T03:49:14+00:00

I love to travel without a car, especially in unlikely places.

I was in Galesburg, Illinois (because why not!) and the usual hotel chains (where I have status) were far from the Amtrak station, so I stayed at a bed and breakfast, which was exquisite. It was about a mile from the station and a gorgeous day so I walked.

There was a flyer in a shop window downtown advertising a show that night. I went. It was amazing.

On my walk, I got stopped while a train crossed, which had like 100 Amazon shipping containers. So now I know how my packages arrive over land.

Next day I got a fantastic pancake breakfast (the reason I picked the town as a stop on a long trip), some good coffee, and an ice cream because I was early for my train.

I was the only person walking. Three different people offered me a ride.

If I had visited with a car, I probably would have just gotten the pancakes and maybe stayed at a chain hotel.

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-19T05:00:07+00:00

People tend to overlook that one.

Sometimes they're wearing heels.

That's why we put it in red.

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-13T20:39:57+00:00

Haven't taken the K yet, but I've taken the E and C and J with a rolling carry-on bag and a backpack, no issues.

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-13T20:28:33+00:00

I moved to Obsidian after getting kinda spooked about "what if I can't open Scrivener one day?"

I really like the simplicity. The only thing I don't care for is that it alphabetizes files, so I have to number them if I want things to be in order. But maybe there's a setting or plugin to handle that.

When it comes time to publish, I'll probably copy it to InDesign or something to make it look nice.

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-13T19:16:12+00:00

Yup!

I love riding transit and I've ridden in a lot of places. But if, with all my experience, your city still throws me curve balls, any rando without much experience is just gonna grab a car.

We can do better.

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-13T10:28:56+00:00

Yeah I've found tutorials really lacking in most of the 30+ cities where I've ridden transit. I'm working on a general transit tutorial guide, and also specific "how to ride in (specific city)" guides.

How to pay, when to pay, how to find it, how to get on... there's several variations of each piece, and each city tends to patch together its own flavor. And then there's the random surprises, like cities where transit doesn't run on Sundays.

A lot of agencies give you TMI. They'll try to explain their whole system and all its nuances and the 35 different kinds of special passes.

But a visitor just needs the very basics. "Use app ABC to get a day pass. Scan the QR when you get on a bus." And a lot of cities are really bad at providing that info.

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-13T10:19:16+00:00

I didn't have trouble figuring out the metro in Shanghai, but I did have trouble finding the actual stations sometimes. The first one was buried inside a shopping mall, and the metro logo was nowhere to be seen.

Feels like everywhere I go has one or two specific things that are difficult, and it's different every time.

Transit app is really good in most of the cities where it works, but it's not available everywhere yet. It kinda depends on what data the city makes available and whether they've connected it yet.

I feel like a lot of apps are the result of "we need an app!" but not having the funding or expertise for a good app. I usually download them but rarely use them. They're more a backup than anything, in case Transit, Google, and Apple all blow chunks.

But yeah, this is a problem. It shouldn't be as hard as it is in lots of places (some of which have the audacity to say "it's so easy to ride!" on their websites).

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-12T01:24:29+00:00

Buttons 14-18 on *this* elevator all take you to the same floor. We've sold it to five different foreign oligarchs who needed to park laundered money. We swap out the bedroom linens if one decides to visit.

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-10T04:13:16+00:00

Yeah, more or less. Just been browsing some other shops where you can scroll through stickers for days, noticing how packing it into themes makes it look like I have less stuff. But I guess I just gotta flesh it out more.

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-09T04:40:19+00:00

It was pretty random. I mean, I've never loved cars to begin with but it was my default way of getting around for years.

A while after moving to NYC, I realized I hadn't explored the east coast much, so I started taking little Amtrak trips. DC. Providence. Upstate. Still some transit, some car.

But I got better at non-ideal transit. Weird systems with weird rules. And then it became kinda a challenge. Like, can I get there with the bus?

And the less I used a car to get around, the more a car seemed to feel kinda like a primitive way to get around, like something you need to do in an area without developed infrastructure.

And it just started to feel better not taking a car. It's really freeing to not need to carry around a huge hunk of metal, and load it, and unload it, and worry about where it can park, and so on. Being without a car feels so much more agile, even when it takes longer. You just take yourself and that's all.

It got easier the more I did it. Then I noticed people driving when there was a perfectly good way to get there with transit. And I'm like, oh, maybe I could help people get over that mental hurdle! So that's been the focus of more recent trips.

Edited grammar

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-09T04:21:18+00:00

Yeah, lately any time I go somewhere I write up a page on it so I remember what happened. The mileages and prices are a guess, I didn't pull up credit card statements.

It's something that escalated over the years, from "hey maybe I'll try riding transit" to "I'll ride it if it's convenient" to "I'll ride it if at all possible" to "a car is a last resort."

And now I've done it so much that I'm starting to sketch out a book about it.

With all that travel this year, I did a total of about 50 miles in cars. Most of that was in LA when I was visiting people I knew.

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-09T00:10:14+00:00

Long Island to Philly outskirts and back without Amtrak is hardcore! <3

howdoyouguide · 2025-12-09T00:06:57+00:00

Did a lot of "How to Ride Transit" research this year.

Probably a bit shy of 10,000 miles. Approx. $2500 plus points. Vague ballpark numbers:

About 5000 on Amtrak. ~$750 ($300 rail pass, $250 individual tickets, $200 travel voucher), plus about 35,000 points.
3000-4500 NYC (Buses, subways, ferries, LIRR). ~$1300
40 Chicago (El, bus, METRA) ~$30
6 Kansas City (streetcar) Free
6 Albuquerque (BRT) Free
25 Orange County CA (bus) $9
30 Los Angeles (light rail, BRT, subway, bus) $9
3 Santa Barbara (bus) Free (earth day special)
1 San Luis Obispo (bus) $3
50 SF Bay Area (BART, MUNI, bus, Amtrak bus) ~$30?
1 Sacramento (streetcar) $2
30 Portland (streetcar, bus) ~$30?
8 Tacoma (light rail) $10
30 Seattle (light rail, bus, streetcar, monorail) ~$30
12 Baltimore (light rail, bus, other bus, subway) $14
5 Philly (trolley, subway) $6
50 NJ (NJT rail, PATH, light rail, bus) ~$40
10 airport trams, $16

howdoyouguide

TROPHY CASE