Time Out for Lani

Part I: Advocating for a Healthy Community

This year, Lani and Michael started a new business in real estate, and learned that a neighborhood influences the value of a property almost as much as the home itself. They also bought their own home and when I visited their new home, I loved seeing their neighborhood.

I loved seeing the sidewalks throughout the neighborhood, which exemplifies the manner in which Cary has made itself into a walkable and bikeable community. Residential development in the south is much different than master-planned Irvine, where we grew up. Sidewalks and bike lanes are not the norm. In fact, "the states of the southern U.S. are the most dangerous per biker, and per bike mile traveled, by a wide margin."

Cary, North Carolina is different. It prides itself on planning and building bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure. The Hocks' new neighborhood demonstrates something cool in Cary's bike-ped evolution. We might think the ideal situation is for every single street to have sidewalks on both sides of every inch of the road. However, that simply isn't practical in a culture that ignored human-powered transportation for so long. It is costly to build and it uses land that developers are accustomed to building upon.

In talking with Lani and Michael, they expressed mild disappointment that their cul-de-sac didn't include a sidewalk.  Later, I realized their community exemplifies a first-step in community design that treats cul-de-sacs as inherently safe enough for walkers and cyclists to share the road with vehicles, but includes a sidewalk on at least one side of every road that accommodates through-traffic. I told them how I was so jealous of the great infrastructure they were lucky to find in the south.

Cary planners, homebuilders, and realtors realize property values in a walkable neighborhood are higher than in those built only for vehicular travel. They've seen how "having shops and gathering spots like schools and restaurants located within a quarter-mile to one-mile from the homes in your neighborhood can add from $4,000 to $34,000 to home values." Disappointingly, the Richmond community is decades behind Cary in realizing the value of this trend.

So this year, I embarked on a mission to help change the way my community values safe places for biking and walking. I threw myself into two community planning efforts - the Bon Air Plan, and the Bikeways and Trails Chapter of the County Comprehensive Plan. I attended over a dozen public meetings, submitted pages of comments and suggestions, and testified repeatedly at meetings of the Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors.

I created 8 different versions
of this theme that were shared
by repeatedly on Facebook.

But early on, I realized my personal work wouldn't be enough to counter the vocal naysayers in my community. I was stunned by the misinformation and false beliefs surrounding these great plans. Lani always chides me for not utilizing my writing and teaching skills more often, so I decided I needed to help spread the truth.

I started a Families for Bon Air page on Facebook to help educate people on the facts and to build a coalition of supporters. I began by inviting my friends in my neighborhood and in the PTA and my neighborhood, but it took off when followers of Bike Walk RVA and the Real Housewives of Bon Air spread our postings.

Leland and I were directly responsible for the inclusion of
a sidewalk that will connect the elementary school with the library.

To help show the value of sidewalks in our community, I coordinated a Bike-Walk to School Day with the local Girls Scouts Troop and Bike Walk RVA. (Check out the awesome pics.)

For every public meeting or event,
I posted a easy-to-share graphic
calling for supporters.

I was only one piece of the effort to rally support for sake walking and biking in Bon Air. It was great to work with so many other advocates and see so many people get engaged in the process.

In the end, we succeeded and both plans were passed!

Part II: Time Out for Lani

In October, the Time Out For Women program came to Richmond and Ashley invited her sistes and mothers to come stay at our house for a spiritual girls weekend.

After Michael blew out his Achilles', it looked like Lani wouldn't be able to leave her kids for the weekend. The youngest two were just too much for a man who could barely walk. So, I volunteered to watch AJ and Hunter at my house. Feeling like a super uncle, I also agreed to watch Mitzi's Tara Mei, who was working on becoming a good babysitter herself.

For 24 hours, I was a single father of seven children ages ten and below. It was a lot of fun, but it took a lot of energy.
We began on Friday afternoon by working in the yard. The boys loved getting dirty. When they got tired, they went inside with the girls to clean up and play.

I put three frozen pizzas in the oven and went outside to clean up our tools. A while later, Lucy yelled at me to come inside to help AJ go to the bathroom. When I got to the bathroom, I discovered he hadn't made it to the toilet and pee was all over the floor.

At that exact moment, Charly started yelling that something was burning in the kitchen. I told AJ not to move and ran up to find a pizza that was tool close to the bottom burner.

It took some time, but I cleaned up both messes and fed everyone plenty. I even got AJ to help Eddie with his dish job.

I was too tired to read stories to all seven of them, so I used the Kindle to help with the cheek boys.

The next morning, I wanted to get out of the house, so we filled up the van and headed to a bike safety fair at the school. Then, we went to get ice cream at Chick-fil-A. It took a lot of effort, but we had a great day together. It was a very fun way to serve Lani by being a fun uncle.

We all love Lani!