Walking in an easement wonderland

The phrase "ask and ye shall receive" comes to mind at this moment.  Either that, or the old adage "when the student is ready, the teacher will appear".

Following on the heels of this recent post about Centerpointe's outdoor walkability potential and the health benefits thereof, I resolved to summarize some of those opportunities in a separate post (namely this one). 

But immediately a question arose: are people really "supposed" to be walking in the Interurban easement?  Because that's where I've observed most of our local serious walkers (especially dog walkers) to be going. 

The Interurban easement:
Footpath to freedom in an area of otherwise jumbled up, incohesive development scheme (or lack thereof).

Somebody owns that land.  Who?  And then of course, numerous additional entities have been granted easements over that land.  Strictly speaking, is it even legal for residents to walk there?  It's neither fenced nor posted, but in our litigation-gridlocked culture, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. 

And of course, the Interurban easement is by no means the only easement where people in greater Houston frequently walk.  With a resounding and pervasive lack of urban and suburban planning, there's often no way to get from Point A to Point B on foot except by traversing someone's easement, regardless of which section of town you live in.

Lo and behold, as if on command (or request), yesterday Houston Chronicle conveniently served up at least a portion of the answer with this feature article, which discusses some of the issues surrounding the public's use of easements.

Screengrab from Houston Chronicle.
It's worth reading if you're interested in this kind of stuff.

The article describes how "no-e CenterPoint" would allow free use of their utility easements in exchange for protection from liability claims by the people using those easements, but how this measure has yet to attain a legal standing. 

Personally, I see it as a potential win-win situation:  CenterPoint might be acting especially proactive in this regard in part because they perceive how widely pedestrians and cyclists are using their easements anyway.  Given that this use will likely occur either way, they'd benefit from a clearer liability framework.  And residents would benefit from formalization of this use.

That being said, part of this issue is obviously still in limbo and seems likely to remain that way for some time to come.  So what I'm going to present below is not a recommendation of any kind.  It's just a series of observations about where and how I've seen local residents walking, especially those who are serious about walking their dogs on a daily basis.  I've traced out the pathways of these common routes, screengrabbed the traces, and estimated the mileage associated with each one using a common internet utility.  Again, these are not recommendations for you.  Just some summaries of what I've seen.  All rough measurements are taken from the intersection of Willow Pointe and Centerpointe Drive.

If you just need a quick jaunt and wish to avoid the easement, going up the sidewalk to the LCPD station and back is about one mile in length. 

Sometimes I see joggers in particular tracing that nice segment of sidewalk up and back, which is a distance of about two miles.

Unfortunately, this sidewalk doesn't connect to anything else at either end.  This is part of what I mean about lack of cohesive suburban planning.  Unfortunately, this sidewalk is like a Bridge to Nowhere. 

Remaining strictly within Centerpointe, this is about a 2-mile circuit, and I sometimes jog this route.

The PROBLEM with this kind of route, however, is that WE HAVE SO MANY RESIDENTS WHO ILLEGALLY PARK THEIR CARS ACROSS THE SIDEWALKS that it's not a pleasant journey - it's more like an obstacle course, especially on perenially-congested Walnut Pointe.  I suspect that this kind of reality is part of what drives people to walk in easements, the sentiment being "Geez, just give us a tiny bit of open space where we don't have to be dodging yet another infernal automobile literally every fifty feet." 

From Centerpointe to the United States Post Office, League City station, about a 1.5-mile circuit as shown.  If a person doesn't walk through that section of the easement to get there, it becomes necessary to go all the way up to Highway 3 and then back down FM 518 to Interurban.  But congested FM 518 is not really walkable, and neither is Interurban Street, so that's not really a viable option, not to mention the extra distance that would needlessly be involved. 

Either that, or go via West Galveston Street by way of Hwy 3, but West Galveston is a horrible unimproved street with no sidewalks and so you have to share what little degraded pavement there is with speeding cars - not safe, especially if you have kids or pets with you.

There's also a dirt barrier at the end of West Galveston, FYI.  People have made an obvious footpath around it.

Centerpointe into Pecan Forest.  This is about a 2-mile loop as shown.  As I mentioned in my post of two days ago, Pecan Forest is an interesting walk because it's an older neighborhood with magnificent trees (full of squirrels, which our dog loves to watch).

For people who live on the north and east sides of Centerpointe, it would be very difficult to get into this neighborhood without going through the Interurban easement.  The only other route is the "long way around" via Calder, which would add about another two miles to the walking circuit.  In other words, you'd have to walk over a mile before you could even get into Pecan Forest to start with.  Many walkers would find that to be too much for them.

I see people doing this 2.5-mile route, but I don't understand why they would want to.  There are neither sidewalks nor crosswalks on this segment of SH 96 (except at the Walker Street intersection), and cars whip by at up to 70 mph in close proximity to pedestrians. 

This is what I see dog-walkers in particular doing more commonly - going down the easement to SH 96 but then doubling back, in order to avoid the road which is arguably dangerous to pedestrians.  This too is about a 2.5-mile loop.

Future posts will address these options further, if I'm able to find out more relevant information about our local walkability issues.

Current ozone pollution

Here's a one-off blogpost just because it occurs to me to mention it.

We're having a bit of an ozone air pollution issue in the League City area late this afternoon.  This is potentially relevant to folks who are physically sensitive to this kind of thing. 

Screengrab from http://www.tceq.texas.gov/cgi-bin/compliance/monops/select_curlev.pl?region12_cur.gif

If that link above doesn't function properly, go to the TCEQ's Air Quality page and drill down through the menu by clicking on the Texas graphic (it might not be obvious where to click until you hover over the map). 

Here's a screengrab of the key to interpreting the colors:

Screengrab courtesy of TCEQ

If you're sensitive (e.g., asthma) to air pollution, you have the option to sign up for email alerts telling you when our local air quality is impacted.  Go to this site and follow the instructions for that.

Example of a physical warning sign in the greater Houston area.
Screengrab from Wikipedia. 

Bats, birds, and bellies

I had two health-related epiphanies inside of two weeks.

The first derived from a trip my daughter and I took outside of America.  We went to a location where people still tend to get around by (gasp!) foot.  A proverbial pedestrian environment.  After twelve days of largely walking, I was darned near dead.  My knees were swollen and I had to spend some time each day with my legs elevated. 

And here's the unsettling thing:  this happened despite the fact that I'm physically fit.  I'm not the slightest bit overweight.  I go to the gym several times a week.  I have visible muscles.  I do elliptical training, I swim, and I do yoga.  And (as my neighbors will confirm) I do plenty of heavy yardwork. 

But I don't walk very much as a lifestyle component, and so I'm no longer used to it.  (I do walk our dog, but usually not miles at a stretch.) 

The second epiphany came an eighteen-hour window of time late last week, a period in which I'd encountered two different associates, each of whom had recently lost forty pounds.  One of them was one of my daughter's extracurricular teachers, and upon seeing him, I almost said, "Who the hell are you?!" because he appeared so transformed (for the much, much better). 

How did they lose forty pounds apiece, and without really stressing themselves in the process?  By lifting their forks to their mouths less frequently (and with healthier stuff on those forks when they did lift them), and by exercising, including walking.  One guy is a fan of the Clean Living Diet, which I hadn't heard of previously, but it basically appears to be a fancy way of saying "healthy eating".  I also have a girlfriend who reports that she's in the process of losing weight.  She's a fan of the 10,000 Steps program.

So following these epiphanies, I resolved to do more walking. 

The area surrounding Centerpointe is well-suited for walking.  Not only is it accessible with a fair number of sidewalks, it's also highly entertaining, as I found out last night.  Check this out:


OK, so it's my worst cell phone close-up pic yet (you can cut me some slack because it was almost dark when I took it).  But can you guess what it is??  Hint: it's a bird, and there are little pointy bits on top of his head, which you can just make out in this pic despite the grainy-ness.   

It was one of these:


A Great Horned Owl.
Photo from Wikipedia.

He was sitting in one of the towers in the electrical lines (aka the Interurban easement) on the other side of our retention ponds.


It was really quite dark by this time, but I lightened up this photo so that his silhouette would be more visible.

Last night for the first time, I walked south along that easment.  I can't believe I've lived here for two years and never got around to doing that before.  I routinely walk north to the Post Office and to divert into the nearby Pecan Forest subdivision, which has massive trees full of squirrels that our dog loves to watch.  But until last night, I'd never walked south. 

I noticed something else on this walk last night, too.


Bats.  Lots and lots of bats, all feasting on the insects that congregate at the retention ponds.
Yes, another crummy pic, but I tried my best to get some digital evidence just for you, my loyal readers (all three of you).  That nondescript blur with the circle around it is a bat on the wing.

This is a delightful development because of the potential it has to moderate our mosquito population.  I wonder where they are congregating?  I got used to seeing bats when I lived in Austin...


Bats boiling out from under the Congress Street bridge in Austin.
Screengrab courtesy of videocityguide. 

...and I also enjoyed seeing them en masse around Memorial Park.  There's a thriving and closely-monitored colony under the Waugh bridge.  (See also this link).


This is really, really cool!!
You can read the whole story here.
Screengrab courtesy of KTRK.

Immediately I wondered - where are these Centerpointe bats coming from?  Do they have a local roost, or are they part of the Waugh colony?  Obviously if they can make it from Waugh to IAH, they could make it to League City if they wanted to!

Anyway, I'll post more about walking options and associated adventures later.  This is enough for one rambling blog post. 

Peculiar preemption

In the "random local weirdness" category, there's this blurry cell phone picture of a construction sign erected this morning on the west side of League City on SB Bay Area Blvd. at FM 518.  This one had my husband and I so curious that I just had to research it, and if I go to the trouble of researching it, might as well blog. 

Sorry about the poor pic quality, but it reads "No Railroad Preemption".  Ever wonder what the heck that phrase actually means??  Apparently a lot of people have wondered - because look at the autofill suggestions on Google:

I only got first four letters of "railroad" typed before it knew exactly what I wanted. 

A railroad preemption occurs when people driving trains are able to over-ride a road intersection's traffic light signal pattern in order to freeze the progression of vehicles as they are passing through.  The train itself preempts the normal flow of traffic, in other words.   This is something they do ostensibly to increase safety. 

Here's the weird part, though:  there's no railroad within three miles of that particular intersection.

Huh?!?
(Screengrab from Googlemaps)

This is my best guess as to why the warning sign was posted there: Because the construction crew couldn't put their hands on the correct sign, so they used the closest available approximation. 

There's a fire station near the intersection, and fire trucks are another type of vehicle that sometimes has the ability to preempt the normal flow of traffic so that they can get through the area quickly.  It should have read something like "No Emergency Vehicle Preemption" but maybe their supplier was out of those signs.

That's my best guess, anyway.  But I could be wrong, so if anyone happens to see a train flying down west FM 518, please drop me a line because I'd love to hear about it. 

West Nile virus in League City

A rumor reached me yesterday and the rumor said that West Nile virus was recently detected in League City. 

Mosquito close-up photo.
Nasty, nasty, nasty.
From Wikipedia (here).

However, I haven't been able to substantiate this rumor.  Of course, West Nile has been detected in League City in the past, because it has been detected just about everywhere by this time.   

Distribution of West Nile in North America,
from Wikipedia (this page).

But the news reports I'm finding are all old (e.g., this one from GCDN in 2004).  If anyone knows of any such source of alleged recent information, please contact me via centerpointe dot blog at gmail.

One thing we can do is take a look at what is known about West Nile prevalence at the present time.  Oddly enough, much of the current monitoring is communicated through the United States Geological Survey.  Mosquitoes are not really a subject of geology, but USGS does produce maps, afterall. 

Screengrab from this page.
Most of the current human infections are occurring in the DFW area.
This source was showing NO confirmed West Nile cases this year in Galveston County, at least not as of two days ago.

Galveston County Mosquito Control corroborates the information above, having posted this statement to their homepage:

We have had no West Nile Virus positives in our mosquito pools or sentinel flocks within the county. We do test for arboviruses weekly. We understand that Harris County has seen some positives and there are some concerns by our citizens.

By "mosquito pools" and "sentinel flocks", they mean the non-human testing that they monitor for distant early warnings of the re-arrival of the virus.  "Sentinel flocks" is often a fancy way of saying "chickens". 

USGS reports no West Nile cases in any sentinels anywhere in the state, as of two days ago.  But Mosquito Control is saying that now cases are emerging to the north of us.  Perhaps the rumor I heard pertained to those emerging cases for Harris County. 

HERE'S ANOTHER THING WE CAN DO: ENCOURAGE MOSQUITO CONTROL TO SPRAY CENTERPOINTE, BECAUSE OUR NEIGHBORHOOD WAS SKIPPED DURING THE JULY 23 EAST LEAGUE CITY SPRAY-A-THON. 

I don't know why this omission occurred, but I did email Mosquito Control asking about it, and they confirmed via a response email that we were not among those areas of League City that were covered the other day.  That evening, my husband and I heard their truck go down either Walker Street or Centerpointe Drive, but it never went through the neighborhood.  We are outdoorsy people and usually pay strict attention to where the truck is (you can hear the sound of its pesticide diffuser quite some distance away and can usually follow the truck's path with your ears).   We have never heard it skip Centerpointe before this most recent time.

Please keep their telephone ringing, and thanks for your help.

Thy neighbor's camera

Interesting snippet from Click2Houston / KPRC today about a guy stealing expensive potted plants from a residence.


Screengrab from KPRC's story here. 

This scene was immediately reminiscent of the blog post I did about a month ago called "Pickers", where I parsed some camera stills of a man and woman not stealing per se, but loading items from our trash into their pick-up truck.

This is a screengrab from that post.

I guess these kinds of petty thieves don't read the papers much.  Sales of these security cameras are just exploding right now, but few thieves seem to realize it.  Pretty soon, everywhere we go, all of us will be photographed from five different angles.

Anyway, this is one more good reason to get to know your neighbors.  You should get to know your Centerpointe neighbors because it's the neighborly thing to do, and because they are most likely very nice people who are worth knowing.  But you should also get to know your neighbors because you never can tell ahead of time who is running their own hidden security camera systems, and one day that knowledge might come in handy, as it did for the Midtown folks described in the news piece above. 

Carbon monoxide and carpet cleaning

A brief note here to remind you all to ensure that there are working carbon monoxide detectors within your houses.  Go and test them now if you have them.

One of ours.

The reason this comes to mind at this very moment is as follows:  One of my neighbors has a carpet cleaning service at their home.  I'm sitting here listening to that godawful deafening drone of noise that all those service truck engines make.

The key phrase there is service truck engine.  As I understand it, the carpet cleaning machines often operate via a power take-off (PTO) from the truck engines.  The trucks have to remain running in order for the carpet cleaning machines to operate.  And the truck engines produce carbon monoxide (CO) in their exhaust as they are running. 

• As I was getting my previous house polished for sale prior to moving into Centerpointe, I had my carpets cleaned. 
• The cleaning company parked their truck in my driveway, as such services usually do. 
• The service personnel left my garage door open as they worked. 
• My attached garage faced south. 
• The prevailing winds in Houston usually blow from the south. 
• The wind blew the truck exhaust into my garage, where it accumulated.
• The carbon monoxide in the truck exhaust seeped upward into the two children's bedrooms that were directly above my garage. 
• My carbon monoxide alarms (including the one pictured above) went off in those children's bedrooms, indicating that it was not safe to be in there because of elevated carbon monoxide.  CO levels got surprisingly high within a very short period of time. 

I had to stop the servicemen from working and get them to move their truck farther away from my house, and then I had to get everybody out of the house and then air out my entire house until the detectors showed that the CO was gone.

Watch out for this type of situation developing - I didn't know this type of thing could happen simply from a vehicle parked in the driveway (most of us know not to run our vehicles in our attached garages, but simply by it being outside?) and someone could get hurt by it.  NO amount of inhaled carbon monoxide is good for your health.