{"id":2150,"date":"2007-11-19T16:11:31","date_gmt":"2007-11-20T00:11:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2007\/11\/19\/crossing-the-rubicon\/"},"modified":"2026-01-31T21:08:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-01T05:08:11","slug":"crossing-the-rubicon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/2007\/11\/19\/crossing-the-rubicon\/","title":{"rendered":"Crossing The Rubicon"},"content":{"rendered":"

I faced a fear today.<\/p>\n

About half a mile from my home is a large urban park with fountains, trees, green spaces, populated by geese and ducks, pigeons and seagulls. It’s close to a first-class public library. It’s a walkable distance to get there and would make a great daily walk destination. Except… to get there requires crossing a not-quite highway called an expressway. These are six-lanes (both ways) with extra lanes at intersections for turning, and with no-stop right-turn merge curves that many people hardly slow down while taking. Oh, there are crosswalks and pedestrian lights. However, the stated speed limit is 45 miles per hour, and I know<\/em> people easily<\/em> drive 20 miles per hour over the speed limit. I’ve crossed the road on my bike, but until today I was terrified to walk with Bean in the stroller (or even by myself). Well, terror<\/em> might be an exaggeration; let’s just say prospect made me very uneasy. I mean, would you feel comfortable crossing this?<\/p>\n

\"san<\/a><\/div>\n

When I started the walk I didn’t plan to go. My feet just took over. Except for the right-turn curves — where I made sure to look thrice and wait for oncoming drivers to slow down, see me, and wave me across — it was easily done. I will never attempt this at dusk, dark, or dawn, but I could see us taking walks there more frequently. I suppose I could load the stroller in the car and drive to the park, and save all the walking for the many paths, but a) it seems like a lot more effort and b) it kind of galls me to drive half a mile to take a walk.<\/em> If you were me, what would you do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I faced a fear today. About half a mile from my home is a large urban park with fountains, trees, green spaces, populated by geese and ducks, pigeons and seagulls. It’s close to a first-class public library. It’s a walkable distance to get there and would make a great daily walk destination. Except… to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,27,29],"tags":[39,163,165,96,164],"class_list":["post-2150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-motherhood","category-recreation","category-regional","tag-california","tag-expressway","tag-fear","tag-traffic","tag-walking"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2150"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13817,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2150\/revisions\/13817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kathrynpetroharper.com\/mindfullife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}