Everything Falls Apart

Two things :)

1. If anyone wants to keep in touch, you can add me to your myspace: www.myspace.com/fallingintosin

2. I decided the other day that just because WWO is "offically" over, it doesn't HAVE to be OVER.  I'm going to keep my journal going. I'm going to keep documenting ways I'm saving oil and other interesting oil related information/items I come across.  I feel that the more I keep reminding myself what a big part oil plays in my life, the more apt I am to keep continue learning how to conserve!  I'm wondering if anyone else has thought about keeping their journals going??

Mr. Smith (the railroad executive) sent me an email with a link to a great site that shows how moving freight by trains is becoming more and more enviromentally friendly: http://www.freightrailworks.org/

Also, it has an option for you to join two different  groups, so that we can continue to make a difference: GoRail and Go2.

GoRail is a national grassroots organization dedicated to keeping people informed about the policies affecting the freight rail industry.

Go21 is a national non-profit organization reaching out to business and community leaders to find solutions to our nation's increasing freight transportation needs.

AND... I was wondering...did anyone ever pick up the DROP I left in Louisville? If you did, I've to hear what you did with the items I left inside and what you left in return.  It would be a neat thing to keep going even after these 32 weeks come to a close.  What about the other drops? I'm still curious to know what was in them...

Finally, the WWO IRC Chat room is STILL UP  and running.  It's a great place to come and share what you've learned.  Perhaps we could even set-up a time for everyone, including some members of the 10 to Save Our Country to join together for a farewell chat?  Maybe sometime this weekend would work? What do you guys think?

Even though gas prices and availability  have stabilized, things are still not back to "normal".  Another gas station by my house closed down this week, that means more people out of jobs.  I find myself taking snapshots of these images because it is so easy for me to forget what really happened these past 32 weeks. I need visual shock therapy to remind me why I bring my own cloth bags to the grocery store and why I no longer buy bottled water and why I got up at 5am this morning to drag the recycling box to the curb.  I'm so easily caught up in materialistic America and I that is not a trip I want to get stuck back on anytime soon.  I encourage you to keep these blogs, photos, videos, voicemails close to your heart and fresh in your mind. May we never forget.

This has been one of the most amazing experiences in my life.  I want to write a proper goodbye, but it's going to have to wait until I gather my thoughts together.  I can't believe it's been 32 weeks and that it's the last day. I've made so many wonderful friendships, learned so many things.  It's my hope that this site still stays up because there are so many blogs, videos, emails, voicemails that I never got the chance to listen to.

When this started, I was excited, but I kept waiting for the puzzles, the anagrams, the hex codes, you know all the standard "Arg" components...yet as days, weeks passed I realized this ARG was so much more than a puzzle ever could be.  I had high hopes for this event, but I never dreamed it would be come the amazing tool for change that it is.   Time passed so quickly and I find myself wishing it was longer so that I could learn more and more about people and the changes they are making in their lives. 

I hope that this game met every expectation that the 10 to Save our Country had for it. You should be proud at what you have accomplished. I can't imagine what a high you guys must be on knowing that you created a the first ARG think tank that has had  a significant impact on the changing the world.  I think this game has ushered in a new wave of building community and educating the masses in a digital world. The founders of this ARG made history and we, the players thank you for it.

I guess this has turned into more of a proper goodbye then I thought.  I have to say though, that I didn't expect to be so emotional and have so much sadness in my heart that this ARG is coming to a close.  Like Gala_Teah, I too have tears in my eyes as I write this post. 

Thank you to everyone, players and creators,  for helping change my life and change the world. I and the planet will be forever grateful.  

I end this post with HOPE.  Because, that is what I'm filled with in this moment. I have HOPE for our future and a what powerful feeling that is.

This is the last challenge. Thank you to everyone who's participated, I've learned so much from each and everyone of you.  I'm honored to call you friends.   

Well, it only took 32 weeks but I finally started a garden! I finally learned what it feels like to have dirty fall through my fingers and have calluses from digging.  Here's some photos of some of the items I planted!

I had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Smith again about the future of the railroads in a World Without Oil. It's split into two parts again due to time restraints :).

I had the opportunity to talk to Mr. Smith again about the future of the railroads in a World Without Oil. It's split into two parts again due to time restraints :).

I spent much of my day in tears.

My parents have been hit so hard by this oil crisis.  They are both in their 70's and have serious health problems.  My mom is suffering from systamatic Lupus that has ate away the lining of heart and while she was on a heart transplant waiting list for a while, she decided to take herself off because she couldn't bear the idea of taking a heart that could go to someone who still had a long life again.  My dad has Mystenia Gravis, a very rare disease that wears away the muscles. 

God, I'm crying again.

Anyway. My parents live in a semi-rural, semi-suburb area about 45 minutes outside of Chicago.  They live on a street in the middle of a corn field with about 10 other houses.  It's about 5 mile trip to nearest store, and that's just a small town grocery store.  They're about a good 15 miles from the nearest pharmacy. 

Maybe you see where I'm going with this? 

They live on S.S. and up until my mom's last stroke a few months ago, she still worked at the local pizza parlor in town as a hostess.  That same pizza place was another one of the small town business that bit the dust during these tough times.

Sigh. So to make a long story, semi-short. My parents are poor, have to travel long distances for medication and doctors. Without oil, without gas, they die.  There's no other way to put it. No sugar coating here.  In fact, I'm crying so hard, I can hardly see what I'm typing on this screen.

The only plus, is that they do have about 1 1/2 acres of land and some wonderful neighbors.  In the years past my mom would fill almost every free space of back yard with some kind of fruit or vegetable or flower.  This year, she can hardly kneel and loses her breath every few steps. But. She still planted, not nearly as much, a few tomato plants, some rhubarb, some pumpkins, some sun flower seeds, some hot peppers, some carrots.  Everything that she planted in the ground took every bit of energy she had. 

In my eyes, she is the true Netizen Hero. 

My dad, he used to fix cars, he could fix anything. He'd be the one everyone in the neighborhood came to when they had a car problem. When my dad saw a nice car at a good price, he'd buy it up and sell it at cost to someone who needed it. 

With the gas shortage, he can no longer buy cars, he can't afford to and no one is buying cars anyway.  His hands shake and his eyes are weak but he still goes out everyday and spends hours tweaking neighbors cars so they can eek out just a little more gas mileage.  He has an air-compressor and he makes sure everyone's tires are always full so they get better gas mileage.  

He is also a true Netizen Hero.

It's getting to the point where they can no longer afford gas in their car to drive to doctors and get their medications.  If they got sick, would the reduced 911 coverage even make it to them in time?  I've been hoarding gas for them. Whenever I see a gas station with gas, I take the little extra money that I have and I fill my gas cans for them.  Me, my butt can walk, it needs to get a bit flatter anyway.  They've given me everything, I am who I am today because of the love and kindness they have constantly shown me.  The least I can do is promise myself that I would give up everything in order for them to live out their last years.  

I'm going to call my mom tomorrow so you all can meet her.  If I can find some gas, I might even go and visit her. She's beautiful and I love her.  She doesn't deserve this.  If I had only known, if I'd only had some clue of what I could of done years ago to help America become less dependent on gas, if only I had educated myself, if only I realized that my selfish American lifestyle would eventually one day kill my parents.

I can't type any more. I'm going to be sick.

I saw this sign up on Rt41/Indianapolis Blvd today.  It was heartening to see that even local business's are doing what they can to help save and conserve.  I wonder how may cutbacks and layoffs affected this Oil Express since the oil shortage hit.  I'm going to see if perhaps I can talk to some of my area business's, so that I can be more aware of exactly how the local economy has been affected.  Hell, maybe I'll even end up building some more community connections!

Thank you everyone for the condolesnces.  It was a long, tough weekend, in fact, I feel like I'm still recovering and sorting through things. I'd hoped to be back playing by Tuesday or Wednesday, but I just didn't have it in me.  But, I'm feeling a bit better the past few days and I have some ideas for some videos/photos/posts.  PLUS, I have about a million blogs to catch up on :) :) :)

I'm already getting sad that this is ending in just a few days. This has been one of the neatest ARG's I've played and it really has changed my life. I feel so empowered and educated.  I thank all of you for that <3.

Okay time to go "in game"! 

*Hugs*

My sister-in-law died this morning. She'd been in the hospital for diabetes and they couldn't figure out what was wrong. They dx her yesterday with Ovarian cancer and today she passed away. She'd been complaining about back pain, but they just thought it was due to her being overweight. This is the second wife my brother has lost, he lost his first wife to early onset althztimers. My brother is also in the National Guard and has done two tours of Iraq with a third one looming.  My mother and I are driving to North Carolina (where they lived) tomorrow night, the wake is Sunday and the funeral is Monday. We'll be back late Monday night or early Tuesday.

I'm just kind of numb right now. 

I won't be on much the next several days, I may try to post one or two things IG before I leave, but I'm just not sure. I guess it depends on when it all hits me and if posting helps me take my mind off things. Maybe I'll call in with an audio post on the road or try and take some footage, but I just don't know.

Things are not great here, but they aren't horrible either.

 The other day we had our first  major power outage, IllianaSpeedster was out of power for about 3 days, I was a bit luckier and was only out for about a day. I was able to salvage most of my food and only had to throw a few things out. But, after the power outage, I've learned my lesson and I'm buying as little as possible of perishable food.  Several of our grocery stores have closed down and the ones that are still open have about 1/4 of the items they used to have, no more Sushi or Mangoes or other "exotic" foods.  I'm not too worried about food, my vegetables and fruits from the CSA I joined have been coming in and they've been delicious.  I also have a friend who lives on a large dairy farm a county over and they've offered to allow me to buy "1/2" a cow if the markets run out of meat.  

All of our commuter trains run on electric, so when the power was out, no trains could run. That was bad, I had to sit on a hot powerless train for hours until they were able to divert some of the busses to shuttle us to our respective stations.  We now are having scheduled brownouts/blackouts where the power is shut-off for 2-4 hours a time, I guess it's better then just having random outages and I know that some places like California have had to deal with these kind of outages for years, but for us Chicagoans, this is all new.

The only time I drive Roxy is when I'm the designated carpool person for work, we carpool to the train station and take the train in.  The only gas available is Premium and you still have to wait in line for an hour or more to get gas.  I've been walking to the stores (about 1-3 miles depending where I'm going) and doing more activities outside. 

This week I'm going to pass out a flyer in my neighborhood about a community block party where we can get together and talk about ways we can support each other, like gardening and carpooling and so forth. I'm nervous, I don't know ANY of my neighbors, I've noticed a lot of them trying to live life like normal, I guess something about being a yuppy makes you think that nothing bad can ever happen to you.

I'm also worried about my parents, I need to call my mom today and see how they are doing, but I'll save that for another post.

Last night carpooling home from work was surreal. We were heading back on 80/94 (the highway with the highest amount of traffic in 24 hours in the United States) and what usually resembles a parking lot is now full of wide open spaces.  The only people on the road are those who are carpooling or have enough money to afford gas.

Things are stressful here though not as uncomfortable or chaotic as other places in the United States.  I find just living daily life a challenge lately and I'm sure most of you feel the same way. 

Tom, my most faithful Changing Lanes participant submitted things he's changed in the past two weeks (your the best Tom!) He said: "My latest change is that I replaced my old refrigerator with a new energy-efficient model. It will be delivered tomorrow...You can also make sure your computer is set to go into "sleep mode" fairly quickly when not in use."

There have also been TONS of great ideas in the IRC chat, but I really don't have the time to go through the logs right now...so perhaps another day :) 

What have I done the past couple of weeks? I've changed to rechargeable batteries! I've also been looking at alternative ways to charge batteries, via solar cells and hand cranking, but I haven't found a good method so far that is also cost effective. 



That's all I have for now, I hope to hear from all of you soon.  You can send me your ideas with via LJ, email (fallingintosin@gmail) or in the IRC chat.  <3

They closed the subway yesterday (the "L" red line).

I was running some errands and went to hop on the train to my destination and it was blocked off with a huge red gate. There were some police officers standing around and they said that the entire underground red line had been shut down, something about how the track needed repair but the CTA didn't have the money to repair it, especially with the fuel shortage.  Our CTA has been running unfunded for some time now, always in the negative, even when the economy was good, but now that things have been getting increasingly worse, there is just no money. That means all the employee's who help the Red Line run everyday are out of work. 




I ended up taking the bus, which is still running (for now). It was so hard for the bus to get around the city, always having to veer around abandoned cars.  Even right in front of the bus stop there were a bunch of parked cars, making it impossible for the bus to stop were it's supposed to.


It was interesting to see the different kinds of people riding the bus now, it's no longer just yuppies like myself, but there was even a farmer on my bus! He was taking public transportation to meet the rest of his family working the downtown Farmer's Market.  He even wore his John Deere Green hat :) it was adorable.

The worst thing I saw yesterday made me so angry that I almost could of got myself arrested. I was walking to the bus stop when I heard someone LAYING on the horn followed by a string of horrible obscenities. I looked over to the road and saw a guy on his bike (he even had his little basket on the back) pedaling as fast as he could (he was in pretty good shape, so he was going at a good clip), BUT behind him was some rich "I have money and gas to burn" couple STILL driving their Lincoln SUV. They were honking and screaming at the guy to get off the street because he wasn't going fast enough for them.  It was HORRIBLE. They just kept screaming and screaming, acting like they were going to hit  him, trying to swerve around him (with all the State Street traffic coming the other way). Finally, they ended up swerving around him only to get stopped at a stop light...and what do they do?? They pull up right next to the guy and continue to scream and scream. At this point, I take off running towards the stoplight. I had SEEN ENOUGH and was ready to give those a**holes a piece of my mind.  Lucky for them the light turned green before I got to the corner. I was so proud of the biker for keeping his cool, he just kept on biking down the road.  It was just so frustrating to see. With the gas shortage, more and more people are biking but yet you still see these rich folks thinking they own the road. I hope they run out of gas somewhere and end up having to leave their $50,000 SUV on the side of the road.

The last two weeks have been so crazy, with my travels to Louisville and back, the blackouts, the shortage, the hurricane, just everything that I've been more in survival mode then posting mode. But, even in these dark times, we need some fresh ideas and encouragement, so I'm back.  Things are getting worse by the week, but together, we can work together to make it through and adapt!

The past two weeks I've been taking shorter showers to conserve water and hot water heat. I'll admit, I haven't made the switch to cold showers yet, but I have turned down my hot water heat.  I've been taking an egg timer into the bathroom and setting it for 10 minutes. I've made it kind of into a game to see how fast I can get in and out of the shower.  Also, I turn the water off while I'm sudsing up my hair or shaving my legs, no need to have all that water run for no reason.

Alright, I'm home, safe, finally. It took me TONS LONGER to get home then I ever expected, but that's a story that is going to have to wait until I get some sleep. At least, I'm here, safe and sound...well, as safe and sound as any of us in Chicago can be.

I left our wonderful Louisville Netizen's some tools to help them through! The exact location of the drop can be found here: http://dropspots.org/spot/1696 

I took some photos of the drop and the bushes I placed it in, but it's laaaate and I'm way to tired to load them at this moment, so I'll try and add them to the DropSpot gallery in the morning.  

This Drop is on Preston road, right under I-64 and across the street from the "Green" parking lot. There is a patch of wild bushes/trees, concrete, another patch (where the drop is located), concrete and then a final patch. You shouldn't have to actually step into the patch, I placed it about 2-3 feet in and covered it up with some leaves/branches. It's a plastic "gallon size" ziplock bag.

Happy Finding! If you take what's in it, please leave something for the next Netizen :)  Also, it would be AWESOME if you could take video or photos of you finding the drop! I'd love to see you guys finding it!

Alright, I need some sleep! Night!