Travel with Strangers - a new public transit litmag

Hey everybody, I'm trying to get off the ground a little multidisciplinary venture known as

 TRAVEL WITH STRANGERS, 

the only web litmag dedicated to providing glimpses of public transit (if you can prove me wrong, please do).

We just released our first issue, so please check out the site. We've got some talented folks writing, and we're hoping to grow.

Someone really transity once told me that the problem with metro Detroiters and transit is that we can't picture what real, quality transit looks like. We use transit when we go on vacations to Chicago. We don't have the frame of reference for daily, efficient commuter travel. And so what we can't imagine, we can't reach.

Travel with Strangers exists in part to address this issue. To bring transit to the forefront of our narratives. To show that in some places and for some people, it's a thing. And to present the awkwardness/beauty that comes from traveling with strangers instead of with yourself in a bubble.

Please do give it a read! And if you're a transit and/or writer type person, check out the submissions page.

Happy travels!

The reordering rules of snow

Winner: best use of vegetables and protective headgear

I'm not very accustomed to driving in the snow, because all my winters for the past seven years I've spent in Ann Arbor, blissfully avoiding contact with the automobile type and shuffling frozenly from one point to the next. This year, though, I own a car, and over Christmas break I had the need to use it. The lack of traction unnerves me, the same pit of stomach slipperiness that comes with ice skating. I make a turn onto the main road, the monster I supposedly control does not respond to me, its back and then its front swerve into snowy ruts on the curb. I am a person who likes having control over things, and this gas-fueled beast knows it can now get the best of me.