How to get there from here

I found the location where the school Erin is probably going to next year is being built. It's in your standard far-east neighborhood. It's funny. This charter school district seems to like putting their schools in neighborhoods, which is cool, but they always pick neighborhoods in areas of town that are just kind of, well... what's the word I'm looking for? Boring as hell? Cookie cutter suburbia? Yes, that's about right.

I just think it's so crazy that the only places there are opportunities that are anywhere near decent for kids are on the far east and the west. What's REALLY funny about that is that the neighborhoods on those sides of town are rather hip now, but they're mostly cheap, and are going to be falling apart in five years. Then what? Hell, the ones a lot of my friends live in already look like crap, and they're, yeah, about 5-10 years old for the most part. It's like packed in tiny houses with the worst layout ever, which look exactly like every other house on the block. We looked at houses on the far east because everyone raved about living there, but they were so boring, and the layouts were horrid. We had the financial freedom to let our choices be governed by what would work best for us, not just what we could afford, so we chose to live in the Vista Hills district instead.

Honestly, if I have to live in this city, there is nowhere else I'd rather live. We're far enough from the major highways that we don't have the noise or the thru traffic driving down our street, yet we're near enough to them that anywhere else in the city is convenient to us. Our neighborhood has more flavor than any of the up and coming areas do. It's not boring. It's also got the highest Asian population in the city, and we have the best sushi and the best Chinese take-out in the city, as well as an Asian market, within 5 blocks of our front door. Aside from the fact that 90% of our neighbors are 10 million years old (not that that in and of itself is a problem, but it would be nice to know other young families who live nearby) and the schools we're zoned for are abysmal, this neighborhood is hard to beat.

Even though this place is about as good as it gets for this city, nobody seems to put any good schools anywhere near here. There are a lot of private and charter schools in this city. Most of the private schools are in the historic district. The charter schools all seem to spring up in neighborhoods full of cookie-cutter houses that are going to look like crap in five years. I totally wonder why that is. There is so much space in our part of the city. There are lots that are not used, buildings that can be repurposed, and all kinds of other spaces that could become schools, but they don't want anything to do with us. It's weird.

My new task is to figure out what route I can use to take Erin to school each morning, and run into as few school zones as possible, and avoid as much traffic as I can. It's looking like I'm going to have to take Montwood, which could allow me to avoid all school zones (if high schools start at 9 am again next year) since the only two schools I'd have to pass are high schools, but I HATE Montwood for traffic, and people drive like idiots there. If you commute on Montwood, it's not IF some inattentive soldier on a cell phone or some idiot with Mexico license plates runs into you, it's WHEN. The option to avoid that is to take Montana to Joe Battle, which is ridiculous because I'd have to cross two Elementary schools' school zones, or zig-zag through this one neighborhood that's a total incomprehensible maze of streets, and kind of ghetto, to get around ONE of the school zones. The other is unavoidable. We could also take the interstate, then hit the loop, but then it would require us to drive on the loop during commuter traffic, and the loop is the main road from the border. That's a little too much Mexico on the roads for my taste.

I think school might still be in session. I may drag my ass out of bed early tomorrow, and see how bad each of the routes seem, and go from there.