PLAAND

Hello Mr. Estevez,

At the height of the controversy surrounding your son Charlie I told myself that if I ever had the chance I would express to you my tremendous pride and gratitude to you for your sobriety and the grace you display therein. As the son and brother of addicts I hold you as a role model and an inspiration, what little I know of you speaks of a man who never stopped struggling against his demons and who cares deeply for the mental and physical well-being of his family. In those things you embody for me the hardest and most deeply treasured lessons my family members' addictions have taught me.

It seems I have to ask a question here so in keeping with a theme: What led you to get sober?

Thank you for being publicly sober and thank you for being sober for your sons.

On that note, is it unusual for your Captain to have communicated instructions to you and others via phone rather than the radio net?

There's a gross double standard within some sections of the cycling community. While riding myself - on my way home from work ~10PM - I was coming off a red (I had made the full stop and the light had turned back to green for me) a road cyclist wearing no lights jumped the red cross-traffic to me. I saw him only as he entered the streetlight coverage in the intersection itself. I wasn't yet at speed, fortunately, and shouted for his attention while coming to a stop. His reaction was... Unusual. To his credit he heeded my warning shout but his decision was to turn into me anticipating that I would have continued straight-on at speed. When I didn't, he hit me in a hilariously low-speed collision and proceeded to yell at me for stopping. We exchanged words -to my unending regret I didn't kick-in his front wheel - and then we went our separate ways. Both of us were very lucky. There was enough straight, flat road behind him that he easily could have pushed though that intersection at 30+ Kph and he did at least have the judgement to haul on the brakes after he saw me but shift a few variables around and that could have been a very bad night for both of us resulting at least in loss of property if not physical injury.

All that is to say, there is a noticeable section of the cycling community that A) Does not fully appreciate the danger they potentially pose to others. B) Doesn't embrace or hasn't been properly exposed to the philosophy that "We're traffic too."

That said, I do understand the impulse towards speed, as a commuter on trafficked streets I'm forced to stop at all my reds and frequently even at many of the stop-signs along my route. Put a long multi-use path or rural road in front of me and I want to push it, I will jump stop signs where I feel the risk is minimal for example but never in high-traffic (vehicular or pedestrian) areas or areas with obstructed views. Ideally I'd like a solution that allows me to go fast separate from pedestrians but until such a solution presents itself prudence is going to have to be the order of the day.

I'm not super happy with the way the admins have been running the site recently but I've not been upset enough to swing one way or another. A coup by the admins in /r/IAmA or one of the other major subs would be perhaps the only thing that would get me to leave Reddit at the moment and I suspect if the chips were down a lot of other users would feel the same way.

As a member of the cast of Star Trek I imagine that you've had a number of people, from doctors to astronauts any everything in between credit you and Trek as their inspiration in life. I wonder, of all those people if there's one story in particular that sticks in your mind that you'd be willing to share?