Things I Didn't Do Over The Weekend - Ode to Joseph Heller

Of all the things I didn't do this past weekend, there are two that I feel especially compelled to share with you.

I usually plan my trips to visit family in the Des Moines area to coincide with my need for a haircut, since my hometown barber far exceeds any barber I have ever visited in every category (quality, thoroughness at trimming my crazy bristly-spiky hair, price, etc).  But this past weekend was an exception as I just wasn't able to fit everything in and get my ears lowered.

Haircuts had been on my mind ever since I noticed that Vodka Alley had gotten a mullet: 

If you've ridden through the alley at all this summer or fall, you would notice a significant change from the near canopy jungle that it had been.  The picture above clearly shows the transformation to "business up front", and if my camera phone were better quality, you would also see the "party in the back."  Maybe there were a few empty bottles the mowers didn't want to pick up, so they continued to let the vegetation run wild...

Speaking of geography along my commute, the votes are in from the quiz on my Public Art post, and there was so much disinterest in the quiz that it was hard to tally them up.  My neighbor Brendan wins the participation ribbon for actually guessing (via my Facebook feed), but unfortunately he missed the mark.  The correct fill in the blank answer was "C" (There is no ladder to climb).

Back to other things I didn't do...

The wife and I were in downtown Des Moines for the Saturday farmers' market, and didn't find any B-Cycle stations to check out.  Because I didn't see any stations, I wondered if the bikeshare pilot program had ended.  Sure enough, after a quick scan of the website's map, the stations were all in locations where we hadn't looked.  Sadly, this wasn't the first time that I had visited a city without trying out its bikeshare.  My visit to Washington, DC in the fall of 2008 claims that distinction, unless you count cities that don't even have bikeshare programs.  If that's the case, I actually didn't ride the bikeshare in Des Moines well before not riding the bikeshare in DC.

Interested in having a B-Cycle station in your city that you can not ride on the weekend, too?  Go to the website and vote:

B-Cycle

What didn't you do this weekend?

Summary
Week 98
Monday - Car (AM & PM Carpool)
Tuesday - Bicycle
Wednesday - Car
Thurs & Fri - Bicycle

Week 99
Monday - Car (AM & PM Carpool)
Tuesday - Friday - Bicycle

Week 100
Monday-Friday - Car

Mileage
10/22/2010 - 603.1

Publish Post

Public Art

The past two weeks have been a colossal bike commuting FAIL.  I can blame this fail primarily on being on-site at an out of town client in southern Minnesota in an area that wasn't densely populated. Let's just say it's been...agricultural. I'm back in the saddle this week for some in-office work and to take part in fall bike-walk week.  Perhaps the end of my late September slump will coincide with an end the Twins' struggles.

In celebration of my return to bike commuting this week, I'm offering up another quiz related to my normal commuting route which deals with a specific graffito at the I-94 underpass.  Here it is:

As you can tell from the picture, this isn't so much a "graffito" as it is an "area formerly known as a graffito," which has been recently painted over, presumably by some inexperienced city official who has not yet realized the magnitude of his folly.  In addition to the above column, it appears that the entire collection of the "Anarchist Underpass Art" series has been covered in a similar fashion.

In a time of significant budgetary constraints facing the municipality, our elected officials should have had the sense to tout these works of art as their own doing, which our progressive city surely would have embraced whole heartedly.  (I'm thinking a Walker Art Center East satellite location)  Savings would have been reaped in both the public art works and bored teenager graffiti clean-up budgets, but instead we're left with two tone support beams.  Just think of the pension overpayments that we could have funded with these savings!

All of this leads me to the one question multiple-choice fill-in-the blank quiz about the above pic:

Question:
Pick the item that best fills in the blank, which was previously painted on the support beam pictured above (my comments in parentheses):

There is no ___________________________

a) Santa Claus
(some truths are better learned late than never)

b) such thing as a free lunch
(Anarchists love macroeconomics)

c) business like goat business
(singing the praises of an agrarian economy)

d) ladder to climb
(sobering warning to greedy, cycling capitalists like myself)

Bonus Question:
This blog post contains an allusion to a movie quote, if you can spot it you get a bonus point.

Summary
Week 96 (Sept 20-24)
Mon - Friday: Car
Week 97 (Sept 27-Oct 1)
Mon - Friday: Car

A lot of carpooling was mixed in there.

We Have a Winner

The much blogged about yet scarcely played "Pin the Tail on My Commute" game has ended, and we have a winner. I am relieved that I can walk down the street and hand deliver the prize to Brenna. It always feels wrong to pay more in postage than the shipped item is worth.

In any event, Brent supplied the correct answer, and Vodka Alley is located right before the crossing the 5th Street bridge over I-35W (heading into downtown) and is so named due to the high number of empty vodka bottles that "decorate" the landscape. From every indication, the locale appears to be a night time gathering place for young men in the neighborhood.

Final map with answer

Wrench In My Commute

First things first: The deadline to play Pin the Tail on My Commute is this Friday, September 24. At that point, the winner will be crowned, Dennis Green style. There are only two guesses so far, so do the math and you can probably see that you have a good shot at winning.

Now to the wrench...



I picked this up as I waited for the stop light on 5th Street and 11th Avenue, right across from the Dome. This being my first experience with a literal wrench in my commute, I have to say it's a much welcome occurrence as compared to the figurative wrenches I've encountered. Unfortunately figurative wrenches outpace their literal counterparts 2 to 1. (See Exhibit 1 and Exhibit 2) And if you remember, the "figurative" wrench in Exhibit 2 was actually a literal screwdriver.

Week 95 Summary (Sept 13 - 17)
Mon-Wed: Bicycle
Thursday: Car & Bicycle (AM Carpool)
Friday - Bicycle

Mileage Count
9/19/10 - 499.7
"And I will bike 500 miles..."

I Can't Count

Each year Transit for Livable Communities performs a bicycle and pedestrian count at various locations in the metro area to measure the rate of bike/pedestrian commuters. Last year I was able to help out, I got a free "I Count" t-shirt, and was even inspired to write a blog post of almost palindromic proportions.

This year the count is happening this week and next. I'm teaching a training in the office, and my schedule won't let me count this week. Next week my schedule has me at a client site so I can't do it then either. I won't even get counted.

I can't count. Not this year anyway. Maybe next year I can.

Testing the Existence Assertion

Note: The "Pin the Tail on My Commute" game is still on. If you haven't already, go read it and make a guess!

Nobody ended up taking me up on the invitation to confirm that all 65 Nice Ride stations in Minneapolis indeed exist. Nevertheless, Corby and I managed to obtain sufficient audit evidence to gain comfort over the existence assertion of the 65 stations.





We rarely strayed from our course, grabbing our first bikes at Birchwood Cafe and docking for the 65th time at Franklin & 21st Avenue. Other than dismounting for lunch at Punch Pizza in Northeast, picking up some water and Powerade at CVS on Hennepin Ave, and a brief call with a customer service rep (more about that below), we didn't waste much time in between stops. Our longest time between was only 10 minutes, and one of the station to station trips only took one minute (according to the My Trips function of the Nice Ride website).

It took us just shy of four cycling hours to complete the ride and my estimate for mileage was 36. The Nice Ride account login put it at 27.2 miles, but their assumptions seem a little faulty to me. If I have time, I'll complete a "complex estimates" practice aid, retrace our steps on Google maps to get some more comfort over management's estimate. I'm kidding about the practice aid, I just wanted an excuse to slip in some auditor-speak.

We did have to backtrack once, since a glitch in the system kept us from checking out another bike after we had docked at the downtown library station. After we were denied trying to check out every single back at the station, I called customer service and had what can only be described as a ridiculous conversation with this woman.

She instructed us to check the ID numbers of the bikes to find the ones we had just returned, so she could then release them for our use. The problem was, the bikes that she had in the system were not at the dock. She told me there should be 22 bikes at the station, and when I assured her there were only 20, she pretty much called me negligent and a liar, albeit in polite terms.

I figured telling this lady that this wasn't my first rodeo wouldn't overcome her obstinance so instead I proposed that we return to the previous station to check the ID numbers. I kept her on the line for two blocks, and sure enough, the bike IDs in question were there. Only the tech wizards at NiceRideMN will be able to figure what happened on that one.

Overall successfully completing the challenge was the "cherry on the spoon" of an otherwise perfect bike commuting week, and we even scored free jerseys for our efforts. I would definitely do this again if anyone needs a sherpa, or if some visitors wanted to check out some of the popular Minneapolis landmarks from the seat of a green two wheeler.

Week 94 Summary (September 6 - 10)
Monday - No commute (Labor Day)
Tues - Friday: Bicycle

Mileage Count (Fiscal YTD)
9/12/10 - 459.0 miles

Pin the Tail on My Commute

In an attempt to make this an interactive blog, I've decided to introduce a game that any reader with a Google or Gmail ID can play: Pin the Tail on My Commute

Here's the basic premise.

A question will be posted that has to do with some sort of landmark from my commute (aka, "the tail"). I have mocked up a Google Map with my normal route, and it is open for "collaboration" so anyone can "pin the tail" on the map (click the EDIT button to open the collaborate feature) by dropping a placemark on your best guess. Simple enough? If that's not clear enough, the description section on the Google Map gives an example guess and further instruction.

The person to get closest to the spot wins a bicycle themed prize of my choosing. Disclaimer: these prizes will not be glamorous.

Here's the question:

Where in my commute would you find the area that I affectionately refer to as "Vodka Alley?"

Here's the link:

Link to Google Map

Happy hunting.