"Nice Ride" Blue Cross taps into bicyclists pick up line

I attended the Break for Breakfast event at Peace Coffee Headquarters, The food was decent for free, and the tofu scramble was hearty. The bicycle community is growing here, there is no doubt about that. This day coincided with the Launch of Nice Ride a bike sharing program already going in Montreal and Paris. My hope would be that people buoy the popularity of such program into actually owning their own bicycle. There is a blog that tracks all the programs of bike sharing around the globe, it is informative enough but I think this program should be more of a stepping stone rather then a means to an end.

Congestion of traffic is mostly due to the fact that automobiles evolved as four seat machines. What I tend to see in traffic is one person driving around in the automobile. If there were more motorcycles and scooters the congestion would be almost nothing in our population center. In dense populations where traffic is horrible, as I witnessed in Jakarta, motorbike are the preferred speedy method. If our goods were shipped as inefficiently as we do our people in cars the price would be noticeably more. I mean look at the horrible design of Costco milk carton in the Upper Right, but such a design is produced in the name of shipping efficiency. Perhaps we should look at the automobile design of Buckminster Fuller, The Dymaxion, much more compact, and what do you know, designed with efficancy in mind getting 30 MPG's in 1933. Look how far we have come.

Space has never been much of an issue in our manifest destiny country, yet it will be more and more, as our resources are depleted and we focus our lives to live more simply without the luxury and abundance of space. Perhaps we will even have Standing Bars for our nightlife in the future as they do now in Japan. That would help twofold, you would burn more calories to have yourself be smaller and the floor space would be saved from over sized chair to rest your tokhes on.

But there was plenty of seating at the Break for Breakfast, the hosts of the event being well prepared. Our own Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak stopped in with his daughter to show his pro-bicycle stance. I was sitting along taking in the scene, finishing my coffee, when two others sat in the circle of chair and started up some chatter. Unfortunately one of them wanted to promote her political stance, as she had just landed a job with Gubernatorial candidate Entenza. While he may be a decent guy, I should have cut her off and said I only support 3rd party candidates in statewide and national elections. I think Dayton should run as a 3rd party man myself, he already has the money and name recognition. Yet he should run dressed in a fur cloak and scepter. The heir to the fortune of Target Corporation, he could hearken back to our history of electing the wealthy businessmen of our area. Like the Washburn's before him, yes the same Washburns whose W is represented in WCCO, and are the founders of General Mills. Whose philanthropy has given us the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, located on Cadwallader Washburn's former Estate.

But don't worry the opulent residents of this state have no reason to protect their personal interests when in office, they will fight tooth and nail for the common man. As demonstrated in the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters Strike.