bicycle parking

Yehuda taking advantage of available street parking. The first things I thought of when I saw were—

1. That's totally legal. If you feed the meter, the space is apparently yours, whether or not you choose to fill it with a car.
2. That's the concept behind Parking Day, an event that Denver participates in, but during which I have had to work for the last two years and so have never seen it in execution.

I'm afraid I discovered in myself a double standard the other day. While I support—and find humor in—Yehuda claiming equal access here, I caught myself cursing the owner of the Honda Ruckus that is still parked perpendicular to the curb alongside which I was trying to find parking. Its spacing from the corner made it such that it occupied an entire car's length. It could have been parked neatly between two cars, or on the sidewalk where every other 50cc in the neighborhood roosts.

I guess I'll cut him some slack.



It would be neat as hell to see a couple parallel parking spaces allocated for bike parking. That bike cage adequately addresses security in addition to the mere availability of space. I almost can't imagine a world in which you don't need to worry about securing your bicycle, but such places purportedly exist. For example, there are apparently no bike thieves in Copenhagen.

Kids in Crosswalks

October 7th was the ninth annual International Walk To School Day. Highly celebrated here in Denver. There are cute little "Kids in crosswalks!" signs posted around the neighborhood that are apparently going to be up for the duration of the month.

Walk To School Day is a concept that I find strange for some reason I can't quite put my finger on.

Rick Smith touched on the subject in the following Yehuda Moon.



And I guess he addresses what I find odd about making a big to-do about walking to school.

But I think that's only applicable when you're thinking about elementary and middle schools. This campaign could do some serious good work at high schools.

It'd be a challenge for sure, trying to convince a bunch of 16 year olds to leave their cars behind in favor of walking and bicycling. But I know I didn't consider biking to school a real or viable option when I was a kid, and it's less than 4.5 miles from my old house to my old high school.

That's nuthin.

I remember parking always being such an issue, too.

That's where this campaign should focus its attention. I used to walk and bike all the time when I was in elementary and middle school. After I got to high school though I didn't touch a bike for over five years.

Beausage

A portmanteau is a blending of two different words and their meanings. The word itself, in this context, was apparently invented by Lewis Carrol.

So some portmanteaus grate on my nerves. Labradoodle, Brangelina, and other designer words are manufactured and created by marketing departments in order to sell something flashy and fab.

And some portmanteaus are so accepted that you—or I at least—rarely notice them as being a jumble of two different things. Like brunch. Or spork, blog, and wikipedia. These words seem more natural, at least.

So Grant Peterson, of Rivendell Bicycle Works, apparently coined the portmanteau beausage in an article he wrote for the Rivendell Reader, the bike shop's newsletter. Rick Smith used the word in the 10/11/2009 episode of Yehuda Moon.

I think it's a pretty great word, with great potential to be used "in the wild."

It's a blend of "beauty" and "usage," and is used to describe a beauty that comes from or through use. Like dings and nicks on a trusty bicycle. Or a leather bicycle saddle once it has been broken in and has adopted the shape of its rider's bottom. Certain sets of kitchen knives acquire beausage after many years. Or—and this might be the perfect example—musical instruments. Like Trigger, Willie's guitar.



Where pronunciation is concerned, I'm going to go ahead and say that the American pronunciation ("BYOO-sij") and the French pronunciation ("bo-SAHG") are equally acceptable.

I'm looking forward to noticing and appreciating examples of beausage in the future.