Regular readers may know that we live where we do specifically to be within biking distance of my wife’s university. She had the short, three mile bike ride across town to her classes, while I have the 40 mile multimodal commute from hell.

She completed her Master’s degree last year. We really like Santa Cruz County, but both of us work in the South Bay, and there’s no longer any real reason for us to live here. We’ve been looking to move “over the hill” to Santa Clara Valley to shorten our commutes.

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From the Wikipedia article on Jaywalking:

According to one historian, the earliest known use of the word jaywalker in print was in the Chicago Tribune in 1909. The term’s dissemination was due in part to a deliberate effort by promoters of automobiles, such as local auto clubs and dealers, to redefine streets as places where pedestrians do not belong.

Originally, the legal rule was that “all persons have an equal right in the highway, and that in exercising the right each shall take due care not to injure other users of the way.” In time, however, streets became the province of motorized traffic, both practically and legally. Automobile interests in the USA took up the cause of labeling and scorning jaywalkers in the 1910s and early 1920s; a counter-campaign to name (and disapprove of) “jay drivers” failed.

Highway departments across North America are unable to paint stripes on the pavement because of a shortage of two key components: methyl methacrylate (MMA) and titanium dioxide (TiO2).

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I took this photo of this San Francisco Market Street cyclist getting the squeeze in 2006. The photo doesn’t show it well, but the driver pulled to the cyclist’s left, pulled up alongside her, and then nudged her right into the curb.

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Bike Fort Collins is running a publicity campaign to put a face on cyclists and humanize us.

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Condolences to family, friends and fans of Dr Frank Ryan. Perhaps we can learn something from his demise.

The plastic surgeon to the stars texted a note about his Border Collie Jill while driving near his Malibu home.

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