Hey, Wake Up!

In the event you were wondering, yes, I'm still alive. Alive, rolling my eyes and muttering profanities under my breath. You know, condition normal. My latest love/hate realities?

Hate: No room for bikes at the 'greenest convention in history'

Organizers for the Democratic National Convention and party leaders have touted the official greenness of the upcoming convention in Denver, including everything from biodiesel buses and recyclable materials to carbon counting.

But in the rush to secure everything green -— even setting up a “hybrid-only parking lot” at the Pepsi Center -— it seems one simple and fairly obvious LEED-certified step was overlooked: Installing bike racks.

Indeed, there will be no bikes allowed within the DNC perimeter of the Pepsi Center, nor at Invesco Field, where Barack Obama will deliver his acceptance speech, DNCC organizers confirmed this week.

This is just like crime where if only people worked as hard at being honest. They work so hard to call it green, don't they? Yet, let's exclude actual green for why?

Repeatedly citing the Secret Service and the Denver Police Department as making all security-related mandates, including not allowing delegates, volunteers and gathered media to park a bike within the convention perimeter, organizers said not accommodating leg-powered transportation is the exception to the rule when talking about the true greenness of the event.

Of course, what security concerns are not mentioned. I suspect it's either the excuse that we don't want to give bad people ideas by telling anyone our fears, or more likely someone feels it's green enough without the hassles of bikes being parked all over the place like a flea market in Berkeley. We've already had one shoe-bomber incident, perhaps we should all be barefoot at the convention too?

Love? I love it when people that say stupid things in public get called on it. Perhaps ignorance should be equated with pride instead of bliss...



Although the thought occurs to me that if you just drive less, you can reduce your oil use by a lot more than 3-5%. Unfortunately, Americans aren't ready for that sort of silliness from a potential leader, and Obama would be summarily crucified by the media for having the audacity to be so un-American.