Dave & Lizard Going Away

My friend David is going away. Very far away. To Seattle.

He's been a great friend and my go-to bike mechanic for a couple years now. So I'm sad to see him go, but then, I think he was bored with that gig and the one he's moving for sounds like it will provide satisfying challenges. And honestly, a chance to live in Seattle. If I didn't have family ties to Kansas City, I'd probably be in the Pacific Northwest by now, either Seattle or Portland.

Climate alone would move me there, I detest the extremes of summer and winter in the Midwest.

Not that we have it bad in KC. Boulevard is a world class brewery and there's lots of other little craft breweries and brewpubs around town. The Nelson and Kemper museums. The cost of living is very reasonable. And as far as bikes go, it's coming along (okay, it's still ass backwards on that front but there are a few glimmers of hope for civilizing our roads).

And there's the people. I know they have people in Seattle, too, and I'd probably love them once I got to know them. But just looking at the pics I took at the moving sale going away party at Dave & Lizard's, I guess I have more than just family ties to the area.

And as far as reforming that transportation system, look how fast the beer thing turned around in America. When I was in high school, it was all Budweiser, Miller, Coors. Guinness if you were really out in left field looking for adventure. Even when the craft brew thing started to catch, when I got into home brewing in the mid 90s, it was thought that at most craft beer couldn't be more than a percent or two of the total market (I think it's around 25% these days depending on how you define your terms, whether you include import craft in the picture, etc.)—it's changed so much that mostly the traditional powerhouses are buying up craft breweries left and right, not to shut them down, but to recapture market share. So when we reach a tipping point to sanity on transportation, it might well make your head spin how fast we park cars and add transit and embrace transportational cycling.