Jay GreesonFriday was National Bike to Work day.
Cool. Lord knows there are several open lanes downtown for our peddle-destrians.
I don't ride, but if that's your thing, here's hoping you enjoyed it. Personally, if I was going to have a national day, it would be more of the National Don't Do Work at Work Day or National Five-Hour Lunch Day.
But to each his own, right?
Well, here's betting the folks in Omaha, Neb., would love our spacious and comfy lanes for our two-wheelers.
Earlier this week, eight renegade cyclists - if you want to call them an outlaw biker gang, I suppose that would fit - put 120 plungers with reflective tape along some streets in the Aksarben-Elmwood Park neighborhood to simulate the feel of bike lanes.
Todd Pfitzer, assistant Omaha Public Works director, said there is not enough money for bike lanes in the budget and bike lanes cost about "$1 million per lane per mile."
Yes, that's more than I expected too. So I did a little research. Scary, right?
According to the peopleforbikes.com website - and yes, it likely has a vested interest in the topic considering the domain name - the prices can range greatly for bike lanes. You can add bells and whistles - actually barriers and white stripes - and several other things. The nicest bike lanes in the country, the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, cost a few million dollars per mile.
Most normal bike lanes do not, according to the website's calculations, cost the $1 million per lane per mile. That is the estimate for sidewalks.
Odds are in
You can wager on just about anything, and unlike political pundits or sports prognosticators, the folks who set the gambling odds on those things are doing it for a living. Like that's how they actually make their money.
In fact, I can remember sharing in this space that oddsmakers in Vegas had always taken Donald Trump's campaign more seriously than most by the gambling numbers they set.
Well, the first run of odds have been published on who the gamblers think will win the 2020 presidential election.
And sorry, Trump haters, The Don is the favorite at 3-to-1. He's followed by Mike Pence (7-to-1), Elizabeth Warren (9-to-1), Michelle Obama (14-to-1) and Bernie Sanders (20-to-1).
Some of the other familiar names that Vegas has on its board are Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (each at 25-to-1), Paul Ryan (28-to-1) and Marco Rubio (33-to-1).
There are of course some of the out-of-left-field names, too. After all, if someone had told you in 2013 that Donald Trump was going to follow Barack Obama in the White House, you would have laughed. Or cried.
Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg is listed at 50-to-1, same as Ted Cruz. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is 66-to-1, same as John Kasich.
Oprah is 100-to-1, along with action star The Rock, Jeb Bush and Rand Paul.
Rounding out the list is Chelsea Clinton, George Clooney and Tom Brady, each at 300-to-1.
School bored
The questions continue to drip for the candidates wanting to be the next Hamilton County superintendent of schools.
There will be one more round of interviews Monday before Board of Education members trim the field to five names.
Yes it was originally going to be three. Now it's five. Maybe they need more time. Maybe they widen the parameters to make sure some familiar names make the cut. Maybe they, you know, will actually share the details in the culling process.
I'm not holding my breath, though.
Will they ever get to one? Who knows?
Let's just keep our fingers crossed it's not the wrong one.
Saturday star
It was on the front page of this paper this week, but here's one more round of kudos to the folks who moved all the pieces to get the ball rolling on Chattanooga's Miracle Field.
It will be the second Miracle Field in the state. The diamond-shaped baseball field will be home for the Miracle League, a baseball league for people with physical and mental disabilities.
From the great story this week from reporter Ben Benton: "We started site preparations last week," said Mike McGauley with Fidelity Trust Co., the man serving as the Miracle Field overall project manager. "It's taken a couple of years to get to this point."
Stars, indeed.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com and 423-757-6343.