First up is alert reader John of White Bear Lake, who wrote to Roadguy late yesterday afternoon:

…Coming home on 61 today two runners carrying unlit torches had a three-squad escort by Ramsey County. Any idea what (hopefully) worthy cause this was for? It was causing above-normal congestion on 61 south from 694 north a few miles.

John sent along a few pictures, and Roadguy cropped them so they’d fit into the friendly confines of the blog software:

Not wanting to bother the sheriff, Roadguy Googled around for a bit, but he found no links to the East Vadnais Heights Unlit Torchlight Parade. If we don’t get a real answer today in the comments below, I’ll ring up the proper authorities.

Also submitting some digital photography is alert reader M, who e-mailed Roadguy on Wednesday:

I am just learning to use my camera phone and sent you a pic of a car parked in a handicapped spot RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE MPLS COURTHOUSE and was there close to 4 hrs today from about 8AM-Noon. No sticker, no plate! And a squad car was waiting for a red light at the intersection when I took the picture!

Roadguy cropped out the license plates on this one, in case there’s some extenuating situation we don’t know about. But sadly, yes, it’s hardly unheard of to see handicap-space abuse downtown.

Our final piece of mail today comes from (gasp!) a public relations person. His name was Mike, and he had this to say:

I thought this website might be of interest to your readers: publicroutes.com. The site takes the old version of Mapquest or Google maps, and expands it to include public transit and walking directions. The site went live yesterday [Wednesday] in the Twin Cities. It also includes great features like traffic and weather, and local search for restaurants or attractions.

Roadguy has been hearing about alternative-transportation Mapquest-type sites for months now, so he was eager to try this one. He typed in his home and workplace addresses, clicked on “best transit options,” and … well, what’s the opposite of “voila”?

There are apparently some bugs to work out yet — whenever Roadguy rides transit to work, it’s about a 4.5-mile trip that takes about 35 minutes, but this software determined that a 12.7439-mile, 42-minute route via the University of Minnesota campus would be the way to go. The driving directions worked OK, as did a few of the other transit routes Roadguy tried, but he’d be interested in your reaction to the site if you have a moment to check it out.

So please share those thoughts (and any knowledge of east-metro torchbearers) below.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 6:10 am and is filed under Moron Patrol, Scenes and stories, WUWT?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.