First, a little something from alert reader Coco:

Thought you might enjoy this beautiful example of parallel parking I found outside my apartment:

Good grief — that’s pretty exceptional. Given the cost of gas, maybe the driver decided to stop right there to save fuel.

There’s also the possibility that the person holds the contrarian view that gas prices aren’t that high — alert reader Matty found a story in Slate titled “Gasoline is Cheap.”

Alert reader BarryS, meanwhile, directs our attention to this USA Today story about freeway removal — Oklahoma City is the latest to join this urban trend. Roadguy was thinking that the Twin Cities largely escaped the elevated-freeway boom back in the day, but BarryS notes a couple of examples:

Oklahoma City is doing something that I wish would happen in the North Loop — removing the highway and replacing it with a park and a boulevard. I’d like to see the I-94 viaducts in the North Loop removed, and 3rd and 4th streets become connecting thru streets.

That’s the catch with elevated roadways — they can be handy to drive on but are unpleasant to live near.

Finally, I got an e-mail from a P.R. firm for Verizon Wireless that offered tips on phone usage in the car; you can view the list here. My favorite was this:

Do not engage in complex, stressful or emotional calls while driving.

Roadguy notes that it’s not so great to have such conversations with your passengers, either.

May your Memorial Day weekend be full of pleasant chatter — and entirely moron-free.

Roadguy almost got run over by a car. As in, “had-to-jump-out-of-the-way” almost run over by a car.

I was crossing Washington Avenue at a crosswalk in Seven Corners. I had the walk signal and was proceeding in the normal manner, between the white lines. Roadguy is admittedly not always this perfectly behaved, but there was a lot of traffic going to and from the 10th Avenue Bridge at lunch hour, so I wasn’t messing around.

As vehicles made right turns behind me, it didn’t occur to me that a car coming from the other way might try to make a left turn into me. But suddenly, there it was, coming at me — and accelerating, completely oblivious that I was in its path.

I jumped forward to get out of the way. As a six-foot-two man in a red parka, I was apparently invisible until I started jumping and swearing, because the driver noticed me at the last second and did some swerving and braking.

And how, you may ask, does a driver not see a six-foot-two man in a red parka until the last second? The answer appeared to be in the driver’s hand: he had a hand-held device with a keyboard and a screen. (I could see it because I was only a couple of feet away.)

Once I was safely on the other side of the street, a guy in a pickup truck called out to me. He’d seen the whole thing. “You should’ve hit him with your bag!” he said. I suppose I could have, but I didn’t want to sacrifice my burrito bowl to make a point. Still, with my adrenaline still racing, it was nice to know that someone was on my side (and would have been prepared to testify).

I managed to write down the license plate number, and I even took a picture of the car when it was stopped at the next light — the guy shrugged at me in a slightly exasperated “look, come on, I’m sorry” kind of way. I know it’s the holiday season, and peace and goodwill and all that, but even a day later, I’m finding forgiveness hard to come by. Maybe y’all can help me look deep into my heart, but geez … my life is more important than his text message.

And if you’ve got a near-miss to share, please do so below.

Roadguy’s boss just alerted him to this story from the Christian Science Monitor. The article features a Purdue researcher who estimates that 6,000 square miles of the United States have been paved over for parking — an area bigger than the state of Connecticut (or roughly the size of St. Louis County, Minnesota).

So with all that room, maybe it’s not so bad when people do this:

Thanks to alert reader Erin for sending in the picture last week. She says this kind of thing is a daily occurrence at a parking garage she frequents. She writes:

I guess when you spend 100 grand on a car, you are entitled to 2 spots instead of one.

The signs on the wall say something about reserved parking, so maybe the car’s owner did indeed reserve two spaces for it. For some, money is no object.

About the time Erin had her sighting, Roadguy snapped this photo:

A Fusion is somewhat farther down the food chain than a Porsche, but if there’s one thing that’s been known to cut across class lines in our country, it’s a sense of entitlement. We’ve got millions of parking spaces — why not take two for yourself?

Please share any thoughts on the Monitor article (or parking in general) below.

With all the talk of road rage and congestion the past few days, Roadguy has once again fallen behind on his mailbag. It’s always good for him to learn what’s on the minds of his alert readers, and this week it’s … parking.

First up is Paul, who e-mailed to show us a “bad parking job on Hennepin, in front of City Center”:

Paul wonders how drivers don’t realize these things. Roadguy always figures that any car propped up on a wheel or two must have such good suspension that the driver doesn’t notice. (Roadguy’s own vehicle, meanwhile, would probably tip over.)

Our next photo is from alert reader Snowman, who was in Portland (Oregon) last weekend, and when he saw this truck parked on a street, he immediately thought of Minneapolis’ move-your-car-every-72-hours rule:

With all the rainfall and mild temperatures, trees probably do grow a bit faster in Portland, but Snowman is pretty sure this truck had been sitting there for more than three days.

We also heard from alert reader Ryan:

Hey Roadguy — Here are a couple of pics I took while traveling through Sioux Falls, S.D., a couple of years ago. I’ve been meaning to share them with you for some time. The lady in the van was “pulling over to park” and apparently didn’t judge the edge of the pavement too well.

It’s kind of interesting because it goes to show that there are bad drivers in places other than MN.

Indeed. Roadguy isn’t sure whether to be reassured or dismayed, but that wheel in the air is quite a sight either way.

Our last photo is not exactly a picture of parking, but the e-mail that accompanied it encouraged impaired drivers to leave their cars where they are. Yesterday, to underscore the idea that it’s better to crash with a friend than crash your car, those wacky folks at the Department of Public Safety staged this:

For those concerned about the state budget, I think it’s safe to say that none of the furniture was purchased at Room & Board.

Have a safe, Moron-free, rage-free weekend, and keep those e-mails and comments coming.

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.

Roadguy got an earful about police lights after Sunday’s post, so we’ll be revisiting that topic in coming days. Today, however, the parking gods have indicated through various means that they’d like us to talk about parking.

The first sign was this fine commentary in the Sunday paper — who knew a car sitting on the street for 72 hours could be considered abandoned?

The second sign also came over the weekend, when Roadguy got this e-mail from alert reader Morg:

Here is my contribution to the CrapCam archives of moron parking. The scene is Taco John’s in Rosemount, 7:30ish Friday evening, as viewed from nearby DQ drive-thru:

Note self-important imbecile in the Beemer spanning the two parking spots closest to the doors. As has been stated here by others, if you want to protect your precious paint job, I have no qualms with that. Take 3 spots if you like. Just do it in the outer reaches of the lot rather than the front door.

Indeed. We can only hope that the Beemer owner is reading right now and weeping with remorse.

The parking gods also sent a sign to Roadguy via the U.S. mail, for the envelope containing Roadguy’s most recent water bill included this two-sided insert:

As you may know, Roadguy gets very excited whenever he finds anything designed to get drivers to park better (you might recall the instructions on the Denver parking meters), so he was pleased to see this effort. It did seem to him, though, that the card had a fair amount of empty white space on the back — space that might have been used to remind people to park within a reasonable distance of the curb, or to keep an eye out for traffic cones, or to avoid any of the other transgressions we so often see. But with so many of our local drivers at such a remedial level, maybe one lesson at a time is best.

If you have thoughts on the abandoned-car commentary or the city of Minneapolis’ “Park Smart” effort, please share below.