As gas and food prices have risen, many of us have been thinking about ways to cut back, including using public transportation when possible. Nashville’s public transit options are already less than ideal, but riders may have fewer options in the near future.

Nashville MTA is holding public hearings next week to consider “a potential fare adjustment; the possible removal or reduction of several bus routes; possible reductions in service on all MTA routes, including the elimination of night service, Saturday, Sunday and holiday service as well as Night Owl service; and possible reductions of the ADA AccessRide service to areas within 1.5 miles of regular service routes.”

That’s an awful lot of cuts. They note that “rising diesel fuel and operating costs” are behind the possible changes, but I’m guessing these changes come at a particularly bad time for many riders - the buses I ride have been fuller every week.

Of course, I’m biased, because one of the routes MTA may cut or change is the one that gets me to work in the morning, and already has limited service in my view because the last one out of downtown runs at just after 5 (meaning that most people working an 8-5 job can’t get there in time and have to find another route home). Personally, I’d rather they mothball the $40 million downtown hub (or find some other solution), because actually getting to work is more important to me than waiting comfortably indoors for a bus.

Public Meeting Schedule (download as PDF):
May 5 - Rochelle Center (Building A) Monday, 6 p.m.
1020 Southside Court

May 6 - Downtown Library Tuesday, Noon & 5:30 p.m.
615 Church Street

May 8 - Madison Library Thursday, 6 p.m.
610 Gallatin Pike

May 12 - Easley Community Center Monday, 5:30 p.m.
1000 Edgehill Ave.

Additional meetings may be held and will be announced at a later date. Individuals do not have to attend these meetings to offer public comments. They may fax comments to (615) 862-6208 or e-mail comments to mta.publichearings@nashville.gov through May 14, 2008. Comments can also be made by calling (615) 862-5950 or by writing MTA at 130 Nestor St., Nashville, TN 37210.

Last week I was in Lima (Peru, not Ohio) visiting my Peace Corp volunteering daughter. The timing of the trip was based on the Metro Nashville Spring break (my wife is a teacher). Had I planned the trip and timing was not an issue, I would have opted for the previous week - cheaper airfares because the week of Easter is bum-rushed with touristas and, much more importantly, the fact that the first week of the NCAA March Madness tourney began the week we visited Peru. Those first two days of the tournament are as much fun as just about anything other than consensual sex or watching UT fans leave Vandy’s gym after the Orange is peeled.

By the time Thursday rolled around, I was jonesing for a way to watch just a little b-ball. Granted, Lima is an amazing vibrant city and there is more to see there than can possibly be seen in one week, but I had so many great meals and cultural experiences that I was more than ready for a simple hamburger and a large-screen TV with satellite connectivity.

Luckily we ate lunch on Thursday with another Peace Corps volunteer who happened to be a sports freak. He tipped us to an establishment called ‘The Corner Bar’, near the ocean in the same neighborhood in which we were staying. Even luckier,  my wife and daughter were also longing for a hamburger and were willing to watch a little basketball wishing for something to shut me up re said basketball tourney.

We ambled into the Corner Bar with about 10 minutes to go in the Belmont game. At this point, I need to let you know that I went to Lipscomb and normally am an arch-enemy of the Bruins. But, once another Nashville team made the tourney, I was more than willing to set aside my animus* for the followers of the headless harbinger, and cheer for the local team.

To my amazement, the bar full of mostly native sports fans began rooting for Belmont. Most of them had no idea where Belmont was located, but everyone knew that they were underdogs AND pretty much everyone I know LOVES to see Duke lose**. Suddenly, every TV in the bar except one***, was tuned to the Belmont-Duke game. The crowd became as one, cheering for each Bruin basket, and groaning when Duke scored. My wife, the only person in Nashville in 1999 who didn’t care that the Titans were in the Super Bowl, was cheering and groaning with the crowd. The last minute was met with shared frustration and not a little cursing. I wish Belmont had won, but it was amazing being in another continent and sharing those moments.

*Actually, some of my best friends include Baptists, Anti-Baptists and truly anti Baptists.

**Apparently, our experience coincided with ‘The Sports Guy‘. He had watched four games in Anaheim (in person), and checked into a bar after the games to watch the Belmont-Duke game. From his column:

‘…everyone at that same bar had more fun drinking and watching the K-State/USC and Duke/Belmont games on TV than anything we witnessed in our four games. It’s absolutely incredible how many people despise Duke and how the entire place galvanized behind Belmont at the end like it was the 1980 Olympic hockey team. If Belmont had pulled off the upset victory, there’s a 25 percent chance that we’d still be there drinking and celebrating four days later.’

***There was one dude who insisted on watching some dumb futbol game..go figure.

(tongue action? priceless…) 

Last week Lesley left Nashville and headed west.  With her significant lover in tow they have purportedly done quite the food round through Vegas and So Cal.  Well she’s back now and is determined to make us all just a tad envious…

First up is Del Taco but… hey - don’t we have one of those here?

Anyway, I for one, live for this kinda thing and will be following along closely. 

She’s on day 2 and counting…

 I want y’all to meet my pal MaryE.  MaryE is a photographer, writer, and perhaps one of the most well-rounded, diverse and interesting people you could ever bump into.  I can almost hear the intro to Gentle On My Mind when MaryE comes into my head.

MaryE is kinda like me in that she has been present at some memorable moments in music with a nice, front row seat cause she was “with the band.”  She’s always got her eyes and ears open and doesn’t miss much.

Sometimes MaryE hangs out in Nashville, other times it’s the Catskills, the summer months she goes from Bluegrass festival to Bluegrass festival, documenting the sights, sounds…the winter months, she hangs in Wales and goes on foxhunts (I know, isn’t that just fascinating? Not something I would do but it’s interesting)

The Hen over at Bilingual in the Boonies just got back from Miami. Seeing this picture of Miami in January and reading about her trip transported me to the land of 75 degrees and sunny with the ocean breeze blowing through my hair as the waves crash on the beach.

As we freeze our arses off this week, let’s close our eyes and go there for a moment…

We took night-time walks, we hung out with the tias, tios and primos — there is nothing like cousins. Nothing. We also went to fun parks, we fed the ducks, we ate too much roast pork, pastelitos and muchas media noches.

On the day we went to the beach, we also had a fattening and nostalgic lunch at the Morro Castle, right next door to my old school, La Progresiva, and where I used to sneak to to buy hot churros and mamey shakes. (I think I gained five pounds during my stay in Miami last week and if I still lived there, I would certainly be una gordita.)

Oh my…it’s time to plan a trip to my childhood home…but for now, I’ll just live vicariously through her.

Women and gay men are worst drivers.

Short and Fat is at it again with another post which is sure to make you nod in agreement, laugh out loud, and grimace with indignation. I fit into at least four of the types of people he lists. Can you guess which ones? I’ll give you two hints: I’m not Glenn Frey nor am I a nun.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, a friend of mine from Baltimore recently visited Nashville with her son to check out Vanderbilt. I gave her a few suggestions of where to visit and showed them around a little, too. A collection of her photos from the trip are here. I think it’s interesting to see what first-time visitors think is photo-worthy (though from the photos, one might guess that as an interior designer, she has an interest in architecture). One of her observations about the city made me chuckle–she noted a lack of seafood restaurants here. I told her that we have seafood–we just call it sushi. And that most of us don’t eat what comes out of the local waterways (even if that is what we drink).

Holy crap, I am so impressed with Jackson’s ability to get customer service to do what he wants:

Now, when I say that we needed to come to an understanding, what I really meant was that they were going to have to give me what I wanted. All I had to do was to figure out exactly what I wanted and let them know it in the clearest terms possible. Surely that would get this whole matter resolved. Here goes nothing…

Go see how it was resolved. Oh, and Jackson, you totally need to go on the Amazing Race. With me. I need a million bucks.

Many of us will travel next weekend, or at some point between next Wednesday and the first of next year. Veteran traveler Jackson Miller has compiled his Holiday Flying Season tips into a handy article I highly recommend.

As a former travel agent, I have to say this is by far my favourite tip of the ten:

Don’t buy a ticket with multiple airlines
This is a huge no-no. What typically happens is that someone will buy their ticket from one of those online travel sites and their flight will have multiple carriers on a single day. This may very well be the absolute cheapest ticket, but it is not worth it no matter how much you save. The reason is that no one is accountable for you to actually get to your destination.

It’s almost impossible to describe the hell that happens when a split-carrier ticket goes bad.

Well, crap. Jet Blue’s pulling out of Nashville:

JetBlue has announced they are pulling out of Nashville effective January 6, 2008. The company says they need to “redeploy assets.” Understandable considering the cutthroat nature of the airline industry, but I’ve never flown on a JetBlue flight to or from BNA that wasn’t at least 80% full. And I fly the route quite often.

That’s too bad. Not that I fly to NYC a lot, but if I wanted to, now I can’t fly JetBlue.

While others share inspirational thoughts about their ventures to the land of Dracula’s Castle, leave it to Cranky to share some of his more humorous discoveries…

This is a monument to Vlad the Impaler. I think. It could be the front of the Prostate Institute too. Just not sure.

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A very intelligent people, the Romanias have a zero tolerance policy for marching bands.

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There are many more over at the Buffet.

First I came back from my vacation sick, now Kate:

I took an Airborne tablet and drank a lot of water on the overseas flight. But by last night, on the flight from Newark to Nashville, I was getting sicker and unable to keep my eyes open at all. I woke up today with a searing burn in my throat, my head full of congestion, and my body aching all over. I’m most miserably sick, but I’m very happy to be home.

Kate, unlike me, has a really interesting trip report. You oughta go read it, it’s a great post, and includes a report on the customer service she received from Expedia.

Driving in Greece seems like an interesting pastime.

Yesterday as we were on the way back from dropping off more crap at our new house, an errant cow found its way onto the road. …

We were patient as the errant cow made its way across our lane, but as it crossed to the oncoming lane, a guy in a sporty car decided it would make sense to blink his headlights at it. I am not in any way fluent in cow communications, but somehow I think the best cow whisperer would tell you this is probably not a good idea. Who knows what the cow actually sees, and what it thinks about what it sees? At any rate, this cow seemed to interpret the blinking headlights as a “come hither” thing and so it slowly made its way towards the sports car, at which point the guy proceeded to honk at it endlessly.

Maybe that other driver was actually Short & Fat

Today, driving down the interstate a woman in the car in front of me was applying makeup. Which is fine, if you don’t drive like a f*cking blue hair, but she was. As I passed, I was tempted to cut my wheels hard in her direction and lay on my horn.

…I just wish I could write about it as charmingly as Grace does:

I envision the hour-long flight passing in what feels like minutes because we have this incredible chemistry and we wonder aloud how funny life is that the fates will set two like-minded people next to each other. We find out that we both live in Nashville and are just visiting the city on the lake, and we make plans to see each other and we fall madly in love and eventually get married, in a ceremony featuring the colors orange and purple, in honor of the airline that brought us together.

Sometimes I think this chick can read my mind. Read how the fantasy ends here.

The Music City Star has missed its ridership goals by half:

The Regional Transportation Authority predicted a first-year average of 1,500 daily riders on the Music City Star, but fewer than half the projected number are boarding the train each day. The train saw an average near 640 daily riders at its peak this summer.

Officials say they have a core group of loyal riders that is slowly growing, and it’s too soon to decide whether the Star is viable based on passengers. Experts say that commuter rail systems are booming in places they were expected to fail, and there’s probably public policy to blame if Nashville’s doesn’t follow suit.

I’m glad they seem to be giving it more time before giving up and calling it a failure. I think if Nashville could get their bus system to be better, people will start using the commuter rails more.

It’s hard to say, though, since my commute consists of walking down the hallway. Commuters, do you use mass transit at all? If you don’t, why not? Is there anything that could convince you to use it?

HT: Volunteer Voters

But this is Vegas, Bay-bee!

FIRST BLOGWORLD & NEW MEDIA EXPO TO BE WORLD’S LARGEST GATHERING OF BLOGGERS
Registration Now Open at www.blogworldexpo.com

LAS VEGAS - August 20, 2007 - Thousands of bloggers, vloggers and podcasters are set to descend on Las Vegas for BlogWorld & New Media Expo, the world’s first, industry-wide blogging tradeshow. The inaugural event, to be held at the Las Vegas Convention Center Thursday - Friday, Nov. 8 - 9, 2007, with pre-show seminars Wednesday, Nov. 7, will bring together professional to citizen journalists, entertainment icons, industry pundits, and popular social communities, as well as internet radio and TV producers and podcasters in the most important assembly of future new media moguls. Registration is now open.

Designed to help experienced content creators and newbie’s alike, BlogWorld & New Media Expo will feature more than 60 seminars, panel discussions and keynotes.

The Expo promises sessions on blogging basics, podcasting, video blogging, monetization strategies, increasing readership and blog site “stickiness,” use of RSS (really simple syndication), search engine optimization, blogging in the political arena, and other topics of interest to veteran and first-time bloggers.

The conference will host several major blogging communities, including business, technology, politics, sports, lifestyle and pop-culture, milbloggers, mommy bloggers and godbloggers.

Exhibitors will include blog publishing software, advertising networks, affiliate program providers, RSS syndication services, news readers, aggregators, computer hardware and software companies, Wi-Fi services, broadband ISPs, web hosting companies, podcasting services, pro audio and video recording equipment and blog consultants.

Research shows that more than 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog, while more than 57 million read blogs. Companies and individuals will be able to harness the latest developments in the blogosphere, all in one place-at BlogWorld.

“We’re witnessing a communication revolution. New media is rapidly changing the way people get their news and the way companies communicate with their customers,”

Rick Calvert, Founder and CEO, BlogWorld Expo, said. “This event is designed to give professional and aspiring bloggers the tools and education they need to take their brands to the next level and to bring the traditional communication world up to speed with the blogosphere.”

Additional information on BlogWorld, speaker topics, session descriptions and registration are all available at www.blogworldexpo.com.

I’ve already checked my calendar and the Predators aren’t playing in town those two nights, and the Titans don’t play until Sunday the 11th.

Yeah, I know Thursday the 8th is RUABelle and my anniversary, but we’ve already had sixteen of them and it’s not like we’re married or anything. <ducks flying flowerpot>

So who’s in? Anybody wanna share a room?

We all know my other car is a bicycle. But that don’t count, do it now?

“Well, there’s about probably some 10 percent to 20 percent of the current spending that is going to projects that really are not transportation, directly transportation-related. Some of that money is being spent on things, as I said earlier, like bike paths or trails.”

Megaphonic asks a familiar question:

[H]ow come, when public schools are in session, traffic is twice as bad in the mornings and evenings then in the summer, even though, as i look into these cars sharing the parking lot that 40e becomes in the mornings, there are NO CHILDREN in any of these vehicles?

This was ALWAYS a topic of conversation at my old office. And it is indeed true. Traffic is much worse when school is in session. Any of you Metro Parents able to explain why?

Neil has a dream. It involves travel, 50 states, lots of lines (not the kind of lines they have at DisneyWorld) and, well….I’ll let you read the rest.

Kristina is a little behind, but she understands how a song can connect you with place, a feeling, a time, just as much as the smell of say, a madeleine..

Oh my gosh you guys, I have a new favorite song! It’s Crazy by Gnarls Barkley…

had A Moment then. It was a cool, drizzly morning and I was driving with every window down on a bumpy two lane highway through a tiny New England town in New Jersey, surrounded by orchards, cornfields, and the smell of wet asphalt. I knew as I listened to the song that every time I heard it from that point forward I’d think of that exact moment. So this morning when that song came on the radio it wasn’t surprising that I smelled just-rained-on concrete in my head. (No, I don’t have a concrete head. Shut up!) It all came back, as I knew it would.

Read the wonderful rest…

Thomas (iHajj) was flying home from a recent vacation when he noticed that the guy sitting next to him was devouring a magazine devoted to body building.

This guy is reading all of this information about how to be a body builder. But he is obviously not a body builder. I am bigger than he is, and I don’t even suck down “Mongo Max Milk.” I can understand enjoying a sport, but is he thinking about actually doing this stuff? Why else read about it?

So, now I am in the land of judgment. I come to the conclusion that, unless this guy is a researcher or something, he is reading hypocritically. He is reading how-to material that he is obviously not now, and probably not ever, going to put into practice. In my mind, he is reading this material in order to grow in this sport, but its all a big fantasy.

Judgment made, I blissfully go back to my PSP.

But Thomas had second thoughts…read em’ here.

Since I’m not vacationing anywhere this summer (other than scenic, Sumner County), I’m having major trip envy.

Producer J is a producer for XM Radio and has probably the coolest job in town. She gets to go to XM headquarters now and then, which happen to be in our nation’s capital. She spent most of last week there in DC and is curious as to how many famous, DC landmarks you can guess.

(Kerry Woo…you are disqualified from this little game since you’re a DC native.)

Lake Neuron John is back from his mission trip. He also has part one of his mission trip series up here. Mission trips have always been fascinating to me, since I think if they are done well, they can be great testimony for God.

On the other hand, I did read The Poisonwood Bible.  That’s certainly a story of “when mission trips go wrong” if ever there was one.  I’m glad John’s went better than that, messed up flights notwithstanding.

No, this is not about the Presidential race and early primary campaigning. Sam Davidson’s sister ‘MB’ is trekking the Appalachian Trail from north to south and made it to New Hampshire yesterday. I don’t believe the trail is yet ‘Wi-Fi’ ready, but she is managing to send e-mails to Sam, who relays them to us via her ‘MB on the AT’ blog.

Follow the journey…

The man who cares about you has returned from a family vacation in Fernandina Beach.

We’re home from Florida. I go back to work today and I suppose I missed it a little bit; I’m weird like that. Give me a few days off and I get restless for the structure of the work environment. I guess that’s what prisoners mean when they say that they’ve been institutionalized.

I don’t know about you all, but I’ve had a few jobs that were like prison…and a few that I thought were gonna put me into an institution!

Anyway, we’re glad you’re back, too, Mr. Bez.