Lincolnite

The Food Bank of Lincoln's annual Dine Out to Help Out event runs throughout the day. These restaurants will give 10% of the day's proceeds to the Food Bank. Feel like eating out and supporting a good cause? Pick a supporting restaurant and have a great meal. Or I'm sure the Food Bank of Lincoln would love a general donation as well.

This morning I ran a workout on the Boosalis Trail along Highway 2, as I often do. My usual starting point for interval training is 40th and Highway 2. Over the years I have spent a lot of time near that intersection. I've never witnessed a crash there, though I have seen the after effects of accidents -- as well as a common cause: running "orange" lights. In fact, it's very common to see drivers on Highway 2 tempt their fate and that of their fellow motor vehicle operators by hitting the accelerator rather than the brakes when that yellow light turns on. Truckers get much of the blame, but they're far from the only sinners. They're just easier to notice because they're so much more massive than your friendly neighborhood Yaris. What causes the orange light running on Highway 2? Many of the reasons are the same as elsewhere: drivers think it won't hurt anything; drivers are in a hurry; drivers aren't paying attention; drivers misjudge the length of the yellow light; and so on. But some factors are more unique to Highway 2. Frustration can play a big role, for example. Certain intersections along Highway 2 are prone to backing up, not just because of heavy traffic but also because of horrible light cycle timings. Drivers "get back" at the signals by ignoring them. Another factor is that Highway 2 is, well, a highway. Drivers cruising along at 45 miles per hour on a divided highway feel a sense of entitlement about their right to keep on keeping on. Last, Highway 2 has fewer intersections and access points (driveways and such) than most other streets in town. That can give drivers a sense of momentum that they don't want to interrupt. Given all of those potential causes and the obvious potential consequences, one wonders why more hasn't been done to help prevent disaster. There's one very simple -- and I think inexpensive -- solution that I would like to see implemented. A series of "Prepare to Stop When Flashing" signs along Highway 2 would work wonders. They're already in use east of 56th Street and there's one at Van Dorn, but in between they've been left out. I would like to know why. I'm sure cost plays a role, but I suspect there's something else going on as well. Surely cost alone isn't responsible for keeping the signs away for this long. There's another alternative solution, though one that few of us would enjoy. LPD could step up enforcement and go on a ticketing barrage. Me, I prefer a little preventative medicine.

Aliens invaded Lincoln the other day. Did you notice? The folks at KLKN did. They spotted a flashing light on their TowerCam on September 4th and watched it for about 45 minutes. It didn't move or do much of anything really, except blink. It would be easy to dismiss the object as some kind of reflection in the camera lens, except at least one other person caught the object on video. We can rule out a meteorite because it lasted so long, and a comet is out because of the blinking (not to mention the fact that astronomers would have known about it). No airplane could have stayed in one spot so long. Clearly the only option left is aliens. QED. My guess is that the aliens mistook the Pinnacle Bank Arena for some sort of spaceport. They came, saw that they were wrong about our capabilities, and left. But they'll be back. After all, one of their kin is playing at the arena on November 23.

Yeesh! Sorry I've been AWOL this week. Work and life happened. Anyway... I want to give a shoutout to our USPS mail carrier, Jerry Clausen, who was profiled by the Journal Star after he received the USPS Million Mile Safe Driving Award for 30 years of service. Thirty years is a long time to cruise around town in a mail truck. Here at 625 Elm Street we love Jerry. He always has a smile on his face, and he warmly greets us -- and our dogs -- by name. Jerry isn't just "the mailman" to us; he plays a subtle, but important, role in our lives. In fact, he's part of a long line of people who have made memorable repeat appearances in our family history: the lady who forgot her new shoes at SouthPointe; the garbage guys when Robbie was a toddler; the pharmacist at Hy-Vee; the checker at Hy-Vee; the custodian at the Y; and so on. When a package arrives, I can even tell whether it's Jerry or somebody else at the door based solely on Daisy's bark. So a hearty congratulations to Jerry and best wishes as he aims for his next 30 years of safe driving.

I wanted to get a few shots up from last weekend's Nebraska victory over Cincinnati before the team plays again this weekend (including some nice shots of Husker defender and Mexican National Team player Ari Romero doing a header). Despite being near hellish temperatures, Nebraska pulled off a 4-1 come from behind victory against the Bearcats. Woohoo!

Here's your friendly reminder that Ignite Lincoln is tonight at the Rococo Theatre. The Ignite events are a fun time and they feature a fantastic variety of speakers and topics. You can buy tickets online for $10 -- the entirety of which goes to a local nonprofit that will be selected at the event. I can't make it this year, so if you go be sure to let us hear all about it!

I've been meaning to post some photos from this past weekend's season opener of Nebraska Soccer, and have finally gotten around to it. The Cornhuskers are off to a strong 2-0 start, with a 4-0 victory over Southeast Missouri State, and a 4-1 victory over Cincinnati. Go Huskers! Not to forget, freshman Jaycie Johnson (above) was named Big Ten Offensive Player and Freshman of the Week after scoring 3 goals in the first two games of the year. Congratulations Jaycie!

Mr. T took some nice photos of today's lunch at Buffalo Wings & Rings. A quick look inside:

Pinnacle Bank Arena continues it's string of relatively strong concert announcements this morning with the news that Sir Elton John is coming to town on November 23. Sure, Sir John isn't exactly in his prime, but that doesn't really matter for this sort of show. Tickets go on sale September 9 and, if Twitter is to be believed, will start as low as $29. That's downright cheap for an arena show these days. Heck, it's only half the cost of a Husker football ticket. Speaking of the Huskers, they play Penn State on that date. Hopefully it's a day game.

Help me celebrate the opening of The Railyard's first restaurant tomorrow by joining me at noon at Buffalo Wings & Rings. This will be a relatively informal gathering -- as are all of our meet-ups -- but an RSVP would be nice so we know how many seats to save. Or just show up. It's your call. It's exciting to see all the work in the Haymarket finally coming together. And I'm especially excited about Buffalo Wings & Rings because it's owned and operated by a friend of mine. He has been hard at work on this restaurant for a long time. A hearty congratulations go out to him and his team. I hope to see you down there tomorrow at noon. Let's eat!

Tomorrow night is a fun night for free concerts. Trouble is, you're going to have to make a tough decision. At SouthPointe you've got the farewell performance of No Better Cause, a fantastic local vocal band. The group is calling it quits after eleven years. That concert begins at 6:30pm. Across town there's the Cornhusker Marching Band post-band camp exhibition. The annual event begins at 7:00pm in Memorial Stadium -- but presumably they'll do their traditional warm-up outside Kimball Hall around 6:30pm, followed by the march to the stadium. Like I said, both concerts are free. Both should be a lot of fun for the whole family. Which one will you be attending?

By almost all accounts, Lincoln is doing pretty well right now. Our city is on all sorts of "Best Of" and "Top 10" lists -- Best Places to Raise a Family; Best Drivers; Best Governed Cities; and so on. And we're loving it. Lincolnites and community leaders take joy in patting ourselves on the back every time we show up in another magazine or on another website. We have room to improve, of course. We all know that. Some local entities think that Lincoln's target for improvement ought to be becoming more "cool". Putting aside the subjectivity of that sort of thing, how sad and desperate does that sound? Given Lincoln's momentum, I hardly think chasing after the cool kids is a worthwhile use of our energies. We can do so much better than that. Lincoln oughtn't seek a fleeting endorsement from a small subset of the population with ever-changing tastes. Instead we should create opportunities -- for growth, for innovation, for creation, for exploration. We can do that in a number of ways, and arguably we've been doing an ok job of it over the past decade. Antelope Valley and West Haymarket are the two most visible and obvious examples, but even smaller projects like the South 48th Street improvements in College View contribute in similar ways. One topic that has been underplayed -- shockingly so, in my opinion -- is the importance of next-generation, high-speed internet access. Neither Windstream nor Time Warner have shown any hint of moving their networks forward. I had high hopes that the arrival of Verizon's call center in North Lincoln a few years back was a sign that they had big intentions here. Nope. Smaller players like Wide Range Broadband aren't making much of a dent. Overall our speeds are too slow and our prices are too high. Several communities around the country are addressing that problem by providing municipal internet services. Who can blame them? They want to be competitive but private companies aren't providing the services they need, so they build out the networks themselves. In some cases the cities retain full control, while in other cases they lease access to private companies that then sell products to customers. I wonder if such a system would be a win for Lincoln. We know Windstream isn't going to wow us with its internet offerings any time soon. And Time Warner is under no pressure to innovate because they have a virtual monopoly on the services they provide. We're stuck. So why not force the issue? There are upsides and downsides, of course, but I would like to see a more active community conversation about the possibilities. We know that municipal utility operation can work well because we have proof right here in town in the form of LES. We also know that there will be cries from the business community about unfair competition. All of these are things we can and should work through together. But so far ... zilch. For a community that thinks itself progressive, it's disappointing that we aren't addressing this issue. How would you tackle Lincoln's current and future internet needs?