To be fair to Brodeur, this article is written in the usual Seattle Times "suburban" style, where the reporter exposes herself as an embarrassing example of normalcy to avoid being written off as an environmentalist wacko. Just picture a Bellevue readership, and it makes sense.

Hopefully, Nicole will consider entering her P1800 at the following:

14th Annual Greenwood Classic Car and Rod Show

Saturday, June 24, 2006
10 AM - 4 PM

Perhaps you might accompany her, Erica.

---Jensen

The most telling line in the whole thing:

"Now we don't make the time to plan a bus ride or take one."

This is why expanded bus service is insufficient. True mass transit is *faster* than driving, and eventually gets even lazy suburbanites to use it. Ugh.

Maybe if we stripped every last square inch of roadway from downtown Seattle, we could *force* her out of her car(s)!

I have the misfortune to have known Nicole Brodeur in my past life. She thinks the alpahabet begins with the letter I and the musical scale begins with the note mi.

She is a scab who crossed her own union's picket line. She is not worth your attention.

There's a misnomer The Seattle Times tries to perpetuate every time they do an article about a family giving up their car and roughing it, and every time they have their columnist cheerily confess what a bad person they are for driving everywhere. It's that forsaking driving should be an individual self-sacrifice, a personal virtue.

Instead, it should be strictly out of self-interest that someone decides to take transit or walk or whatever rather than drive. I don't drive because it's faster, more convenient, less aggravating, cheaper -- or some combination thereof.

Creating the conditions for that to happen is the responsibility of an entire metropolis, an entire society. Why? It's not just about social justice or saving the world from global warming or oil-funded nuclear terrorists; it's about having a functioning, efficient metropolitan transportation system.

Nicole should get out of that car and do a bit more walking. Have you SEEN her ass lately? BIG as a HOUSE

Nicole, who used to exchange emails with me when she first moved here, is a prime candidate for a Hybrid SUV, like the one Saturn is making, or one from Toyota.

If she really wanted to do something, she could just replace lightbulbs in her house with compact flourescent lightbulbs that use 1/8th the energy or LED moon lights that use 1/20th the energy, both of which last years and are really really cheap at Home Depot.

That would probably save more energy than almost anything else, but not require her to alter her lifestyle radically ...

If everyone just makes some change, no matter how little, the market will react and fix it - but if we stick with radical action or no action, nothing will ever get solved, cause most people are like Nicole, and that's reality.

I saw her this morning. We often arrive at work at the same time. Sadly she can't reliably ride her bike to the Times for fear of it being stolen. This company has a bike cage for, get this, SIXTEEN BIKES. Pathetic.

Several hundred employees + scant parking + 3 dollar gas + no-bikes-in-buiding policy = full bike cage. I'm working on getting it expanded, but it's been an uphill battle.

As a result, too many workers here suffer from Fairview Fanny.

Maybe next week she will tell us how she beats up old people, rolls drunks and she daily dines on elephants and bald eagles. Then she can add on, "oh silly me."

doug -- i heard the bike cage is getting expanded. i agree it is ridiculously small, now that summer is here, it's usually over capacity.

I'd heard that Frank Blethen bikes to work everyday.