Bainbridge Conversation

Long sought-after improvements are on the way for two of the island’s most beleaguered roads.

The city was selected to receive a $422,000 federal grant to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety along North Madison Avenue and to work on ways to shore up a section of Rockaway Beach Road threatened by erosion.

The grant is part of a $388 million package aimed at improving transportation in the Puget Sound region.

The city plans to construct shoulders along both sides of North Madison between Highway 305 and Valley Road. The heavily-used section of North Madison lacks space for cyclists and pedestrians to travel. Plans include a separate pedestrian path along the mile-long stretch.

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A drunk driver smashed through a tree and light pole and, despite popping his car’s tires, kept on driving until he threw up and passed out. When asked if he’d been drinking, the man responded “some.”

Also this week, a driver parked his Mercedes-Benz in a swamp…under a bridge. And he wasn’t even drunk.

Read on for the full blotter.

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When taking your bicycle on the ferry, keep your helmet with you – not so much because someone will steal it, but because it will remind you that you boarded with a bicycle.

Otherwise, you may disembark on foot, leaving your bicycle on board. This will cause the umpteenth multi-agency missing person search on land and sea.

Also, drinking too much beer on the ferry will cause you to forget your bike. Falling asleep on the ferry and then waking up disoriented with a ferry worker jabbing you with a broom may also cause this.

I can tell you this from experience because some or all or none of this has happened to me.

Last week, I reported on how the Bainbridge Island Land Trust has nearly reached its fundraising goal to pay for the Heart of the Forest property.

The 19-acre forest would link two of the three Grand Forest Park properties. Together, the four properties would amount to almost 280 acres.

BILT is about $50,000 shy of the $1.8 million goal.

To read my story about the effort to preserve the Heart of the Forest, click here.

The Heart of the Forest is a big step toward linking the three properties, either with large tracts of land or through trail easements.

Local documentary filmmaker Cameron Snow recently produced a 27-minute film on how a small group of islanders saved the Grand Forest lands in the early 1990s. A trailer for Snow’s film, “Forest in the City”, is can be viewed above.

The Port Townsend Film Festival has a description of “Forest in the City” here. To purchase a copy, head over to Eagle Harbor Books.

Look below for a map showing the Heart of the Forest’s location.

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If you haven’t yet, click here to check out my profile of children’s nonfiction author Jim Whiting.

Besides writing 109 books for kids – with topic ranging from Yo-Yo Ma to the Scopes trial – Jim has made his mark on Bainbridge as a coach for young runners, as an editor for the Bainbridge Island Review and as the founder of the All Comers Track Meet, a summertime institution on the island.

Jim fell into writing children’s nonfiction by accident, after having tried his hand at advertising for a boom-and-then-bust Internet start-up. Without a job, Jim agreed to edit a bio of Tiger Woods for young readers. The writing was terrible, so Jim ended up re-writing much of the book. That book led to another and then another and then a hundred more.

On a side note, head over to the Seattle Time’s reprint of the article for an interesting commenter debate over whether profiling a children’s author is “fluff” or not (to avoid confusion, note that the Times posts comments in the reverse order of the Sun, with the most recent post at the top).

For more on Jim, head over to his website, here.

Below is Sun business reporter Rachel Pritchett’s story on Mywedding.com’s planned move to Colorado.

Mywedding.com, a Bainbridge Island-based company that uses the Internet to put the young and in love in contact with wedding vendors, is moving its headquarters to Colorado.

But the Bainbridge office on Tormey Lane will remain open. The two-dozen people employed there will stay, and, in fact, that office is hiring.

“We’re actually hiring on Bainbridge, as well,” said Chief Executive Officer Woody Pastorius.

Mywedding.com now has three offices — Bainbridge, the new headquarters in Castle Rock, Colo., and Beaverton, Ore.

The company has enjoyed substantial growth since it started in 2001, in spite of fierce online competition. Last year, it had revenues of about $3.5 million, according to Pastorius.

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