On Summit

If you've been anywhere resembling close proximity to the intellectual pulse of Columbus, you'll know that last Tuesday (that's 10/20/2009 if you're using the Gregorian OS) the Wexner Center hosted TEDx Columbus . The original TED franchise , the story goes, is an annual conference founded by the legendary architect and designer Richard Saul Wurman. It's held in California, draws the best and brightest minds from around the globe, and to a certain degree can be thought of as a kind of forward-thinking cultural yin to Burning Man's low-brow tribal yang. The acronymous name isn't a coincidence either; it stands for something (technology, entertainment, and design to be specific). The x (lower-case please) denotes the Columbus happening as an independently organized event (i.e. not the biggie in California). TED has been referred to as "the ultimate brain spa" and local residents can thank Co-Chairs Nancy Kramer and Ruth Milligan for arranging some of...

Every year, around the beginning of October, my library hosts an event called "Touch-a-Truck" . As the name implies it's a children's program set-up to let the young ones explore trucks and other interesting vehicles up close. Being that motorscooters are something of a "kid friendly" mode of transportation, I usually offer to have my scooter available for the program. It's also common for me to enlist some of my scooter owning friends to put in an appearance too (the more the merrier!). While their first reaction is usually alarm (at the prospect of toddlers climbing on their bikes) they typically come around and agree to risk a little exposure to the 3-8 old set. This ye ar was no different, and I was lucky to have my friends Mike (proud owner of a Vespa ET150) and Mark (Vespa GranTurismo) take part in representing scooterists everywhere at the 2009 edition of "Touch-a-Truck". Joining us in the two-wheeled corral were a couple other bike owne...