(Critter report: saw a lizard today, which I narrowly avoided rolling right over, and some squirrels. I can't believe I didn't include squirrels in yesterday's post!)

Yesterday I had a thing after work that involved biking out on Martin Way & then Carpenter Road. I had almost forgotten how squirrelly it can be riding on really busy highway-like roads. I love biking, but I'm not exactly what you'd call the most expert cyclist. (As chad360 can attest to.)

Yes, there is a bike lane on Martin Way; however, there's also quite the dip by Top Foods: a long downhill followed by a long uphill, and the traffic zips by at (I would guess) 45+ MPH. So I stuck to the right edge of the bike lane, more in the shoulder than the lane. Heading east, I got to a pretty nice clip myself on the downhill, which is fun if slightly unnerving.

The Puget Sound is in serious danger. Pollution has wreaked horrible consequences on this majestic waterway. For example, 92% of wild salmon runs are no more, and several stocks of other species are collapsing as well. Why is the Puget Sound in danger? Ask an expert.

Take it from William Dietrich. He published an article in the Seattle Times yesterday. It's about this very subject. It's very well written and it's titled: "Puget Sound: One man's indictment, love poem and call to arms", here's a link: seattletimes.nwsource.com/

From a local website, seeminlgy based on this article from a conservative magazine:

Quietly but systematically, the Mah/Clarkson administrations are advancing the plan to build a huge Oly/Lacey Super Highway, one/fourth a football-field-wide, through the heart of the Olympia, from the Lacey border at Komachin Middle School to the Tumwater border north of the cemetery.

Once complete, the new road will allow cars from the far east of Thurston County to enter Olympia through the Lacey's Mullen Road , bypassing the downtown Olympia exits in the process. The suburban cars, without passing by the highway sign for the Urban Onion, will drive on what will be the county's most modern road straight into the heart of Olympia. The Lacey cars will cross the border in two lanes.

As incredible as this plan may seem to some readers, the first Trans-Lacey segment of the Olympia Lacey Super Highway is ready to begin construction next year. Various local government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private neighborhood and homeowner associations have been working behind the scenes to create the Olympia Lacey Super Highway, despite the lack of comment on the plan by President Bush. The Olympia public is largely asleep to this key piece of the coming “North Thurston County Union” that government planners in the new trilateral region of Olympia, Lacey and Tumwater are about to drive into reality.

In my months of reading Olympia city council packets every Friday, I had read of and heard rumors of this project. I had always scoffed at the myth. There was simply no way the maze of roads and suburban subdivisions in SE Olympia and Lacey could be straightened to make such a road possible.

But, after seeing the evidence slowly mount before my eyes, I can no longer but believe that such a monterous project is coming.