I know I haven't been posting much lately, but I have been out of town for most of the last week. We were in the Berkshires from Friday to Sunday for the Jewish Multiracial Network's annual retreat. Then I had to catch a flight to Toronto early Monday morning for a business conference. I did get to have a bit of fun while I was up in the Great White North, including catching Monday night's game between the Blue Jays and Mariners at the Rogers Centre. I'll have a full report on the game and the stadium (it was my first visit since 1991) over the weekend. It's getting late and I want to keep this short, so here are two quick observations on Toronto.

(1) It was rush hour when I was going from the airport to my hotel on Monday, and the driver decided to avoid the traffic on the highways and drove me through the city (I was on a flat rate, so he wasn't trying to run up the fare on me). It was great to take the scenic route, but the thing that really struck me was the sheer number of people riding bicycles to work, school or wherever. Of course, the city of Toronto makes it pretty easy to bike commute. There are bike paths along the lake and bike lanes on many of the major streets I rode on. There are also numerous places to lock up your bike. If Boston made half the effort Toronto does to make the city bike friendly, I bet the number of people commuting by bike would jump substantially.

(2) Tuesday night I went with a group of Boston area folks attending the conference to watch the Celtics game at a pub across the street from our hotel called the Spotted Dick. Get your mind out of the gutter. It's a kind of pudding. Despite the somewhat disappointing outcome (although I wasn't expecting them to win that game), it was a fun little pub with an excellent beer selection (I partook of a Smithwick's myself). Game 4 tomorrow!