I stopped at a local coffee shop to get breakfast this morning, and at first was the only customer inside. A skinny man walked in behind me and had this exchange with the staff:

Man: I’d like a dozen bagels.

Clerk #1: That’ll be $8.50

Clerk #2: (starting to grab bagels) Is this for here or to go?

Nope. I’m just really hungry. Here’s your sign.

I’ve been looking for a map of Colorado, and this is the one Amazon recommended for me:

The Other Colorado

First, hasn’t Colorado historically been a bit… squarer? Second, what aspects of a map make “Home, Garden & Pets” an appropriate category? And third, how large is this map that it costs $117?

I recently took my first trip on Southwest Airlines, with my first layover in Chicago Midway. It’s a fairly mundane airport, really, though anyone who’s seen the show Airline will recognize the scenery.

While strolling down the concourse, however, these doors caught my attention:

For Emergency Only

Beside the completely open passageway spanning the entire width of the concourse are two tiny doors to be used “For Emergency Only.” Please, in a calm and orderly manner, move over to the right, open the door, and step through.

(Full disclosure: a gap in the ceiling suggests a gate can be lowered across the concourse to seal it off, but this does not make a freestanding “emergency only” door any less hilarious.)

Some cities build dedicated bike lanes to encourage residents to travel by bicycle on city streets. Others build dedicated lanes for busses to ensure that busses can travel faster than cars in heavy traffic.

Boulder, Colorado, unable to decide which of these options to pursue, combined the two:

Bike Bus Only

I wish I could’ve been at that planning meeting. “I’ve got it! Let’s take the smallest, most fragile vehicle on the road — the bicycle — and make it share a lane with the largest, heaviest, most massive vehicle! This plan is sheer elegance in its simplicity!”

The Boulder Creek Festival this year (back at the end of May) fell on a particularly hot day, so we were excited to see this booth in our wanderings:

Lemonade! Maybe!

This appears, at first glance, to be a fairly typical lemonade stand. But upon closer inspection the tiny yellow sign in the window (beside the Visa and MasterCard logos) says, “This booth does not sell lemonade.”

They seem to have failed to grasp a certain key element of the “lemonade stand” concept.

(Full disclosure: another lemonade stand was located in the adjacent space, and the sign clarified that not selling lemonade was part of their contract with the Creek Festival. However, I maintain that having a lemonade stand that doesn’t sell lemonade is a bit misleading with or without a contract in play.)

I noticed this in a parking garage in downtown Boulder, CO:

DirecTV While You Park?

Well, sure. Why wouldn’t you have a satellite dish on your parking garage!

This storefront in Estes Park, Colorado paints an interesting picture of what the kids are wearing these days:

Kids Outfits

This is never a good sign:

Google Does Not Exist

At least it’s not “Google can’t be found.”  The irony would be stifling.

There are certain aspects of Verizon’s service I won’t miss, though in their defense my Internet connection has only malfunctioned once in the four years I’ve had it.

I accidentally zoomed to the wrong spot on a Google Map and ended up seeing Laramie, Wyoming.  Also: an inexplicably Asian name and a place called “Test – Wrong Locality.”

Google Maps: "Test - Wrong Locality"

Laramie, Wyoming: home of Google Maps’ best test cases.