Keep Austin cruising
The Texan welcomes the 40,000 bikers that will converge on Austin Thursday for the begining of the Republic of Texas Biker Rally.
Hotels will see a lot of business, cheap domestic beer will flow like water and the Austin Police Department will get a chance to practice its domestic-disturbance response skills.
Austin needs bikers more than the bikers need a place to crash for the weekend, and it's nice to see the city living up to its weird motto by accommodating events outside the mainstream.
The city's three-day shift into some parallel universe where motorcycles are everywhere, and there are more bikers than college students on Sixth Street is welcomed.
Events like this one help keep Austin unique from the rest of the state, and it's worth closing down Congress Avenue just to scare away Westlake parents from heading downtown for a few months.
Plus it would be pretty cool if the biker participants formed a giant posse and "lobbied" lawmakers to come up with a school finance compromise.
T-U-I-T-I-O-N
Anurag Kashyap, an eighth-grader from Poway, Calif., burst into tears and ran to his father after realizing he'd won the 78th Annual National Scripps Spelling Bee.
The Texan sympathizes with Kashyap's reaction to the win. After all, not every kid has a chance to compete in the World Series of spelling bees - let alone win.
Were we to ever miraculously be able to spell the winning word, "appoggiatura," off the top of our heads (which means "a melodic tone"; we had to look it up), we would have cried ourselves out of a mixture of disbelief and the massive headache that must ensue from 19 rounds of spelling smack-down.
While firmly believing Kashyap earned his $30,000 winnings, we would like to offer him a bit of friendly advice: Save that money to spend on college, kid. Knowing how to spell words like "trouvaille" ("windfall") may be cool, but it won't get you anywhere outside junior high.
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