An image of Ron Sims riding his bicycle to work came to mind as I recently read three newspaper articles on city travel expenses, a pedestrian's death in West Seattle and the last about Seattle's police shortage. A strange connection here, you may well ask. I'll explain.

Sims is probably a man who understands from experience the perils of bicycling in this "bicycle friendly" city and, by extension, the perils of the pedestrian. He also probably thinks that it's valuable to see the city from his bicycle seat once in a while and not just from behind the smoked glass of his Lincoln Town Car which is driven by an armed police officer, a police officer who might better serve the city from the seat of a patrol car. Sims is probably aware of the dangers faced by the bicycle commuter from West Seattle who travels across Harbor Island and along Alaska Way among the eighteen-wheelers. Sims probably understands that it's better to travel the world without a bodyguard and that it's probably OK to travel the streets of our city without the same guard.

I somehow get the impression that Sims is a leader who understands that leading is not accomplished from the cocoon that is formed by a town car bubble protected by an armed guard. This impression is formed partially when I see Sims running on a treadmill at my West Seattle gym, no armed guard standing at his side keeping us commoners away.

Greg Nickels could take a lesson by walking along his block in West Seattle to the bus stop at Admiral and 47th Avenue where a pedestrian was run down and killed. He could cross Admiral at this very dangerous intersection, dangerous for pedestrians, not for those in Lincoln Town Cars guarded by armed police officers. He could get onto a bus and ride to work even if "it doesn't work" for him. He could even travel the world as do the rest of us, without a police officer at his side, thus keeping the cocoon unbroken. He could take this police officer and put him or her back on the street.

What's the point of all this? Maybe it's simply that our mayor ought to be willing to see our city as most of us do, not from behind smoked glass and with the protection of an armed guard, (Are we commoners that dangerous?) but from street level, unfiltered, even on foot or from the inside of a bus. It seems to work for Ron Sims.

P.S. The Toyota Prius without the smoked glass would make a great mayor's car. And maybe the mayor could even drive it.

David Kannas

Admiral