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Monday, May 12, 2003

"Bub" from Ingram called with a wild, unwieldy and wholly unworkable idea, just the kind I love.

It seems Bub works the 3-to-11 p.m. shift as a lab technician at Mercy Hospital, commuting Downtown via the 100 bus. Once or twice a bus has passed him by, and he has gone back to the lab for a night's sleep. On Friday night, as a test, Bub even walked the 7.5 miles home.

With potential transit cuts looming, Bub and workers like him might soon have little choice. The Port Authority needs to find some combination of service cuts or transit increases that will save $14 million in the next fiscal year. Cutting all weekday service after 9 p.m. is one of the possibilities on the menu. That would save $5 million.

So Bub -- who doesn't want his name in the paper -- has an idea for a new kind of race in Pittsburgh. He calls it "The Race To Get Home Before Sunrise."

In this race, contestants would try to walk or jog home from work in the middle of the night. First person who makes it wins.

There are, of course, innumerable problems to overcome. Depending on the number of competitors, there would be tens to thousands of different starting and finish lines. No two courses would be the same. Cheaters could prosper. And, as the race would be run in those wee hours when the flotsam and jetsam of public life are out and about, the first-aid booths might be overrun.

But Bub says if you look at the statistics, driving home isn't all that safe either.

Bub was having second thoughts the day after he offered this idea to me. He remembered going to a transit rally Downtown last fall that attracted only about 50 people, and that was in the light of day. The Race To Get Home Before Sunrise might not attract more than a handful.

But I assured him that if I dropped every idea that wasn't workable, this column would be blank much of the time.

So I called J. Larry Kuzmanko, father of the Pittsburgh Marathon and now Allegheny County's director of special events. I knew he would be intrigued, and Kuzmanko was even more in the mood to hear about this one because he'd just been hit by a bus.

Yeah. When he heard the race idea, he accused me of calling just to bust his chops, but I really didn't know his Honda Accord had been rear-ended coming off the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Monroeville 2 1/2 weeks ago. I'm just lucky that way.

The outlandishness of this idea provided immediate therapy for Kuzmanko. He quickly pinpointed the two people we'd need to make this race a success.

Rosie Ruiz, who famously "won" the Boston Marathon in 1980 by entering the course at Mile 25, would have to be named a race director. Otherwise, Ruiz would win The Race To Get Home By Sunrise by starting at the end of her own driveway.

"Baghdad Bob," deposed Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, was Kuzmanko's choice for co-director. Who better to tell us how the race was going?

"Every destination is perfectly covered by race officials. Each one of the 157,681 participants is being watched closely. We expect no problems from the infidels."

Perhaps, like Mr. Tomato Head, this idea doesn't quite make it -- which is too bad. The prospect of thousands of people on the streets of Pittsburgh, even for one night, warms my civic heart. And, as Bub from Ingram said, it would be interesting to see how many South Hills commuters, who have never come Downtown any way but through a tunnel, make it over Mount Washington.

Meantime, the $14 million hole in the transit budget still gapes.

Anyone who doesn't want The Race To Get Home Before Sunrise to be a nightly chore for thousands can speak at the Port Authority's public hearing from noon to 8 p.m. May 21 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Downtown. People can call 412-566-5103 to register in advance, but I'm told almost every three-minute slot in the eight-hour hearing is already filled.

And that's without Baghdad Bob.