From City Hall to Tokyo

I am off tomorrow to Tokyo. I found myself in City Hall today talking to traffic engineers and policy makers from Houston, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Chicago about creating a bicycle infrastructure that attracts the next segment of population of cyclists. I found this old photo of me taken by Jonathon Maus of BikePortland.org standing outside City Hall contemplating the future of people on bicycles and my career in making our transportation system more sustainable. My carfree conference shirt was as close as I get to being a radical.
So today, City Hall, tomorrow Tokyo! It came as a shock as I was reviewing my ticket that my flight there is 11 hours, but I lose 16 and on the way back I leave on Tuesday at 3:30 PM and get back at 8:15 AM the same day! I had to go check the Delta website to verify. I consider myself pretty good at math, but that logic defied my brain at this stage of the night. I am really looking forward to the trip as a way to learn about Japanese culture and experience a City on the world's scale. Much like NYC, Mexico City, London, and Paris... Tokyo is one of those that I think you can consider yourself worldly if you've been to a few of these. More posts from the land of the rising sun.

2010 Family Portraits

In what's becoming a family tradition, we had portraits taken by John Lemkuhl. This year we went over to Washington Park to enjoy the scenes of the City. It was a beautiful Sunday evening and the weather was perfect for taking photos.
John does a great job and it's been nice to work with him the past few years. He takes the photos as a benefit for Llewellyn Elementary, so it is a great thing that we really appreciate. The photos have turned out great and we're glad that we can share them with friends and family. This will be the first year blogging about the photos, so there's a new thing.

BC example of Garbage

On a recent trip to Vancouver BC, I saw this ad on the Skytrain. The point is that you had a large share of garbage.... certainly makes you think about our contribution to landfills, etc. I can't believe I am anywhwere near this, but it is hard to visualize my contribution outside of our home. There are so many externalities that exist in personal waste. Yikes! Very effective.