PTT: statement

just about to swing out to our second Portland Traffic and Transportation class, a joint venture by p.s.u. and the p.d.o.t. wonderful!
last week we got to meet Sam Adams, portland's transportation commissioner, who spoke for about an hour about the responsibilities, limitations and current proposals presented by his office. we have the greatest transportation manager on the planet!
our homework for today was to provide a statement of a possible final project we want to pursue. here's mine:

(nonbinding, preliminary, quite possibly logistically impervious)

Project Statement

AREA OF FOCUS

I would like to focus on road-sharing education, primarily between bicycles and motorists. Laws affecting bicycle/motorist usage are changing with far greater rapidity in the State of Oregon than most road-users can track. Misunderstandings in regard to rules of the road are one of the most frequent causes for frustration and collision between bicyclists and drivers. By promoting legal transportation education, we can create safer streets.

PROJECT

Driver and bicycle user manuals are two independent DMV publications with very little commonality, and I would seek to change that. We can provide an updated, integrated road manual offered by the DMV that can be used by all users of roadways in order to create mutual awareness of road-sharing rules. This could also involve developing an easily implementable system for continuing education, and here is the wishlist:

*integrated DMV Road-User Manual to replace Bicycle and Driver Manuals

*bicycle rule integration into DMV tests;

*requisite bike legal clinic attendance for all parties in bike-car collision cases;

*optional fine waives/reductions for bike-borne fines in return for bike legal clinic attendance;

*law change updates provided to media to be mentioned during traffic reports.

hmmmm . . . a little too bold? dependent on swiftly moving bureaucracy? and again i say hmmmm . . .

linfield debut

friday was one heck of a crazy day! i woke up at about 5am, and Sparky and i snookered our way to downtown in just enough time to get hot water for Breakfast on the Bridges, voter registration cards, and signs made such as "exercise . . . your right to vote" and "are you registered to vote at your current address? reg. cards available here!". on the way to work, Sparky and i telepathized to finally name our lovely bambina trailer. so next time you see that three of us, kindly tell Minerva what a cute trailer she is. she likes that.
so anyway, we got to the bridge, broke out some hot water and plums that Joan our FABULOUS volunteer brought to the office, registered folks to vote, then busted away to prepare for Green Empowerment's Board of Director's meeting. five minutes before the meeting, i called Gwen Leonard to say that my voice still wasn't back (curses!), and she informed me that i was already on the program for the dedication to the Vivian Bull Music Building at linfield. this is my fault, as i didn't call her the day before. luckily, Gwen suggested that i could sing a little chinese ditty, which is about all my voice could handle.
just after the Board meeting, mom called and agreed to drive us to mcminnville. we arrived just in time for the earlier concert to hear the glorious personages of Brian Bartley and Joe Theissen sing (they're performing in ragtime until oct. 25th, and they are not to be missed). one person couldn't make it through the parking lot of dundee in time for the concert, so i pinch hit. it turned out much better than i was fearing! i asked for the audience's forgiveness and offered in trade an introduction to the songs in chinese. thankfully made it through "Yue Liang Dai Biao Wode Xin" and "Mai Tang Yuan" without too garish a passaggio.
everyone was there! it was a reunion of about an entire town that i had been missing! Wynn and others from the first baptist church, Donna Root, two Susans, Tiff, Tom Gressler and the Marshalls (sounds like a great band), a number of other professors, a lot of alumni with whom i share fond memories, they were all there. i think i hugged everyone on the planet. after the dedication and second concert, Gwen took any performers who could stay out to sushi. what a great conversation. what an utterly fantastic day! mom and i were glowing all the way home, and i couldn't stop gleaming all saturday.
more about saturday soon, but i don't want to bore my two readers any longer.

SSS - six string samurai

if you are ever in a position to need a macguyver-concocted roadside entertainment system, consider the following triumvirate: "Organic" Brian Scrivener, "Tall" Steve Kirkendall, Aaron "Transportation Diplomat" Tarfman.
thanks to them, the sidewalk on 24th and alberta was home to a showing of "six-string samurai" at this month's last thursday. more to come, with any luck!

last paddle hurrah in san fran

last weekend marked the final dragonboat competition of the year. held in san francisco, there were over 100 paddling teams that helped compose the weekend encampment on treasure island. i can't recall whether i've mentioned it before, but dragonboat competitions look not unlike a modern depiction of a medieval military campaign. there are a number of tents, each sporting its own banner and hosting its own distinctly-attired cadre bent on thwarting the other groups' dreams of victory by employing time-honored devices. races involve a closely-contained covey of odiferous folks who employ a lot of muscle and war cries to propel them to the finish line. the space between the finish line and a lot of expensive yachts was rather slender on treasure island, so we had to hold the boat quickly after crossing. i was in the 2nd bench for most of the races, so i had an intimate understanding of how imminently our potential rendezvous with yacht gunnels (and very possibly personal bankruptcy) was. a weekend of such close encounters rendered me unable to phonate as i repeatedly and loudly encouraged teammates to hold the boat. tee hee.

so that was the actual competition. now to san francisco. ahhh! Corey and i enjoyed beds in a chi-chi (sp?) hotel on market street secured by Debbye (thanks, Debbye!). Linda, Corey and i were hotel-mates for the weekend, and hilarity ensued. Corey got me a most humbling and treasured gift - travel scrabble. two of our three nights in san francisco were spent drinking wine and playing scrabble. it was delightful! a guilty squandering of a beautiful city's myriad opportunities, but we just couldn't help ourselves.
what did we do? we visited citylights books, walked around a lot, ate cheap pizza, walked around some more. the last day, i walked in the haight and golden gate park areas and returned to the waterfront to - you guessed it - walk around some more.
next to playing scrabble and paddling, the greatest pasttime was to be found in and around chinatown. it has been so long since i've spoken chinese with such wild abandon! most folks i met could speak mandarin, which is rare in portland (most speak cantonese). i shopped for cds that no one seemed to have. i continued my quest for portable chopsticks to replace mine, and no one had even heard of the idea before. i hunted for a restaurant with a chef from changchun or beijing to no avail. and i was unsuccesful every time, but completely in chinese which gave me the chance to speak mandarin some more with the next person or shop who didn't know or didn't have. it was fabulous!!! i went a few whole hours without speaking english. our last night in san fran, a group of castaways deigned to follow me in the winding route from our hotel to a restaurant that had been recommended by two different music store vendors, and we got to order a bunch off the menu (stir-fried eggplant and hot and spicy tofu . . . yumm). it was great! i have missed china, and san francisco is the nearest thing nearest to portland. what a find.

the only downside to the weekend was that i returned to portland with absolutely no voice (i will never yell that much again lest my voice leave and never return) and screaming muscles on the entire right side of my torso (i paddled all the races port-side, which will also never be repeated).

famous for a week

i'm blushing, positively blushing!

TOUR DE VOTE: ROUND 4

Stephanie Routh: Tour de Vote victor of the week!

Stephanie was a continually awesome presence in Building Votes office last week. On Monday, she showed up at the office with registration cards. On Wednesday, she helped-out with our captain training. And on Sunday, Stephanie ran into BV staff member, Alex, at Red and Black Café and handed him three more registration cards!

It was absolutely wonderful! For all her hard and persistent work we are happy to award Stephanie with a $25 gift certificate to Coventry Cycle Works on Hawthorne Blvd.

HAVE YOU JOINED THE TOUR? Register now to let us know you're participating -- and get to work! Opportunities abound. Register your friends and neighbors.

dragonboat sellwood

the varnish on my paddle dried just in time to use the New and Improved paddle on the waters during this weekend's sellwood race. the Castaways sported both a women's and a mixed team this year, and what a workout for the ladies! our first race was almost unbearably sluggish (were some of the men holding the back of the boat at the dock just so that we would appreciate them more during the mixed races?). our second race was almost 30 seconds faster, and we ended up with respectable times considering we had practiced as a group only twice before the competition.
the double duty definitely had a number of us huffing. a few times we stepped off the boat of one race and turned around and marshelled straight into the next one. no one can ever call us whimps! the stars of the day were, of course, Captain Darrell and Coach Fev, both sporting huge hearts and winning smiles straight through to a drinking foray at the Black Cat.
wanted to die sunday evening. very nearly did.

weekend craze

why i am a silly chiquita who doesn't know how to say "no":

this morning i went to work, delivered hot water for breakfast on the bridges and “birthday” flyers on both hawthorne and broadway, greeted bikers for two hours, went to work, am going to buy marine varnish to varnish my paddle before the race tomorrow, going to a movie with friends or disco dancing with other friends at a ballroom, then a midnight mystery ride, sleeping somewhere between the midnight ride and our 8am race tomorrow morning, registering folks to vote between races, meeting up with my family at some point, hanging with the team at the end of the evening before going to a friend’s birthday party, then more racing on sunday followed by a picnic for Shift (biking nonprofit) with more voter registering followed by (if i’m not too tired) a get-together with my friend Nicole.

doable? my head (and muscles) hurt already.