For the next 3 weeks, Amie and will be living on Vashon Island, house and cat-sitting at a friend's cabin while she is travelling in France. We will be test driving the island commute, farmers markets, and checking out the other amenities that the island has to offer. The chickens have travelled with us and are occupying a large defunct coop, the equivalent of a chicken mansion with all-you-can eat buffet of greens and bugs.
Meanwhile, I am still working on a recap of my hike in the North Cascades over Labor Day, stay tuned.
Today I am leaving on an adventure into the North Cascades. I am currently on a northbound Amtrak train to Mt. Vernon with my bike and Bob trailer. From there I will ride northeastward to Baker Lake. At the top of Baker Lake I will stash the bike, put on my pack, and follow an alpine route over Mt. Blum, Mt. Hagen, and Bacon Peak. If all goes well, then I will rendezvous with Amie at the Watson Lakes trailhead.
At least, that is the plan. Right now it is pouring down rain, so I am expecting a wet ride today, and I am hoping that this will not be a repeat of last year's soggy Labor Day hike. The weather report indicates some clearing tomorrow, and then a nice Thursday and Friday, so I am hopeful.
Once I meet up with Amie, we will spend a few more days around Baker Lake going mushroom hunting and maybe fishing.
Last week I have been attending the American Public Transit Association's Multimodal Operations Planning Workshop.
On Saturday and Sunday prior to the conference, there were two full days of the Multimodal Tour. The Multimodal Tour basically consisted of a group of 20-30 transit geeks riding as many trains, buses, subways, and ferries as humanly possible. Along the way, various people spoke about the features to the system currently being ridden, both to the tour participants as well as unsuspecting revenue passengers. In two days, I became intimately familiar with the various transit agencies and their different modes operating in the tri-state region. We even visited Connecticut, a new state for me.
Then the real conference began on Monday. I learned lots about the latest things transit agencies are doing all around North America. There was a healthy representation from MTA NY Transit and NYDOT, and they shared much info about their recent projects. They also took us on impromptu guided tours of the subway. On Monday evening, there was a social hour at the New York Transit Museum.
On Tuesday, I gave a presentation on the topic of Bus Travel Time Monitoring and Reporting. The presentation went well, except that there apparently were some issues running a PowerPoint version 2003 file on a newer version of PowerPoint; the images I had inserted were not in the right spot and some were obstructing the text, thanks Microsoft! Tuesday evening, we were given a special tour of the famous abandoned City Hall subway station, plus some other abandoned underground workings, this was very cool.
Wednesday was the last day of the conference. There was a half-day of more presentations, and then more tours. We got to visit the new PATH station being built at the World Trade Center site, and the new subway station being built at Fulton Street. These tours were very extensive, we were given hard hats and taken into the working construction sites, where workers were welding, cutting rebar, and mixing concrete so close to us that any one of us could have hocked a lugi onto them.
On Thursday morning I boarded Amtrak's Lake Shore Limited train to Chicago, to visit Grandma for a few days. It was a very pleasant ride, the route first heads up the Hudson Valley, where the scenery included interesting items such as old bridges, derelict castles, and nuclear power plants. It was fun to follow along with a gps/map and pull up Wikipedia articles such as this one on my Droid as the train snaked its way up the valley.
Today, I spent the day roaming around downtown Chicago, riding els, checking out a street fair in Wicker Park, and scoping out some abandoned factories. The plan for tomorrow is to go on a long bike ride on the Prairie Path.
Finally, on Monday I will fly back to Seattle.
© 2010 Owen Kehoe
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