Busy times in the "Rose City"

Me and Portland City engineer Peter Koonce relax near the river after a busy day touring the city

Well it's been a busy time since my last post, mainly because of PSU's Pedestrian & Bicycle Planning/Design course held all this week. The university's Ped/Bike Innovation Centre hosted 16 participants from all around the US and Canada and gave them an intensive week of lectures and field trips on best practice for providing for walking and biking. I think the most appreciated aspects were the field trips, that invariably ended up at a brewery for a beer at the end of the day!

Checking out some of the new South Waterfront development on foot...

...and some of the Inner Southeast by bike (part of a bike boulevard shown here)

I sat in and tagged along for much of the week and then on Friday gave them a presentation on some NZ research and practices that might be of interest over here. Also on Friday afternoon I gave another seminar in the Civil Eng Dept about some of my road safety (PhD) research; so Thursday was a busy day getting two presentations ready! Also this week I've caught up with a couple of fellow academics for lunch to compare notes about research projects. And I FINALLY finished the reviews/edits on my major cycle research report and was able to get rid of that - now onto the next job on the "to do" list...

Today I've been able to catch up on some much-needed sleep this morning and then visit another Portland institution - the Saturday Farmers Market. This is a long-standing event every Saturday almost all year round, where 2-3 parkland blocks in the heart of PSU are opened up to a wide variety of food/produce stalls and other entertainment like music, balloon animals, etc. It's very popular and today was no exception as I squeezed through the crowds and picked up a punnet of strawberries for my pantry.

Some of the action at the Portland Farmers Market

Well it's hard to believe there's now less than a week before I'm on a plane and heading home. I have another seminar next week as well as a meeting with one of the region's councillors to discuss their transportation programme. In between that there are plenty of other "to do" tasks to work on, as well as one last look around the city before I have to surrender my bike. The temperatures are also coming down - today it's not even getting past 20 deg and tomorrow, heaven forbid, it might even rain!

OK, another of Portland's incredible fountains (and some topless guys for you, Dianna!) - Lovejoy Fountain