With the purchase of flights my mind is now focussed on a new adventure.
Last October whilst at the RTPI Young Planners Conference I found out about the Portland to Portland ride, and very quickly signed up. Having decided that with a tumultuous previous year or so and education fatigue I would defer my masters course and look for work whilst aiming towards a transcontinental bike ride with a bit more focus than previous excursions of mine.
And now with the job climate warming up as much as the winter climate I hope that investing time, effort and money in this trip will eventually pay off more than new anecdotes and impressive pictures. The ride is right up my alley, combining cycling, classic American landscapes, city and transport planning and, I'm sure, a little social activities and networking.
I have volunteered to do as much of the leg work on the research for the project as I can. As i first stated when I originated this blog; there are plenty of eloquent and knowledgable advocates for improvements in cycling facilities and culture out there already, and I don't really want to risk just re-hashing what's already out there. The focus, at least from my perception at the moment, for the research of the P2P ride is that as well as drawing examples from the case study cities that we ride through, we will be able to add to this first hand experience as visitors to the cities, augmented by discussion with locals and regular users of these systems.
So this post for now is a statement of intent, to keep an honest track of my progress in terms of fitness, research and plans for beyond P2P.
I'll keep track of training rides.
I'll add notes regarding research, be they specific to a city or a particular publication.
I'll hone my writing skills to make this informative, entertaining, legible and most of all useful to my future self to add further perspective to the trip and the early part or 2013.
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