2000 was the year my mother died, quickly and not unexpectedly, from a heart attack. That was July 30th in Kansas, while Marion, Hazel & I were in Oregon enjoying a good view of the partial solar eclipse. I was in a metaphorical eclipse for the rest of the year, and wasn't able to bring myself to write a newsletter at year-end. I'll now mention the travel highlights as a few days' cruise for Hazel & me with our friends the Wolfs on their boat in the Strait of Georgia (E. side of Vancouver Island, B.C.), and the 3 of us going to Europe in mid-September for a week in England and 5 in Italy. We spent 2 weeks in Lucca at a very pleasant home-stay while taking full-time Italian classes, and walked for 3 days hotel-to-hotel in Chianti. But in 2001 I've become more used to living with my parents as a rich and useful collection of memories, and felt a lot brighter, even without any special travels.

My enthusiasm for cycling, of course, continues. My mileage is slightly ahead of years since '95 though it won't break 6k. Best rides were a 2-day on my own to the coast (out mostly on dirt, back on pavement), a 7-day loop of the Willamette Valley with ~180 others (the Oregon Bike Ride), and a 3-day trip with Hazel (to Newberg, "camping" in the Biggerstaffs' yard).

In March I began working full-time at Metro, still as a volunteer, basically on the bicycle-mapping project I began with them 2 years before. We've had the short-term goal of putting together the 2002 edition of their BikeThere! map. This is a beautiful $6 product, printed on a Tyvek-like material and sold at bikeshops & bookstores around town. They've now sold out of the 20,000 they printed of the 1999 edition. Well, this work has been great fun for me; picture me packing my lunch and toodling off on the Raleigh 3-speed (with wicker basket & rubber pedals) to the office every day. I've learned loads more about GIS, done plenty of bike-based "field work", and assembled data from the bicycle specialists from many of the 24 cities, 3 counties and state road jurisdictions. We now have final drafts and will be going to press in February.

Recently at Metro I also helped design a sidewalk inventory for the region. Tri-Met, our transit agency, got $2mil to spend on filling some gaps for pedestrian access to transit. We've hired two interns to work part-time on it for 6 months and I've written tools to convert digital data from Portand and help them input data from other jurisdictions and edit the collected results.

It was Marion who told me to "get a day job" so that she could be the at-home parent, after about 6 months of her working again at Solution Logic. We all continue to feel quite happy and lucky to be able to live with this flexibility. Changes on her shift include dropping Campfire Kids (keeping Girl Scouts) and changing piano classes from group to private. Marion began giving weekly classes in the Logo programming language to Hazel and a bunch of other homeschoolers. Hazel's interest in Pokemon collecting grew into playing the trading card game in a weekly league.

If you've read this far, you might have time to write us(jack, marion, and/or hazel @newlevant.com) or check out some of our new photos.