Pedali colors at 2002 NorthWest Tandem Rally
In May we enjoyed half a week in France, one in England and two in Italy. We had a rental car and made our base in a tiny hilltown called Lucignano for 6 days, making a day trip to our friends Aldo & Mughetto's fine party celebrating their younger daughter's first communion. In London I was very pleased to be led around town on bike by Quil Forbes who runs the world's first web-based bike trip planner from cyclemaps.com.
When we got back Marion began full-time at Oregon's Health Services, using her Java skills on their database modernization. She hardly lets a day go by without saying how grateful she is to have this job.
Hazel and I are still evolving our homeschooling weekday routine. We continue Girl Scouts, piano, art and roller skating. A couple of pieces of her artwork from 2 years ago are included in her teacher's website. A pastel portrait (her best work yet) is among 21 of my 2003 photos and was part of her application for an exhibit this next March. Hazel's adventures on the Web include creating her own site for her amusement & friends entertainment.
Summer highlights were listening to chamber music with my nephew John who visited for a week from Kansas and my trip with Hazel to Colorado where we chased butterflies with my great lifelong friend, Chuck Slater. Hazel and I taught juggling and learned to dance the Cotton Eye Joe at our 6th unschoolers' Chautauqua.
In August I did my 3rd Oregon Bike Ride among about 160 mostly-over-40s for a week around the high desert of central Oregon with excellent food, support and camping accomodations. I put up 33 photos taken by my main riding pals. Other top rides were my club's 200km "brevet" (the shortest of the qualifier distances for Paris-Brest-Paris) and the beautiful day of 90 miles from home over Lolo Pass to stay with family and friends on their pear farm near Hood River.
In October I started working on the long-conjectured new edition of the Washington County bike map. I've gathered road and airphoto data covering the county, plus parts of the six around it, and will add topography, etc. for presentation in the style of my earlier project, Metro's BikeThere! map. I plan to take this one through several rounds of drafts that should get lots of public review before publication in early summer.
We've been dancing a ton (getting gradually better), especially waltz & contras, and are planning to go to a waltz week at Stanford in June.
You can write us: jack, marion, and/or hazel @newlevant.com or check out earlier years' photos (and the old news):