Diane Bishop, my bike contact with the City of Eugene, had emailed me a set of directions to get onto a greenway, down along the river and into town to meet her. [..] I met Diane at a beautiful rose garden along the trail and we rode on to City Hall. There I met Beth Forrest, the other person coordinating my visit and then finally Mayor Jim Torrey. This being my first visit to a city on behalf of the NBG and the first time I remember meeting a mayor, I was a bit nervous. I wonder if it was obvious, he started out by joking with me "I didn't wear a tie today, I figured you wouldn't be wearing a tuxedo on your way down."

Feeling a bit more at ease we talked about their greenways and I spent quite a bit of time telling them what a good job they were doing. He gave me the proclamation (they're actually going to mail it so it doesn't get trashed riding down in my bags) and a bunch of Eugene novelty items. We went outside to check out my bike and get a couple more pictures before the Mayor had to leave to go back to his business.

Afterwards Diane took me to lunch at this wonderful Indian-Mediterranean restaurant. As we ate we looked over the brand new copy of ODOT's bike map Diane dug up for me (if I'd known she had one I wouldn't have ridden the 6 miles to recover the old one) and planned a route south. What a great experience!!

Andrew Morton