Angel made a video of the hike we did up Spencer Butte in January after the first good snow. It was our first hike on the butte and a great time. We can’t wait to get to go hike up it again.
Photos from the hike are in this older post: Snow on Spencer Butte
While perusing the City of Eugene today I was looking at the Traffic Safety Devices Page and found in the PDF for Bike Traffic Signal a photo I took of the signal on 18th and Alder. The city had asked to use it, but I just hadn’t looked at what they ending up using it for. It was nice to see that I had photo in there. 🙂
Original photo they used here.
I really like how the city has set up the Traffic Safety Devices, it also includes information about: bike boxes, buffer lanes, sharrows, back-in diagonal parking, stutter flashes in crosswalks, and green bike lanes.
Today was a great day for riding. Earlier in the day I went out for a ride with Kori from GreenCycle Services on a Christmas tree pick up in North Eugene. It was nice to get to know him more. Then I met up with Angel after she was done with all her classes for the day at school. We went for a ride around the river paths, then went home to eat, where I had a stupendous peanut butter sandwich on toasted Dave’s Killer Bread heels (I LOVE heel sandwiches). Then went out for a solo ride into the South Hills of Eugene. I went down Willamette to Fox Hollow to McBeth. This was the first time I went that way. Normally I take Fox Hollow back into town. Going toward McBeth this time was fun. I found Bill’s Bench (if you know anything more about it, I am interested), it’s a nice little bench right off Fox Hollow Rd set aside to watch sunset right on the road. On the plaque it reads:
“Bill’s Bench
Bill Sloat, a long-time Fox
Hollow Resident, loved this
spot and dreamed of a bench
here so cyclists and others
could enjoy it too.
Placed by family and friends
of William R. Sloat with
permission of the Dale Smith
Family, owners of this land.
1991”
After that I saw a flock turkeys, a sheep/goat with large straight up horns, and three American bison. Sadly the turkeys ran when I got closer, and the sheep/goat and bison were too far away to get a good photo. It was a great sunset ride, with some well deserved pasta when I got home.
Yesterday was a bike group bike ride organized by Eugene Bicyclist. It was a great ride even though there was some rain. There were 16 people who showed up, plus 6 kids in tow. We had a great ride around the bike paths around the Willamette River. It was about a 10 mile ride from EWEB Plaza, to the Autzen Footbridge past the Delta Ponds, then on to Ninkasi Brewing for drinks, where we had a nice time talking. It was great to meet all these people and make new friends.
Thank you to all who came. It was a wonderful time; hopefully we can have another meet up.
All the photos are also on my Flickr.
A little distorted post ride panorama.
More photos from others there
EugeneSRTS – Flickr
Eugene Bicyclist – Post: A little rain never hurt anyone
We made a nice video of the time. Sadly I forgot my GoPro at home, but Angel still got some good footage. Enjoy.
Special thanks to fellow bloggers:
Eugene Bicyclist
EugeneSRTS
Eugene Doom Bike
And businesses:
Ninkasi Brewing for being so kind after the ride.
GreenCycle Services for joining us on our ride.
Angel and I got ice cream from Viva! Vegetarian Grill today. The second greatest vegan ice cream, only to my own. 😉 Viva has the best soft serve, with great flavors to choose from, all organic, with specialty ingredients. They have new flavors every couple weeks. Angel got Mocha and I got Apple Spice. After that, we rode down to the river paths around Alton Baker Park to see the flooded areas. The flooding had receded, but the water is still high enough that some of it covers or reaches the edges of the path. Later saw a Penny-farthing.
Here’s a nice video we made of the ride.
Friday I ate pizza with Angel between classes at Pegasus Pizza. Afterwards, I went on a ride out to Fern Ridge Lake. It’s nice to get out on a good ride during the break in the winter weather. I had never ridden out to the lake itself; Angel and I had only ridden out to the end of Fern Ridge Bike Path on the first day we moved to Eugene. It was my First Post on my blog. I didn’t know where I was going to go I just figured if I went west from Fern Ridge Bike Path I would have to run into the lake. So ended up going straight out Royal Ave, right of the bike path, and ran into something I didn’t know existed (it’s not marked on Google Maps) but it was a part of the Fern Ridge Wildlife Area. Royal Ave runs right to the divide of the Royal Amazon Unit and Fisher Butte Unit. It was a great ride and when the weather gets nicer I will have to ride out again and spend more time hiking around the wildlife area.
Here are two panoramas from the ride. Click photo to view fully.
This is a large field of geese; all the black dots are geese feeding.
From a bird watching deck at the Fern Ridge Wildlife Area.
I took this nice little video, it’s so calm out there. Just the wind and birds.
-Sorry there was a mess up and the full 3:47 video posted. I might fix it later.
Last week (1-16-11), Angel and I decided to go hiking on Spencer Butte for the first time since we moved to Eugene. We can see the butte from our home, with it just being 4 miles away. I have ridden my bike around it, but we just haven’t ever gone hiking there. Eugene seems to have enough inside the town to keep us busy for quite some time. With the snow falling the day before, we really wanted to get in the hills to get good photos of it. I got great use out of my new Merrell shoes in their first real hike, and I used the GoPro with its head mount to get some nice photos and videos on the hike. The video of the hike will be posted later.
Panorama Photos
I also took some great panorama photos. Follow the links below to view them in their entirety.
• 360° spherical view on the path up the butte in the woods on the trail(Here).
• 360° view up at the summit(Here).
*Update: Video from the hike(Here).
Photos of the hike and climb up to the summit of Spencer Butte, Flickr Set.
Today(1-15-12) was the first day it snowed in Eugene, Oregon this season. It didn’t snow much, some heavy flurries, but nothing that sticks. Angel and I walked around a bit and took some nice photos and videos of the day. I wish I could have gotten up in the hills where it looked like it was frosted over, and might have stuck to the ground a little more.
Short Video I took during the first snow fall.
Time-Lapse Video of the snow fall.
I shot some video with my helmet camera riding North Bound on South Willamette, between 24th and 29th. The city is working on plans for South Willamette that are hopefully going to include good facilities for bicycles, pedestrians, and motor vehicles. To read more about the city’s plans, here is more information.
Video was taken going North Bound on the roadway on January 11, 2012 around 3:40pm.
You can see/hear how bad the roads are right now, and that there is no place for cyclists to safely ride. I live right off of this street and find this road very uninviting in its current conditions to both pedestrians and cyclists. When walking on the sidewalks, there are frequent driveways going out into the street, and if you (or a driver) aren’t paying attention you could easily be hit by someone pulling in, or exiting any of these driveways. Angel and I feel like we are cut off behind this road with no side streets that can truly get us anywhere necessary. The road is too narrow to allow for 4 full lanes of cars and bicy
clists to ride safely alongside. You can see in the video 2 cars squeeze by me, the second aggressively honking, then squeezing between me and another car quickly only to stop a couple of yards ahead at an intersection. I am an experienced cyclist, and used to conditions like this, but would not recommend for other cyclists to ride on this street in this condition. I myself don’t enjoy riding on this street and avoid it whenever possible. Hopefully the new plans will address some of these problems, making it safer for all to use.
Here are some photos I like that I have taken since the first of the year. Including photos from today’s ride to West Eugene.
I grew up in central Illinois. In August of 2007, I bought my first real “adult bike” after needing a bike to save money on gas. Since then I have had many bikes. In April of 2010, after moving out to Oregon, I got my beloved Surly Long Haul Trucker. I have put a lot of good miles on the bike. This blog is about my life in Eugene.
Contact me at:
BreadBike [at] gmail [dot] com
Bread Bike 