I rode with Peggy on her tandem to the last of the first round of Regional Transportation Plan Workshops in McKinleyville, last night.

Peggy is sight-impaired, so this was a cool way to get to a workshop that would have been difficult to attend by transit. There was no bike parking out front so we brought our bikes into the Lobby. Jim from the Schattz Energy Lab rode over from Arcata with us.

There were diverse views represented at the workshop with the usual large number of cyclists and transit users, but a good contingent of folks interested in goods movement.

Palpable throughout the event was the sense that fuel prices compelled us to think deeply about how things would work in the future. There was some consensus at one table that the port was going to be very important for goods movement in the future, although how that would work would probably be different from the plans that have been put forward up until now.

On the ride home, we got to enjoy the cool night air and rehash the discussions that happened at the meeting. Tandems are pretty cool in that conversation is pretty easy, even when you are flying down a hill. Peggy also pointed out some of the smells that I probably don't pay enough attention to: mustard on the sides of the road, the smell of the riparian woodland next to the Mad River as we rode across the bridge, and of course, horse dookie.

Thanks to Peggy and Jim for the fun ride, and to everyone at the workshop for a good discussion of our transportation future.

Now it's watch and wait for the draft plan in a few months, and then we will be back into the thick of it.