Seeds for the Future

I recently reconnected with a woman I knew when we were both teenagers. Through the course of catching up with each other's lives, I found out she's now a teacher. Her school is located in the Columbia Gorge city of Arlington, Oregon, just across the river from the Lewis & Clark Bicycle Trail. It's a charter school and as such, their teaching model is a bit different. She invited me to stop in sometime to observe. I realized that Arlington is only a couple of hours from Portland and would be a breeze to include in my NACIS (North American Cartographic Information Society) spring board-meeting road trip.

Now, while I have spoken to groups of adults about Adventure Cycling and bicycle travel, I had never specifically tailored my talk to adolescents. Though I was nervous about this audience, I shouldn't have been. The kids were respectful, curious and well prepared -- a real joy to talk with about cartography and bicycle travel.

As I wrapped up the formal part of my talk, I mentioned Special Project Director Ginny Sullivan's son Mac's A Bike Story for Cory blog. I wanted them to be left with the idea that this bicycle travel thing is not just for grown ups. Then I passed out a simple map of their town and asked them to locate all the things they thought traveling cyclists might appreciate knowing about Arlington. The things they mapped ranged from locations to do laundry to the city park to churches and the local golf course. I was thrilled to see how much some of them really got into it.

I know I was revved up by their enthusiasm and hope I got their minds spinning on the options available to them in relation to making maps and riding their bikes anywhere.

Photo by Lorena Woods.

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GEOPOINTS BULLETIN is written by Jennifer 'Jenn' Milyko, an Adventure Cycling cartographer, and appears weekly, highlighting curious facts, figures, and persons from Adventure Cycling's Route Network with tips and hints for personal route creation thrown in for good measure. She also wants to remind you that map corrections and comments are always welcome via the online Map Correction Form.

Source: http://blog.adventurecycling.org/2012/05/seeds-for-future.html

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