Khakis anyone?

Last fall I was approached by an advertising agency representing Life Khakis.  They wanted to make a video of people doing interesting jobs and also wearing khaki pants.  I apparently fit the bill nicely.  We spent one afternoon and then a Sunday morning filming me out riding the bike I built and then got some shots of me in the basement working on a bamboo bike.  The end result looks pretty cool.

http://lifekhaki.com/#!/video/drive

Vancouver

God bless junkets. Jennifer had a paper accepted for the American Educational Research Association conference held in Vancouver BC. A more spectacularly situated city I have yet to see.  Downtown is a mass of aqua colored glass sky scrapers set against some remarkably beautiful mountains and the sea. It also seems to have the best network of parks of anyplace I've ever been. Stanley Park is great and there are dozens of cool little squares and the like all around the city. That said, the city also has this totally surreal vibe of a place whose main product seems to be livability, almost all of the construction is new residential high rises that are going up literally wherever you look. Our hotel is right by three different sites where they are building condos. Nobody really seems to work here, at least not like the other really rich cities that I've been to like New York or London. There every one seems to be rushing off some where, but in Vancouver it's like they are all just chilling. I speculate that there is just an enormous amount of second home ownership that occurs here. You make your money doing whatever in Tokyo or China and then you move to Vancouver for the prestige of it or the parks or the nearby mountains or the Marina or the friendly Canadians. Don't get me wrong, it's great, just weird.

Gardening

Sawzalls on a bamboo rod with some good old fashioned duct tape makes a decent pole saw. This wasn't exactly what Jennifer had in mind when she said, "Let's go to the garden and get it ready for spring planting." But it kept me occupied and out of trouble.

You put that on your pizza?

Yup, cracked an egg on the pizza right before we threw it in the oven.pretty awesome despite my initial misgivings.

Distracted Walking Only Lane

What we've been up to at the Mayor's Office of Transportation and Utilities: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/April-Fools-Day-Joke-Raises-Awareness-on-Distracted-Walking--145512585.html