As a student at the University of Oregon, my main source of income was a federal program called work-study. The federal government paid 80 percent of the wages for part-time student employees, and non-profit organizations willing to pay the other 20 percent were eligible to hire students under the program. I received a call from Dave Brown, an assistant director of the Survival Center, an on-campus environmental group, asking me to work for them writing reviews of Forest Service plans.
The Survival Center was located in the latest, 1973 addition to U of O’s student union. I had office space, a desk, an IBM Selectric typewriter to write on, and a phone that was hooked into the state telephone network, allowing me to make unlimited calls to any city that had a state college or university. Although I rented a small room in a house in nearby Springfield for, as I recall, $55 a month, the Survival Center became my real home, and initially I only left because the building was closed to students after 11 pm. Later, they allowed students with a key to stay after 11 and I sometimes would work there until 2 or 3 in the morning.
I continued my cycling advocacy in a small way. Part of the cycling route between Eugene and Springfield was on a designated bike path that emptied onto a city street in Springfield. The city of Springfield had decided that it was too dangerous to let cyclists ride in the street and required that they use the sidewalk. The sidewalk wasn’t very wide and had something like 40 driveway cuts, each one requiring bicycles to go down a dip and then up a bump. Sometimes part of the sidewalk was blocked by signposts and it often had wet leaves, litter, and other obstacles. Continue reading
