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meeting an old friend in Amsterdam

Today I was presented with a breakfast box by the staff at the university where I'm staying. Unfortunately, the bulk of it was bread, cheese, and yoghurt and all three are off my diet. So I traded it all for some fruit left over from some seminar.

Then I went into Amsterdam to meet an old friend from our mutual days on the board of directors of Cycle Toronto, a road safety advocacy group in a city where one cyclist or pedestrian dies every week in road violence, on average. Two former such advocates meeting in one of the world's most pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly cities was a bit on the nose, but that's where she and her husband (of "Not Just Bikes" fame) moved to have somewhere for their kids to live that was safe.

I suppose Mari and I did the same thing, though in a round-about way.

Anyway, the weather was fantastic and we had Greek coffee in the sun by the river. Then she showed me some of the redesigned streets in the neighborhood. It's almost depressing how advanced the Netherlands is, really.