Guus Bosman

I spoke at the County Board meeting tonight to support the new bicycle plan. It updates the 10 year old existing plan, and is the fifth one Arlington has adopted -- a sign off how long the bicycle history goes back here, which is cool.

Arlington is making decent progress with protected bikelanes. The plan is to build more of them and this formal Plan helps codify that.

I spoke for only a minute or so, but it felt good to make my voice heard.

Before the board meeting I hang out with many of my Twitter buddies, several of who I met for the first time in person tonight.

The American Legion/APAH plan was officially approved by the County Board today. This is the development in our neighborhood that I was part of the Site Plan Review Committee for.

I couldn't attend today but watched the discussion via livestream. Good discussion on the future east-west connection.

We went to vote this morning. Always a good feeling.

On our way out we saw Matt, who is running for County Board, and he took our picture.

We went to the County again, the third time in three months, to give feedback for a revision of the Transportation Master Plan.

There are positive developments in County policy, and it's good to come out and support the good cause.

This week the County started working on the first phase of the new sidewalk at Johnson and 13th Street. In the median of Kirkwood there'll be a new bio-retention element, which is what they've started on.

Per an email from the County: "The NC street improvement element is currently at 75% design review comments, and will likely be ready for a neighborhood final design meeting by early 2019."

We went to an open house where protected bike lanes for Veitch were presented.

It was in the Navy League building in Court House and we went there by bakfiets.

For the kids there was coloring and I spoke with two of the designers which was nice. The proposal is really nice, they even have a special bus stop that doesn't infringe on the bike lane.

After dinner we went to Oak Grove Park. It was renovated this winter and today the fence was removed -- so we wanted to check it out. It's so nice!

The tree trunk that is carved in the shape of animals came out beautifully.

On Monday night there was a walking tour and open house of the proposed YMCA redevelopment. It was interesting to walk around the block with the County representative, who explained some of the constraints of the terrain, and pointed out various things.

It was good to visualize the plans by walking around. This picture was taken where most of the plans call for a road connection onto Kirkwood Rd, there is currently a drive-way there.

Afterwards there was an open house, with updated plans. It seems likely that there will be townhouses along 13th St, where currently the parking lot of the YMCA is.

At the other side of the street is the YMCA. It's a wonderful facility to have so nearby, but the building dates from the 1950's and it's pretty small.

There is a long-term plan to replace the old building with a new one, and in the process of preparing for that the County is evaluating the zoning of that property, as well as several neighboring properties.

This is going to be a very long process, but we'll be living here for a long time so it's interesting to follow. Some of the proposals are a little too high for my taste -- in the most aggressive proposal there would be a 5-story building facing 13th Street -- but it's great to see plans for improvement.

This County staff presentation from December has some good information.

After a renovation the Quincy park playground reopened yesterday. We went to check it out, as did many other families -- it was very crowded. The next day it was cold and very windy and we went again, and it was virtually empty.

It's a beautiful playground, with equipment that is fun for bigger kids too, which is nice because Nora is starting to get a little too old for the things at Hayes park. Adrian loves the music equipment. Not so much to make music yet, but there are "sticks" there to play with, and he loves grabbing those. Leo enjoys playing with the gate of the playground.