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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, AUGUST 22, 2016
Photos from Kayla Jill Photography
Fuller Events, of Portland, will produce the finish line party in Seaside on Saturday. Race organizers are prepared for a repeat of last year’s inclement weather, which caused the
cancellation of the traditional finale celebration.
Hood to Coast: Comedian Kevin Hart will compete
Continued from Page 1A
wishing to see the event com-
pletely leave Seaside, city
councilors were unanimous in
their support of the race for at
least this year and 2017.
This week, the event gets a
fresh start.
“The relationship has been
excellent since last October,”
said Dan Floyd, chief operating
oficer for the Hood to Coast
Race Series.
Organizers and represen-
tatives for local stakeholders
— including the city, the Sea-
side Chamber of Commerce
and the Seaside Downtown
Development Association —
collaborated to address local
concerns.
“We were able to have a
good open discussion about
the beneits of Hood to Coast
and utilizing Seaside and Clat-
sop County,” Floyd said, add-
ing organizers are happy to
be in Seaside for the next two
years, and “hopefully many
years.”
Last year’s inish party
was disrupted by a debilitat-
ing storm that dismantled the
chairs, tents and other struc-
tures set up on the beach.
This year, in case of more
bad weather, organizers have
booked the Seaside Civic and
Convention Center for Satur-
Racers compete in the nearly 200-mile Hood to Coast Relay.
Racers compete in the nearly 200-mile Hood to Coast Re-
lay, which has filled to capacity for the past 18 years.
‘We’re trying to be more ... respectful of our neighbors
and the city of Seaside, which is hosting us.’
Dan Floyd
chief operating officer for the Hood to Coast Race Series
day, convention center Man-
ager Russ Vandenberg said.
Route change
For the overall safety of par-
ticipants, organizers decided to
make a small tweak to the race
route, which is not uncommon,
Floyd said.
The traditional route uses
the Portland’s Springwater Cor-
ridor trail for about 20 miles.
This year, however, “we’re
avoiding a 40-block stretch of
the trail,” from Southeast 82 nd
to Southeast 122 nd avenues, to
bypass a homeless camp, Floyd
said. The route change will
affect Leg 11 and add about a
mile to the course.
Volunteers and security per-
sonnel will be placed through-
out the trail in Portland and
Gresham, and a mobile bicycle
patrol will monitor the entire
corridor.
Organizers spent several
hours on the trail, which is
scheduled to be cleared of the
homeless camps in the near
future. They wanted to under-
stand the extent of the issue
involving the homeless popu-
lation and make a decision to
beneit everyone, Floyd said.
They decided to change the
route in an effort to preserve
participant and volunteer safety
without tampering with the
homeless camps.
Hood to Coast’s mission
also includes showcasing the
state of Oregon, and “we’ve
got to do it in the best way pos-
sible,” Floyd said. That portion
of the trail currently “doesn’t
show who we are,” he added.
Party on
Hood to Coast will get some
celebrity attention. Comedian
Kevin Hart, known for movies
such as “Central Intelligence”
and “Ride Along,” will run for
the Nike team.
“We don’t know which leg
he’s running, and we do know
he’s planning to make it to Sea-
side,” Floyd said.
The inish line party, which
starts Saturday afternoon, will
follow the same format as pre-
vious years.
The Seaside Chamber of
Commerce’s Beer and Wine
Garden will open at 11 a.m.
Brian O’Dell Band will perform
on the main stage from 12:45 to
3:45 p.m. Various award cer-
emonies and announcements
will take place starting at 4:50
p.m. Radical Revolution will
perform from 6:45 to 11 p.m.
The main stage is being
moved to the southeast corner
of the party where it will be
pointed more toward the ocean,
rather than the Promenade.
“We’re trying to push the
noise away from people,”
Floyd said. “We’re trying to be
more aware of our surround-
ings and the people that are
there and more respectful of our
neighbors and the city of Sea-
side, which is hosting us.”
There will be potential
impacts to trafic low in cer-
tain areas before and during the
event.
The pedestrian bridge over
U.S. Highway 101 in north
Seaside will be set up today
after 7 p.m.
Trafic along Youngs River
Loop may be affected from 2
a.m. to 4:45 p.m. Saturday. Traf-
ic along Lewis and Clark Road
and U.S. Highway 101 may be
affected from 4:30 a.m. to 9 p.m.
‘White Out’: Microaggressions are small indignities that add up
Continued from Page 1A
— unintentionally shifted dis-
cussion away from power and
equity.
“We can do a lot of multi-
cultural celebrating but not a
lot of understanding about how
power and difference are creat-
ing different access to resources
in our society,” Drew said.
Claiming to “not see race”
could ignore the reality of being
a person of color.
“There is something so dis-
honest and painful about era-
sure,” Drew said. “How can
you deal with me as a white
person if I can’t talk about one
thing that’s shaping your daily
experience?”
Though some suggested
racism ended when Barack
Obama was elected president,
Drew showed evidence that
suggested otherwise.
The Pew Research Cen-
ter indicated income inequality
along racial lines further wid-
ened after the recession, and
federal data showed an increase
in schools with primarily poor
black or Hispanic students
between 2011 and 2014. Seem-
ingly racially diverse schools
may have racially segregated
college-bound and remedial
courses, and a study showed
“white-sounding names” are
more likely to get callbacks on
resumes than “African-Ameri-
can-sounding names.”
Americans today are “inun-
dated with daily coverage of yet
another person being shot and
killed by police,” Drew said,
displaying a photo of a black
man, Walter Scott, running
from a police oficer last year
before being fatally shot.
The audience discussed
unconscious bias, psychologi-
cal effects of racism, media rep-
resentation and narratives about
black men.
Microaggressions, like a
person of color being treated
differently by a store clerk, are
small indignities that add up,
Drew said. “Sundown towns”
are areas of informal racial
exclusion, through surveil-
lance, name-calling or the pres-
ence of symbols like Confeder-
ate lags.
Moving forward
and healing
How do we deine race in
an increasingly racially diverse
country?
“Race is going to become
this amalgam of how we
self-identify, how members
of our group treat us and how
society at large treats us,” Drew
said. “Sometimes it’s not about
our appearance but the second
we open our mouth.”
She encouraged the audi-
ence to think about two vastly
different perspectives.
“If white people are saying,
‘It’s not about racism until you
prove that it is,’ and people of
color enter a situation saying,
‘Racism is involved until you
prove to me it’s not,’ no won-
der we miss each other,” Drew
said.
The audience was prompted
to discuss how racism is main-
tained. Some said it felt frus-
trating and uncomfortable to
discuss, because we are not
accustomed to it.
“White people have a
whole lot of work to do on our
own,” Drew said. “People of
color also need to do internal
work and healing around their
trauma.”
The audience offered ideas
on how to create a more equi-
table and inclusive commu-
nity, which included address-
ing economic equality, learning
each other’s histories and lis-
tening to what people of color
experience.
Learning “a perfectly log-
ical explanation” for racist
behavior “serves to deny and
minimize whatever the person
of color just said,” Drew said.
Lastly, Drew encouraged
the audience to think about one
action they would be willing to
take to disrupt racism.
“Our hope is that these cou-
rageous conversations can
become one of our tools for
healing,” she said. “Dialogue
accompanied by the actions
we’re willing to take I’m hope-
ful can turn the tide around.”
Ridgway: His most memorable trip was going on a safari tour in Kenya
Continued from Page 1A
Because his father was
quartermaster in the army,
Ridgway spent some of his
childhood summers in West
Africa. He spent a year in
Ghana and went to an Ameri-
can school for a year.
“It was kind of strange surf-
ing on a beach on Christmas
Day,” he remembers.
During most school years,
Ridgway went to boarding
school in England, which he
credits with sharpening his
communication skills.
“You have to learn to get
along with people,” he said.
Before his career in hospi-
tality and destination market-
ing, Ridgway was an accoun-
tant. He moved from England
to Alberta, Canada, while
working for John Deere.
“It was quite a culture
shock,” he said.
After working as a gen-
eral accounting supervisor for
a group of hotels, he became
tired of “looking backwards all
the time.”
“I wanted to make things
happen,” he said.
He became owner and gen-
eral manager of Hospitality
Services of Canada. Finding
solutions for hotels that could
not afford marketing sparked
his interest in the ield.
Eleven years ago, Ridgway
and his wife, Georgia, got mar-
ried at Hug Point in Cannon
Beach. They would return to
celebrate their wedding anni-
versary, and their love of the
area led them to eventually
move to Cannon Beach full
time. Ridgway started attend-
ing Wednesday morning busi-
ness meetings and got involved
with the chamber through
knowing local residents.
It’s no surprise that Ridgway,
after an extensive career in pro-
moting destinations, is an avid
traveler. He recently went to Ire-
land with his wife. Their most
memorable trip was Kenya,
where they went on a safari tour.
Ridgway and his wife live near
Tolovana with their cat, Nera,
and dog, Aren, who enjoys run-
ning around the beach every
morning.
— Lyra Fontaine