Yesterday we crossed the Continental Divide, the tipping point deciding which direction the rivers flow to reach their ocean destinies.

Today we crossed back over the other way on a different highway.

We travel with so little effort, the struggles of the past are unimaginable in our modern lives.

I think that is why it’s important to try to connect to the past. Walk where our predessors walked, picture how it might have been, wonder and be amazed how they did it.

Although not historically accurate, we take a break in Doc Holliday’s Saloon. Decorated in pictures from the past and a wooden bar with its own history, the place is a throwback to how things may have looked. It at least makes you feel that way.

It’s one of the things I love about the west and Utah where I live. So much is still the same and it helps me, on a regular basis, be grateful for the time I get to live in and able to decide the direction of my own destiny.

–Sorry for the short post, we’re on the road with a lot of miles to cover still today.

Hey Kids,

The presidential inauguration of Donald Trump was today. I hate to admit it but I didn’t listen to it. It’s not that I don’t like Trump, I just wasn’t interested enough to suspend my day and listen in.

In fact, I have only listened in to one inauguration address, the 2009 speech by Barack Obama. 

It was historic. I was interested. I hadn’t voted for him, but I was hopeful and he was the new president.

I listened and afterwards I had hope. I liked his address. I told others that I did. The concern that I did have was my belief that my definition of the ideas he had shared would be greatly different that his.

They were.

I didn’t tune into his second inauguration speech.

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Hey Kids,

It took 15 days but it arrived.

The first day of 2017 to get on the bike and ride.

The temps were down around 30°F. A little below to begin, a little above on the ride back.

From a past ill attempt to tempt fate and the weather.

It’s not so much temperature as it is the possibility of ice on the road.

The last few days have given way to warmer temps, no new moisture, and a chance for the roads and gutters to be clear and dry.

It felt good. It felt free. It felt like it should.

The new heated gloves were kind of nice too.

 .

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Hey Kids,

When I woke up this morning, I had no idea what I would be doing.

The temp was somewhere below zero. The snow was still piled from the storms.

I figured I’d spend some time inside the apartment, getting some things cleaned up and organized.

Before I rose from the bed, we had decided to make the 300 mile trip to Lake Powell to look at a boat in which I had interest to become an owner.

We made the trip, saw the boat and then took a road neither of us had driven and made our way to Moab.

It might’ve been a crazy decision and the apartment didn’t get cleaned, but what a beautiful part of the country this place is.

I think we made the right decision.

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Hey Kid,

You became an adult today.

No longer a kid? Not to me.

You will always be my favorite little alien.

May the mother ship never return.

And may one day, we find each other again.

Post 3-005

Hey Kids,

I took a sick day today.

My little cold that I’ve been fighting off decided to do a counter offensive and
dropped down into my chest. The thought of going out and breathing air outside of my own home struck me
as repulsive, so I called in.

Sick days used to be laying on the couch trying not to die while you watched the crap that makes up daytime TV, with all the trade school commercials and class-action lawsuit ads.

Now, it’s trying not to die while doing work at home on the laptop, Facebook, and YouTube.

I guess that’s progress.

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Hey Kids,

“We have not journeyed across the centuries, across the oceans, across the mountains, across the prairies, because we are made of sugar candy.” –Winston Churchill. December 1941

I heard this quote today and it hit home.

Given by the ever statesman Winston Churchill to the Canadian Parliament shortly following the events that made assured that Canada as well as the US would be playing a part in the expanding world conflict. He shared these words to give them the hope and the assurance that we, as the collective good guys, had the metal to face the oncoming challenges.

Moving forward, it’s sometimes easy to think of yourself as unable to withstand the pressures of today. Life is not easy, yet we’ve all had to face and overcome challenges, weather failures and disappointments, and continue on from our victories; they all give us the foundation that will support us tomorrow.

We are what our past had made us. That isn’t a bad thing.

Post 3-002

Hey Kids,

2016 didn’t bring me an endless surplus of riches, but I did OK. I worked a second job the entire year. It did afford us some fun things and the ability to help a few of the kids.

Of course the job kept me from some other things. This blog especially. I can’t entirely lay all blame on the increased job hours on my neglect of my daily posts, but it provided me with enough reason to let it go.

It also allowed me to forget where my attention may have been better served.

I am a writer. But along with my daily blog went my daily writing, editing, and publishing. I was a writer that no longer wrote.

Steven Pressfield would call it surrendering to Resistance.

I had lost. Or more precisely, I’ve been losing.

I’m done losing.

I quit the job and I’m writing again.

I’m a writer.

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