The deep sleep of America

John: We came here and have been having a long honeymoon/retirement. Burning precious time 🔥. The h❤️ney moon is great but retirement sucks👎🏼👎🏼.

In this endless free time, I have developed a minor addiction to NewS😿 something I had successfully dodged for the last 15 years. Each morning I search for a fix and sure enough, the big 0 has delivered to torture on the world I love. Being from the north I don’t have a dog in this race, but as I walk among those who do, I see that they don’t seem to have a care in the world or care for the world of our grandchildren ✊.

I had some hope in the absence of 24-hour sports as they might have a thought for the future🖕 but the only matters of concern seem to be the size of their 🚙 or the length of their boats. The other thing is fear of the virus and not being part of future 🛤.

I’m just completely overwhelmed by the deep sleep of America. How big is your truck, it’s not big enough if it’s not bigger than my truck. How big is your car, not big enough unless it’s bigger than my car. Everybody has at least two animals, we have some friends who have a 200-pound dog. Bigger is better?

Cynthia: Biking means access to absolute freedom.

Sheltering in place means sheltering in a national park, in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, which is Mt. Tamalpais in northern California. There are no limits, there are hundreds of trails, and we have ridden hundreds and hundreds of miles. Up the mountains, down to the beaches, through the forests, down steep ravines, up gullies, around cow pastures, surrounded by imminent beauty.

There is no hill too steep because we have e-bikes, which are basically pedal assist but allow us to work hard as we ride. We were at Lake Tahoe, riding up and down, Squaw Valley aka the Jackass Trail, the Tahoe-Truckee Gravel Grinder… averaging 35 miles a day. Biking has been our key to freedom during this pandemic. John had the genius idea as we were leaving Bali to get these e-bikes. I hadn’t ridden in 10 years because classic mountain biking took a toll on my neck. I’ve returned myself and my neck is no longer in my way, it’s just so much fun.

Snapshots of America:

When I was a teeenager, I was a Wonderbread man for the summer to earn money for college. I didn’t know that it wasn’t food. We happen to be in the diabetes capital of America, which is so sad. You have to walk a long way at Walmart to find real food. It’s almost all poison and sugar.

In the presence of awesome American natural beauty in Utah. The beauty is absolutely astounding.

United States of Dopes.

An acorn breakfast with a bear in the garden.

The Imogene Pass at 13114 feet. I didn’t make it—it started to rain and the road was covered in gravel, but Cynthia did.

The desolation of a mine where 10,000 people once lived. How they survived, I don’t know.

The 123 days is the amount of time between when I sent it in and got it back… Looks like it was lost in the black box for a long time of the US government’s secure mail. Finally, we have our passports and now we are in line to get our visas, all we need to do is fill out the forms, and pick them up in San Francisco.