Politics Now and Then

Politics. I sometimes enjoy kicking around political topics on forums and Facebook but I'm growing weary of it. Maybe it was all of the venomous political back-and-forth associated with the government shutdown the previous two weeks that sapped my desire for it. I was in one conversation where a woman was ranting about 260 billion Muslims and how 10% of them are terrorists and blah blah blah. I had to ask her several times to please explain what she was referring to because she wasn't making sense and did she have a link? She condescendingly told me that the information is online and that all I had to do was Google it. I replied that there are only just a little over 7 billion people on the planet and her 260 billion number was confusing me to which she replied: "my bad, lol". It's that sort of thing that has me questioning why I bother to try. I doubt I'll throw in the towel but I think I'll be more selective about who I engage with. Politics 'now'.

The pups and I are in a nice routine lately with me taking them for a half-hour to an hour walk nearly every day. I usually let Toby lead the way because he often pulls me in another direction when I turn for home sooner than he'd like; he knows which roads lead back there. He had us all running this afternoon in the cool air.

I was talking with Jackie (my sister) last night and she was telling me how Toby and Allie's father, Tucker, is beginning to show his age. He's got doggie dementia which is similar to Alzheimer's disease in humans and it sometimes causes him to roam the house in the middle of the night. Tucker is only two years older than Toby and Allie. The thought of our little guys getting older is a sad one but they're already clearly slowing down.

I was planning on going out for a few hours on my road bike Friday morning but I got a sudden urge to get on my Mukluk instead and head down to the Minnesota River, about 11 miles from home, and ride the trails along the river between Cedar Ave and Mendota. It was west of Cedar where I got into trouble a couple years ago and suffered numerous spills that caused my clotting issues. The terrain is more forgiving east of Cedar and I was careful to keep myself upright. I'd love to be so much more aggressive out there but I simply can't risk it.

I approached the making of the video below a little differently than others I've done in the past. Typically I'll splice together the video scenes and then find some music that fits both the length and the mood I'm looking for. This time I chose the music first and then edited the scenes to fit the music. I think it flows better.

The artist is David Baerwald and his music has been so much a part of the soundtrack to my life the past 25+ years. You'll likely recall his song Welcome to the Boomtown from 1986 when he and David Ricketts recorded as David & David. We used to be on opposing sides of political arguments on a forum I used to frequent years ago when I was staunchly conservative. Politics 'then'. I messaged him last week to see if he was okay with me using his music in one of my videos, to which he responded, "Kevin, I'm honored". He may have been overstating things a little but I still thought it was quite cool.

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