Leaderboard

Living in the valley of the sunstroke generally kills my batteries every 2 years. I don't bother to charge them anymore, the heat just kills them anyhow.

Drove past one of the mosques where the shooting occurred yesterday and am staying in a motel only about a km away. There are still three armed cops outside but they, and everyone else, seemed fairly relaxed. It's amazing what an incredible amount of solidarity this tragedy has engendered in NZ and the prime minister and the rest of the parliament have behaved with a level of strength, leadership and decorum that should be a blazing torch for other polities around the globe. When I look at the enormous, raging clusterfuques that represent most other English speaking 'Democracies' at the moment it is reassuring to see that the system can work and it is possible to say no to bigotry and hate. Would that my own country would embrace such high minded and common sense ideals. Sadly I fear that successive governments of all stripes have allowed racists to crawl out from under their rocks without being stamped on immediately. That, along with social media platforms that allow isolated individuals to band together and reinforce each other's hate have made a fertile dung-heap in which bigotry can thrive. In my youth I spent a fair bit of time at anti racism marches, sometimes even punching on with racists. I was really hoping to have left all that behind but now, in my sixties and half a world away from the country of my youth it looks like I may have to do it again! That sucks! I've got a dicky heart, fuqued lungs and can't walk very far nowadays, (A packet of darts a day for fifty years will do that to you!) but shit like this is important! For our kids and the future of mankind.

Not much riding weather here in the south'n US. Time to charge batteries and build routes for the spring . . .