Every year ends about this time… there are moments of great joy and moments of sorrow… smiles and fears but 2024 is only hours away and with it new hopes. So thank you everyone who fill my life and time and thank you all for another year of adventure. Take care and may 2024 be full of the best and full of joy.
Every time I join the group of bicycle riders who decide to ride across Iowa; I find myself surrounded by people full of joy, hope, fun, kindness and goodwill that I start to think: “It’s not so high a bar to reach for.” So why not lift up that hand and think: “I’ll be better…” Everyone have a good day… thank you for being…
People have rode bicycles across the state of Iowa yearly for 50 times now. This year 20,000 signed up (add another 9,000 who only signed on for a day instead of weeklong). More showed up (some say 60,000 the first day). It was 500 miles in 7 days. Lots of hills… along the way you could eat that sweet Iowa corn. You could even have a picture taken with a Camel (I did not, he was on break at the time). I rode the 25th ride and thought how could I miss the 50th.
There are moments, I just look around and see all I let past. Once and a while I will be able to capture the moment. I then recall all the moments that only exist in memory… I smile!!
It seems to happen more and more often; I will read something online… search for more information and discover the more I dig into the story the less I find. Still better to search and find… and write and think than to rush out without reflection. At the end I type and feel better.
Yesterday I received in the mail a letter I mailed 6 years ago. I could be upset, but better late than never. After all it is not as if my words could save the word… if was only my hope that it might. But that is just ego…. I like to think it is better to go “oh… well” than think dark thoughts. The world might even be a better place if more took time to move forward…. I wrote a new letter and it could be… a great reply will be on it’s way before 2030.
1934 Underwood
It’s a new year… I feel that it would be great to think positive thoughts at the start and strive to keep along that path throughout the year and on for infinity.
I sat down at my 110 year old typewriter and put down my thoughts. When I finished I felt I had created a “fine mess” of thoughts and was about tear up the paper when it occurred to me that I “was not running for office” I was not charging for my thoughts… I just wanted to express my views.
We all are products of the time and place we were born in. Ways of expression and the meaning behind them shift over time and what was benign for one age group becomes offensive to another.
Still there is a hope we can find a common ground and express ourselves without fear of fists or hammers or hate by just trying to point out our thoughts. Fear has a way of preventing words from being expressed and that is a sad thing.
I have felt that way with all the division out there today… but I still hope so I kept my fine mess of words…
Over five decades I have written to Presidents. I felt it was important to express my view and believed it was worth as much as money, input to a poll… and it did not matter if the person I voted for won or lost. Whoever held the office was safeguarding the entire nation and not just those who voted for or against. Perhaps it is silly to think such things matter but old habits have a way of sticking withyou.
On a bicycle I get to see things I would have missed had I been driving a car.
