Habituated

No, this may not qualify as unusual, but some time back my email account got hacked. A friend forwarded an email he had received “from me,” with a link that obviously wasn’t from me. So, I changed the password that I’d kept for several years (OK, I made some minor, rememberable tweaks) into a longer more exceptional one. MUCH harder to remember. Much harder to hack.

But for the next several weeks, 90% of the times I signed into my email account, I automatically used the old email password. Habits die hard. Before…

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A Whole New World

On a recent flight to Alaska for the wedding of a good friend, this traveling man received quite a shock. I’ve ridden a motorcycle in all 50 states and flown over most of the contiguous US, and love how an airplane window seat provides a God’s eye view of the world. I traced our trek from San Diego to Seattle over the California coast, Mt. Shasta in NorCal and Crater Lake in Oregon, culminating in Mt. Rainier. But as we left Seattle for Anchorage, something happened that totally rocked my world…

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Setting Your Spirit

The church building required refurbishing. Multiple decades had aged it, and the minimal remodeling spoke of bygone eras. Even worse, the entrance was on the opposite side of the parking lot, well hidden to first time visitors. Many people drove in, saw no entrance, and drove right out. So we embarked on a major project: cut into a retaining wall, install steps, remove vegetation, craft a new entrance by the parking, and paint the entire interior. One of our leaders, an Air Force officer, led the painting crew, and I struggled to say nothing as…

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Getting Beyond Ourselves--Love

At about thirteen, when I’d grown enough to be a fishing partner in the rugged Sierras, Dad initiated me into the mysteries of the fine art of pulling trout from mountain streams, a skill his grandfather had passed on to him. Learning from the master, we became fairly competitive on catching both the largest and most. Three years later, I landed a 16-inch rainbow on Oak Creek, huge there. I felt pretty confident until…

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Roots

Our annual cross country biker group calls itself the Gray Hogs, in a veiled allusion to Tim Allen’s movie Wild Hogs. Two prime requirements to be a Hog: you don’t need to belong to the Harley Owners’ Group, just pack a few extra pounds, and to sport some gray hair. Oh yeah, and to ride a bike and to get along with the charter members.

Even so, old totally dominated part of our ride to the Taos NM area. We visited the country’s oldest continuously occupied residence, Taos Pueblo, which dates back to 1000 AD. A bit later in Santa Fe we explored the country’s oldest church, the San Miguel Mission from 1610 (I snuck up and rang the bell before learning they allowed it), the oldest seat of government from colonial days with Santa Fe’s Palace of the Governors, also 1610, and what some claim to be the country’s oldest residence, the De Vargas Street House, from 1646. All…

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Seek Help

In my pride, I sometimes resist asking for help. But a needed lesson hit me back in the mid-1980s. Sheila and I went to visit her mom in Spearville, Kansas, just east of Dodge City, but with a surprise. Oh, she knew we were coming, but to avoid her worries we somehow forgot to mention we were riding our 1978 Honda Goldwing motorcycle. She saw us pull up out front, and joy and fear both danced across her face. And before the trip ended…

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Of Mountains and Molehills

Several years back when we lived in Thousand Oaks, my wife celebrated the upcoming Mother’s Day with a few days away with a girlfriend, I figured to pop a surprise for her return: installing a new faucet for the master bathroom. Several complications soon arose. Previous owners had done some funky modifications to the old house over the years, and one was the drain trap, a strange conglomeration of plastic and brass and mismatched parts. The threads were stripped, and it took four trips to Home Depot to finally get the correct set up. Eventually I had to…

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