When I changed out oil/trans/diff fluids this weekend I found that the old girl is still running on the factory struts from 1995.

Need replacing to be sure but I’m honestly impressed how not terrible they are after 30 years and 170k. Lightweight must be the secret.

Joie de vivre inside of the AM commute yesterday.

We really lost the feel of driving in modern ‘by wire’ cars. An honest cable between the foot and throttle, a shifter straight down into the transmission, only an LCD clock instead of screens.

It’s detoxifying.

If they walk out of this with a deal I’d bet my best lamb it includes a petro concession for a principal.

It’s been my week for timing. Made my flight out of Amsterdam with minutes to spare, flew through customs, made it onto the 7pm ferry tonight at 6:58.

Also, I haven’t had a second to spare all week which.. has not been restful.

I had the mostly pleasantly unexpected ease through customs yesterday. I stopped to buy a package of frozen herring and a block of cheese at duty free figuring it would probably be a headache.

Nope, I declared my goods and was through in three minutes, wild.

Then I volunteered for a disease swab

Sitting on the ferrytron, the best thing perhaps about this old Miata are reactions from people. People really get a kick out of it.

It’s the best thing I’ve seen all week, I’m so thrilled for him. I’m so many ways it’s a wonderful thing

I know right?? And you wonder why people insist on chopping them off! Lambs jumping around is always a laugh but the tails, the tails always do me in. They’re so absolutely goofy.

This has probably been my least enjoyable EU visit due to the rush. Too little time to pause and breathe it in but I did enjoy the familiarity of the little nuances like heavy glass doors, kitschy signs, kebab shops and nice tankstelles.

Hope this frozen herring makes it through customs!

Rate Dortmund 5/10. Heavy industrial town that’s seen brighter days and wearing the common afflictions of that turn. The German format of mixed industrial-residential zoning is less jarring when that industry is a VW or Bosch as opposed to a Thyssenkrupp or Leichmetal. Crumbling brick and drugs.

Oi, finally, nearly on the way back home. East->West is a cruel transit, landing only an hour after taking off in local times. Much prefer the overnighter running eastbound.

A war crime against tacos. Mexican-American still hasn’t arrived in the EU in any genuine sense

Nein schätze

Staugefar and the intoxicating bouquet of koe poep In de ochtend

I really wish American hotels would come see what an actual continental breakfast looks like. German hotel frühstück is the best.

Oh man, memories..

I vividly recall driving this length of A road in early December 2009. Eight months married, newly moved to Europe, Ash and I visited Amsterdam, Brussels and Bruge a week before I left for Afghanistan.

What a lovely memory to greet a brief night’s morning. ❤️

If Don Quixote only had a Galleon, tilting at windmills on the Tulip Riviera

An offshore oil platform in the North Sea

Ships

Offshore platform, ships in transit, North Sea

Good morning moonrise over the North Atlantic, east of 🇬🇱

I don’t doubt it in the least. The most consistent element of this administration has been the clockwork pattern of impeccably timed equities trades preceding and following every market moving trade announcement and military action.

I hope that bill comes due someday soon.

Yet who still will have the lights on still?

Give you a clue, massive buildings with hardly any humans in them.

generators go rumble rumble, gas turbines go whoooosh.

Cascades of the North

It’s magic stuff, that this periodic skeptic believes in. A latent wonder that should stay a craft medicinal and I hope isn’t corrupted by capitalism.

Intoxicating bouquet of golden sunshine.

House lamb got banded this morning, poor little eunuch. I practiced on a walnut in a little sack 😳, it made me wince sympathetically. Credit to Ash for the suggestion because I wanted to be smooth and quick.

Lidoband seems to have helped, he showed very little distress at all.

A neighbor resting on the water spigot mount.

Huevos!

El volcan

Not enough hours in the day. A morning of egg hunting (chicken & plastic), lamb handling and wild things. Afternoon hustle to the plane station, followed by a night in the liminal space between continents.

Is urgent speculation necessary when it’s trivial for a reputable source to just go and see?

As tantalizing a possibility it may be, I’m wary that the consequences are not likely to be as promising as we might hope.

The pedantic and callow Vance seems more liable to extremes to justify himself.

* Roam, thanks auto-incorrect, same-same though.

A value of art is as a funnel for the subconscious to reveal the occult trajectories indiscernible to the conscious mind. Let it be what it is without striving too hard to assign meaning acknowledging that with time it will make itself known.

I bought this print of an original in quilt by a DC artist about 2018. The caption, “when the last humans are gone we will rise up and rule the earth”, seems darkly prescient in the moment.

Its meaning has certainly evolved for me.

(Personnel recovery & combat search and rescue). The risks are magnified by virtue that the circumstances are imposed rather than chosen, so many variables are likely unfavorable.

The whole apparatus behind these efforts are fascinating and highly refined, a product of many hard earned lessons.

For folks in the back, DUSTWUN (duty status whereabouts unknown) in a combat circumstance practically means that we’ve lost contact and status. Now this may be inaccurate if our downed pilot has been able to communicate, we won’t know. It’s the spin up for PR & CSAR efforts.