May 7, 2025

 Left at 9:45. Blacksmith. Cool, almost chilly and fairly stiff breeze out of the northeast. Mostly cloudy-- grayish-white cover with some variation. Merwedekanaal to Vreeswijk. Beatrixsluis to Tull en 't Waal to Achterdijk. Horses and Apacas and very few, if any, cows there, which may be a good sign, a sign of agribusiness farming retreating perhaps. Shifting views of the Schalkwijk spire and railroad bridge always interesting from the south. Tetwijksepad to town, then across the ARK and around Houten. Whenever the sun peeked through, the temperature went up, but these were marginal gains. Did spot a few people wearing full gloves. Amazing, given that we're in a drought, how lush and colorful everything looked out there. The other Achterdijk fairly quiet. Koningsweg, Kampong, Wilhelminapark, Singel, Meus. Coffee and Algemeen Dagblad, since someone was using de Volkskrant as a placemat for her phone (I found out when I got outside). In the newspaper, besieged local politicians trying their best to sustain a dialogue with their constituents, versus evidence of especially young people seemingly detached from, and uninterested in, society. The common theme may be how the real world is losing ground against the virtual, on-line version--how more and more people spend increasing amounts of time in the latter, thus subverting the cohesion of the former.