May 9, 2025

 Left around ten. Blacksmith. Cool but sunny, and warming up quickly. Moderate easterly breeze. Maastricht, southern beltway, across the river and the freeway, then left and right toward Bemelen. Up the hill and left at Gasthuis, left toward Klein Welsden, then Groot Welsden. Very quiet roads, you could hear birds everywhere. Weekday mornings on the little roads here are the best. A bit confused in and around IJzeren, then Scheulder, Ingber, and Gulpen. The best part of the day was next: the little road to Pesaken, then Beutenaken, and connecting up with the bigger road in Slenaken. Loorberg was quiet too, but coming down Schweiberg there were some riders coming up, and some parked vans and moving trucks. Mechelen always has traffic, but I had the Kruisberg mostly to myself. Same with the Eyserbosweg. Looking for a way back, I first aimed for the Sibbegrubbe, but decided to follow a rider, who had just left the Jean Habets bike shop, up the Gerendalsweg. Very nice, until it did become a gravel road for a few hundred meters. (Surely why I had never been on this road before). Then the steep part on some kind of hard pavement, and at the top there was Scheulder again. To Margraten and the main road back to the city. Newpaper back at the hotel, with an entire page on the late Joseph Nye and his concept of "soft power" in international relations. His views of the relative significance of the concept were always nuanced, as was his take on an alleged decline of U.S. power in the world. Still, we're now witnessing what could be called an experiment in reverse soft-power and its possible impact on U.S. global influence. A retreat of representations of soft-power is in full swing in Europe, and it would be illogical if U.S. influence remained unaffected. Currently, however, the administration does not seem to see it this way, since (also in the news today) the U.S. embassy in Sweden has just asked the Stockholm government to quit diversity and inclusion policies. It's only the latest in a series of inappropriate interventions. It beggars belief, and the best explanation I have is either ignorance, arrogance, or a combination of the two. Just imagine the response in Washington if a European government would try to tell the administration how to mind its own business.