March 21, 2026

Saturday. We left Swift/Leiden by 9:30. Blacksmith. Chilly and damp. Some lingering fog, light winds out of the northeast. After a bit alongside the Vliet, the route led south to Stompwijk, Benthuizen, and the Benthout park. Then zig-zag to Boskoop and its growers. When it was still gray, the blossoms and light green, not to mention the forsythia, stood out very well. Past Alphen toward Papenveer and the break. Joop. Then Nieuwkoop, Noorden, and the Achterweg to Vrouwenakker, now with the sun warming things up. Tailwind alongside the Amstel-Drechtkanaal and on, back to Papenveer. Woubrugge and the north side of Alphen--narrow and crowded, all the way to Hazerswoude-Rijndijk. Back to Leiden just south of the freeway in full spring weather. In the Gulf, the enemy keeps fighting back, as so many scenarios the past decades have predicted. The commander-in-chief is flailing wildly, now that his recklessness and the incompetence of his team are on broad display. Israel keeps getting hit too, three weeks into this. The air campaign is inconclusive, a ground operation spells quagmire. It'a quagmire regardless, and it seems a good deal worse for just about everyone than the containment of the previous decades. Not that the boss will ever own any of the bad news. He could still double down again. Thus, the best outcome seems to be a declaration of victory that leaves the Islamist regime in place, although now probably fully determined to build a nuclear device and test it. Nothing connected to the Iran challenge was ever simple or without risk, but the past three weeks have shown that it was certainly possible to make things worse. Also unmistakable--and far from new--is that depending for your well-being on petrostates, wherever they may be located, is a bad idea. Perhaps more Europeans understand this now, although some of the talk of reconciling with Russia makes one wonder. At the very least the obfuscating, so-called "realist," warnings that we'll be depending on fossil fuels for a long time to come may be seen as the recipe it has always been for doing too little, too late on an energy transition.