Peace is hard to find. Trouble tears apart our lives. Doubt delivers us to our fears. Worry warps our sense of reality. Before we know it we’re trapped in the chaos of day to day life and panic takes over. Yet Christ came to be our peace. Everything—our hopes, worries, fears, doubts, dreams—are met by him and found in him. He can put our worries to rest and surround us with an everlasting peace that calms the raging storm in our lives.
Christmas is a busy time of year and it’s easy to get caught up in all the chaos. This holiday season, let’s make time in our schedules to experience the peace that Christ brings. Let’s set aside quiet time with our family and more importantly ourselves to reflect on God’s promises and let his peace wash over us. Through the good and bad, through times of laughter and tears, Christ came to be our peace.
Well, 2020 wasn’t exactly a banner year on the bike. Things were looking good in January & February as I was on a training plan with some pretty lofty goals and then the journey continued.
I did get back on the road in late summer with some easier and shorter rides as I recovered. Into the late fall I was feeling good on the bike and starting to handle some longer and faster rides. A big surprise was a late season road ride for 103km on Dec 9, 2020.
I’m still riding year round and typically outside on Wednesdays in the winter with some diehard buddies on fat bikes in the snow and cold.
Fatboy Trail at The Lake
For the rest of the winter season it’s indoors on the trainer, typically with Zwift doing a workout, or a group ride, or the occasional race.
So though we might experience disappointment and setbacks, our hope is not defined by that, but by the word of God. Hope can be a quiet confidence, while we are waiting, while we take one step after another.
“I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.”
I was doing a workout on Zwift and to pass the time I typically listen to a podcast or audio book and keep an eye on the workout on the TV and the Companion app on the iPhone.
One of the Companion app features is to be able to message nearby riders. This is typically used on group rides and races. Everyone in a while I’ll have a look at what folks are saying. Today, I got a bit of a surprise!
I hope the kid is OK, I didn’t see any more messages. BTW the (DIRT) after the guys name is the name of a Zwift club and it stands for Dads Indoors Riding Trainers.
This is the problem child. He came to our house for Christmas in 2019 and was perfectly well behaved. This year it seems he’s in a “terrible twos” phase.
Shortly after taking up residence along side our front door we found him down on the ground propped up along side the car!
The fine wire that I used to hang him up and to be virtually invisible had broken. It seems that in a strong south wind he gets a little excited and flys around banging against the house. Being a little slow, me not him, I re-hung him using the same wire but with a new safety improvement. I attached his power cord to a screw that hold the facia on. This way if he slips off his perch at least he wouldn’t hit the ground, or so I thought.
The other night both Shirley and I were woken up at 4 a.m. by our problem child banging around in the wind. As I stood at the front window he decided he’d had enough and jumped off the house. Sure enough the safety system worked and he was now dangling around suspended from the edge of the roof. Well, I couldn’t just leave him there so I got dressed and headed out to rescue him.
However, in the 2-3 minutes it took me to get out there he’d completed his escape and was lying on the ground in the flower bed. Not only that but he took some of his friends with him! A section of aluminium facia was also on the ground with him and about 20′ of Christmas lights were also ripped from the roof and flapping around in the breeze. Well, at 4 a.m. it’s still dark and things couldn’t get much worse so I left him there until after sunrise.
At 9 a.m. I’m out there with a new plan to rescue the boy. The facia is hammered back into it’s original shape without looking too much the worse for wear and easily re-attached. A new 1/16″ stainless steel cable is used to secure him from above and a 150lb test line is used to secure him from below, hopefully to eliminate the flapping around in a breeze. Christmas lights are re-positioned and everything is re-connected and it seems all good.
But we’re not done yet! This morning he’s banging around again! Pretty sure he can’t jump off the wall this time but the string holding him down has some slack in it now allowing the flapping around. So, I teach my self the Trucker’s Hitch knot, the gold standard in securing a load and keeping the string tight. So far, so good.
Since I’ve recently changed WordPress themes from DevotePress to Catch Responsive I’ve been doing a fair bit of updating and maintenance work. All this playing around with the blog got me to wondering, just when did I start this blog?
Well, the answer is March 24, 2005 with the posting of Grid for Good. Certainly nothing spectacular but a start. From there I reviewed 10-15 of the oldest posts and it was quite interesting to see what I was doing, and thinking about at a point in time.
However, there were some problems with the older posts. They were fine and worked at the time but now several of the links are broken due to internet content just “going away”. Also surprising, lots of really old links still work!
I also discovered some stuff that I’d forgotten. Things like the blogs I played with before settling on this self-hosted wordpress site. I’d totally forgotten about Tempus Fugit on Blogspot and for a while I was using Tempus Fugit on WordPress.com. surprise, they are both still there.
For photographs I started off on Picasa which morphed over to Google Photos and then finally settled on flickr.
Back in the day photos on the blog were almost always embedded from flickr. It seems the embed code has changed over the years and while the photos are no longer showing up, there is typically still a photo title link that will take you over to flickr to see the photo. I suppose I could go back and fix this, but that would be pretty time consuming so, not likely to happen. 😉
That’s me on Zwift, in the centre, blue and white jersey. As you can see I’m pushing 251 watts which is a decent effort for me. I’m on an 11% grade and doing a measly 7 kph.
What is less obvious is that I’ve just been passed by the running dude up ahead on the right! Somewhat discouraging. Passed by a better cyclist, well OK, but a runner!!!
Every morning in this advent season when I come to reading this devotion just looking at the title image brings me joy.
It just resonates on so many levels. Historically, the coming of king Jesus as a baby, presently as the king comes to people who accept him, and prophetically as the future second coming of Jesus. All of these are so exciting. And, if I’m not alive to see the second coming, king Jesus will come to meet me when I die. Either way, what a day that will be.
OK, so I’m a bit of an Apple fan, not quite a fan boy, but up there.
With the latest iOS and the ability for widgets on the Home Screen I did some playing around and settled on this Apple widget at the top of my screen.
By default it shows my 6 things in a sort of random, but also some what intelligent way.
First thing in the morning I get a display about what apps I might want to launch, scarily predicting what I might like to do based on past usage. Then the weather, generally useful, the calendar for the day with the next 1-2 events, again useful. Top Apple News stories which is OK but I have not yet succumbed to subscribing. A Map, a bit of a mystery for me and not yet useful. And then there is the best of all!
It’s the photo! Generally, some combination of Grandkids like today’s where we were going to the 2019 Santa Claus parade with all of them together, which is a bit of a rare event to go somewhere all together with just Shirley and I. As I recall it was like hearing cats, but a lot of fun.
If it’s not Grandkids it’s some other photo that Apple has figured out as a “Featured Photo”. Not sure how they do that. Some of them I’ve flagged as “liked” other are well… just photos that show up.
Always brings a smile to my face and an extra bit of happiness to my day.
