Well folks, here we still are, at home waiting for all the scientists (I do believe in science) in the world to come up with a way to control Covid -19. Unfortunately, my attempts to drum and strum my angst away hasn’t really been enough, but happily, being outdoors has. My afternoon outing is the highlight of my day, and social distancing is a breeze in our mountain landscape. I like to consider it my “Geography of Hope” a term coined by one of my favorite authors, Wallace Stegner in his famous Wilderness Letter, written in 1969 in support of land preservation. What has made it even better, is the…

I was going to do a short non-Covid-19 post today, as I needed a break. But then I saw a post on the Facebook page of Stay Park City Riding, a riding group I belong to, about riding in these strangest of times, and thought it was worth sharing with our many Senior Ripper cycling enthusiasts. The post recommended an article called Riding in the time of Covid-19. In short, it says, by all means, ride, but ride alone. When riding, we leave a “Respiratory Signature”, that is a sphere of all we expel when we breathe, laugh, cough, sneeze that spreads out behind us in a spherical trail that…

How is it possible that we’re so busy? We aren’t going to work. We’re not socializing in person. The ski mountains are closed. Many of the parks are closed. It’s too snowy to ride outside, even in isolation. Somehow, Gail and I get to the end of each day, and more often than not, we haven’t finished what we intended (including getting this post out on time)! I guess that’s not much different than BC (Before Covid)! And yet, we’ve accomplished a lot. It’s a different measure of accomplishment. We’re not seeing our students (Gail), and fewer deals are getting done (Larry), but we’re still teaching and working and trying…

Well, Senior Rippers, we are certainly in a different place than we were the last time I wrote Take the Plunge. While the world outside my window still seems innocent enough, and snowshoeing is still permissible in our new world of Social Distancing, my advice to you this week is consider learning to play the drum, or any other instrument that you have lying around your home for that matter. The fact that music can heal the heart and soul is fact. “Rhythm” in Greek means to flow, and the power of dance is palpable to all humans. For example, have you ever seen a toddler dance bare naked after…