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…

Just a short post to recommend a blog post from a blogger whom I follow, Old Man Gravel. Bob writes about his bicycle adventures in Iowa, his home state. We share interests and topics, and I eagerly await his posts each week. If you like his posts, please subscribe. His post this morning, Navigating the Road Ahead, is a nice follow-up to our post of this past weekend. It’s a useful roadmap for continuing to live our lives during this unsettling time; but doing so sensibly. Bob is avoiding the media, as his view is, it’s more noise than news. I’m not sure I fully agree, as it is important…

I have struggled to find an appropriate topic for this week’s post. All of my fun ideas about Senior Ripper adventures seem trivial and self-indulgent, in light of what is happening in the world, in our country and in our community. Our Senior Ripper generation has lived through a lot. The Viet Nam War, the moon landing, the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK, 9/11, war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the great recession, just to name a few. And now Covid 19. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced. We were in New York City during 9/11, and that’s the closest I can come up with for what we are going…

Please don’t think for a second, that I mean a polar bear dip on a frozen morning. I’m a life-long swimmer, but outdoor swimming in the winter requires a heated pool. The kind of plunge that I am advocating for is one on snowshoes. Let me explain. A recent Saturday found me, along with 21 Senior Rippers and 2 dogs, at a trailhead in the Uinta Mountains as part of an organized trip through The Park City Mountain Sports Club, an all volunteer group of like-interested Parkites. It had been several days since the last snow fall so there were tracks up an old Mine Trail, the sky was blue,…