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I have a Cousin that I've talked about on here before. He lived in San Antonio, and thought he was an open minded liberal, but was anything but. He voted for Trump in his first term. We had a falling out over gay marriage. He tried to act like he was gay friendly around me, but was very opposed to gay marriage. I had no luck getting him to understand how insulting  some of his opinions were to me, so I just checked out of that relationship. This was several years back, while living in Texas. His wife tried to smooth things over a few times, but knew it was a losing battle. Monday, out of the Blue he called me up. He said he was driving to visit his estranged Son ( his Son and I have a great relationship, full of mutual respect ), in Colorado, and was thinking of driving on to California afterwards. He wanted to get together tonight. I really had mixed feelings about seeing him at all. But he told me his wife had passed 3 months back. I attended their wedding in 1979, and really liked her. She sought me out at family gatherings and was somewhat of what we used to call a fag hag. So I felt somewhat sympathetic to his loss. We had dinner at Rancho Nicasio. It's 1/2 a mile from my house, should I need to make a hasty exit. All in all it went well. We didn't touch on politics or social issues, though I must admit to wondering what his political stance is today. My Mom always had a good relationship with him, and for that reason I consented to dinner. He'll be headed back home soon, and that'll be that. We're planning to get together again tomorrow, after I install the doors I'm working on. I think it would have made my Mom happy. Just have to avoid certain conversations one more day. It was fun talking about our grandparents and mutual family members. And I had some great fish and chips.

As part of the Kickstarter, I get to listen to Al1ce's upcoming album, As Above, So Below, before anyone else... ...except everyone else who was a part of the Kickstarter...which is a heck of a lot of people...they quadrupled their goal.

Claire and I signed up for the 40th annual group ride put on by a large local cycling club. It was this morning and was supposed to be 38 miles. The weather forecast had a chance of rain starting at 2:00pm when we would be back home already.  Thunder rumbled after the first few miles, however, and then it started pouring rain. We pulled off the road and stayed under trees but still got soaked. We were right next to an empty house where two other riders were sheltering under the eaves so we did the same on the front porch. It slacked a bit so we resumed but that was when the hail/sleet started. We pushed on stupidly to the first food stop instead of going back to the car, and we found 40+ people trying to get out of the rain under two 10x10 tent awnings. We called it at that point but still had to ride another five miles in hard rain to our car. Ironically, the rain stopped as we got to the car, but we were freezing, completely drenched and 19 miles of that mess was plenty. It took a couple of hours to warm up as it was. 

Chris doing amazing Chris things...