A Day Of Mourning

8:16

Well, it's 7:26 and I lay in bed, awake for a good hour, afraid to get up. When I got up, I had good reason to stay in bed because Trump, a twice-impeached felon, is now our President. I cannot believe my countrymen voted for someone like him. My only conclusion is that Trump is who we are.  My only consolation is that if Trump had lost, we might have had major violence led and abated by Trump.

Kayak Morning

North Sky Above The Reeds

Tuesday was a beautiful full day and we both took advantage of it. I paddled for forty-five minutes in bright sunshine, an optimistic start to what ended up being a very dark day. After breakfast and the blog, Evie left for kindergarten and I headed off to Presque Isle State Park in Pennsylvania, about a forty-five-minute drive. It's a peninsula that stretches about seven miles into Lake Erie, four miles west of Erie, PA. Its east side is mostly wooded and looks toward Erie while the west side has numerous great beaches, among the best in the inland United States. It's perfect for biking or walking because an asphalt path surrounds the peninsula. My ride around the peninsula covered 11 miles and took over an hour. I usually stop at the halfway point, the Oliver Hazzard Perry Monument, then head back along the west side with its great beaches. It would have been more pleasant if it wasn't so windy, with gusts up into the 20s. 

Presque Isle

Perry Monument

Great Beaches

I wanted to stop at a Middle Eastern restaurant we have been to before and have a bowl of their lentil soup but it was closed so I just went straight home, arriving around 1:00. I had the leftover stir fry for lunch and waited for Evie to text because she was meeting me at my mechanic's because I was dropping off the Outback to get fixed. Both of our cars are in shops getting work done. 

We both took it easy the rest of the day because we were tired, Evie from school, and me from my drive and bike ride. It made it easier knowing that we would be going to Linda and Ron's for dinner and the election results. Linda had an amazing assortment of appetizers, followed by two pizzas, one homemade. We enjoyed them with various libations until around 9:00 when the election results started to turn towards a Trump victory, especially the early Trump leads in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia. By 10:00, we had enough and were tired and said our thanks and goodbyes and drove home in utter darkness, perfect for our moods. We did not linger but went straight to bed, hoping for the best but expecting the worst: a Trump victory.