I had the most amazing swim out in the Gulf of Mexico this evening. I’ve got just a few weeks to go before the Augusta Ironman 70.3 race and I’m trying my best to put a few quality hours of training in, but frankly the workload and this mission have consumed all my time so the training’s just not there. So rather than hammer away, I’m slowing down the training swims, bikes and runs and really appreciating the time to think things through. Tonight’s open water session was one of those times when my breath is literally taken away by the sheer beauty of what is around us here in Florida.
You never know what kind of water you’re going to get, but tonight the Gulf was as smooth as silk, the water iridescent blue. And just a few yards away from where we started the 1.2 mile swim was a huge party of dolphins rollicking and rolling and darting around in the water. I don’t know what kind of bait line they were running through, but the whole crowd of them, babies and all were going nuts. As I hit the water and started the long glide back to the start, I turned back to notice the most amazing full rainbow over the water. Not exactly the picture above, and no picture on this screen could capture the full beauty and magnificence of what was above. And what was below was equally magnificent. Some nights the water is dark and murky, roiling and rough, like swimming in a milkshake. But tonight the water was crystal clear blue and with all the fish around it was like swimming in a fish tank.
And at the end, another treat, a fully developed waterspout. From the sea right up to the heavens, God’s finger pointing down through the clouds to touch the earth…a reminder just how small and insignificant we all are. After all that, a little run through the rain felt like reincarnation….what a way to recharge from a long day slogging along in the trenches.
Speaking of the trenches, at some point in time I got to wondering…”Just how much pressure is being placed on the banks to conceal the full extent of the foreclosure debacle that is still coming?” I’m not talking about fraudclosuregate or robosigning or the attorney general investigations (or lack thereof) that’s so 2010. I’m talking about the fact that the lenders are not filing foreclosures at anywhere near the rates they could be filing. New foreclosure filings have slowed down to a trickle…and they’ve been slowed down for more than a year. But why? Has the economy improved? No, it’s gotten worse. Has unemployment decreased? No, it’s gotten much worse. Has anything at all in the national or international legal and economic scene changed to make the foreclosure environment any better? No way, things have only gotten much worse.
I have heard for months now that the foreclosure mills have tens of thousands of new filings that they are just sitting on. And sit they better. Because what’s going to happen when Chase or Wells or Bank of America or US Bank gives the instructions to file any recognizable percentage of the delinquent files they are sitting on? What will all the analysts and industry hacks and realtors say about all this flooded inventory? And just think about how this would force all the bean counters to finally account for all the defaulted loans sitting on the balance sheets of all these financial “titans”.
How is Warren Buffett going to make out with his $5 Billion Dollar Bathtub “Gamble”? How is Obama going to make out with his grand bargains with the Wizards of Wall Street? And where is anyone who is willing to apply 5th grade economic analysis to our country’s larger economic picture?
Times are bad people and reality is being masked by fraud, fiction and fantasy. Truth has a way of revealing itself eventually. We’ve all been shielded from the truth for a very long time. To what end?
