Yeah, too right Steve.

Personally I would've replied smirking 

He's a lovely guy,  followed by rolling my eyes.

The tourist dependent cities of Las Vegas and Orlando are suffering from a lack of foreign visitors. California is desperately courting Canadian visitors, saying "don't blame us". No doubt FIFA is extremely nervous about the 2028 World Cup.

International tourist hot spots are seldom friendly for bicycle touring. A high vacancy rate doesn't make me want to do a bike tour in those places. The U.S. tourist recession hasn't changed my plans. This summer I plan to bike a rural loop to Canada and back. Northeast Washington and Southeast British Columbia.

Thanks Wayne. That’s interesting and good point about tourism hotspots and cycling. Places best avoided.

With the proposed social media vetting at the borders, it’ll be interesting to see if they widen their net. I won’t be surprised if they extend the technique to USA citizens returning via international borders.

And of course there’s no need really for authoritarian governments to limit their social media scanning to border crossings. For example, an Indonesian friend recently had one of their social media accounts disappear, only for it to return a few days later, but with posts critical of the government deleted.

In an unrelated incident, that same friend hosted an Australian cycle tourer a few years ago. Shortly after the cycle-tourer (also a friend of mine) departed, a local area official fronted up to the house, and demanded a written report about the visit. The issue was more about conservative, rural, religious leaders throwing their weight around. Not about political affiliations. 

This is astounding to me but such a part of our new reality now. I grieve for the land of the free and all who were our friends. May this national nightmare fizzle out from all the stupidity ASAP. 

Everyone needs one of these!

https://logwork.com/countdown-h5o4

This link does not work for me, but that may be because I’m in Thailand. 

Andrea, I have two sisters in the US with grown up families. I mentioned him to one sister on a visit home recently. She froze up with disgust and said don't talk about him.

The link is a count down timer to 20 January 2029 but may be geo barred where you are now.

Mike that counter is reminiscent of trying not to look at my CatEye cycling odometer when it was measuring a 3800km cycle-tour (Canberra to Perth) in 0.1km increments. :)