Atent dead yet.

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Well, not bad for being dormant for close (very close) to three years since the last post. Another million views, and three million is in sight. I was amazed. You folks are the best.So Im here because a couple of folks said Beetlejuice. I received a offsite message from an old friend asking after me these days and hinting that news from 3RR was missed and I have to say that I was quite touched. I meant to log back on before Christmas but we had an earthquake up here in Alaska the last day of November and the less said about that, along with the many big aftershocks, the better. Then yesterday I clicked pretty much by accident a shortcut Id made to the site as I was moving things to some new computer equipment (earthquake, sigh) and found, almost by serendipity, that someone had inquired about where he might find my old center-pivot agriculture stuff. I responded in that thread and, well, here I am.Part of the transition to a large (8 TB) hard drive that backs everything up has involved finding in millions- well, more than 20, anyway- of different locations all of my old SC4/3RR files. I am now organizing these carefully and, if anyone would be interested, will within the next few weeks be in a position to send anyone who would be interested anything that Ive ever created. Ill note, going back to the center-pivot and other farm stuff, that my contribution there was to come up with the idea and then create textures. I asked Matt () to do the BATting of the equipment and windmills and road grates, among others and so I cannot supply those directly, but Im pretty sure my friend would be happy to make that possible. Another interesting possibility is that, with the availability of large file transfer options not involving the LEX (Dropbox, mainly, but even email attachments these days), I can easily provide 3RR quads to anyone who might want to play with one. Let me think that through a bit and Ill post further about doing that down the road.So, what about me otherwise these days? When I came to SC4D in late 2006 I was 54 years old and still in the midst of running an active law practice. Im now 66 and happily retired for five years. I do keep myself busy, mainly in planning and then taking long-distance bicycle rides. I rode my Surly Disc Trucker down the Atlantic Coast from Halifax, Nova Scotia to Key West, Florida in 2016, down the length of the Mississippi River from Lake Itasca in Minnesota to Venice out in the Gulf of Mexico on the Mississippi delta in 2017, round-trip on the Natchez Trace Parkway from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez, Mississippi and back in the spring of last year and then from Washington, D.C. to Kansas City, Missouri in the fall. In the past two and a half years I have put over 12,000 miles/almost 20,000 kilometers on my bike; probably more than Ive put on my car. This summer I will ride from Seaside, Oregon across the United States almost 5,000 miles/8,000 kilometers to Seaside, New York, a neighborhood of New York City.Ive also done one and two week trips here in Alaska.When I return from this years trip Im headed back to school. Im enrolling in the University of Alaska Anchorages Master of Fine Arts program in creative writing and will spend three years while working towards my MFA degree writing about my experiences riding down the Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri Rivers. Ive seen a lot of fascinating things and think I have enough to put together a fairly interesting story. Well see.My love affair with Cities:Skylines is over. The game is beautiful, but really not all that much fun to play over the long term and, if anything, Im a long term sort of guy. Its broken in ways that the developer just doesnt seem inclined to fix and theres no real sense of community that Ive found anywhere on the web that matches what SC4D offers here. Ive made a couple of good friends, but Ive probably, barring something unforeseen, booted C:S up for the last time.One of the things that has kept me away has been the passing on of several SC4 players who I had become very close friends with and the disappearance of others from the community when they moved on to other pursuits. I am very much aware of my own mortality these days and thinking about folks like John () and Barby () is pretty painful. In the end, though, their creations and contributions to this community live on, much as 3RR has appeared to. Im honored by that, and feel like the least I can do is wrap things up a little bit more neatly even if I no longer am playing SC4.So, more to come. Stay tuned, and thanks for stopping by.David