Diane’s mom Doris passed away this week. Just short of 99 years old and in poor health, it was no surprise. Soon after her four daughters and their husbands got together for a kind of cross country Zoom wake. It was cocktail time in the Central Time Zone, and I bent a rule and poured Diane an early afternoon glass of rosé.

The stories and memories were flowing with the wine. I thought about titling this blog “Ode to Doad”. Doad was what Doris’s husband Dave called his wife, kind of like I call Diane “Stoker”. When their youngest daughter Jackie was dating Jeff (they got married and are still together). Jeff misheard and innocently asked Jackie “Why does your dad call your mom Toad?” Poor Jeff; that story has stayed with him for almost 5 decades and provided the family a little fun at his expense.

Stories like this are an important part of families; shared memories and reference points. Stoker’s sister Kris told how she came upon her mom crying at Jackie’s wedding. Kris asked Doris what was the matter; this was supposed to be a joyous day. Doris replied “I can’t believe I raised 4 daughters and all of them got married without getting pregnant!” Proof of excellent parenting, bringing tears of relief.

Diane and I spent quite a bit of time with Doris and her husband Dave. They would come to California every winter. We set up a travel trailer in our front yard so they could have their own apartment. They were visiting here on their 50th anniversary. During the cocktail hour I tried to get them to tell stories of their years together, and Doris obliged. High school basketball player, playing guard in the 6 player women’s game that no longer exists. She was aggressive and fouled out occasionally. Or more than occasionally…

After high school, when WW2 started, her husband went into the army and she went to Wichita to work for Boeing, a real life Rosie the Riveter. When the war ended she and Dave moved to North Carolina. Dave was a good enough baseball player that the Cardinals signed him to a minor league contract. Not a big money free agent, so cash was sparse and they rented an apartment at a discount by doing chores and fix it jobs.

She remembered one time walking (they had no car) home from the store with a bag of potatoes. It began to pour down rain, and the paper sack broke and potatoes went rolling everywhere. The grocery budget was tight so she had to round them up, getting soaked in the process. The image of ‘Doad’ pursuing potatoes has stayed with Stoker and me ever since.

The years from 1946 to 1956 were termed the “Baby Boom” as soldiers came home from the war and couples made up for lost time. Dave and Doris did their part with four daughters. Diane was born in 1946, followed by Kris, Cindy and Jackie. After four girls I imagine that Doris informed her husband that he was never going to have a male heir.

She also described a cross country car camping trip with all four of the daughters. It sounded hectic and disorganized with occasional raised voices, which was not common among the polite Midwesterners. But they survived and created more memories.

Hearing all these stories, I urged her to write them down, for her daughters and grandchildren. I even showed her how to use the early word processing software I had. She never got around to it. Too busy fishing or cooking or playing cards or visiting daughters and grandchildren.

After her husband Dave died Doris continued to visit us in California. There aren’t any grand kids on Brumby Road, but Luke certainly enjoyed being the grand dog.

I’m borrowing this from John Mortimer: there are two kinds of people in the world, patients and nurses. I think he means that some people give more to others than they take for themselves (nurses), while others don’t (patients). Doris was a nurse.

Sometimes I wonder just how stupid our political leaders think we are. Case in point…

“Seniors are getting the biggest increase in their Social Security checks in 10 years through President Biden’s leadership,” the White House tweeted Monday.

Seniors are not getting an ‘increase’ in anything. The purchasing power of their Social Security checks FELL 8.7% during 2022, based on the CPI. The ‘increase’ simply restores the purchasing power to what it was at the start of the year.

The increases are automatic and required by current law, so President Biden’s ‘leadership’ had nothing to do with it.

An accompanying note from Twitter states “readers added context”. When they finally stopped laughing.

Flash Update! This just happened as I was writing: That tweet disappeared without an explanation from the White House by early Wednesday afternoon.

Even the Administration is embarrassed. I hope they are more careful tweeting about Russia and China.

The great thing about stupid tweets is that once they are released someone is going to copy them and bring them into public view. But there is a chance that Facebook, which is where I share my blog with the world, will ban this one. So if you don’t subscribe to my blog via e mail, why not do so? WordPress doesn’t censor.

Stoker and I receive Social Security payments, which constitute a small portion of our income. The increase is welcome and will help offset increases in Medicare and supplemental medical insurance, PGE and propane costs, food and gasoline prices, and keep the Côtes du Rhône vin rouge supply topped up. My favorite bottle was $6.00 at the start of 2022, and today it is $7.50. That is a 25% jump, so the SSI COLA is going to need some assistance from IRA withdrawals.

Defined benefit pensions have become less common than they once were, but public employees and some large companies and non-profits still have them. And most of the pensions have COLA’s built in. But those COLA’s are virtually always capped at 1.5 to 2% per annum. If you depend on a pension your purchasing power starting 2023 is down over 6% even after the COLA, which means you need to eat 6% less, drive 6% less, travel 6% less, etc. You get the idea.

Actually eating 6% less might be a good thing for me. I could lose a few pounds and ride uphill a little faster. I knew there was a bright side to hyperinflation somewhere.

The full quote is “Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain”. It’s from the play by Friedrich Schiller titled Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans, as translated by Anna Swanwick). I remember the quote from reading Isaac Asimov’s novel 1972 novel The Gods Themselves. And no, I don’t carry all this around in my head. I had to look it up. Thank you Google.

If Asimov can appropriate the quote, so can I. When I’m not writing about my teeth or how much I love Stoker, my blog intends to ‘contend against stupidity‘. And certainly ‘in vain’.

My friends Joni and Doug just completed RAGBRAI, a week long bicycle ride across Iowa, on a tandem. Along the way they met an enterprising rancher who was offering a photo op for $5. They couldn’t resist.

The animal’s name is Bufford (not Buford, I asked). Joni referred to Bufford as a ‘cow’ but she grew up in Southern California where they think milk comes from a grocery store. It is pretty clear that Bufford is either a steer or a bull, but I’m guessing an animal tranquil enough to keep relaxed with Joni sitting on his back and talking non-stop has had some equipment removed.

Unlike Lia Thomas. When I first saw Lia Thomas’s photo, the obvious question occurred to me. Thanks to Riley Gaines, I now know the answer. Here is what Ms. Gaines wrote about her locker room experience at the NCAA Women’s Swimming Championships:

“I saw a 6’4″ biological male exposing male parts in our women’s locker room. To be perfectly clear, the anatomy I and many other women were forced to view, confirms Thomas is a male.

I asked the officials where I should change as I had no intention of undressing in front of a man. They informed me that there were no protections in place for me to change in a space that Thomas did not have access to.“

Thanks to Ms. Gaines, we know that Lia Thomas has something that Bufford doesn’t. Which raises the question, what are NCAA Swimming officials thinking? Do they think that all a person has to do to be eligible to compete as a woman is to self identify as one? Do they think taking a few pills to lower testosterone levels and using a few depilatories turns a person bearing male parts into a female for competitive swimming purposes?

I could write that the swimming officials are either being woke or fearful of woke backlash. But I’d rather call their decision what it is: stupid. Contend in vain…

Yesterday I had an appointment with my Family Care Physician. I like him well enough, but he spends more time looking at the computer screen with my medical data than he does looking at me. Everything was fine, except that the take home report said I was ‘overweight’. That kind of irritates me, since at 5’11” and 170 lbs. (I’m usually a little lower but I ate some ravioli the night before. OK, more than just ‘some’) I didn’t think that would qualify. Time for Weight Watchers?

He (I’m assuming the doctor uses he/his pronouns, others were not suggested) asked if I wanted a flu shot, and to preserve domestic harmony I agreed. Stoker thinks it is a good idea. I like to remind her that one year I got a flu shot a couple of months before we went on a cruise, specifically because she wanted me to. I got the worst case of flu I’ve ever had on that cruise. Despite sharing close cruise cabin quarters she remained perfectly healthy while I had a miserable fever and chills and body-wide pain.

I intended to do the club ride today, but I woke up with a headache, some general body aches, and I felt listless and tired. I took the dog for a walk instead of driving to Wallace to ride and while Luke was marking his territory I remembered the flu shot. So that’s why I had a headache! The side effects were mild, unless one plans to ride a bike uphill.

I told Diane about my headache, and she said I should take a home Covid test. She got us a whole bunch of them, probably for ‘free’ paid for by some of that massive increase in M2 used to finance the Inflation Reduction Act. Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ had nothing on the Biden Administration.

Since I don’t have a fever, or any respiratory symptoms at all, the test seemed unnecessary. But there are reasons right now why I need to be like Caesar’s wife, and when it comes to being Covid negative, I must ‘make assurance double sure’. I can’t write about the reason, but take it from me I don’t want to be passing anything to anyone.

So it’s time for my first self performed (self inflicted?) Covid exam. I opened up the test kit, and look what I found:

For some reason, all the Chinese characters and the red star on the ‘Qualification Certificate’ tickled my sense of irony. Maybe Covid came from a bat cave via a wet market. Maybe Covid escaped from a virology lab that just happened to be located where the outbreak occurred and which happened to be working with Covid type viruses to make them stronger so they could be studied. But one thing is pretty much universally accepted: Covid came from China. Only fitting that the test kits should too.

Performing the test is not exactly simple, but the directions were actually clear. Sometimes products come from overseas with instructions that claim to be in English, but might as well be in Mandarin. I could actually follow these pretty easily. Open a couple of vials, swab for 15 seconds in each nostril, soak the swab, put EXACTLY 4 DROPS onto the sample hole and wait 15 minutes. The directions were adamant about the EXACTLY 4 DROPS part. Fewer drops or more drops might cause a hurricane or endanger world peace, as well as make the test unreliable.

One line next to the C means your are Covid free and the test is valid, a second line (next to the T) means get thee to a nunnery or otherwise isolate, STAT! As you can see, I passed. So if anyone that I’m trying to keep from getting Covid gets it, remember I’m like Caesar’s wife.

I said I would write about my recent trip to France/Andorra/ Spain, and here we go. If it gets a little too much ‘woe is me’ then just skip it. I promise to return to skewering pronoun nonsense or expressing outrage at student loan forgiveness or at being called a ‘semi fascist’ (moi? Non!) soon.

First the good stuff: once again 44 | 5 put on a wonderful tour. The food and accommodations were first rate. The roads were mostly great for cycling, up and down and quiet, although there were a few exceptions to the ‘quiet’ part. The climb from the main city part of Andorra up and into France seemed to be in use by every car, truck and bus in Europe. True, there was a nice shoulder. But there was also a big headwind for the first half of the climb, so between the trucks and the breeze I felt pretty battered.

There was also a lot of traffic on the valley roads between the climbs, and it was bumper to bumper along the beautiful Costa Brava road. But as I blogged last week, the Spanish drivers were simply ‘muy, muy amable‘ and shared the road with no honking or engine revving or one fingered salutes. And they followed the 1.5 meter rule without exception.

And it isn’t every cycling trip where you can ride through parts of three nations in a single day. On August 22 we started in Andorra, climbed up and into France, then dropped down to Spain. Only 44 miles and 5,600 feet, but 3 countries!

Finally, the other guests were all people I know and like a lot. We have a great time on the road and at dinner. And the 44 | 5 guide/owners John and Gerry are more like friends than guides.

Now for the ‘woe is me’ part. I’ve been on at least 30 cycling trips since 2005. So many trips I’ve lost count. I’ve done 15 in trips in Europe alone. Occasionally (and rarely) I have been the strongest rider or nearly the strongest. Most of the time I’m in the middle somewhere, not the slowest but certainly not the one out in front. But this was the first trip where I was dead last, the caboose, the Lanterne Rouge.

There were a couple of climbs where I wasn’t the very last one to arrive at the top, but they were few. And every time the road was down hill or flat I got dropped. I was so far behind most of the time that I couldn’t even see the other riders, and the guide who was on the bike with us had to wait and show me the way.

I was also the only one who abandoned any of the rides before the finish. On Day 3, I was so far behind after the first 2 kilometers of the Col de Peyresourde, and feeling so awful, that I got in the van after a mere 12 miles. On the two longest days I also skipped the last part of the ride, although I can say I did all the other big climbs, albeit slowly and well behind the others.

I do have a couple of convenient excuses. It is true that I was the oldest rider on this trip. I’m 66. There were a couple of 62 year olds, one newly turned 60 person, and the three ‘children’ aged 33,44 and 52, I realize 66 isn’t much older than 62. But while I felt really strong at age 60 (I even wrote about that in a blog) both my perception and my power meter agree that I’m not what I was then.

More excuses: I’ve been distracted by events on or near Brumby Road that I’m not at liberty to blog about. Let’s just say that my mind is not exactly focused on the joy of cycling right now.

Then there is the big excuse: oral surgery! In the late afternoon of Friday August 5 I felt a sharp pain in one of my remaining molars. I saw the dentist on Monday August 8. We determined it was cracked and had to come out before any trip to France. The extraction needed to be done by my excellent implant doctor, whose 401-K I have been making considerable contributions to. This is implant #6, do the math.

He performed the extraction and bone graft on Wednesday August 10. I took the offered ‘happy pill’ and had Stoker drive me, to try and make the process less stressful. With limited success. My flight to Toulouse is Monday August 15, only 5 days away!

After the procedure the dentist packed this disgusting and irritating putty like substance over the wound and put me on a regime of Advil for 4 days, along with 12 days of antibiotics, and other pain meds as necessary. I didn’t take any of the ‘good stuff’, though perhaps I should have. All this made my stomach uncomfortable and played havoc with my normally normal digestion. Not to mention trying to eat very carefully and keep food away from half of my mouth. And the taste of the ‘putty’ made me want to gag occasionally. The putty stayed in until after I returned home!

The antibiotic kept my digestion in turmoil until I finished the last pill with 4 days left on the tour. Miraculously my stomach quit hurting the next day and everything was back to normal and stayed that way. I know this medicine isn’t good for my cycling. Look what the internet says: some of the antibiotics that may have a side effect of tiredness or weakness include: amoxicillin. Guess what I was taking!

Despite the uncertainties at home and the gaping hole in my mouth and a stomach that wasn’t really cooperating with the hydration and refueling needs of a cyclist, I went to Europe anyway. I expected to have a difficult tour, and I met those expectations easily.

In August 2021 I rode in the Pyrenees and did fine. Not the slowest by a long shot. Ditto in May 2022 in the Cevennes. But this tour I had to deal with being off the back and riding in the van because I felt lousy or was simply exhausted. I was more than a little frustrated.

I tried to keep at least somewhat upbeat and not spoil the other riders’ trip by indulging in self pity. That is what my blog is for. I’ve toured with these people before, and I like all of them. A lot. I want to tour with them again. But I have reservations. I’ve often said it is better to do one cycling trip too many than one too few. I don’t know if this one is the last one. Probably not. I’d like to do a trip without a hole in my mouth and amoxicillin in my stomach before I say basta or finis.

I’ve just returned from my 15th (!) cycling trip to Europe. I can hardly believe it myself. I started in 2007, went back in 2012, and after my first trip with 44 | 5 Cycling Tours (https://www.445cyclingtours.com/) in 2014 I been back to ride with them every non-Covid year since. Some years I made two trips, one to do tandem rides with Stoker, and the other to take on the Dolomites or Alps or Pyrenees.

The cycling on those trips totals 7,200 miles and 713,000 feet of climbing. If you eliminate the 4 almost completely flat rides (over 200 miles) Stoker and I did in the Camargue, that means my Euro riding has averaged over 100 vertical feet per mile. Using the Stockton Bike Club ride descriptions (Flat (F), Rolling (R), Hilly (H), Very Hilly (VH)) my European adventures probably qualify as Mountain Riding (M).

I’ve written before about the delightful roads around Malaucene that are nearly devoid of cars, but in the Pyrenees or Alps in August this is not always the case. Most of the climbs and descents on the my recent trip were quiet and nearly deserted, but between the climbs there were busy valley roads. Most of those had some shoulder, but there were lots of cars to deal with.

In my experience drivers in Europe are generally quite tolerant of cyclists. Close, fast passes are rare, and one finger salutes or ‘smoke outs’ or shouted advice to ‘get the ___ off the road’ never happen. But the Spanish drivers take being polite to cyclists to an entirely new level.

Spain has a ‘1.5 meter’ law, which means cars are suppose to give cyclists over 4 1/5 feet of space when passing. And they do it! Even when there was a line of cars behind me as I was climbing (the valley roads are not flat) on a curvy road with limited sight lines, the drivers would follow patiently at a safe distance. No tailgating or engines revving. When the road ahead was clear, the cars would pass giving me plenty of clearance.

My 44 5 Guide Gerry also has a blog (https://viciouscycle.blog/), and he has written that the Spanish drivers are the nicest toward cyclists. He has ridden his bike in far more places than I have, so his opinion carries weight. And based on my most recent trip, he is correct. Viva España!

News today on all three fronts:

Inflation: The CPI for July came in at 8.5% above July 2021. The stock market is excited because this was lower than expected, but I’m still getting sticker shock at the meat counter. If you had $1000 in your wallet in January 2020, it’s worth $883 today. Put another way, if you spent $200 on groceries in January 2021, and bought the same stuff, you paid $227 last month. Financial planning models that use a 3% inflation rate are going to need some adjustments.

Intervals: I did interval training of a sort the last two days. I’m trying to keep some fitness for France ahead of my impending dental work. Here is the picture of what I did this morning. 6×4 minutes intervals at 212 to 220 watts. Five years ago I would have done those at around 270 watts. Age cannot wither my infinite variety, but it can slow me down.

Implants: As a blogger I aim to entertain my readers, and based on feedback people enjoyed reading about my teeth. Here is an update: I thought the pain was coming from the bridge area, but actually it is the adjacent molar that is cracked. It is hard to locate the problem tooth when the whole area hurts so much.

The bad news is that the molar has to be extracted. There are several options after that, including just leaving the space open, but the best solution is an implant and a crown. The best solution is not the cheapest solution. I could get a very nice bike for what one implant/crown costs.

The one tooth issue is actually financial good news. I was expecting to need 3 implants and crowns for a failed bridge, which didn’t fail. For what 3 implants cost one could buy a very nice used car before the inflation/supply chain run up in prices. I was at the Honda dealer in Lodi getting an oil change recently and I was shocked to see that there was almost no inventory on the lot. No wonder car prices are so high.

The extraction, and possible bone graft and implant, are happening this afternoon. After that come the ice packs and pain meds for about a day, and antibiotics for about two weeks. None of this is what I would choose as preparation for my scheduled trip to France next week, but at least I can go, even if I can’t ride every mile. A healing jaw is a good excuse to under perform.

I try to take good care of myself, and so far through a combination of good luck and healthy living, I haven’t had any serious issues. My weight is fine, my blood work is really good (no statins for me) and with medication my blood pressure is under control. As my regular readers know, sometimes too much so. My cardio fitness is off the charts and my joints and muscle tone aren’t too bad for someone who is 66 years old.

But my teeth refuse to cooperate.

I practice excellent dental hygiene, that isn’t the problem. The problem is that I have double rooted molars that are prone to cracking, failing suddenly and catastrophically. With severe consequences both physical and financial.

Over the years I’ve had 3 bridges, one of which failed. I have had multiple implants and a few single tooth crowns. I have put more money into my mouth than I ever paid for a car, even our very nice Honda Accord. And the fun isn’t over yet…

I saw my dentist on Wednesday for a cleaning. I mentioned that I was having occasional noticeable discomfort in the area of one of my remaining two bridges. Occasional and not really bad, just noticeable. Both the hygienist and the dentist looked but couldn’t find anything obvious. We decided that there wasn’t really anything to do unless it got worse.

On Friday afternoon it got worse. Much worse. Something must have cracked or come loose or unseated, possibly as a result of the cleaning. Suddenly any chewing or pressure in the area produced a very sharp pain. Here I go again…

I had a bad night waking up in pain, and called my dentist’s service this morning. I just wanted to make sure I could see him Monday, but to his credit the service contacted him and he called me a bit later. He even said if the pain was too bad he could make an emergency office opening today, but I told him I was pretty sure I could survive until Monday.

Now since this has happened to me before, I kind of know what to expect. He will drill out the bridge and examine the teeth underneath. He will probably find that either one, or perhaps both, are no longer able to support a bridge and so will have to be removed. That means one or two extractions, followed by two or three implants.

If that is what he concludes, I need to see the implant doctor ‘stat’, which might not be easy to do. The implant specialist likes to to the extraction himself, and sometimes he can start the implant process right away. It takes at least 6 months to complete.

That is not certain and I won’t know for sure until Monday. But this is my third rodeo with this kind of thing, and it has always gone this way.

Added complication: I’m supposed to fly to France for a cycling trip a week from Monday. The timing is perfectly not perfect.

That means that I will be in France (if I go) with some wounds healing in my mouth, perhaps covered by a ‘temporary’ which makes me a little nauseous with its bad taste. It also means I will be taking antibiotics which upset one’s stomach. That will make hydrating and taking electrolytes for long rides even more difficult for me. Every time I’ve had this kind of dental work done, my cycling has suffered. And the rides on this trip are through the Pyrenees Not flat!

And that assumes I get to see the implant doctor, who is very, very good and I wouldn’t want to see anyone else, to do the extractions next week. And while he is very, very good, the process is not pain free. Far from it.

I think I need a dose of that (Ukraine friendly) Latvian vodka Stolichnaya to take the edge off of my pain and anxiety about what is coming. I just have to be careful to keep the ice cold liquid on the right side of my mouth.

First a little history lesson from just over one year ago: June 22, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Tuesday responded to concerns from Republican lawmakers about spiking inflation by reiterating his view that current price increases will likely prove temporary.

Consumer prices jumped 5% in May (2021) compared with a year earlier, the largest increase in 13 years.

Yet other officials echoed Powell’s views. Also on Monday, New York Federal Reserve Bank President John Williams, who also serves as vice chair of the Fed’s policy making committee, said that currently high inflation is likely transitory.

“I expect that as price reversals and short-run imbalances from the economy reopening play out, inflation will come down from around 3% this year (2021) to close to 2% next year (2022) and in 2023,” Williams said.

Again, those quotes were from June 2021. Back then, people were worried that inflation had ‘spiked’ to 5% in May. Now that looks like the good old days. A year later, inflation is 9.1%. Close to double what it was when it was labeled a ‘transitory’ and ‘temporary’ problem by the Fed Chairperson and his compadres.

Back to my favorite chart, updated for the latest data:

Inflation lags behind M2 growth. So while M2 growth has slowed, it is still high and all that created money isn’t going away: it’s chasing a fixed (in the short run) quantity of goods and services. We’ve got a bit more ‘transitory’ to go. Maybe quite a bit.

But enough economic theory: let’s get personal. As in personal finance.

Suppose you had a $20 bill in your wallet in January of 2017. After 4 years of Republican mismanagement of the economy, that bill was worth $18.61. Inflation eroded your $20 by $0.029/month. For those younger readers who may not have had decimals included with their DEI training in school, that is a little less than 3 cents.

Now suppose you had a $20 in your wallet in January of 2021. After 18 months of a much more effective, equitable, diverse and inclusive administration, that $20 is worth $17.61. Inflation has eroded your money by $0.137/month. (For you DEI non-mathematicians, that is about 14 cents. I realize math is racist and I don’t want to discriminate). Shrinking over 4 times faster.

But hey, it’s ‘transitory’. Mass transitory to the poor house for savers.

I’m sure Frank would like to add another word that starts with ‘F’ to the title, but he is too much of a gentleman to do so.

The trouble started about 18 miles into the 4th of July club ride from Lodi to The Fruit Bowl. Fearless heeded a call of nature and ventured into a convenient walnut orchard for some privacy. He saw the goat heads but thought they hadn’t gone to seed this early in the season and hadn’t yet developed those spiky thorns that plague Central Valley cyclists. Silly boy.

When he rolled back to the road, he noticed goad heads stuck to his front wheel. He brushed them off, but didn’t realize at least one had penetrated the tire and was looking for a tube to puncture. Flat #1 ensued shortly.

The group waited at the intersection of Duncan and Comstock Roads. Fearless and Russ and Rafi and Marlin rolled up after repairing the tire and we got started. I was in front all the way to Baker Road, but when we made the turn Marlin told me that there were 4 riders behind. I soft pedaled and then G Man caught me and told me Fearless had flatted again. Flat #2 was due to a common mistake that an experienced rider like Frank should not make: he pinched the tube between the bead of the tire and the rim, and soon afterwards it popped.

I rode back to find Rafi and Russ and Frank just finishing repairs to the pinch flat. We rode together back to Baker Road and then all the way to Jack Tone without incident.

About 1/2 mile past Jack Tone Road Fearless stops again with Flat #3. He can’t understand what is happening. He has been checking to see if he can feel anything on the inside of the tire that would puncture the tube, but can’t find the problem. By now Russ and Rafi are gone and it is just Fearless and me. We start up again and incredibly Fearless gets Flat #4.

Fearless has long since used up his supply of tubes and CO2 cartridges. He has borrowed a couple of tubes already from the other guys. I’m his last hope. I give him my spare tube (I carry one even though I’m riding tubeless tires, just in case) and my CO2. He hands me the tire and asks me if I can find anything wrong, because he can’t.

I started feeling the inside of the tire slowly and carefully, and sure enough I detected a small rough spot on the inside and saw the base of a piece of goat head on the outside. Fearless finally removes the tiny piece of puncture vine, and this time the repair doesn’t fail. Rafi and Russ eventually rode back to check on us, and we four finally made it to The Fruit Bowl at least 1/2 hour after the lead riders of our group.

To sum up: Flat #1 due to underestimating goat head danger during a natural break, #2 due to operator error (pinch flat), and #3 and #4 due to operator error (not checking the tire closely enough).

I’m amazed Fearless never used profanity, including the f-word which would have added to the alliteration in the title. As I said, he is a classy guy. And a great cycling friend: I’ve been riding with him regularly since 1999. I don’t ever remember him having four flats total during all those years, let along 4 flats in about 2 miles. I was glad I could help him out with supplies and by finding the problem which he had missed. Maybe I put some karma in the bank for the next time I have mechanical troubles. Karma and prayer candles lit in French cathedrals make a good combination.