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.

Stealin’ Watermelons was a song by Elvin Bishop, whose albums were a regular feature of our Tuesday/Thursday/Friday/Saturday drinking club back in college. I still remember the lyrics to Travelin’ Shoes. Not politically correct…Somebody fetch my coat and hat, and hand me my walkin’ cane.

I love watermelon. Cold and fresh and sweet and messy and delicious. Eat it with your fingers outside and spit out the seeds. Lick the juice off of your chin. A real taste of summer right up there with grilled hot dogs.

Back in college, when I wasn’t wasting time and working on liver damage, I had a summer job in the field department of a tomato cannery. This is before cell phones. We were ‘seasonal field representatives’, which meant we drove around the county spotting full loads of tomatoes and calling for trucks over the two way radios in our cars to come pick them up.

One grower kind of liked me, and one day as I pulled up to his field he asked if I wanted some watermelon. I said yes. It turned out he had a melon patch and a couple of fresh picked ones in the bed of his pickup. We sat on the tailgate and ate our fill. He gave me one to take home.

There is no sure way to tell if a watermelon is going to be delicious until you cut into it. I buy mine out of the back of a pickup truck parked at the intersection of Eight Mile Road and Hwy 99. The sign on the truck says ‘Maria’s Produce’ and a very nice woman takes your $8 and lets you choose. I’ve been buying from her for at over a decade and her deliciousness percentage is over 95%.

Now I am careful to avoid the subject of watermelon completely when I am around anyone who identifies as African American. No matter what I say I can’t win. If I mention how much I love melon, I’ll be accused of cultural appropriation. If I recommend Maria to a person of color I will be guilty of stereotyping them by ASSUMING they like watermelon and might be interested in a good supplier. I can’t say anything that won’t be construed as either insensitive or (worse) racist. So I keep quiet, a strategy I’m adopting in more and more situations lately.

You think I’m overstating the case? I think not…

A popular gym in Washington, D.C. is apologizing after a bar at one of their pool clubs served a Juneteenth-themed drink.

The drink, which some on social media say was served at the VIDA Fitness Penthouse Pool Club in Washington, D.C., was called a “Watermelon Henny Lemonade” and allegedly contained Hennessy, watermelon liquor, and lemonade.

I would have thought that the bar would apologize for making such an abomination of a cocktail. But apparently the issue was associating the watermelon liquor with the holiday celebrating the emancipation of slaves.

Or maybe it was the ‘Henny’. I bet you didn’t know this, but I put considerable research into each and every blog post. And look what I found:

Hennessy has a substantial consumer base among African Americans, who drink the majority of the cognac consumed in the United States. Accordingly, the brand has also marketed itself with initiatives around black entrepreneurship and Black History Month.

Who knew? Stoker and I have a history with Hennessy. Back before we moved to California we lived in the wicked cities of Washington DC and Des Moines, and we would occasionally finish off an evening of libation fueled frivolity with a glasses of the stuff. Not the best nightcap unless consumed with some ibuprofen. Sometimes even that wouldn’t help.

So it would seem ‘Henny’ is a friend to the Black Community, and that the bar was simply trying to put together a culturally clever celebratory cocktail (CCCC for short). But woke-up traps are everywhere, and they fell into one.

I think I’d rather give up drinking than consume a concoction with ‘Henny’, watermelon liquor and lemonade. No danger I’ll appropriate that.

Thursday’s club ride drew a very small crowd. Only Bill (my France riding companion) and I showed up in Wallace. So we decided to do a route with a little more climbing and skip the coffee break and hopefully finish before it got too hot.

Now despite my almost constantly saying what a weak rider I am, the truth is that I am a pretty fit cyclist. Notice that I do not say I am a great bike handler or descender or that I have perfect pace line riding skills or that I can knock out double centuries by the dozen. But I am more than reasonably fit, at least for cardio fitness. Look at what Garmin thinks:

But I do have a real problem with hot weather. No one really likes riding in the heat of course, but most people do it better than I do, and for longer. Loyal readers may remember that I wrote about the time in France where I scared Stoker and our guide John by getting horribly dizzy and losing my vision because my blood pressure dropped so much.

This kind of thing has happened to me 5 times that I recall, always when the weather is hot. Yesterday was the latest occurrence.

The first hour of riding went fine. We were on our regular Thursday Burson-Olive Orchard-Baldwin route, and our intent was to skip the break at Common Grounds and do the Watertower Climb, then head back to Wallace on Campo Seco Road.

Just before the climb up the face of Hogan Dam, my neck started to hurt and I found myself going much slower. In the 580 miles I rode over two weeks in France, my neck NEVER hurt. My feet yes, my butt yes, my hands yes, but not my neck.

Because, as I said, this has happened to me before I knew what the neck pain and slower pace meant. I am in the early stages of heat exhaustion. And it didn’t even really seem that hot!

I had been drinking plenty of fluid, but I can sweat it out faster than my GI tract will replenish it without getting nauseous. So I was experiencing a reduction in plasma volume with a reduction in my blood pressure. More on that later.

I told Bill to do his planned ride without me. I assured him that I knew what was happening and that I could ride back to the car on my own, slowly of course. He was concerned and wanted to go back with me but I told him I knew how to deal with it. I told him I’d text if I needed help.

At the horse staging area on Paloma Road I stopped for a minute, poured some water over my head and laid down on a picnic table in the shade. I wasn’t feeling too great but I figured I could make it down Campo Seco without dying.

Then of course, when I am least able to cope with it, I got a flat tire. This is rare with tubeless tires, but if the sealant dries up even a small hole can do you in. I fixed it with a tube and started to ride again, and the day was getting hotter.

Over the last 5 miles I was really feeling awful. I was going so incredibly slowly, and I could hardly hold my neck up. I kept standing to pedal a few strokes and try to get more comfortable.

Here is a slight irony: later when I uploaded the ride to Strava, I got a participation trophy:

Some sprint: my PR is a pretty fast 22 seconds, but yesterday it took me 1 minute 9 seconds to ride the 300 meters of the segment. But I have been over the segment more than any other Strava rider during the last 3 months, so I get a gold star or blue ribbon just for showing up.

I rolled into the Wallace church parking lot, got off my bike and was hit by a wave of dizziness so severe that I had to lay down on the asphalt in the shade and put my feet above my head. After a few minutes of this I sat up, then laid right back down, my body telling me “Not yet, Rich”. Finally I was able to get up and put my bike in the Element. I got in and started the engine and turned up the AC to maximum. But now that I was upright my vision narrowed and everything was shimmering and bright in the center but dark and cloudy around the edges. I had to wait about 5 minutes in the AC before I thought I could see well enough to drive home.

Here is what my home blood pressure monitor showed some 40 minutes after I stopped riding. I wonder how much lower it was in Wallace?

I also stepped onto the scale and learned that I had lost 5 lbs. of fluid, about 3% of my body weight. And this despite drinking a bottle of water on the way home. I try to keep such fluid losses down to 2% or less, and sometimes when I fail things go badly. Like they did yesterday.

Since I knew what was happening I was never really worried about whether there was anything seriously wrong, and a day later I feel fine. In the future I just have to realize that even if I am plenty fit to do a ride, heat trumps fitness, at least for me.

Cycling through the French countryside, you will quickly notice what appear to be tombstones at regular intervals along the roads. The top is usually painted yellow and displays the number of the road you are on. The rest of the stone may display a kilometer number with an arrow pointing the direction to the next village.

The French call these ‘tombstones’ bornes. The word borne in French has multiple meanings. Look what I found on the Cambridge Dictionary web page: no wonder learning a language is so difficult.

borne translate: marker, limit, kilometer, narrow-minded, bollard, terminal, narrow, dull.

The bornes are placed at 1 kilometer intervals, so when I’m cycling on flat terrain I see one every 2 minutes or so. But it is when I am climbing one of the many cols that the bornes really get interesting.

On a climb up a col or a mont or an Alpe the bornes provide a wide variety of information, depending on how much the local Department of Transportation supervisor likes cycling. The borne might tell you how far it is to the summit, what the current elevation is, what the elevation of your goal at the top is, and the average gradient of the next 1000 meters of pavement. This last figure can be a mite depressing if you are getting kind of tired after an hour of climbing and are informed that for the next kilometer you will be confronting a 10% slope.

Here is a sample from a climb I’ve done twice, once from each direction:

This helpful borne is informing me that my current elevation is 1030 meters. Since I know the summit is almost 2000 meters that means I have a lot of climbing to do over the 12 kilometers of road. And the next kilometer is going to average a whopping 11% gradient. It is going to take me at least 7 minutes until I see the next borne. The Col de la Madeleine from this side is 19 kilometers long, so when I went by this marker I had already been climbing for just under an hour. Maybe the bornes are a little TMI.

The borne at the summit, when all the climbing is finished, makes a really good photo opportunity, assuming you make it to the top without needing a sag. Here I am at a borne I’ve visited 4 times over the years: the highest point in the Cevennes.

You can purchase miniature replicas of the bornes to take home with you, and on my most recent trip I decided to buy as many as I could find from climbs I’ve done. Along with my relief maps of the Cevennes and Mont Ventoux, and the delightful caricature 44 | 5 commissioned as a gift for Stoker and me, the bornes are displayed on the French Wall in my study.

I couldn’t find every borne I wanted. I guess there are supply chain issues in France too. But I got stones for most of the famous climbs I’ve ridden up, and if I can find some of the ones I’m missing (Col de Vars, anyone? Mont Aigoual?) I’ll just slide the rest closer together to make room. Great souvenirs of some wonderful rides.

Silly me, I was getting a little depressed over the state of the economy. Inflation running at 8.6%, highest since the early 1980’s. And food and gasoline and electricity, three things it is hard to cut back on, are going up much faster than the CPI. The stock market is in a state of free fall and entered ‘bear market’ territory just this week. Recession storm clouds are gathering on the economic horizon…

But The White House Press Secretary has some reassuring words:

MS. JEAN-PIERRE: So, what I’m — I guess what I’m trying to say, Peter, is that we understand that people are feeling — feeling this. They are feeling the increase of prices, which — with food, in particular, right now, and gas. That is — that is something that we understand.

What we’re trying to say, what I’m trying to say to you is that the economy is in a better place than it has been historically.

“Peter” refers to Peter Doocy, who works for that source of disinformation known as Fox News. He is practically the lone dissident in that room full of sycophants known as the White House Press Corps, so he might ask an uncomfortable question about what the Administration would say to people who are a trifle miffed that they are paying more than twice as much to fill up their tanks as they were 18 months ago. Or people who get sticker shock every time they peruse the meat counter at their local market. Or people who need a tranquilizer before opening their gas/electric bill.

I am so relieved that the Administration knows people are ‘feeling this’. But I’m a little confused about this ‘better place’ thing. Are they asserting that current conditions are better than from 2017 through the start of the Panicdemic in March of 2021? I suppose they must be, because the other guy was in the Oval Office then, and we all know what a disaster that was. I still feel the pain of $2.40 gasoline and steaks I could buy without maxing out a credit card.

And since this Administration has only been working for us for 18 months, we can look forward to them getting us to an even ‘better place’ over the next 2 1/2 years. Good times ahead!

And bring money. Lots of it.

I’ve just returned from 3 weeks in France, riding my bike and eating so well that despite riding 577 miles with 48,000 feet of climbing over two weeks, I still managed to bring a couple of extra pounds back though US Customs. Anything to declare?

In Europe, gas stations quote prices in euros per liter, so it is kind of hard to compare to the $/gal we are used to here in the US. But I was able to figure out that if you take the euro per liter price and multiply it by 4.05, you get $/gallon. Since I was seeing prices like 1.59 euro per liter, I calculated that the French are paying the equivalent of $6.44/gallon. I know that European gas prices are always higher than in the US, but the gap is narrowing.

When I got back to the States, I was kind of shocked to see that our national average gas price was close to $5/gallon. And here in California we are approaching Euro levels. I filled up my wife’s car on Wednesday, and I paid a whopping $6.49/gallon. Just like France! But the food is better there.

No worries though, our President knows why gas prices are so high:

“Oil companies, instead of everybody, says, ‘Well, Biden won’t let them drill.’ They have 9,000 drilling sites that they already own that are there. They’re not doing it,” Biden told Kimmel. “You know why? Because they make more money not drilling and buying back their own stock.”

I have lived through several periods of high gas prices since I started driving back in 1974, and people always blame the greedy oil companies. When prices moderate and even drop back to previous levels people never seem to wonder why, if the oil companies are so powerful and have such a monopoly on supply, would they let prices, and profits, fall?

And why did the greedy oil companies magically discover that they could make more money by ‘drilling less and buying back their own stock’ starting in January 2021? What stopped Exxon Mobile and Arco and Chevron and Royal Dutch from pursuing this strategy back in 2016? Did oil executives have an epiphany that just happened to coincide with a change in occupancy in the Oval Office?

The US national average gas price was $2.34 per gallon the week of January 4, 2021. It was $4.98 per gallon (and climbing) for the week ending June 4. A 113% increase in 17 months. If you put 10 gallons a week in your car, it is costing you an extra $26 (for now), so skip the trip to Applebee’s and settle for Burger King. And if you happen to be an RV owner with a summer road trip in mind, make sure the credit cards aren’t maxed out.

At least 5 people I follow on Facebook are posting photos of themselves touring colleges across the country with their high school senior children. It is so nice to see smiling young adults posing in front of university buildings and statues, with their proud parents on an adventure to see what campus would make the best fit. And most of the trips are pretty far from the Golden State. Auburn, Vanderbilt, Fordham, Boston College, TCU, Iowa State, almost anywhere besides California.

This may be an attempt to avoid some of the woke nonsense so common in our state, but it might not work . My last blog pointed out that these incoming freshpersons (see, I can be woke too) can choose a course in pornographic film making at a university in Salt Lake City. Brigham Young would be appalled.

And now this, from THE Ohio State University: John Fuller is parliamentarian of the University Undergraduate Student Government General Assembly. While presenting a resolution aimed at condemning all anti-critical race theory legislation he made these observations:

“I just wanted to say that and make this very clear, the only people who are taught that they are superior to another race are White people.”

I think I missed that course. Certainly I don’t recall anything like that in the UC Davis catalog from 1976. There is more…

“And I would absolutely love to live in a world where Black people were taught that they are superior.”

I wonder what the materials for such a course would contain? Duke Ellington genius, Mozart white supremacist who stole his melodies from Africa? Maya Angelou is the read deal and Shakespeare is a faker? And don’t even get started on that racist Mr. Clemens.

Mr. Fuller didn’t stop with that, he doubled down:

Fuller later repeated his original claim, saying that “I do believe that Black people are superior.”

Now if I disagree with Mr. Fuller’s thesis, does that make me a racist? Worse, if I write that this claim is hilarious nonsense would I get banned from Facebook or WordPress? One thing woke persons hate is to have their serious pontifications greeted with laughter.

So if you are a parent sending your offspring off to get a quality education and hopefully acquire some skills and knowledge that will lead to a productive career, this is the kind of thing you should be aware of. Warn them, and advise them not to laugh when they hear something so silly stated in front of them. They might get dissed or doxed or reprimanded for being insensitive. Or sent to reeducation classes. With coed porn film watching…

I remember college courses like Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Statistics, and a bunch of math courses for my major in that subject. I did take a ‘fun’ course called ‘Introduction to Wine and Wine Making’, which at UC Davis was actually a fairly serious and scientific class, since there is a world renown Viticulture and Enology Department on the campus. Oddly enough I remember quite a bit of what I learned in that course, much more than from something like Stochastic Processes. I took a course called that and now I don’t even know what they are. But I’ve done daily ‘lab work’ on enology for the last 40 years.

Wine is a pretty tame subject compared to what a school in what I thought was the culturally conservative state of Utah is offering: a course called “Film 300O Porn” at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. Here is what the course description says:

“We will watch pornographic films together and discuss the sexualization of race, class, and gender and as an experimental, radical art form,” the description states.

Remember my recent blog about the Supreme Court Justice who said of pornography “I know it when I see it”? Apparently ‘seeing it’ is now part of a liberal arts curriculum.

I’m sure glad I’m not a parent getting ready to send a kid off to college with courses like this considered part of higher education. Of course there is the obligatory “race, class, gender” angle, and I suppose there will probably be a whole chapter on white male misogyny.

Quality education does not come cheap: Westminster College tuition is $38,830 per year, and if you want a place to sleep and eat add another $10,000. All so you can study men and women and the other 20-40 sexes and genders, and learn what goes where for each of them. A whole new take on the ‘pop’ quiz…

If that sounds expensive, relax. You can get a student loan, and then wait for the current administration to forgive most of it because you can’t get a job that pays anything. The demand for porn experts is pretty small and the pay isn’t much, but the perks make up for it.

Driving home yesterday I was listening to ‘Willie’s Roadhouse’ on Sirius XM, and a novelty song by C.W. McCall came on. It was one of those CB radio, long haul truck driving songs that were popular in the 1970’s, inspired by movie Smokey and the Bandit. Breaker, breaker…

This particular song told of a pair of big-rig brothers who were hauling a load of chickens through the Rocky Mountains, and they lost their brakes. The catchy refrain, sung by the background lady singers, goes like this:

Wolf Creek Pass, way up on the Great Divide
Truckin’ on down the other side

Suddenly I realized that the song was talking about a place I had actually been. In Southwest Colorado. Elevation 10,856. On my bike. Yes, I actually reached those heights by pedaling under my own power. During that memorable week I ascended passes over 11,000 feet three times, so Wolf Creek wasn’t the Cima Coppi of that trip.

That memory got me to musing about all the cycling trips I’ve done. Oregon, Colorado, Arizona, Utah, So Cal, Death Valley. Montana up into the Canadian Rockies. Some of the trips with Stoker on our tandem, some riding single. Always in beautiful country with plenty of mountains to climb.

And Europe. I made my first trip in 2007, to the French Alps around Lake Annecy. I went to the Dolomites in 2011. In 2014 I did my first trip with 44 | 5 Cycling Tours. That went so well and I had so much fun riding through the magical Cevennes Mountains that I have returned to ride with 44 | 5 ten more times in the Alps, Pyrenees, Dolomites, Cevennes (3 times!), Girona in Spain and Haute Provence.

You want the Euro stats? Even if you don’t, here they are: 13 trips. 6,300 total miles ridden. With 631,000 feet of climbing. Incredibly, 1,900 of those miles were on the tandem, and not on flat terrain either: we pedaled the rented tandems up 123,000 feet. Although we skipped an ascent of Mont Ventoux. Not tandem friendly…

And 5,480 of those miles were on trips with my favorite touring company, 44 | 5. Co-owner Gerry says that Strava tells him there was a year when Gerry and I rode together more than he and fellow owner John did. Since those two live in the same town that is pretty incredible. Headed for Europe? Check John and Gerry out at https://www.445cyclingtours.com/

For a variety of reasons, it is highly probable that Stoker and I have done our ‘Last Tandem in Provence’. We spent some of our happiest times ever there, and she did some absolutely amazing rides to help her pilot through mini Mistrals and traffic circles and up the little cols around Malaucène, which weren’t all that little on a tandem. It is kind of sad to think we won’t ride there again, but there are many fond memories to think back on. With apologies to Rick in Casablanca: “Stoker, we’ll always have Malaucène”.