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”.

Giving up something for Lent is a tradition for some Christians. Not eating meat used to be a common abstention, or no alcohol, or even no marital relations. If I had to choose among these three, I’d better get used to eating seafood and tofu.

But now a Chicago area church has some new ideas on the subject:

A church in suburban Chicago has told parishioners it will abstain from performing any music that is associated with White people during the season of Lent.

“In our worship services throughout Lent, we will not be using any music or liturgy written or composed by white people,” the website for the First United Church of Oak Park reads. “Our music will be drawn from the African American spirituals tradition, from South African freedom songs, from Native American traditions, and many, many more.“

The church is also reportedly promoting reflections that it calls “evotionals” which have supported the idea of “fasting from whiteness.“

I found the story on Fox News, so I was suspicious. But I went to the Church’s website, and it is true. They even put a sign up on the front lawn.

I would certainly rather ‘fast from whiteness’ instead of giving up drinking Côtes du Rhône vin rouge for 40 days. But first I have to figure out what ‘fasting from whiteness’ means.

Some things are obvious. No Mozart or Beethoven or Gershwin. No French baguettes, but maybe tortillas are acceptable. Are potatoes Irish and thus white? Maybe Black Irish? I suppose waltzing is off the table, but I am a terrible dancer anyway, whether it is an ethnic step or not. Basketball is ok but golf is questionable, and curling is completely verboten. Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway are fine but put the Glen Miller records away. So I have to be careful when I’m listening to 40’s Junction on Sirius XM, which I do in the car. And forget about Willie’s Roadhouse unless Charlie Pride records are on the playlist.

I will probably make mistakes, but I’m going to give ‘fasting from whiteness’ a shot. Bring on the vodka and the hot links, but put Cosi Fan Tutte on hold. On second thought, is vodka part of ‘whiteness’? It is a component of a White Russian…this is going to be harder than I thought…

Most cycling training programs include something called a ‘recovery ride’ about once a week This is a ride where you keep your intensity and distance at a really easy level. The theory is that this is better rest than just staying off the bike entirely.

Recovery rides are great fun. If you have been doing some hard days on the bike, it is very pleasant to go so much easier and enjoy the scenery. A couple of weeks ago I did 30 flat miles and my heart rate averaged all of 85 beats per minute. Kind of like sitting in a chair watching the news.

Except on that recovery ride, I was riding in front of a ‘recovery rider’, one of my friends who is dealing with cancer. I wrote about it here: https://freehtt.org/2022/03/04/real-life-intervenes/

My friend Steve had been off of his bike completely for 4 weeks while recovering from surgery. He said after the ride that I ‘trashed’ him. Before his layoff I had to work to keep up with him, but he had lost so much fitness that what was very easy for me was a challenge for him. I certainly didn’t ‘trash’ him on purpose. I kept him on my wheel and looked in my mirror and slowed down if I ever saw him drop back. But it was still hard for him. It is amazing how quickly we lose cycling fitness if we don’t ride regularly.

All three of my post surgery friends are back on their bikes as ‘recovery riders’. Yesterday two of them joined the Thursday club ride from Wallace. Steve is a Thursday regular, and he brought Joni along.

Joni has done something like 60 double century rides, 200 miles in one day! She and I have a long history. I was on her very first real road ride over 20 years ago. And on her first trip up Jesus Maria Road. She even rode my Sampson once when I was trying to convince her that she didn’t really need those triple chain rings. Once she started doing double centuries she pretty much eschewed the club rides, because they were way too short. But she will always be my BBPFDCG. Don’t ask…

Yesterday’s ride was the first time riding in the hills for either of them since they have been off the bike recovering from surgery. They both struggled but neither of them took my suggested shortcuts. So they covered 45 miles with 3300 feet of climbing, with gradients reaching 14%. I think Steve looked really tired at the finish, but Joni seemed fairly fresh.

She was off of the back of the group all day, but there was no chance I was going to leave her on her own. Joni is a strong rider but she can be navigationally and mechanically challenged. So I would ride at my own pace to hilltops or regroup spots, wait and let her get ahead, then chase her. Before surgery I wouldn’t have caught her. Or had to wait either.

It was great to see these two ‘recovery riders’ back on their bikes and doing what they love to do, even if it was much harder after such a long layoff. We don’t know what future treatments or surgeries might be needed, or how it will affect their cycling. One ride at a time, just keep pedaling…

President Biden promised that his first Supreme Court nominee would be an African American woman, and at first glance it seems he delivered on that promise. But things are not so simple…

Most people start to really hate mathematics when they encounter Euclidean geometry. This is the first time they come face to face with an axiomatic system. An axiomatic system has to start somewhere, so geometry has some ‘undefined terms’ : point, line and plane.

Legal scholars wrestle with definitions all the time. And they don’t always succeed. Consider what Justice Potter Stewart said in 1964 in a free speech/pornography case that reached the Supreme Court. He tried to explain what is ‘obscene’ by saying “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced… but I know it when I see it …”

So like point, line and plane, ‘obscenity’ is an undefined term, at least before our highest court. I wonder what Justice Stewart would think of the kind of stuff that pops up in your browser when ‘safe search’ is disabled? This isn’t 1964!

Our next Supreme Court Justice has another undefined legal term for us to consider:

SEN. MARSHA BLACKBURN: Can you provide a definition for the word woman?
JUDGE JACKSON: Can I provide a definition?
BLACKBURN: Yeah.
JACKSON: I can’t.
BLACKBURN: You can’t?
JACKSON: Not in this context. I’m not a biologist.

I’m not a biologist either, but I never knew there was any confusion over the subject. Like Justice Stewart, I know one when I see one. But of course the world view from Brumby Road is way too narrow. For example, the NCAA thinks this is a woman:

No wonder Justice Jackson decided to pass on a definition. Perhaps she could have followed Justice Stewart’s precedent and resorted to the ‘know it when I see it’ method.

So is Justice Jackson a woman? President Biden promised us a woman nominee, but if the term is in dispute how do we know she is a ‘she’?

Walter Scott took a crack at the issue:

O woman! in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please… When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!

So if she is a she, you can count on her interrupting you for some ‘honey do’ while you are watching an NFL game and sipping a martini, but if you get sick and just want to be left alone to suffer in peace she will hover offering hot soup or a cool compress. Uncertain indeed!

We could look to Shakespeare for some input: “Why makes thou it so strange? She is a woman, therefore may be wooed; She is a woman, therefore may be won“

I guess that didn’t help much either. All this wooing and winning stuff kind of makes it look like men are up to no good and only after women for one thing. And we will do almost anything for that ‘one thing’. Example: guess who goes up on the roof to clean the gutters? Or crawls under the house to put out rodent bait? Remember we live in the country where the critters are a problem. The bait works, the rats and mice die and the dried bodies litter the dirt floor of the crawl space. One of my favorite home maintenance tasks.

Since ‘woman’ is going to be considered undefined, I need to consider whether Stoker is one, or if I have simply been deceiving myself for the last 40 years. A close physical inspection reveals the predicted differences between me and she (pronoun assumed), but I guess the real issue is whether she (?) identifies as a woman. If she doesn’t, next year I’ll leave the crawl space excursion to (non binary pronoun).

Stoker and I started going to France to ride a tandem way back in 2015. We did 5 rides that year, and things went so well that in 2016 we went back for a two week trip, staying in 4 different villages, with 12 tandem rides.

On this trip we had a day off the bike in Malaucène, on a Wednesday, which happened to be market day. The main street was closed to cars and vendors assembled selling all kinds of fresh vegetables, fruits, meats, cheese (oh my, the cheese!), pastries, wines and more. As we wandered around and then sat at a café for a coffee, I kind of jokingly said “You know Stoker, we really can’t move here”.

Her response was “How about a month?” I thought for a second and then said that seemed possible. I was pretty sure it was just idle talk and that reality would set in at the airport. Nothing like travel hassles and discomforts to bring you back to the real world.

I underestimated her resolve. As soon as we got home she went hunting for a rental house for May of 2017. She found one, and we booked it for our great gamble: one entire month in the village of Malaucène.

We loved it. So much that we went back again in 2018, and in 2019. The 2019 trip was remarkable. We had our best month of riding together ever. I’m going to write about that in some detail later, since it now seems likely that we have done our last tandem ride in France.

We booked the house ‘le portail du Ventoux’ for May 2020, and paid for it as soon as we got back to California after that Magic May of 2019. We all know what happened starting in March 2020.

For a while I believed the ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ decree, but it soon became clear we weren’t going anywhere in May 2020. I texted the Landlady and at that point I just said that we would keep in touch and try to get to France when the pandemic was past. I didn’t bring up anything about a refund.

Well two weeks turned into a year, and in the spring of 2021 our Malaucène Month of May was still not possible: France was closed. So in April 2021 I asked for some money back:

Of course no refund was forthcoming, which didn’t surprise me much. In August 2021, France finally opened up to travel from the US, and I asked for the house from May 4 to June 3, 2022. The Landlady was happy to keep the money and agree. She even used the smiley face, which is as good as a notarized signature.

So when our plans for May 2022 turned into a shortened trip for one I texted the Landlady and said I would be there from May 18 to 27. Note that this is a subset of the dates I asked for in August 2021 in lieu of a refund. I did this as a courtesy so she could rent it at the other times even though she had agreed for me to have it from May 4 to June 3. But she generously offered it to me until May 22 only, since it was rented to someone else after that!

I’m sure glad I took screenshots of our text messages. I tried to be polite but I pointed out that we had a ‘contract’ dating back to August 2021, which she signed with a smiley face. She suggested that I could change my dates, but since I have another tour starting on May 28 I really needed the dates I asked for.

Finally she agreed to a refund. I have learned from 44 | 5 that there is a Covid law in France that requires her to give me my money back, even when she said it was ‘difficult’. I didn’t push the issue because I thought we would get to Malaucène eventually and I was willing to pay in advance.

I sent her bank account information a week ago, and I haven’t received anything yet. I really don’t expect to. I have no leverage here. What am I going to do, hire an attorney and sue in France’s version of small claims court?

Here is how I have chosen to look at it: Diane and I spent 3 wonderful months in this house over 3 years. If I take the 1950 euros I’m (probably) out, and add it to the rent we paid for the other 3 years, we still got our money’s worth. Stoker and I have spent some wonderful happy years together, but we have never been happier than we were in ‘our’ Malaucène house.

Our front door in May… And le Tour came by the same door last July!

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., argued Friday that global inflation “starts with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” but that increased U.S. government spending on domestic social programs would help decrease the national debt and bring down inflation at home.”

Ms. Pelosi is a very smart woman. So she knows that what she said is complete nonsense. But, being such a smart and powerful person, she (her preferred pronoun) also knows that no one is going to dispute her. Except for the Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog! I should probably be worried about being put on a ‘no fly list’ or being audited by the IRS.

Gas prices in the U.S. averaged $2.33 on January 6, 2021. On February 1, 2022, well before Russia invaded Ukraine, the price had risen 48% to $3.46.

Now on to the fanciful notion that increased government spending will decrease the national debt and bring down inflation at home. Really this is such an outrageous statement that I can hardly stop laughing. Except it isn’t that funny.

Here is a picture for your consideration. Discussion to follow:

The red line is the rate of inflation measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The black line is the rate of growth in the money supply as measured by M2.

The CPI is kind of self explanatory, but we need to spend a moment on M2. If you add up all the money in checking accounts, all the physical currency in circulation, and certain savings accounts and short term CD’s, you get M2. M2 is considered the best measure of the money supply.

So far so good. But things are about to get very complicated. We know the US government has the power to print money. But how much that money is worth depends on how much they print. That responsibility had been delegated to the Federal Reserve, a powerful and semi autonomous government agency. The Fed has the power, authority and tools to control how fast M2 grows.

Over time the money supply needs to grow at roughly the same rate as real GDP (Gross Domestic Product, a measure of the goods and services produced). If you are a loyal reader you will remember PQ=MV. Q is real GDP, and it grows over time. So for prices to be stable and the economy to grow, M has to grow too (V is assumed to be relatively stable).

Conspiracy lovers blame the Fed for everything from the price of gas to the common cold, or now the Common Covid. I’m not one of those at all. But what the Fed does, in cooperation with the Congress and Executive Office regarding Federal deficit spending, affects the value of money. More than Putin’s war does.

Now to the chart. Notice how sometimes the black line spikes up far above the red line? Then what happens? The black line falls and the red line rises until it close to or above the black line. The simplistic conclusion is that when M2 is allowed to grow faster that real GDP, inflation follows. When M2 growth is restrained, the rate of inflation comes down.

The chart goes back to the early 1940’s, WWII years. Back then the US Government was spending way more money that it took in in taxes, i.e. deficit spending. But prices were kept low by using price controls, and since prices were artificially low ration cards were issued to dampen demand for goods. After the war price controls were lifted and all that created M2 went around chasing goods that weren’t there. Inflation!

Same thing in the 1970’s. Deficit spending for Vietnam, social programs, the Cold War, whatever. The Fed played along by sopping up Treasury Bonds and letting M2 get ahead of itself. Inflation spiked twice soon after.

Then came a long period of relative price stability and stable money supply growth, and all was well until 2008, when some Wall Street creations called ‘derivatives’ that were supposedly rated AAA turned out to be based on inflated housing prices and were really more like FFF. There was a steep drop in M2 and everyone was worried about deflation and a collapse of the US economy resembling what happened in 1929 through 1932. The Fed reacted by quickly restoring M2 and putting ‘liquidity’ into the financial markets to avert a crisis. Deflation averted, unlike what happened in 1929, when the Fed sat on its hands and let M2 fall something like 30% and allowed banks to fail. Depression followed.

So with all that as background, look what happened in 2020 and into 2021. M2 grew faster than at any point in the past 80 years. Remember that money that magically appeared in your bank checking account? M2 growth. Free Covid tests and masks and emergency production of ventilators which proved to be unnecessary and even counterproductive? Financed by M2 growth making the deficit spending possible. Hospital ships moved into New York harbor and emergency Covid centers like the one at Arco Arena in Sacto, which never housed a single patient?. M2 again.

All this may or may not have been a good idea as a reaction to the Covid pandemic, aka Pandemia, which is a great book by Alex Berenson about events since March 2020. I’m not going to debate anyone about Covid policy. But I’m not going to let Ms. Pelosi’s comments stand without at least a little push back. Even if it does get me on a ‘no fly’ list. Mr. Putin is a bad man causing the world much trouble. But if you are upset about rising prices, look to Washington, not Moscow.

For years, this was part of every male annual physical examination, to check for prostate swelling, which could indicate prostate cancer, or the more common and less worrisome but still uncomfortable ‘benign prostatic hyperplasia’.

Now I certainly have a few health issues, but the symptoms of BPH are not among them. So I can ignore all the ads for supplements to promote prostate health. But still it pays to be safe, so for years I bent over and let my GP do his thing. I think he was more nervous about it than I was. Much, much easier than dental implants.

But progress marches ahead, and at Adventist Health in Lodi the finger is a thing of the past. It has been replaced by something called a PSA test and is a standard part of the blood work for a routine male physical.

At least that was what I thought. For years I’ve had PSA tests and never been asked to pay extra for them. But when I went to the lab last week I was told that of the battery of blood tests my Medicare and supplemental would cover all of them, EXCEPT for the PSA. Apparently it was coded as ‘medically unnecessary’.

Now at least the receptionist was nice enough to inform me of this before they drew blood, and let me know that if I wanted the test it was going to cost me $150. So even if there was no finger involved, I would be getting the finger, metaphorically speaking.

What’s an uninformed and relatively prosperous patient to do? I said go ahead and do the test. We spend about 1/7th of our GDP on medical care, so what’s a few dollars more? It’s only about the cost of one tank of gas…

Now it does seem to me that screening for prostate cancer might actually be considered ‘medically necessary’. When I finally saw my doctor to discuss the labs and other matters, I asked him if there had been some coding error in ordering the test that meant I had to pay instead of the insurance company. He told me that up to age 65 the screening was medically necessary and insurance would pay. But once you turn age 65 new rules come into play, and if you are asymptomatic then the test isn’t necessary and if you want it anyway, open up the wallet.

If you think this doesn’t make a lot of sense, I would point out that when government bureaucrats and insurance company lobbyists get together over drinks very little good can come out of it. I wonder what other surprises lay in store as I begin my Medicare odyssey?