Last Wednesday around 5 PM Stoker and I were getting ready for our evening ritual of self medicating with a mood elevating, muscle relaxing beverage in order to watch the news of the day without getting apoplectic. The doorbell rang, and we assumed it was simply another of the endless stream of Amazon deliveries that find their way to Brumby Road. I halted my pharmaceutical preparations and went to bring in Diane’s latest purchase.

I was in for a surprise. There was a woman at the door, masked up. I opened the door and stared at her, thinking she looked familiar. When I heard her gentle voice, with a light Spanish accent, say “Hello Richard, do you remember me?” I knew instantly who she was.

Her name is not important and I’m going to respect her privacy. Let’s call her Ms. Mi Hermana. If I had a sister I would want her to be someone like the woman standing on my front porch. I was very happy to see her. It had been a long time, at least a dozen years.

Years ago, when my father and I were still farming, we finally decided that running our own cherry picking crew was too onerous a task, so we hired a contractor. This relationship worked out quite well for many years until we retired from farming. Ms. Hermana worked for the contractor as the ‘checker’. She kept track of how many boxes of cherries each employee filled and got paid for. My job was the ‘swamper’, which means I loaded the boxes onto the trailer and picked up empties and moved ladders and loaded bins onto our truck to deliver to the packing shed.

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Since Ms. Hermana and I worked side by side for many hours, we got to know each other quite well. She spoke excellent English which she was constantly, and needlessly, apologizing for. I tried to use my high school Spanish with her whenever possible. We got along great. Her husband was one of the pickers, and when there was time between our swamping rounds she would go help him for a few minutes. He is a handsome man with a beautiful voice, and sometimes while he was working he would sing something quite lovely, in Spanish of course.

After quick assurances that we had all been vaccinated, she took off her mask and we shared a big non-social distancing hug. Diane came out to say hi, another hug, and we invited her into the house for a visit.

Ms. Hermana was looking lovely as always. She was well dressed and driving a very nice red SUV. And she was bearing gifts: homemade tortillas!

When Diane was working we had a housekeeper, a wonderful Portuguese woman who came every week except for summers when she worked in a cannery. We hired Ms. Hermana to fill in for a couple of months. And occasionally Ms. Hermana would bring us some of the most delicious Mexican food I have ever enjoyed. Homemade tortillas, rice and beans, chili rellenos, and some incredible tamales, made with pieces of potato in the filling. Goodbye diet when this food was delivered.

So we were both glad to see Ms. Hermana. What follows is a little difficult to write. Diane says she got teary, and I have to admit I was quite moved. Ms. Hermana wanted to thank me.

She said that when we worked together I always encouraged her and that I told she had lots of opportunities to do something other than work the crops. I vaguely recall this. Her English was so good, and she was smart and conscientious and honest. She would make someone a great employee. But Ms. Hermana went on and on about how good it was to work for us and how nice and fair we were to our employees and how if I said she could do something different, and perhaps better, maybe she really could. It was actually a bit difficult to hear this. Her success is hers, not mine.

She told us a bit more about what had happened in the 12 years since Diane and I both retired and had no more need for housekeepers or cherry contractors. Her life path has been an ascendant one. With some setbacks, some problems, but mostly toward more prosperity and success. She was hired by the State of California, first as a temporary and then given a second contract. Ms. Hermana is quite intelligent and educated but she lacks a college degree that would be a ticket to full time government employment. But finally even the bureaucracy decided to do something sensible and accept her work experience in lieu of a sheepskin. Ms. Hermana is now a full time State Employee working with youth services, trying to help troubled young people stay in school or find work and stay out of trouble.

And she is also a brand new U.S. Citizen. She had resident alien status ever since I met her, which means she could stay in the U.S. without any restrictions. But she took the trouble to apply and pass the test and meet the requirements and take the oath. Now she is an American Beauty, by way of Mexico. I welcome her with a big hug.

I don’t know if we will see Ms. Hermana again. But if we do I hope she favors us with some more of those tortillas.

I know two people who attended Yale. One is an economist I worked with and drank bourbon with in another lifetime. The other is a good friend and cycling buddy who is a physician. However I don’t think either of them attended any lectures like this from last April 6:

A flyer promoting the lecture and posted online revealed the title, “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind”

That got my attention. I thought being Caucasian doomed me to look hopelessly foolish on the dance floor and the basketball court. I didn’t realize it also came with embedded psychosis.

The lecturer was Dr. Aruna Khilanani, a psychiatrist from New York. Here is part of what she said:

She told a Yale School of Medicine audience that she had fantasies of “unloading a revolver into the head of any White person” that got in her way.

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Dr. Aruna Khilanani made the remarks at the Ivy League institution’s Child Study Center on April 6, adding that she’d walk away from the shooting “with a bounce in my step” and that White people “make my blood boil” and “are out of their minds and have been for a long time”

Undergraduate tuition at Yale runs $55,000 per year, but a quality education doesn’t come cheap. And neither does administrative CYA. The official reaction:

“Yale School of Medicine expects the members of our community to speak respectfully to one another and … does not condone imagery of violence or racism against any group”.

It took a very well compensated public relations specialist to issue such a firm rebuke. Put that tuition money to good use.

Does anyone remember the fable about the emperor’s new clothes? A con man told the emperor that this was a special suit that only very sophisticated people could see and appreciate. Then since no one wanted to look a fool everyone pretended to admire the fine raiment until finally one innocent boy declared ‘but he is wearing nothing at all!’.

I would like to say what I really think about this lecture and lecturer, but I lack the courage of the boy in the tale.

Stoker is going on a bus trip with Setness Tours at the end of August. She and my sister-in-law Jeannie are going to see the sights of Idaho and Montana, including a red tram ride up Going to the Sun Road to Logan Pass. But Stoker has been there before…

Back in 2012 we brought our tandem on a Cycling Escapes Tour of the Canadian Rockies. On the second day we faced the longest and hardest ride we had ever attempted: from West Glacier Montana to Many Glacier Lodge over Logan Pass. The route was 72 miles, with 5,500 feet of climbing, most of it on the 10 mile climb over Logan Pass on the Going to the Sun Road.

We knew this day would be a challenge, but we were well prepared. Prior to the trip we did quite a bit of riding in the hills, including Stoney Creek Road and Ram’s Horn Grade. We also rode from Sunol to Milpitas on Calaveras Road and did the infamous “Wall” on the return. All of these roads were steeper than anything we would face in Montana and into Canada. Not as long, but steeper. And on the tandem ‘steeper’ is really, really hard.

We were up early on the morning of July 23, and at 6 am we were enjoying a continental breakfast from the Cycling Escapes support trailer. The official ride start was at 6:30 am, but Stoker and I were nervous and got rolling by 6:15. The reason for our apprehension, besides the nearly 11 mile climb in front of us, was because there was a time constraint. We had to get to the summit by 11 am, which was when the road closed to cyclists until 5 pm. The rational is that there was too much afternoon auto traffic to co-exist with cyclists. I was certain we could do the climb in 2 hours of riding time, but we wanted to have plenty of margin.

The climb is long, but the gradient is remarkably steady at 5 to 6%. I’m pretty sure it never goes over 7%, but I know it never gets below 4% either. It is a long slog. There were several places where we had to stop for construction, and long stretches of the road were unpaved hard packed dirt, which added to the difficulty and made the bike quite dirty. After each of the construction delays we were passed by a long line of cars. Most people were quite nice and gave us a thumbs up or a friendly wave. One woman shouted “You guys are awesome” from the open window of the passenger seat. I had to agree with her, what Stoker was doing really was awesome.

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We were all smiles at the summit and got someone to take our picture at the sign marking the pass. The 6,646 foot elevation was by far the highest the tandem had ever been, although we would top that a few days later on Highwood Pass in Canada. That one was 7,250 feet above sea level.

I was sure the rest of the ride was going to be a waltz. It turned out to be a death march. The descent was a bit breezy but with our new rear disc brake it was easy to control our speed and we made it down without incident. After lunch we had 10 miles heading north, followed by 12 miles heading due west to Many Glacier Lodge, where we would spend the night.

But when we turned left onto the final 12 miles, we got hit by a headwind that approached 40 mph with gusts even higher. I had expected this part of the ride to be a relaxed and triumphant spin, but it was actually worse than the big climb. It got so bad that our speed on flat ground dropped below 7 mph and I had to shift into the granny gear, which is unheard of when we aren’t going uphill. Later I learned that a couple of riders were actually blown off of the road, including our guide Eric. He had been a professional rider in Europe and his bike handling skills were off the charts, as he demonstrated later in the tour by doing one-wheel bunny hops. If he got blown around imagine what fun I was having trying to control the tandem.

That last 12 miles took about 1-1/2 hours instead of the 45 minutes I thought it would. We arrived tired and battered, but after a hot shower I gave Stoker a reviving leg massage and told her how proud of her I was. It wasn’t an easy day and her pilot was nervous, but she rode strong the entire time and never complained once. I couldn’t have made it without her.

So when Stoker returns to Logan Pass this summer, I hope she thinks back to that big ride and feels a little proud of what we did together. She will be the only person on the tour who made the climb under her own power instead of in a tour bus. A real Rocky Mountain High…

Now that summer is here I have gone into my full BBQ grilling mode. I fire up the grill once or twice each week. I’m no pit master but I do a fair job with a few items. I almost always get steaks right. Burgers or our delicious homemade sausages taste wonderful hot off of the grill. I do a mean pork tenderloin using a combination of direct and indirect heat and a rub I found on the internet. Boneless chicken breasts or thighs get the direct heat treatment, while pork ribs or a bone-in turkey breast use the indirect heat method. And my grilled lamb chops are to die for, if you like lamb. And don’t forget the grilled vegetables, particularly the asparagus.

I have never owned a gas grill. I use charcoal only. This is a little more work and adds a little more uncertainty to the process. You really have to take into account the weather and what you are cooking, otherwise you can end up with too much heat, or worse, not enough.

I also do not use lighter fluid. I’m no environmental alarmist, but even I think the petrochemical odor of the stuff detracts from the pre-cooking libation I’m enjoying while building the fire. So I use a chimney starter with some old newspapers for the ignition source.

We save old newspapers for this precise use. And back in the day when we farmed and could burn pruning residue or dead trees and stumps, we used lots of newspaper with small dry branches to get the fire started. Tending the fire on a cold winter day was a great job. The heat warmed your face and hands and felt wonderful against the chilly air.

We went ‘digital’ last year, but my parents still take both the local paper and the WSJ, so I have an ongoing fuel supply.

Because the newest papers get put on the top of the stack, I operate on a ‘last in, first out’ system to select which issue to consign to the pyre. But the other day I reached to the bottom of the pile of papers and was startled to see the issue was dated August 8, 2005!

I looked this antique over and noticed some things right away. The size of the pages was larger. And there were more pages with many more features than today’s version. There was a business section and an expanded sports section, and more local stories by actual local reporters. How quaint!

But what really caught my eye was the crossword puzzle. Take a look:

The 2005 puzzle is 2.5 times larger than its 2021 counterpart. The clues are easier to read and the squares are easier to fill in. And if you have to erase (I always have to erase) the 2005 paper is of higher quality and doesn’t smear, while the 2021 paper is a mess every time you have to rethink a clue.

There is a computer print menu command called “Shrink to Fit” which takes the selected material and reduces it so it fits on a single page. As the newspaper business has contracted I suggest ‘Shrink to Fit’ has become their business model. Get your reading glasses ready and try not to make any crossword puzzle errors.

People who are fully vaccinated against coronavirus no longer need to wear masks while indoors or outdoors or physical distance in either large or small gatherings, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced during a White House COVID-19 briefing Thursday.

For months we have been told that the CDC is the ultimate authority providing ‘mandatory guidance’ on how we are all supposed to behave. No matter how outrageous or economically devastating, their word was law, except it wasn’t anything of the sort.

The directive above would seem simple enough. But there are complications. Here in California we still have a mask mandate, vaccinated or not. You might think Federal Guidance would trump state rules, but this is not automatically so. Anyone who wants to use pesticides or paint thinner or purchase a gas can knows that California rules are different from much of the nation.

Many large businesses have decided to follow the CDC guidance, with the caveat that state and local regulations still apply. So if you go to a Costco in Nevada or Idaho you can keep your airways free, but if you head to my Costco in Lodi you will need to cover your orifices. Both of them people! If you are going to wear the thing do it right, comfort be damned.

Of course these contradictory mandates are producing confrontations. People show up to stores and offices vaccinated and mask-less and they are being denied entry. Debates ensue. So far there are no stories of them escalating into violence, but it is early days yet.

All this leaves aside the question of whether non vaccinated people will do as they are supposed to and put masks on. The CDC guidance is for ‘fully vaccinated people’ which Stoker and I both are, along with most of my Pod and Peeps. But what is to stop someone at the door of Walmart telling the greeter they are fully jabbed when they actually haven’t been? At present, nothing. And since you do not need an ID to vote, it is hard to image that a vaccine passport is coming anytime soon. But even if you do have to show proof for the privilege of going bare faced, what about fakes? Some enterprising tavern owner in Clements got busted for selling fake Covid vaccination cards. I’ll bet he’s not the only one.

I’d like to stand up for my right to go mask free, like the CDC says I can. But I’m a wimp. The Japanese have a saying “The nail that stands up gets hammered down’, and I don’t want to get bashed. So the Costco person checking membership cards will get no argument from me.

When it comes to marriage I’m strictly a one woman man, and Stoker is she. That is her preferred pronoun. I like to say my hobbies are cycling, chess and monogamy. But when it comes to bikes I fool around.

My cycle harem consists of 3 beauties. None is really current state of the art, but they all are quality framesets built with high quality components and none of them will hinder the performance of a strong rider. Since I’m not really a strong rider, all I can say is that they make the most of my limited physical resources. And in no particular order, here they are:

The Sampson was my first really nice bike. I got it back in 2000. It has been my primary travel bike and I’ve ridden it all over the western U.S. and in Italy and France. The titanium frame will last longer than I will, but over the years I’ve changed the components from Dura Ace 9 speed to DA 10 to Ultegra 11 speed. As you see her (all my bikes have specified their preferred pronouns to be the same as Stoker’s: she and her) she weighs 18.2 lbs.

Next in line is my rocket ship, a 2014 S Works Tarmac SL-4. With SRAM Red mechanical components and HED Ardennes wheels this beauty tips the scale at about 5 paper clips under 15.0 lbs. That includes the pedals and water bottle cages too. She is stiff as a board and light as a feather, but with Schwabe road tubeless 700×25 tires at 90 psi the ride isn’t too harsh. I love this bike. It is my favorite of the three. I even do fairly well going downhill on it since the ride is so solid and stable.

Finally the most elegant and stylish of the three, a LOOK 586 Limited Edition. The frame is labeled #146/200, which gives it cachet. It is made in France, which gives it more cachet. I got it back in 2010 to replace a similar LOOK 585 that was stolen outside a coffee stop in Moraga. The thief knew what he was after: there were 13 very nice SBC bikes lined up but he took the most well known expensive one; easy to fence.

Depending on which wheels I put on the 586, she weighs from 15.4 lbs. to 16.3 lbs. Her components are Dura Ace 10 speed so I’m going to need to update at some point, since even DA does not last forever and I think these levers and derailleurs have something like 25,000 miles on them. But the big drawback is that these older DA components will not allow anything larger than a 28 tooth cassette, and I need lower gears at this point in my cycling life.

We also have a very nice CoMotion tandem and I have some very nice ‘extra’ wheel sets. If I were to add up all the discretionary income I spent on this equipment I might be taken aback, and most non cyclists would be absolutely shocked. But this good stuff brings me a lot of enjoyment and pleasure, and it is nice to have some variety in one’s cycling life. But Stoker’s ‘infinite variety’ will suffice in the relationship department.

I started writing a blog for E San Joaquin way back in 2014. The Editor of The Record invited me to write about Stockton Cycling. But I pretty much wrote about whatever I wanted, although I tried to keep it mostly apolitical.

Things went along like that for years. I didn’t think anybody was reading most of the time. But then I wrote a piece about a colonoscopy in 2017. I did the prep, that delightful prep. I arrived at the outpatient center on a very windy and rainy winter day, and then the power went out. And it didn’t come back on, so they sent me home fully prepped but un-scoped and furious at the fact that I was going to have to do all that ‘prep’ again in a few weeks.

This was on a Friday. Two days later on Sunday we were attending the Italian Gardeners Society annual members’ dinner. I know this is hard to believe, but there were over 400 people there all shaking hands or embracing and standing close together and jabbering away without a surgical mask in sight.

I walked over to say hello to my friend Don and his wife Jennifer, both of whom I’ve known for years. Jennifer told me she laughed hard when she read about my colonoscopy fail while at the same time saying she felt so sorry for my situation. I had no idea she even knew I wrote a blog but she said she read it all the time. The proof was she was aware of something I posted the day before!

So there are a few folks out there who at least scan my offerings. I know Stoker hangs on every word of every piece. But until I wrote ‘Going Digital’ I never got much attention from my overseers. That changed, as you know if you are a regular reader.

So I left E San Joaquin and payed for my own domain and now I can write pretty much what I like. But the other day I wanted to retrieve something from an earlier blog so I went to my old E San Joaquin home. All my stuff was gone!!

I thought man, they must really have not liked ‘Going Digital’. Or they didn’t like that I was writing on my own, even though The Editor suggested in a terse e mail that I probably should take my act elsewhere. I thought removing everything was a bit ‘cancelling’.

But I was wrong, the purge wasn’t just for me. E San Joaquin disappeared completely. None of the other bloggers got notice or a chance to save their stuff. Since I’m pretty sure I signed something that said they could do that, I’m not overly concerned. I would like to have been able to save the prose for my own perusal and for some ‘best of’ blog posts, but Avanti! Avanti! Dai Dai Dai! Rough translation is Forward! Come on!

Which I will endeavor to do.

Our Federal Government is working hard at printing money and giving it away to people because of the economic disruptions of the Covid panicdemic. This is fine as far as it goes; I have nothing against the occasional $2,000 check, which for Stoker and me is only a partial refund of estimated income tax we pay every quarter. And certainly enhanced unemployment benefits for people who lost jobs seem reasonable. Although if the benefits turn out to be more money that the person made working it does kind of take away any incentive to rush back into the labor market. And if would be nice if EDD wasn’t so incompetent and didn’t pay out $10 billion in fraudulent claims.

But when I heard a Public Service Ad on the radio advising citizens that FEMA has financial assistance for funeral costs of a Covid victim I was incredulous. But it is true! This is from FEMA’s web page:

Who can apply for COVID-19 Funeral Assistance?

You may qualify if:

1. You are a U.S. citizen, non-citizen national, or qualified alien who paid for funeral expenses after January 20, 2020, and
2. The funeral expenses were for an individual whose death in the United States, territories or the District of Columbia, may have been caused by or was likely the result of COVID-19.

Leaving aside the question of why unqualified extraterrestrials are not eligible, I think this carries Covid relief aid too far. FEMA is supposed to operate in emergencies. How a funeral constitutes an ‘emergency’ is not clear to me. Or if a funeral is an emergency, why should the cause of death matter? Isn’t this death discrimination? Are some causes of death ‘more equal’ than others?

The answer to this is yes. Covid is a special panicdemic, more important and more dangerous and requiring more lock downs and shut downs and mask wearing and more government ‘mandatory guidance’ than anything in Human History.

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Poor old grand dad has a heart attack that punches his ticket to heaven, and FEMA says ‘No Cash For You!’ to relatives wanting to give him a nice send off. But if you can get a doctor to say that Covid ‘may have caused’ the cardiac failure then the FEMA Funeral ATM is open for business. Put in your PIN and have a heck of a wake!

In 2003 I got serious about cycling. I had a VO2 test, and received a training plan to follow based on my heart rate. I did the training and got stronger. I even got my weight down about 10 lbs.

Training using your heart rate is good, but using both power and heart rate is better. In 2005 PowerTap came up with the first relatively affordable power meter. I bought one, downloaded some software to analyze the data, and the way I think about cycling changed completely.

Non-cyclists sometimes ask me how fast I ride. The answer is “It depends”. Which way is the wind blowing and how hard? Am I climbing Mont Ventoux or sailing down Carbondale Road? Am I sitting on Marlin’s wheel or out front trying to shelter Roberta and Margret from our version of the Mistral? Speed tells you almost nothing.

But power data tells you everything. 200 watts is the same effort riding uphill at 5 mph or 20 mph on flat pavement.

Since I’ve been riding with a power meter for so long, and since I’m kind of anal retentive when it comes to recording every piece of data about my rides, I know quite a bit about my performance over time. Perhaps too much.

The graph is called a Power Curve. Time is on the horizontal axis and my maximum power for that amount of time is on the vertical axis. For example, the graph shows that back in 2016 my highest power output for 1 hour was 226 watts. This year the maximum one hour effort is 177 watts. As you would expect when the time period gets longer the maximum power drops; you can ride harder for 1 minute that you can for half an hour.

The graph above shows my power curve for 2021 and compares it to my numbers from 2016. As you can see there is a bit of a drop off. Strava calculates something called Functional Threshold Power (FTP) from the data. It is an estimate of how much power you can generate for 1 hour. Back in 2016 my number was 245 watts. So far this year it is only 201 watts.

I picked 2016 for a reason. I turned 60 that year, and I remember thinking back then that I really hadn’t changed much as a cyclist since 2003 and the day Max Testa changed my life. But over the last 5 years I have gotten ‘less strong’ which is a nice way to say weaker.

Poor numbers this year are at least partly due to the pandemic pall. I am not motivated. I even wrote a blog about ‘the end of the affair’ with my love of cycling late last year. That has eased a bit, and perhaps if we ever get to travel and take our masks off, I’ll get enthusiastic again. I know I can do 200 watts for an hour if I have a nice lunch in Malaucene to look forward to at the finish.

Yogi Berra said it, and Stoker and I are living it.

Back in mid March 2020, many of the world’s nations went into a Covid lockdown. I distinctly recall our Governor imposing some of the strictest mandatory guidance in our 50 states, assuring us that such measures were necessary for ‘a few weeks’ to ‘flatten the curve’ and were ‘science driven’. It has been a very long ‘few weeks’.

This put a nearly complete halt to travel of almost any kind. We weren’t supposed to leave our county, even on a bike ride from home. And international travel became almost impossible to most destinations.

Stoker and I had a lot of travel plans for 2020, starting with 6 weeks of cycling in Southern France in May. Since ‘a few weeks to flatten the curve’ didn’t seem especially worrisome, I still had hopes we would be able to travel. But on April 7, 2020 Air France cancelled our scheduled May flight, and shortly afterwards my favorite touring company 44|5 did the same for the Cevennes tour planned for June 5.

Ever since then I’ve been playing the same game: I make tentative plans far enough out that the panicdemic should be over. Then I watch those plans be cancelled yet again. First we were going to try to do a custom itinerary in Belgium and southern France in July. Then we moved it into August to include a Pyrenees tour. But France was still closed to non-essential travel from abroad. Climbing the Tourmelet certainly is non-essential.

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Going into the winter of 2020-2021, we were almost certain that by May of 2021 we would finally be able to do our planned trips from 2020. But France went into another lock down in mid-April, for at least a month. And there is no sign of when the EU will welcome travelers from the US. So our May/June trip is not happening.

We are kind of hoping to do some cycling related travel in France sometime this year, but I’ve given up on advance planning. The next time I put dates on a calendar I don’t want to have to cross them out. 2022 maybe?