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?

Saturday’s club ride was an old favorite with a new twist: Jesus Maria Road from San Andreas. I’ve been up that road over 20 times, but always starting from Valley Springs. There are various ways to make the ride shorter or longer but none of them are easy. The JM Road climb sees to that.

Our long time SBC regular Fearless (Frank Fiore) lives in Manteca and rides with some other groups, and he invited ‘The Pain Gang’ out of Modesto to join our club ride. It is more like SBC was joining them, since they had us outnumbered. They seemed a very nice bunch of very strong riders. They also had something we never have on SBC rides, a sag car! The driver offered to carry extra clothes or gear, and he had water and Gatorade available.

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We made up a big group of over 20. I am always very careful riding around people I don’t know. I’m sure they felt the same. Good thing I was paying attention. On the first gentle hill a rider (not from SBC) jammed his/her gears. The rider slowed which caused the rider directly behind (also not from SBC) to veer sharply left and into my line. I eased to the left and sighed under my breath. When it was safe I passed them both going uphill.

The so-so climbers turned out to be aggressive downhillers, so they both passed me. But when the road turned up again I caught them and decided to sit on them, and the same thing happened: another gear jam, another swerve left. That was enough for me; I backed off and headed for safer, less occupied tarmac.

I had never ridden Hwy 49 from San Andreas to Mokelumne Hill. Everyone assured me it was rideable. There is some shoulder that varies from 10 inches to almost 3 feet. But Caltrans has put rumble strips on the fog line, which means cyclists must choose between a tightrope to the right when the shoulder is narrow, or cross the bumps and ride in the lane. This is hard enough when you are in a small group, but very tricky when there are many riders in close proximity. Between the wind and the cars and the rumble strips and the other riders, for me it was a tense 7 miles to Moke Hill.

Jesus Maria used to be extremely bumpy, but the fire there a few years back destroyed what pavement there was, and recovery money included funds for repaving. And what a treat the new asphalt was! Incredibly smooth.

The group started together, but spread out on the climb. This was the hardest section of road I’ve done in a long time, and I think I did okay. Of the 20 riders there were three ahead of me and one with me when I reached the top. Strava says I averaged 211 watts for 31 minutes and 144 bpm average heart rate. Back in 2016 I did the climb in 29 minutes averaging 226 watts and 143 bpm. I know I was in better shape back then but I’m kind of surprised that I haven’t gone further backwards.

After the climb we rode on Rail Road Flat Road into Mountain Ranch. This is kind of a busy road with occasional motorists whose idea of ‘share the road’ includes laying on horns and doing a turbo diesel ‘smoke out’ to make sure the cyclists know who is boss. There were only two such occurrences on Saturday, which is about par.

We took a break at Sender’s market, and I must say most people there were quite friendly and asked where we were riding and advised us to ‘be safe’. I’ll try if you will too!

I was a little concerned about the descent back to San Andreas, because I assumed we would take Mountain Ranch Road, which has a lot of high speed traffic. But a most pleasant surprise awaited: Old Gulch Road! Narrow, completely smooth and nearly devoid of cars. Also delightfully twisting and mostly downhill. There were lots of grinning faces at the finish back at the Government Center. The sweet descent make the difficult climb up Jesus Maria well worth the effort.

I know I write a lot about the wonderful cycling roads in France, which after two years’ absence are starting to fade from memory. But on Saturday’s ride there were about 20 miles of French quality cycling. Jesus Maria and Old Gulch are right up there with the Malaucene Metric I love so much. Now if we could just do something about those rumble strips…

That is the name of a moderately hilarious book about punctuation. Yes, punctuation. I bet you didn’t think punctuation could be funny. But consider this example of the power of the humble hyphen: Extra-marital sex breaks one of the Ten Commandments, but extra marital sex ”tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d’.

In the book title above, observe the power of the comma. The Koala Bear Eats Shoots and Leaves. This refers to the animal’s diet. Add the comma and the critter turns into a disgruntled diner who pulls out a weapon and starts firing before making its get away Note: no apostrophe makes ‘its’ possessive: add the apostrophe and you have a contraction of ‘it is’. There is a quiz later.

Now I’m not a grammar fanatic, although if you misuse ‘your’ and ‘you’re’ I’m going to quietly giggle. Likewise for ‘there’ and ‘their and ‘they’re’. On the other hand, if you misuse ‘capital’ and ‘capitol’ or fail to realize that ‘historic’ and ‘historical’ are not interchangeable, you won’t hear anything from me. I’m likely to make those errors myself.

After all, I’m not a professional writer. But people who work for newspapers presumably are. Which makes any errors or ambiguities on their part very entertaining. After all, what duffer golfer doesn’t get a little pleasure out of seeing a pro hit one into the lake occasionally?

A while back a local winery won a prestigious national award. The headline read “Local Winery Named Best in the County”. Which is true, since the county is a part of the country, but it kind of deflates the impact of the story.

Or consider this one “Attorney praises police officers being fired”. When I saw that I thought this was one brave and perhaps foolhardy attorney. Then I read the story and found out that the headline might have been clearer if it had read “Attorney praises firing of police officers.” Good writing puts the object of the verb as close to it as possible. The original headline is ambiguous at best, and I think most people reading it would conclude that the attorney was offering plaudits to the police, which the subsequent story made clear was not the case.

I know I’m behind the times. When I text I use complete sentences, capital (not capitol) letters, and punctuation. Voice texting doesn’t work especially well for me since I have to make a lot of changes before hitting ‘send’. And don’t get me started on ‘auto correct’. Their it is…

My father is 89 years old and in remarkably good health. Although he no longer farms and a tenant manages the property, he still can be found with a hoe, or a rake, or pruning shears taking care of some little details the tenant’s employees might miss.

His major job is to run the irrigation system. He consults with the farm manager about the watering schedule, then starts and stops pumps at times dictated by PGE’s Time of Use Rate Schedule. He uses a 4 wheeled ATV to check for broken sprinklers before starting the pump, and once the water is on he drives around making sure none of the sprinklers are plugged and all of them are turning.

He was doing this on Thursday morning. After checking all the sprinklers and getting his pants wet in the process, he went home to change clothes and have lunch. Then he remembered he needed to retrieve his cell phone, but when he checked his pants pockets it was gone.

The last time he knew for certain that he had it was just after he started the pump and just before he set out on his inspection rounds of the 18 acres being irrigated. That narrows the search zone down to 7,840,080 square feet.

He called me for assistance. As is usual on Thursdays I was doing the Club ride out of Wallace, but his call came through just as I was finishing. His health is excellent but his hearing is awful when he doesn’t use hearing aids. So the plan was for him to use my mom’s cell phone to call his cell number over and over, while I walked up and down the walnut rows listening for the stock Verizon ringtone while getting wet from the sprinklers.

Who among us has not done the same thing? I’ve called my own cell number using our land line to try to locate my smart phone. And yes, we still have a land line. I’m not sure why except that it comes in handy to locate lost cell phones. But usually the search zone is limited to inside the house or garage or our yard. Not the aforementioned 7,840,080 square feet!

My dad’s phone is a very old and primitive flip phone model. He doesn’t use it for anything except actual phone calls, so if you get his number forget about texting him. The financial loss would be minimal but the nuisance factor would be considerable: I’m sure learning how to deal with a new phone would not be my dad’s favorite way to pass time.

So up and down the rows I walked, getting wet and listening carefully and privately laughing at the futility of the effort. The phone was undoubtedly wet and probably not working. If it was, how many rings would it take to drain the battery? But I gave it my best shot. I’m not sure a 2 or 3 mile hike is the best recovery from a spirited bike ride chasing Marlin on South Comanche Parkway, but I wasn’t complaining and the day was warm and the cool water on my legs felt nice.

I finished 15 of the acres with no result, but as I approached the last 3 acres my dad came up to me and made the ‘broken chicken wing’ gesture. If you do not have Linden Italian farmer roots you may not know what this is. When something is exasperating, you raise an arm like you are taking an oath, but you turn the wrist down and push the elbow out while muttering something unintelligible that sounds like ‘aayeeyah’. If things are really beyond the pale, you might see the ‘double chicken wing’, which is the same gesture using both arms simultaneously. The ‘double chicken wing’ is reserved for moments of supreme frustration at the foolishness of oneself or of others. I employ it regularly when Newsom and/or Fauci are pontificating and nagging.

It turned out that the missing cell phone had slipped out of his pants pocket and into a crevasse in the mud room closet where my dad keeps his dry clothes. My mom happened by and heard the phone and answered it. So my dad did the chicken wing because he didn’t look enough in the most likely place before sending his oldest son on a walk through the orchard.

I didn’t mind. I’m lucky my parents are still healthy and don’t need much help, so when they do ask for something I hop to it. Even if I risk a broken chicken wing directed at some folly of mine.

There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief

I can hardly think of a quatrain more apt regarding the continuing Covid conundrum. I really would like some relief from the incessant reminders and/or demands to wear a mask, stay 6 feet apart from everyone except Stoker and Luke, and wash, wash, wash these Lady Macbeth hands that will “ne’er be clean”.

We are not going to France until late July at the earliest. So just to make sure that I remember what I am missing, my friend and tour guide Gerry sent me a couple of wonderful relief maps of the area we have cycled since 2014.

The top map is the area around Mont Ventoux. Our Malaucene rental house is just at the upper left of Le Geant de Provence. The lower map is the Cevennes national park where 44 5 runs a week long tour. I’ve done it 3 times and #4 was supposed to be in 2020, since postponed to 2021, and now 2022. It is certainly worth repeating; if I could only do one week long bicycle tour for the rest of my life I would pick this one. It has everything except traffic.

These maps provoke many memories. Here is the Col de Fontaube, an incredibly beautiful and tandem friendly (6% max, 3% average) climb on the way to the lovely village of Brantes for coffee. We’ve been up it 3 times. Over there is the Col de Homme Mort, which despite its foreboding name is a pussycat of a climb unless the wind is blowing. The Dentelles and Col de la Suzette, where Stoker and I encountered trucks laying fresh chipseal that forced a 2 km hike in cycling shoes. And over in the Cevennes, we have Mont Lozere and Mont Aigoual, the the gorges of the Tarn and Jonte rivers, and the causses (plateaus) between them.

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Fantastic memories of cycling adventures shown in relief maps. Which do not provide relief from disappointment. Like the fans of ‘them bums’ back in Brooklyn’, Stoker and I are chanting ‘Wait ’til next year’ for some kind of way outta here and across the Atlantic.

Let’s start with a vocabulary lesson…

If you watch the Giro d’Italia bicycle race on TV, you will occasionally hear the spectators (back when there were spectators, before Covid) shouting “Die Die Die”. Or perhaps they are screaming “Dye Dye Dye”. But that is how the Italian word ‘dai‘ is pronounced, and ‘dai‘ is what the tifosi (fans) are shouting. ‘Dai‘ means ‘come on’ in English. The fans are exhorting the riders to keep fighting and struggling to get to the top of the mountain.

Some of the riders on the climb might feel like they are in fact dying, but they can rest assured that the fans are not encouraging their demise.

‘Dei (pronounced ‘day’) means ‘of God’ and is a part of many Catholic phrases. I’m not Catholic, but I recognize ‘Mater Dei’ as meaning Mother of God.

But now in the USA, DEI (it exists, just google it) means something different. Case in point:

A suburban Minneapolis theater company abruptly canceled its production of “Cinderella” because the cast was “too White.”

“It was 98 percent White,” the theater’s director, Michael Brindisi, said of the show’s actors Wednesday. “That doesn’t work with what we’re saying we’re going to do.”

“After careful consideration and with our ongoing commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, we have made the decision to cancel our upcoming production”

This is the first time I personally have come across the DEI triumvirate used in this fashion, but it certainly will not be the last.

Now take a careful look at the paragraphs in italics above. Imagine a few clever substitutions. For ‘theater company’ substitute NFL. For ‘production’ substitute ‘season’. For ‘director’ substitute ‘Commissioner’. I’m not going to suggest any other substitutions, since the whole idea is absurd. As is the reality.

DEI cancels Cinderella? Mater dei, what next? Dai!

I received my second dose on Monday at 2:30 PM. The first dose three weeks earlier had no effect on me at all. This time was different.

After the shot on Monday I felt fine. I woke up Tuesday morning still feeling pretty good, with just a kind of vague headache. So I decided to do the Tuesday club ride starting in Lockeford.

The Tuesday ride is a flat 40 miles. We ride 25 miles to the Towne Cafe in Lodi where we take a coffee break. Most of this part of the ride is into the prevailing wind. Marlin and I do a lot of the pulls on the upwind portion, with help from Dean. But yesterday I was determined to ride easily lest I exacerbate any oncoming side effects. So I reverted to following wheels or even dropping off of the back.

When I reached the rest stop and stopped pedaling, I suddenly did not feel so well. I was nauseous and my headache was worse and I started getting cold even though the day was sunny and nice and warm. I had to move my chair from the shaded terrace into the sun to try to warm up.

Normally I get something to eat, preferably the excellent breakfast burrito, but today that seemed like a dubious idea. So I drank a Pellegrino hoping the bubbles would ease my stomach discomfort, and sucked down a 100 calorie easily digestible gel for some energy to ride back.

Several Tuesday riders live in Lodi. They start early and ride to Lockeford, so the Towne Cafe is the end of their ride. Three of them offered to drive me home, which was very nice. But I decided to continue to ride, easily. No speed records or anaerobic heart rates for me. I was just trying to survive.

I made it, but I was feeling worse the entire time. I drove home, took a shower, ate something, grabbed a blanket to keep warm and took a nap.

I had a low fever, just under 100. I had aches and some shooting pains. When I retired to bed, quite early, I kept having chills and sweats and my headache was worse. It was an uncomfortable night.

Now I do not want to exaggerate. I am not deathly ill. I am not miserable. I am still glad I have both shots and that magic piece of paper that may or may not be needed to travel to France, if that ever becomes possible.

But I get a flu shot every year, mostly because Stoker thinks I should. And I have never had this kind of reaction. It is like I have ‘flu light’, just enough to quash your joie de vivre and remind you that this is a world of toil and trouble.

Your experience may be different of course. But when you get a second dose you might be advised to be smarter that I was and stay off of the bike for a day or two.

From the University of Michigan Wellness web page:

For many Americans, life in the time of COVID-19 means forming “pods” – small groups of people who agree to share child care and education responsibilities, or to study or socialize together.

The Brumby Road Pod is a pretty exclusive one. It contains Stoker, Luke, 7 goldfish named for the days of the week (Sunday, Monday…) and Rich. Any invaders to the Pod are confronted with masks, sanitizer and social distancing.

Within the Pod, we interact freely unless I make some kind of husband mistake and Stoker decides to practice a little social distancing of her own. In 38 years of marriage this has been a rare occurrence, but it does happen.

Now there are two other kinds of groups we need to be aware of in these Covid times. First we have our ‘Peeps’. These are folks we interact with on a regular basis, but who are not in our Pod. My personal set of Peeps includes my parents, Stockton Bike Club Tuesday/Thursday regulars and management at the walnut company where I am occasionally employed.

In set theory terms, the Pod is a subset of the Peeps. Pay attention, there will be a quiz later.

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Now we are suppose to practice all the distancing, hand washing, masking and sanitizing routine with our Peeps, but this is very difficult. I give it my best shot. But on Friday Stoker and I went to a restaurant across the border in Sacramento County, where you can actually sit inside at a table. And we had lunch with 4 of our Peeps. This is the first time in a year we have done something like that.

Now when you venture out to the locations where you normally shop, work and recreate, you are in your ‘Hood’. The Hood and the people in it form a superset of your Peeps, which is a superset of your Pod. Got that?

In the Hood the CDC would like you to wear every piece of PPE known to man. Two masks, preferably with one of N95 quality. Treat everyone as if they are giving off radiation at fatal levels for a radius of 6 feet. Take a bath in sanitizer as soon as you are back in the safety of the Pod. It is occasionally necessary to leave the Pod and enter the Hood, but we are supposed to keep such excursions as short in duration and as few in number as possible.

The Hood is the extent of the range our infectious disease bureaucrats allow us, grudgingly, to move around in. Travel outside the Hood is unnecessary so we aren’t suppose to do it lest we spread the virus to other Hoods, or acquire the virus and bring it back to our hitherto virus-free Hood. And then spread it to some of our Peeps, or even into the sanctity of the Pod.

I thought I had some Peeps in a Hood in France to supplement the Brumby Road/ Linden Hood. But our postponed 2020 trip, which we rescheduled for May/June 2021, just got cancelled. On Easter Sunday! Peep, peep, peep!

There is an expression for a cyclist who is obsessed about how much his/her bike weighs and tries to make it as light as possible. He/she is called a ‘weight weenie’. There is even a internet forum where weight weenies trade tips on how to make their bikes skinny.

I must admit that I am a bit of a weight weenie myself. I have accurate scales and any new equipment gets evaluated to see if it makes the bike lighter or heavier. I know how much weight using an Ultegra 11×34 cassette adds compared to a SRAM Red 11×32. Over 100 grams! But I need the lower gear and SRAM Red doesn’t make an 11×34.

I know that my S Works Tarmac weighs 15.2 lbs. with the HED Ardennes wheels. My Look 586 goes 15.4 lbs. with the very light American Classic wheels and 16.5 with the Zipp 303 wheelset that has a Powetap hub. The Sampson with Ultegra parts and the same HED Ardennes wheels is 18.2 lbs. Hmm, maybe I’m more of an obsessive weight weenie than I thought I was.

I don’t always use the lightest parts. My saddle is a very comfortable Fizik Aliente with alloy rails that weighs about 230 grams. I could replace it with an all carbon model with no padding at all and save about 80 grams, but I don’t think my butt would be too happy about it. And I put Ultegra parts on the Sampson when its Dura Ace components finally gave up, instead of opting for something lighter and pricier.

Recently Al, a cycling buddy, showed me a new way to save weight: the Specialized Exos Road Shoe. He said they were the most comfortable shoes he had ever owned, and he let me feel how light they were. I could hardly believe it. I use S-Works road shoes and thought they were extremely light, but they felt lead weighted compared to the Exos.

The Exos shoes’ upper is made from some kind of magic material that feels flimsy but is actually incredibly strong. The sole is the same very stiff version used by the S Works shoes. I read a review by someone who rode them for 6 months in all types of weather with no durability issues. I decided that with all the money Stoker and I are saving on travel during the Covid restrictions I had to spend some of it on a pair. They aren’t cheap; I think I paid $420 plus tax. But boy are they light!

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The Exos shoes weigh all of 400 grams with cleats, while the S Works shoes tip the scale at 650 grams. That is a savings of 0.55/lb., or 8.8 ounces. And it is ‘rotating weight’. Because of something called ‘moment of inertia’ or ‘angular momentum’ or some other concept of physics I don’t understand, this is supposed to be equivalent to reducing the static weight of the frame by about twice that much, some 500 grams.

I haven’t tried the nice light white shoes yet, but now that dry weather and dry roads are here I’m getting ready to put them on and see if they make a difference. Or if they are as comfortable as Al claims they are. I actually wanted to get the shoes in black, so they wouldn’t show dirt, but bike parts and accessories are in short supply because Covid has affected global supply chains and the only ones in my size that I could find were white. So don’t conclude that I’m making any kind of statement choosing white shoes over black ones. You hear me Facebook?