and you feed him for a day. Provided he ‘self certifies’.

The Tuesday club ride officially starts in Lockeford, but most of the riders form the ‘Lodi Express’ which starts early. We leave from Hutchins Square about 45 minutes before the Lockeford start time (10:00 am in December). Last week we were heading east on Pine Street, when we encountered a long line of people holding baskets and pulling carts and wagons. They were waiting for some free food.

The distribution schedule was published in the on-line version of The Record. 23 food give away events are scheduled in December, at locations all over the county. There were also details about who is eligible for which location based on Zip Code, and what the income criteria are. An advisory stated “The food may run out before the scheduled ending time.” which is probably why people were lined up early.

None of the people in line looked to be starving, and in fact the cyclists riding past appeared more likely to be underfed than the free food clients.

Recipients must be San Joaquin County residents who do not exceed the program income guidelines. Here is the ‘self certification’ form:

You print your name, or make one up if you like, since you are ‘never‘ required to produce ID. You can make up a family size too. As far as that goes, you could even use a zip code that doesn’t correspond to your actual residence, again since no proof of address is required.

Guidelines are fine. but nothing stops anyone in line from ignoring them other than their conscience.

The food is free to the recipients, but it is not free. Federal, state and local governments paid for it. Which means taxpayers paid for it. I felt like saying ‘you’re welcome’ as we cycled past, but I kept quiet.

Pretty nice cars in the free turkey line

Not grocery bags. Payment type.

I wouldn’t have thought a law like this was necessary…

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Sen. Kevan Cramer, R-N.D., introduced the Payment Choice Act of 2025. The bill would require businesses to accept cash and bar them from charging a higher price to those who chose to pay in cash.

Choose Wisely

I have been to businesses that are ‘card only’. Apparently they don’t want the bother of handling currency. More counting to do manually, more deposits to make, and more possibility of employees helping themselves to a few bills. ‘Card Only’ is pretty rare but it does happen.

There are ‘card only’ self checkout machines at Home Depot and Costco, although if you bring greenbacks I think there is a way to use them.

Credit and debit card companies charge businesses a ‘swipe fee’ to process transactions, and those fees have been rising. Some businesses have responded by charging plastic users a higher price or adding a surcharge. My chiropractor charges $75 for an adjustment, but adds $3.50 since I pay with plastic. I’m getting yet another dental implant, and the dentist offers a 2% discount for checks and 3% for actual cash. I go with the check route since the amounts I need for implants are large and there isn’t enough room in my wallet even using $100 bills.

Some gas stations have a ‘cash price’ verses a ‘credit price’, with the latter being higher. But until I read about the proposed ‘Payment Choice’ legislation I didn’t realize that anyone charged more for payments in currency than cards. I haven’t encountered that yet.

You can pay your property taxes in San Joaquin County with plastic, but there is ‘convenience fee’. No thanks; the check is in the mail. No word on whether if you show up at the County Treasure’s office with cash they will take it, or add a charge for the hassle.

In Europe I bring euros and pay in cash at restaurants and most business. So far none have said no. I do this because the credit card I have is fine in the US, but charges a stiff fee for foreign currency transactions, and offers a bad exchange rate to boot. B of A gives me a pretty good exchange rate for physical euros and doesn’t charge a fee if the amount is over $1000. And I like the look of euros. All the bills are different colors and physical sizes. Bigger bills are bigger, imagine that. And there are 1 and 2 euro coins instead of bills.

Not Monopoly Money

The US has tried to get a $1 coin for my entire adult life. We had one once, but it was made with real silver, and inflation meant the metal was worth more than $1, so those coins left circulation. Gresham’s law anyone?

The trend is for cash to fade and plastic prevail. but I’m going to fight it. There is something nice about pulling out a bill that is way too big for my loaded burrito purchase, and telling the counter person to ‘keep it’. She always gives me a smile and thank you. The electronic tip screen just isn’t the same.

Ever since we lost Luke, people have been asking Diane and I whether we were going to get another dog. We would say probably not. Diane said that we aren’t looking, but if the right dog found us we might consider it.

There is a woman who lives close to us who fosters stray dogs and works to find them forever homes. Her kennel is full, but a sweet female wandered in and wouldn’t leave, so the woman put her in a crate. We saw the pictures on Facebook, and the resemblance to Luke is striking.

We decided to give the dog a foster home. We filled out the Foster Care Program Agreement and e mailed it to the appropriate person. Yesterday this shy and timid and probably confused and frightened girl arrived at Casa Brumby.

Diane wanted to name her Lucy, but I held out for Lucia. Thanks to AI I know that The pronunciation of Lucia varies by language and region, often pronounced loo-SEE-ah in English or loo-CHEE-ah in Italian, but can also be luthia in Spanish. We are going to use the Italian version of course. With a surname of Freggiaro how could we do otherwise? But we will probably call her Lucy for short, although it saves only one syllable. Opera fans know that in La Boheme, Mimi’s real name is Lucia.

So far Lucia is calm and quiet and clingy. She wants to be near you and up against you. We have her inside our fenced yard, and she has a dog bed on the deck and another in the garage. But she can run like a shot. We have some cotton tail rabbits around the orchard, and one got into our back yard last night while we were having cocktails on the deck. Lucia went after the bunny at a full sprint. I’m happy to report the rabbit got away unscathed, but all you squirrels and rodents and other vermin take note and keep clear.

Although we offered to pay for spaying, the animal control department says we don’t have to. Lucia is supposed to have the procedure this week. They have to wait 48 hours in case someone shows up to claim her as their dog. After the procedure Lucia will have to wear a cone for a couple of weeks, which will add to her stress. We’ll give her plenty of love and attention, and she’ll become more relaxed and ready to begin training her people, like Luke did.

If you watch any football on TV, you will have seen from the ads that the business of betting is booming. So what are the odds that Lucia is going to be a long term Brumby Road resident? And what is the over/under on the number of days until she has family room access? Or bedroom privileges? Insiders tip: bet the under…

Sample ballots for our upcoming special election arrived on Brumby Road yesterday. The ballot contains but a single issue: Proposition 50. If you read my blog you know what this is about, but now that we have the ‘official’ ballot language it is time to do some parsing.

Let’s start with the ‘fiscal impact’. It says there will be one time costs of “a few” million dollars so counties can update election materials. This ignores the $280 million dollar cost of the special election itself.

The proposition is all about maps, so you might think that the maps would be in the voter guide. Not so. There is a QR to point your phone camera at which will take you to a website where you can look at them. I discovered that Brumby Road is in the same district as Pittsburg (CA) and Antioch and Manteca, but not Stockton or Lodi or Linden, which are much closer.

Important update! The official sample ballot does not contain the maps, but the Official Voters’ Guide, which arrived later, does. They are just as convoluted as expected, although they still fail to provide a counterexample to the Four Color Theorem, so the proof is safe for now. We’ll see what Texas and Illinois come up with.

Speaking of Lodi, that pleasant city, which is about as Red as you can get in California, has been divided so that there are 3 congressional districts within the city limits. Any congressional district that includes the entire town has a good chance to send a Republican to congress, so the Democrat state legislature and governor decided to play wise Solomon and divide the baby into 3 parts.

The proposition states that it will authorize these temporary changes in response to Texas’ partisan redistricting. I suppose California’s current maps are the height of fairness. Lets take a look. Here we have a county map of the 2024 election:

It is true Harris won easily. It is also true that there are large parts of the Golden State that are decidedly red. Now consider that this same election produced a California congressional delegation that was 43 (82%) Democrats and 9 (18%) Republicans. One might think that the existing maps are partisan enough, and perhaps we shouldn’t be so critical of Texas. The new maps are designed to turn 5, or at worst 4, of those Republican seats over to the Democrats, and they cut those red areas into pieces to do just that.

Finally, Proposition 50 establishes a ‘policy’ supporting nonpartisan redistricting commissions nationwide. This policy has no force of law. It is simply more ‘feel good’ words that are supposed to distract us from the fact that the proposition we are voting for does THE EXACT OPPOSITE and undercuts the nonpartisan maps already in place.

This being California, I’m pretty sure the blue patches will muster enough votes to pass the prop. Remember every registered voter in California is going to get a ballot in the mail. Voter registration lists are current and complete, and every signature will be checked carefully, along with the voter’s eligibility status. Have I got a proposition for you, indeed!

A quick update to my last post. I just got back from taking out the garbage, and I did some counting. At my parent’s house I pull the tote 170 steps up to the Hwy, and then walk back, for a total of 340.

On Brumby Road, the tote pull is 150 steps out and 150 back for 300.

Grand total: 640.

But starting in January I’ll be doing this 3 times. Total 1,920. I’ll do some bonus steps to get to an even 2,000

And I’ll get another 2,000 doing the reverse on Monday. Walking to the beat of the recycling drummer…

Well on my way thanks to CA law and Waste Management

California has very complex and complicated laws regarding recycling and trash collection for businesses and residences. But until now those laws have not been enforced on our Brumby Road backwater. And not in ‘Area C’ of San Joaquin County either.

For some reason this rural farmland has been exempt, and we were allowed to throw anything that isn’t hazardous material into a single trash container. I could say that my social conscience required me to separate recyclables and take them to a recycling center. I could say that, but it wouldn’t be true.

Whatever the costs and benefits of recycling are, the issue is politically settled, at least in California. Recycling is a social obligation and necessary to save the planet. So finally our new garbage company is going to provide us with the 3 cans necessary to do the job right. Sometime in December we are going to get a ‘garbage’ bin, an ‘organics‘ bin, and a ‘recycling‘ bin.

Confused? Me too. But Amazon sells stickers (organic=compost?)

This is all new to me, so I called a friend of mine who lives in Lodi and has this routine down pat. I’m going to summarize what he said, but if I make a mistake, cut me some slack. The service doesn’t start until January.

First we have the ‘recycle’ bin. This is where we are going to put the empty Côtes du Rhône bottles. And the plastic milk jugs. And all the Amazon cardboard. I’m going to have to get my knife sharp to cut and flatten these, since Stoker gets almost everything from Amazon. So much so that the trucks have left ruts in our driveway.

Newspaper goes here. My parents actually have a paper subscription to The Record and the WSJ, but I bring their papers to my house to cut out the crossword puzzles. I’ll toss the rest into the bin to keep the Côtes du Rhône bottles company. All dry paper (junk mail) goes in too.

Now for the relatively new category ‘organics’. (=compost?) Here is where things get a bit tricky. Food waste goes here. So if you are cooking and chop up an onion, all the peels go into this bin. Chicken bones too. The coffee grounds and paper filter are organic. I don’t know about coffee ‘pods’ but we make our coffee the old fashioned way.

This is going to require us to get a new receptacle in the kitchen, so that we can scrape leftover food into a different place than the empty cereal box and milk jug. Surprise, Amazon sells them, including organically acceptable ‘plastic’ bags and a charcoal filter to contain odors.

Yard waste (pruning residue, cut grass, leaves) goes in the organics too. Here I have an advantage since I can throw this stuff into the orchard, where is gets mowed and the irrigation water and sunlight do the composting. I don’t think I’m breaking any laws by doing this, but since this is California I might be.

Everything that doesn’t go into these two bins goes into bin #3, garbage.

Coming soon to Brumby Road!

Now if you think this sounds simple enough, consider the pizza box. It is cardboard, but according to my friend it is ‘organic’ waste, not recycle. Ditto for an empty carton of Chinese food, unless that carton has a metal handle, in which case I suppose you remove that handle for recycling and throw the rest of the container into organics. I buy chicken from Raley’s in a plastic tray with a paper pad inside. The plastic tray is really garbage since it has no recycle number. But the paper pad is ‘organic’ because it contains chicken juice.

These are the first paradoxes that come to mind, and I’m sure there will be more. I suppose I’m going to have to get an AI assistant to help me do the right thing.

But that AI assistant isn’t going to help me get the cans out to the curb. Because we don’t have a curb. I have to wheel my garbage cart out to Brumby Road, a 150 yard round trip. Now I am going to make 3 trips every Sunday afternoon. And 3 trips back on Monday morning. This will help me get my ‘steps’. 7,000 per day recommended for us oldsters.

It gets better. My parents get their garbage picked up across Hwy 88, and since they are in their 90’s I don’t think it is wise for them to be lugging garbage totes across that busy road with its high speed traffic. So I do it for them. Now I have to make 3 round trips instead of one, on that same Sunday/Monday schedule. Another 150 yards 3 times each way. And these include some climbing. Hwy 88 rises to the bridge across the Calaveras river so my parents’ driveway is uphill, and short but a mite steep.

This new routine is going to contribute to my well being. My brain will get stimulated trying to figure out what trash goes where, and my body will get to do some extra moving. Mental activity and exercise are supposed to contribute to health and longevity, and California recycling law and Waste Management are happy to help.

Way back in 2006 I purchased a Honda Element. It was a pretty unique vehicle. 4 cylinder engine, 5 speed manual transmission. I bought it because it was a bike box with an engine. Some people liked the looks (including me) and some people thought it looked quirky or funky. Dog people loved them: lots of space and no carpet. You could even wash out the interior with a hose! When Luke went to the vet we always took the Element.

The rear seats were removable, and when I took them out the Element had an incredible amount of storage space. Want proof?

Two People, 2 1/2 bikes

Here we are in Kalispell at the start of a Cycling Escapes trip through the Canadian Rockies. Besides Stoker and me, we had the CoMotion and the Sampson, luggage for the trip and a small ice chest to keep food cool for on the road lunches. I’m pretty sure there were a few wine bottles in there too. All of that went into the cargo area. Loading it was like doing a jigsaw puzzle. Without a picture to look at.

The Element handled quite well, but of course the ride was somewhat rough compared to cushier SUV’s. And it was a bit noisy too, especially going into a headwind. The high profile kept the mileage down, but also made the cargo area bigger. And the manual transmission was fine on the highway but no fun when stuck in Bay Area traffic on the way to Mount Diablo or Sierra Road. Cycling is hard enough on the legs without an hour of clutch pushing.

The Bike Box got to travel a lot. Montana, Oregon, Colorado, Tucson, Death Valley. Several trips to Agora Hills to ride in the Malibu Mountains (no tandem on those). And regular trips to Ione or Wallace or Plymouth for Stockton Bike Club rides.

I had this SUV (sort of, or not quite, but it isn’t a car) for 19 years and 130,000 miles. The only problem it ever had was that the motor that raised and lowered the driver’s side window quit and had to be replaced. Oh yes, someone stole the catalytic converter, but you can hardly blame Honda quality for that.

But we don’t have the CoMotion anymore, and I finally decided it was time to move on to something more comfortable. My brother bought an Acura ADX, and I decided to look at that along with a Honda HRV. I drove both and opted for the ADX.

I listed the Element on Facebook Marketplace yesterday. I was going to put it on Craig’s list too, but I never got around to it. I could not believe the number of responses I got. Dozens, starting almost as soon as I hit the ‘enter’ key. Some seemed legit, some seemed dicey. When someone texts that they want to buy it today and pay cash without even having seen it, I get suspicious. I asked $6,000, but one guy was so insistent he texted he would pay $7,000.

One of the offers came from Lodi and looked legit. His FB profile included a photo of him and his family. Three cute kids. His posts were all in Spanish but he texted me in English. I took the car into Lodi for him to look at, but he misunderstood that it was an Element with 4 seats, not a 7 passenger vehicle. He didn’t want it.

I also called a couple of neighbors who know me and know how well the Element was maintained and how carefully it was driven. Sure enough, one of them had a friend that was interested, and after a 6 mile test drive he bought it. I gave him a big discount because I was so happy to be able to take down that FB listing and quiet down my phone.

So my Element has a new home, and I have a new vehicle that is like a supercomputer by comparison. More technology to have to learn and get frustrated with. The Element has a lot of miles left in her, and I hope she enjoys them as much as she did being our travelling tandem box.

The Comotion and Sampson are inside!

And so is their drug of choice. From The Great Gatsby:

“Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, has done something to them, makes them just as different as a race of people”.

Back in high school I had an absolutely fabulous English teacher, Mr. James Lynch. His teaching style was a little different. He informed us that “In my class, students have the right to do 2 things: inhale, and exhale”. He had been a navigator on B 17’s in WWII, so his tolerance for nonsense was quite limited. But the writing exercises he required, giving us 20 minutes in class to come up with something analyzing a poem like Elegy For Jane (look it up if you are interested) helped make me the blogger I am today.

Mr. Lynch was Irish, and he had a fondness for limericks. He even let me take home a book he had of some of the more ribald examples of this art form. I still remember fondly one that began “There was a young plumber from Leigh” with its wonderful double meaning tag line. You can probably find it on line but this blog is PG so you won’t see it here.

The universe of racy limericks would be so much smaller if it were not for the small island in Massachusetts known as Nantucket. But that is not all the place is known for. It is a delightful seaside island community favored by the wealthy, who are different from you and me.

Limerick Writers’ Muse

The sewage in New England’s exclusive Nantucket retreat is full of cocaine, according to local authorities, who this summer began testing it to monitor potential drug use in a popular summer getaway for the rich and powerful.

I’ve heard that sewage was being analyzed to monitor Covid activity, but the drug use data is new to me. But look what can be learned from parsing the poop:

The testing, conducted at the Surfside Wastewater Treatment Facility on Nantucket, found cocaine levels about 50% higher than the national average, according to publicly posted data from local authorities. The same tests found below-average levels of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic opioid blamed for overdoses around the country.

Cocaine is expensive, and fentanyl is cheap. So the rich can do the season at the seaside with lobster and ‘blow’, but people with fewer means must seek highs where they can, with much higher risk of overdose.

When Bernie and AOC and Gavin all scream about ‘income inequality’ how come they never mention the recreational drug gap? How about ‘redistributing’ some of that cocaine to Appalachia and sending some of the fentanyl to the island enclave?

Let me be clear: The Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog does not endorse recreational drug use, and any examination of the Brumby Road Septic System is going to turn up clean for illegal substances. And off the charts on the high side for Côtes du Rhône vin rouge.

One of the great unresolved questions in mathematics was the Four Color Theorem. To wit:

The four color theorem, or the four color map theorem, states that no more than four colors are required to color the regions of any map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. Adjacent means that two regions share a common boundary of non-zero length (i.e., not merely a corner where three or more regions meet).

Simple enough to understand, not so simple to prove. The 5 color version was proven in the 1800’s. But when I started studying mathematics in 1974, the Four Color Theorem still had not been proven. That changed in 1976 when two mathematicians came up with a computer aided proof. That proof was so long and complicated that no human could review it, so there was some controversy about whether the theorem had, in fact, been proven true. Since previous attempts at proof had fallen short, the NY Times did not publish news of the proof for some time, not wanting to get taken in by false information. Would they had done the same with the Steele dossier.

One way to deal with a theorem that is proving difficult to prove is to come up with a counter example. If you do then the theorem is shown false and you can stop looking for a proof. To do this you try to create a map that cannot be drawn using only 4 colors. Over the years several such maps were proposed, but all of them were faulty. But give Governor Newsom and the California State Legislature credit; they are trying.

This map is what the State Legislature came up with in their effort to become even more blue. Currently there are 43 Democrat congresspeople from California, and 9 Republicans. The new maps seek to rearrange things so the numbers move to 48-4, or at worst 47-5.

I decided to look at what the Governor has in mind for Brumby Road. A three year old on a sugar rush could draw smoother shapes:

That little green dot is Casa Brumby. We live about 7 miles from Lodi, but that is a different district. We live about 6 miles from Linden, but that is yet another district. We are in the same district as most of Tracy, but almost none of Stockton, which is much closer. Manteca and Ripon are in our district, but so are Antioch and Pittsburg, which are East Bay (Blue) MUD.

I described these convoluted maps to Stoker, and she asked the hypothetical “Do they think we are stupid?” No, they don’t. They think we are powerless. This is a one party state with supermajorities on all sides, so they can do whatever they want.

However, they do have to put this question on the ballot in a special election (cost $250 million). I’d like to think there are enough fair minded people out there to turn this shameless proposal down, but I’m not optimistic. Paint by number…

Back in 2008, my Congressman was Jerry McNerney. He lived in Pleasanton.

Let that sink in for a moment. Pleasanton is about 50 miles from Brumby Road, and in a completely different universe. Pleasanton is dot.coms and lattes and consciousness raising seminars. Brumby Road is orchards and sprayers and taco trucks during cherry season.

But somehow the California State Legislature managed to put a small sliver of eastern San Joaquin county into the Bay Area for purposes of diluting Republican votes and maximizing the number of Democrat congresspeople representing the Golden State.

Those California Congressional District lines from 2008 look like a 3 year old on a sugar high went bonkers with a set of crayons. And they made about as much sense.

The process was so crazy that in 2008 a ballot proposition created an independent commission to draw lines, but conveniently exempted congressional districts from their authority. That changed in 2010:

In 2010, physicist and political reformer Charles Munger Jr. helped lead the successful campaign for Proposition 20, the Voters First Act for Congress, adding congressional districts to the CCRC’s responsibilities.

This commission was set up to be bipartisan and non-political, sort of. There are provisions for equal representation of the two major parties, and spots for others not affiliated with either. And there are rules which, if followed, would bring a little sanity to setting district boundaries.

As an independent, citizen commission, commissioners are prohibited from an extensive list of political positions and activities for ten years before applying and five to ten years after selection.

Under California Law, the State Legislature now has no authority to draw congressional districts. Texas Law in not California Law. Thus we have a new war between the states brewing.

Republican legislators in Texas are trying to use their legal authority to redraw districts and gain seats. Texas Democrat legislators don’t have the votes to stop them, so they decamped to Illinois to deny the Republicans a quorum. They were welcomed with open arms by Illinois Governor Pritzker, who knows a little something about gerrymandering himself. Take a look…

Illinois has 14 Democrat congresspersons and 3 Republicans. In a state where 44% of the voters chose Trump. Well done, Governor!

Here in California, Governor Newsom has vowed to fight back. He wants the legislature to claw back the 5 seats Texas is trying to flip. Except the legislature lacks the authority to do so.

But the Governor has a plan. First get the legislature to pass an amendment to the California constitution suspending the CCRC’s authority to draw the maps until after the 2030 election cycle. This needs a 2/3 vote in the California statehouse, which is no problem in this bluest of blue states.

But that is not enough. A vote of the people is required, and the next statewide election isn’t until 2026. So Newsom wants to call a special election to pass what will probably be called the “Voter Fairness and Diversity Act” which will promise to do everything from eliminating fossil fuels to completing the bullet train, with reparations and free trans surgeries thrown in.

The cost of this election is estimated at $250 million, which is enough to complete about 500 meters of bullet train track. Well worth the price to put Texas in its place.