Unless you get all your news from NPR and PBS, you have undoubtably seen videos of citizens (and non-citizens) behaving badly. Gangs organize smash and grab raids of high end retailers, or liquor stores. In California shoplifting goods valued at less than $950 is a misdemeanor, and our DA’s don’t prosecute misdemeanors, unless the deed involves a suspected MAGA person.

And then there was this recent event in New York City…

A group of recently arrived asylum seekers (aka illegal aliens) took umbrage at some NYPD officers, and attacked them. It was all caught on security cameras, and several of the perps were arrested. One of the arrestees showed his opinion of the justice system in his new home country where he seeks asylum.

The arrestees were, incredibly, released without posting bail. I’m sure they were ordered to report to court to face charges and told not to leave the city. But several of them were taken into custody at a bus station in Phoenix, reportedly on their way to the Sanctuary State of California. Gavin’s arms are open…

Alvin Bragg has plenty of time to go after Donald Trump, but not enough to detain illegals who assault police. New York is the bluest of blue states, but even their governor said to Alvin ‘You got some ‘splainin’ to do’.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said at a news conference Friday that she wanted to speak with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg about why most of the suspects were released without bail. She said prosecutors should have sought to keep them behind bars.

The story gets even better. What were these asylum seekers doing to pass the time in the Big Apple? Some jobs Americans won’t do? Not many lawns to mow in Manhattan, but lots of restaurants need dishwashers. They could even get a driver’s license and go to work for Amazon. We give those to people here illegally, along with health care and housing assistance and free cell phones. After all, these poor immigrants are all good and decent people who are only seeking a better life, right? (BTW, that is not a sufficient condition to meet the legal test for granting asylum, but that is another blog post).

No, these enterprising young men found a way to work toward the American Dream…

The illegal immigrants who fled to California after allegedly assaulting a pair of New York City police officers are part of a wider conspiracy of stealing phones to make lavish purchases in their home countries, according to a New York Post report.

What happens is that a Mexican gang boss, who I assume is in the country legally, recruits the new arrivals to steal phones which this tech wizard uses to purchase goods for delivery back home, probably from Amazon. There are some truly terrifying videos of thugs on mopeds running into women and grabbing their purses, sometimes dragging them along the pavement in the process.

Which brings us to the title of this blog. It is a topsy turvy world we are living in, so let us turn to the masters of topsy turvy-dom, William S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan.

My object all sublime I shall achieve in time
To let the punishment fit the crime – The punishment fit the crime;
And make each prisoner pent Unwillingly represent
A source of innocent merriment! Of innocent merriment!

What we need are fewer DA’s like Alvin Bragg and George Gascon and a host of others funded by George Soros, and more Mikados.

        Where is a Lord High Executioner when you need one?

A friend sent me a link to a YouTube video that he suspected might interest me. He was right. It’s only 6 minutes long. I watched it twice, the second time taking notes for this blog. Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpCkJs6DKCw

The video is by Dr. Peter Attia, and his premise is that a person’s VO2 max is the single best metric to predict longevity. He says that the research and data show that there is a strong correlation between VO2 Max and life span. Higher is better…

The reason he thinks this is because VO2 Max is a measure of the work a person has done over time to get fit and maintain fitness. You can’t change VO2 Max quickly, but he says that with training anyone can reach the top 25% levels for their age and sex. He only has data for two sexes, so if you are something else this doesn’t apply.

Here are the numbers. There are 4 quartiles, and the Elite level is the top 2.3% of the High quartile.

Most cyclists have at least heard of VO2 Max, and some of us even know that it is a measure of the maximum amount of oxygen your body can utilize during intense or maximal exercise. It is generally considered the best indicator of cardiovascular fitness and aerobic endurance. What I didn’t know, until I saw the video, is that at least one doctor considers it the best single metric to predict longevity.

VO2 can be estimated. My Garmin device gives me a ‘best guess’ that varies between 48 and 51 depending on how hard I’ve been riding recently. Since I’m 67, that would put me in the ‘Elite’ category. But Garmin is guessing. The only really accurate way to measure VO2 is with a lab test. You can do it on your bike, which is hooked up to a device that forces you to pedal at a given power level. They attach sensors to your heart and put a mask over your head that measures how much oxygen your body takes in, After a warm up pedaling easy, the typical test starts at 100 watts and increases 30 watts per minute until your oxygen uptake starts to fall. At this point you are gasping for air and sweating profusely. Here is the power graph from my last test in January 2019.

I had my first VO2 Max test in 2003 when I was 46 years old. I had been riding with the Stockton Bike Club since 2000, and I had definitely improved. My VO2 Max was 51.3, which put me in the High (but not Elite) category. I was given some advice on how to improve this, which was basically to ride harder for periods of 1 to 5 minutes. A lot harder. Like ‘this really hurts’ harder.

In 2005 I took another test and hit 56.7, well into Elite status. The training worked. But bear in mind, I am not really an elite cyclist; those quartiles are determined by the population as a whole, very few of whom ride with our club or have ridden up Mont Ventoux. I’m pretty sure all the SBC regulars are at the Elite level or close to it.

In 2019, I decided to have another test just to see how much age had withered me. Since I ride with a power meter and do Strava segments I knew there was diminishment, and I was right. This time I got 46.6 at age 63. Still ‘Elite’ but just barely. Since VO2 Max is measured in (ml O2 uptake)/(kg body weight)/minute, part of the decline is because I weighed 5 lbs. more in January 2019 than in July 2005, but part of it was also a lower maximum heart rate and lower absolute oxygen uptake. My 2002 heart rate got up to 173 beats per minute at the end of the test, while in 2019 I was only able to reach 163 bpm.

These performance declines are normal. Doctor Attia suggests one can expect an 8 to 10% reduction every decade. I’m in that neighborhood.

Dr. Attia suggests that measuring muscular strength is a close second as an indicator of longevity. There are tests for that I suppose, although they are probably a little more subjective than VO2. But I’m working on that too.

Since I quit farming I really haven’t done much exercise other than cycling and yard work. That has changed; Starting November 21 I have been going to the gym twice a week for an exercise class called “Legends”, which is for people 65 and over. So now I’m working on maintaining my VO2 while and increasing my strength, trying to ‘not go gentle into that good night’.

Climate change is quite real. 10,000 years ago the most recent ice age was ending, and glaciers extended down into the Smokey Mountains between Tennessee and North Carolina. Those glaciers are gone, so it is pretty hard to argue that the climate didn’t get warmer over that time.

On the other hand, how serious climate change is and how much human activity contributes to it are matters for scientific inquiry, and they are far from settled, no matter what you hear on the nightly news and NPR. Those glaciers retreated without any help from a single SUV or coal fired power plant.

A couple of questioning examples: there is a book written by an actual climatologist titled “Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People.” I read it. Everybody relax. And in “Apocalypse Never” Michael Shellenberger (a self described environmentalist) concludes “Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.” If it were not for Fox News or the Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog you would never know these opinions exist.

But such a rational, inquiring approach will not do for the climate change zealots. If you crave power to tell people what stoves they can use and how much meat they are allowed to consume or what kind of car they can drive, or whether they can have a car at all, you need to scare them silly. If you want to tax them to pay for solar and wind power and EV subsidies to the ‘green’ industries that lobby ($) the climate czars, you need to convince the masses that ecological disaster is just around the corner. Or 10 years away, which is what most of the alarmist predictions predict. A rolling decade…. The Catholic Church did something similar for centuries. Fear of Hell after death or fear of environmental calamity; fear keeps people in line. And raises money.

A few heretics like me have pointed out that it is a mite hypocritical for John Kerry and Greta Thunberg to fly to climate conferences in private jets with size EEE carbon footprints where they lecture the rest of us ordinary people (serfs) on what kind of light bulbs we can use. Carbon offsets to the rescue!

Green businesses and developing countries can generate credits for projects that (supposedly) reduce CO2 emissions. They can then sell their credits to companies and countries that need to reduce their emissions to meet their climate goals. Third parties audit and validate these credits, though the market is fragmented and largely unregulated.

Those credits are called Carbon Offsets, and they can be purchased on the open market. Feeling guilty about that flight to Europe for some frivolous cycling vacation? You can do something about it!

Big companies are in on the game too, especially when it comes to those effective carbon cleaners known as trees:

There’s even more money to be made from carbon offsets to preserve trees, which might not be chopped down anyway. Timber company Weyerhaeuser last month boasted it had struck a deal to sell nearly 32,000 carbon credits at a price of $29 per credit.

Here on Brumby Road the Freggiaro Farm (established 1930 something) spent 90+ years trying to ‘preserve trees’. So I think we’re entitled to a little guilt free Air France Business Class travel. Or maybe we could sell some offsets for keeping the land as an orchard, removing carbon from the atmosphere, instead of selling it for houses and strip malls.

Want to buy an indulgence? We’ve got ’em!

Carbon offsets are just a new take on an old trick…

The medieval indulgence was a writ offered by the Church, for money, guaranteeing the remission of sin, and its abuse was the spark that inspired Martin Luther’s 95 Theses.

I’m oversimplifying, but essentially a sinner was supposed to get right with God through repentance and confession, but then he/she/they/ze could, with a financial contribution to the Church treasury, exempt themselves from the worldly consequences of their actions, like excommunication. Guilt be gone!

Carbon offsets ‘go and do likewise’, removing guilt from those enjoying the privilege of prosperity (see my last blog for more on ‘privilege’) . Taylor Swift is using them to shield herself from criticism for flying a private jet all over the world to get to and from Chiefs games. Al Gore and John Kerrey can claim to be ‘carbon neutral’ using offsets while their chefs cook on gas stoves. Even the late lamented Tour of California cycling race used to claim carbon neutrality, though the team busses and cars and planes that flew the riders here from Europe weren’t battery powered. All they did was get some sponsor to pay, then hand the money to an offset company which held a good chunk for ‘administration’ and lobbying (read ‘kickbacks’) before sending a pittance to someone to plant a tree or save one somewhere.

My next trip to France will be guilt free. I think I’ve planted and tended and preserved more trees than most of my readers, so I can claim have lived a planet friendly, nearly carbon neutral life. Now regarding hot air production, that might be another story…

…to be married to Stoker for 41 years as of today. Happy Anniversary Diane!

Regarding ‘privilege’, Johns Hopkins Hospital chief diversity officer Sherita Golden wrote the following in her DEI newsletter:

“Privilege is an unearned benefit given to people who are in a specific social group. Privilege operates on personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels, and it provides advantages and favors to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups,” the newsletter read.

So far Dr. Golden is only offering up generalizations written in gobbledygook. But she went on to get more specific:

“In the United States, privilege is granted to people who have membership in one or more of these social identity groups: White people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle or owning class people, middle-aged people, and English-speaking people.”

I’m guilty on almost all of these charges. White, check. Able bodied? I don’t feel especially strong at the gym or riding up Stoney Creek Road, but I suppose compared to the typical 67 year old I’m pretty able. Heterosexual? Enthusiastically so, at least where Stoker is concerned. Male? Last time I looked, yup. Christian? Kinda-sorta although I don’t go to services. Middle or Owning class? I suppose so. I don’t feel rich but it is true that Stoker and I don’t struggle to pay our PGE bill, even though it has gotten out of hand with recent rate hikes. Middle aged? I wish, 67 is too old for that. English speaking? I’ll let my readers decide if I have at least a fleeting knowledge of the language.

I left out Cisgender because I don’t know what that is, so I might or might not be. But I’ve got all the rest covered.

So according to Dr. Golden I have benefited from privilege and enjoyed ‘advantages and favors’ at the ‘expense of members of other groups’.

So what am I to do with this? Apologize? Pay reparations? Genuflect in the presence of anyone clearly not in one of the favored groups? If I come across a Black, handicapped, gay, transexual, Buddhist, broke, 20-something Farsi speaker, should I drop to my knees, beg forgiveness and accompany my plea with a sizeable check? Or get angry and vote for a candidate who will call this nonsense exactly what it is? I can think of one…

I wonder if all these supposed privileges include the Droit du seigneur? As Lord and Master of Casa Brumby, I suppose it could. As long as Stoker agrees!

For 41 years it has been quite a ride. Happy anniversary Stoker!

I stole the blog title from the 1898 horror novella by Henry James. I never read it, but I did have to read and take a final exam on the same author’s novel Daisy Miller. Not exactly a page turner…And later it was used as the story for a 20th-century English chamber opera composed by Benjamin Britten. I never saw this version either, but I did hear the opera Billy Budd by the same composer. Not a lot of melodies or toe tapping ditties in that one. Puccini and Mozart can make me cry, but all this atonal two hours did for me was bring tears of boredom.

Still a brief lyric from the opera might ring true regarding events in the news:

Do you feel the turn of the screw?
Pushing harder, breaking through
It’s better than you ever knew
Now it gets to take care of you…

…by holding the door plug on an airline fuselage in place

We’ve all seen the pictures of the Alaska Airlines flight that lost its door plug at 16,000 feet, resulting in an explosive decompression. Thankfully no one was hurt and the plane landed safely. The FAA is on the case, and all Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft are grounded and being inspected.

Preliminary unofficial reports are disturbing. This door plug is secured in place by 4 bolts, and inspectors found loose ones on some of the inspected aircraft. And while the door plug itself was found in a teacher’s back yard, there were no accompanying bolts. Were they loose? Were they even installed at all?

When my dad and I were farming, we had a lot of bolts to tighten, and to my knowledge none ever came loose. We both had a bad habit of ‘making assurance double sure’ and occasionally our brute strength would shear off a bolt or strip the threads. We knew how to use lock washers too, or Loctite for appropriate applications.

Today my bolt tightening is mostly limited to my bikes, and with expensive carbon frames and parts it is a good idea to follow the torque specifications. I have a torque wrench and if the spec says 5 N.m, then 5 N.m it is, and not an N.m more. By the way N.m stands for Newton Meter, which is a measure of torque, as opposed to toque, which is a chef’s hat.

Once my friend Kent brought his bike over to check the torque on some of his parts. The seat post bolt spec was 5 N.m, but the bolt was quite a bit looser than that, maybe 2 N.m. So is that what happened to the airplane door? A creaking seat post is bad enough, but a blown out door plug at 30,000 feet could be catastrophic. Window or aisle…

There are lots of serious and dangerous events going on in the world and here in the United States. Too dangerous and serious for the Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog. We try to keep things light-hearted here. Recently I came across a few items that are quite different, but related; call them Variations on a Theme…

PepsiCo and custom spirits maker Empirical are teaming up to launch a new spirit that tastes like a Doritos nacho cheese chip.

I was certain this had to be ‘fake news’ but it is true.

The Empirical x Doritos Nacho Cheese Vacuum Distilled Spirit is described as capturing “all the indulgent flavors of your favorite Nacho Cheese in liquid form,” according to Empirical’s website.

Not only is it real, but according to the company’s web site the supply is completely sold out. I was invited to sign up to receive an e mail or text informing me when it was back in stock, and I was assured they were ramping up production to meet the demand. I demurred; I get too much e mail as it is.

This addiction to the flavor of Doritos, to the extent that one craves it in his/her/their/ze pre-prandial cocktail is part of a larger problem: namely a large number of us are too large. (BTW did you notice how I am starting down the pronoun correctness path? A slippery slope…).

Like almost every cyclist I know, I fret over my weight. Of course back in March 1999, when I hit my doctor’s scale at 190 lbs. I had something to worry about. But now anytime I go north of my self assigned 169 lbs. (before breakfast without any clothes on) food turns to ashes in my mouth and I stay away from pizza or burritos, two of the things that make life worth living. 

Don’t believe I could have been approaching 200 lbs. at some point? Here is proof from September 2000, before I got serious about cycling. And the improved version from 2011.

I don’t think anyone I ride with is going to need this, but Southwest Airlines is quite accommodating to the new reality.

Low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines is being celebrated by “passengers of size” on TikTok after they discovered they can request complimentary seats – one or two, depending on needs – to accommodate their girth.
Customers whose bodies “encroach” past the armrest are entitled to an extra seat, according to Southwest’s inclusion policy.

I had no idea, but apparently there are ‘influencers’ who write about how to travel as a plus (+++) sized person.

“Super fat is how we identify,” Chaney, business owner of Jae Bae Productions, said. “There’s a spectrum of fatness. And as a super fat individual, you start needing different accommodations… I just felt really happy that there was something like this for people.”

I identify as a married monogamous heterosexual male cyclist, even if that last part might make some of my riding partners giggle as they power away leaving me in their dust.

Southwest is merely responding to the disturbing trend towards obesity and the accompanying adverse health effects. Those effects even have a name: “metabolic syndrome”. This includes a cluster of weight-related ailments such as high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol levels, excessive abdominal fat, and a poor cellular response to the insulin hormone.

The U.K. has an idea…

“It’s quite right to urge that waist measurements be now taken annually from the time a child first goes to school,” Tam Fry, chair of the National Obesity Forum in the U.K., told The Telegraph.

Measure away: unless kids are going to play outside more and eat less junk food and spend less time looking at screens nothing is going to happen. Because many of their parents are doing the same thing. 

The U.K. is trying to follow Japan’s lead. Japan has a remarkably low obesity rate of 4.97%. Compare this to the U.S. (36.47% ) and U.K. (27.88%). And if you adjust for Sumo wrestlers, the Japanese number would be even more impressively low.

But even with such a comparatively lean population, Japan is trying to be proactive and passed a “Metabo Law”

The law mandates that all employees aged between 45 and 74 have their waistlines measured by their employer annually and receive guidance if they do not lose weight after three months, but, despite rumors, Japanese citizens themselves cannot be fined or imprisoned for being overweight.

The expression on the pretty young woman’s face is priceless. (I fell off the pronoun wagon: she is a she or I’m losing it). How would you like that job? An 8 hour shift of wrapping measuring tapes around the bare tummies of middle aged men and women and other genders.

I’m pretty sure the same people who brought us Covid lockdowns and want to take away gas powered leaf blowers cannot weight (!) to ‘help’ us lose excess adipose tissue. Cigarettes have warning labels (in France they are quite graphic). Perhaps the CDC will start with ‘hazardous to your health’ warnings at fast food restaurants and movie theater snack bars. Taxes and regulations to follow shortly…

Not in Boston…you may not know about this if you get all your news from NPR.

Michelle Wu (Mayor of Boston) drew criticism Wednesday after her aide sent a holiday party invite to all members of the Boston City Council for an “Electeds of Color Holiday Party,” even though seven of the officials are White.

Wu told reporters on Wednesday that the invite was not meant to be sent to White council members, who had their invitations rescinded about 15 minutes after the original email was sent.

Something similar went on back when Stoker was working for the library, although no racism or sexism was involved. Back then the discrimination was based on whether someone was a ‘professional’ librarian with an Master of Library Science degree.

The library director hosted an annual Christmas party at her north Stockton condo. But only the ‘professional’ staff and their guests were invited. This strategy left almost everyone unhappy. The uninvited library aides were resentful at being snubbed, while the MLS holders felt pressured to attend an event and talk shop on a Saturday night when they would much rather have been somewhere else.

The director’s excuse for the exclusion was that she didn’t have enough space, but in reality it was just to make a kind of caste distinction. 

Since I wanted to help Stoker keep on her boss’s good side, I always went along and made nice, playing my ‘simple farmer’ role. That is the same persona I used with the county ag people checking me for compliance with the regulations that are so fruitful and multiply every year. I never got fined, so I guess it worked. And of course I avoided any speech that could be considered in the least political. Other than Stoker it was a completely Blue crowd.

Ms. Wu’s party is a little disturbing. She is assuming that ‘Electeds of Color’ share some special bond that makes having a separate event without un-colored ‘Electeds’ appropriate. And she says the leak and coverage of the non-white event was politically motivated. As if her endorsement of such a party is a non-political act!

On Brumby Road we are concerned with people’s character and intelligence, not the amount of melanin in their bodies. Would it were so everywhere…

I learned a lot about paradoxes in college. “The Paradox of Value” asks the question why is water, which is essential for life, so much less expensive than diamond rings, which are not. Zeno’s Paradox takes many forms; balls that can never hit walls or tortoises that can never cross finish lines. My favorite version came from a class about infinite series, where the clever professor gave us an example a of a sequence of swimming pools with finite volume but infinite surface area. The paradox is that you can paint an infinite surface with a finite amount of paint!

I also took a course in business law. It was a pass-fail course offering a few easy units as respite from differential equations and macroeconomics. It was taught by a real life judge who, like many attorneys, was in love with the sound of his own voice. Having a large class of college students as an audience for his stand-up routine had to be the highlight of his week. He was most entertaining and I actually learned a lot about contracts and consideration and the Universal Commercial Code.

One thing I learned in that class is minors cannot enter into contracts.

Generally, only individuals with legal capacity can enter into a contract. This means that minors, persons of unsound mind, and persons deprived of civil rights are not capable of contracting.

Our laws offer special protections and restrictions regarding minors, to protect them from the consequences of their lack of experience and wisdom. Plenty of adults lack wisdom too, but society lets them deal with the fallout from their choices. Sometimes minors are allowed to make decisions if their parents permit it. Example:

(1) Persons under the age of 18 shall not receive body piercing unless the body piercing is performed in the presence of the person’s parent or guardian.

So a 17 year old who wants a nose ring or tongue stud has to have a parent present, and presumably agreeing to the procedure. Tattoos are even more restricted. I didn’t know this until I started to research this blog, but underage tattooing is verboten, whether mom and dad agree or not:

(2) All 50 states and the District of Columbia have statutory laws requiring a person receiving a tattoo be at least 18 years old. This is partially based on the legal principle that a minor cannot enter into a legal contract or otherwise render informed consent for a procedure.

The Paradox of Value is easily resolved: Marginal Cost=Marginal Utility. However (1) and (2) above have got me scratching my head over an obvious legal paradox here in California. There are a couple of ‘procedures’ that minors can have without parents even knowing, let along consenting. California considers these ‘procedures’ more ‘minor’ than tattoos or body piercings, so ‘minors’ can decide for themselves. Even Zeno might have trouble resolving this one. ” ‘Tis a Puzzlement” indeed.

On Saturday a group of my cycling friends decided to stay flat and local with a 50+ mile loop from Lodi to Thornton and Galt. The weather was perfect, cool but not frigid, and sunny with almost no wind. Everyone was relaxed and enjoying the day and the company instead of hammering up some hills on the official Club ride.

We don’t normally ride on Harney Lane east of Lodi. It is narrow, with a fair amount of high speed traffic. There are better east/west roads, such as Armstrong Road, Live Oak Road, and even Eight Mile Road which has traffic but also has a shoulder. But there is one short stretch of Harney Lane that we do ride. Curry Road is a delightful and very quiet road that runs north/south, but at Harney Lane it makes a little jog, so we have to ride on Harney for about 100 yards or so. It is normally pretty safe. We just wait to let any traffic clear, then use the gap to continue on Curry.

We were doing just that on Saturday. There were 11 of us at the intersection of Harney and Curry, pointing our bikes north. We were waiting to turn left on Harney and then make a quick right back on to Curry. Rider #1 saw what he/she thought was a big gap and turned onto Harney. Rider #1 had not reckoned on an SUV barreling along at 70+ mph in a 55 mph zone. Rider #1 also did not expect this speeding vehicle to give him about 14 inches of clearance instead of the legally mandated 3 feet.

Dear Reader, you may notice that I am not naming names or genders here. That is because I wasn’t an eye witness to everything, and even what I saw may be mis-remembered.

Rider #1 took umbrage at the dangerous vehicular behavior and made his/her feelings known with a gesture. None of the rest of us saw this because we were still waiting back at the intersection. Then Rider #1 turned onto Curry and soon the rest of us followed.

As we rode north on Curry I was the last rider, and suddenly I see an SUV in my mirror roaring towards me and I hear yelling and screaming. I’m as far to the right as I can be, and the SUV leaves the pavement onto the dirt vineyard headland and pulls next to me ON MY RIGHT! The driver’s window is down and he is screaming at me to “Get the F… off the road!”

I moved to the left side of the road and stopped off the pavement. The driver got out and continued yelling and screaming the same message. He didn’t approach me although he looked ready to beat me up. I tried to keep calm and quiet.

Riders #1, 2, 3 and 4 stopped just ahead and came back. The SUV driver was obviously angry at all of us but especially with Rider #1. There was a confrontation. Riders pulled out cell phones. I tried to take a video but my winter gloves let me down. I’m still standing relatively out of harm’s way and I didn’t get any closer to the potential fistfight, or worse. Call me prudent for trying not to escalate things. Call me a coward for not jumping to the defense of my friends. I’m not sure myself.

Rider #2 put his cell phone a bit too close for the driver’s liking, so he knocked it to the ground. Rider #2, normally a very calm individual, kind of threw what looked like a punch, or maybe a slap. Rider #3, showed the pepper spray that he/she keeps to deal with dogs, and the driver returned to the cab and pulled out a much bigger pepper spray. The SUV passenger got out and joined the proceedings. Rider #4, the smallest of us, got right in there close.

No actual blows were thrown, no one got pepper sprayed, or shot, which seemed a possibility for a time. Eventually the SUV sped off with the driver cursing at us the entire time. One thing the driver kept saying is that we were too f…ing old to be f,,,ing riding bikes on the f…ing road, you mf…ers. His vocabulary was limited so he had to use the same word quite a lot.

Rider #3 called the CHP, and after a short wait a very nice officer arrived. He told us that since no one was hurt, and since he didn’t observe any moving violations, he could not issue any citations. He said we could file a report, but that it would land at the DA’s office and again, since no one was hurt, they would sit on it for a year and then purge it from their system. He seemed reluctant to go through all the paperwork.

We did take down the license number, and the CHP officer ran the plates. Guess what? The vehicle was registered to an address in Valley Springs! Why am I not surprised?

Between my blood thinners making any fall potentially more serious, and the possibility of being a target for foothill rednecks who detest my mere presence on ‘their’ pavement, I’m wondering whether road cycling is worth the risk. I love riding my bike but I don’t like bleeding or bar fights in cycling shoes. Time to Zwift? Got to keep in shape for France next May where I cannot imagine anything like this happening.

Way back in December 2014 I woke up one morning with a very strange tingling sensation in my chest and I felt a little light headed. I took my blood pressure with our home monitor and discovered my pulse was over 100 beats per minute (bpm). That is about double what my normal resting pulse rate is.

I didn’t have any chest pain, so I skipped the ER, which probably wasn’t so smart. I was hoping it was just an ‘overtraining’ response from the long hard ride I had done the day before. Sometimes resting heart rates will be elevated if you have been riding a lot, although the increase is usually only 10 bpm, not 50.

I called my family doctor and he agreed to see me that afternoon. He listened to my heart for about 3 seconds, then started slapping leads and wires to my chest STAT! He wanted to get an EKG right away. I was in Atrial fibrillation (AFib). This was the first time I had ever heard of the condition.

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is an irregular and often very rapid heart rhythm. An irregular heart rhythm is called an arrhythmia. AFib can lead to blood clots in the heart. The condition also increases the risk of stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications.

I started on a the blood thinner Xarelto right away. This was well before I reached the health care haven of Medicare, so there was real sticker shock. I also had a referral to a cardiologist and an echocardiogram.

The very next morning I woke up and the weird sensation and light headedness were gone. I felt fine and knew my pulse was normal. I slapped on my heart rate monitor and sure enough, 52 bpm.

The AFib never came back. I saw the cardiologist a couple of times and did a lot of research on my own. There is plenty of information out there. But the best source of help turned out to be a GI doctor (and fellow cyclist) at UC Davis. I see him about once a year. The reason will make another entertaining blog someday. An STD without the S…

It turns out he had experienced a one time AFib incident too. His happened on a bike ride. He had to stop and get someone to take him home. His AFib also went away quickly and didn’t come back. He took Xarelto for a couple of months, then decided to stop since there hadn’t been a recurrence.

He also told me about Kardia. This is before Apple Watches and other health monitoring devices became so common. Kardia works with your cell phone to take a medical grade 2-lead EKG anytime, anywhere. Strange my cardiologist had never even heard of the device when I showed him mine at my next appointment.

I have taken hundreds of home EKGs since my 2014 incident. For a while I carried my Kardia on bike rides in my jersey pocket, and would take EKGs at the coffee stops.I even did one on a climb up Mont Ventoux, just for grins. All of those EKGs have all been normal. Until October 17….

My nut counting job was at its busiest on October 16, and we expected an even more massive number of trucks the next day. I got home from work late and went to bed early and woke up at 3:30 since I had to get to work by 5:00.

I immediately knew something was wrong, and I knew what it was. Kardia confirmed the diagnosis. My heart rate was 106 and the EKG report was ‘Possible Atrial fibrillation’.

I sent a text to my walnut counting boss, then headed to the ER at Lodi Memorial. I wasn’t nervous at all, since I was pretty sure I knew what was happening. I was sorry and upset to have to let my walnut counting duties slide, but I really didn’t have a choice.

At the ER when they asked me why I was there I told them I was in AFib. They aren’t used to self diagnosis like that. After only a short wait they took me behind a curtain and did an EKG and concluded I was in AFib. They probably charged Medicare $1,000 for it. My $89 Kardia with a free App on my cell phone came to the same conclusion.

Eventually I saw a doctor, a very nice woman who actually listened to my story about this being AFib Incident #2, 9 years removed from Incident #1. Eventually I left the ER with a script for Eliquis and a follow up appointment with my family doctor the next morning.

I went to my nut counting job and arrived at 9 am. The truck drivers wondered what I was doing there. But there really wasn’t any reason to stay home. I did several EKG’s that day and all of them indicated AFib and an elevated pulse.

The next morning I woke up and knew that, unlike 2014, the AFib was still with me. Kardia agreed, although my heart rate was ‘only’ 90 bpm. I went to work at 6 am, but left to go to my doctor’s appointment around 9.

As I was driving to Lodi, I noticed that the strange tingling sensation in my chest and the light headedness seemed to be fading. By the time I got to the medical office, I felt normal. Kardia agreed: I took an EKG right there in the parking lot and it said 60 bpm and Normal Sinus Rhythm. Hooray! It felt like a frisson leaving my body followed by calmness and relaxation.

I’ve done a lot of EKGs over the last 5 weeks, and they’ve all been normal. I’m still on Eliquis, at least for now. More sticker shock: I have a Part D insurance plan but I opted for a low premium with a high deductible, so the first month tab was $500. More than our PGE bill! Although month #2 was only $150.

If I go another 9 years without going into AFib, do I need to stay on Eliquis? Should I risk cycling and possibly crashing while on it? Would I rather risk bleeding to death or having a stroke? The safest advice would be to stay on Eliquis and stop cycling on the road. Difficult choices…