September 2021 – Half-fast Cycling Club

The Ride (waiting 2 years for this)

I’m supposed to be in another town teaching for two days. When we canceled this course a year ago, we thought it would be safe after a year. No dice. In-person and hands-on training is not in the cards again. Too many metaphors for that paragraph, though all about gambling.

I request vacation time a year in advance. When the days come up and I have no plans, there is no sense in giving them back. Two days without plans, followed by a day on the bike. I could get to like this. When the word “septuagenarian” not only enters your vocabulary but starts to impinge on your reality, it’s time to think about how to spend a life without going to work every day. As the folksinger Charlie King reminded us “Our life is more than our work and our work is more than our job.”

I was going to do this ride two years ago but it was canceled due to thunderstorms. Last year was canceled due to the pandemic. The ride is a benefit for the Carbone Cancer Center. By the way, you can still donate at https://runsignup.com/half-fast

I’m starting this post before the ride and I have to add one COVID-19 related piece. My employer has now mandated the vaccine. We have until October 1 to get the first shot or be “placed on unpaid leave and terminated by October 11.” There are both medical and religious waivers. The medical waiver is very specific and must be signed by your health care provider. The link to the religious waiver is restricted – as an employee I can’t see it. Maybe my boss can. [Update: I can now see the religious waiver and it just asks me to attest to a religious, moral, or ethical anti-vax stance. – nothing like the Arkansas hospital below.] Most of us were vaccinated in December and January 2020-21. There are a few holdouts. A hospital system in Arkansas is allowing religious exemptions on the assumption that people are objecting to the use of a 40+ year old fetal cell line in the research and development. The CEO of the hospital chain, Matt Troup, had this to say:

“‘(W)e provided a religious attestation form for those individuals requesting a religious exemption,’ The form lists 30 medications and asks employees to ‘truthfully acknowledge and affirm that my sincerely held religious belief is consistent and true and I do not use or will [not] use any of the medications listed as examples or any other medication … that has used fetal cell lines in their development and/or testing.‘” (From Becker’s Hospital Review, Kelly Gooch, 9/16/2021)

“The list includes Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, aspirin, Tums, Lipitor, Senokot, Motrin, ibuprofen, Maalox, Ex-Lax, Benadryl, Sudafed, albuterol, Preparation H, MMR vaccine, Claritin, Zoloft, Prilosec OTC, and azithromycin.” (from Ars Tecnica, Beth Mole, 9/16/2021)

So if you are objecting to the vaccine on religious grounds due to your anti-choice stance, stop taking anything in the list above; and be sure to check the full list for the other 11 medications you shouldn’t be taking. And if you are truly religious you will (of course, this goes without saying) check to see that there are no other substances you use which benefit from research involving that fetal cell line, as it sounds like that list of 30 is incomplete.

If you object to vaccines on principle, be sure to NOT get a tetanus shot if you step on a rusty nail. If bitten by a rabid animal, avoid the rabies vaccine on both grounds. A Darwin Award could be in your future!

Big Ring Ride

Wednesday night’s warm up for the century was a fairly easy ride. Part way through I realized I had not yet used the small chainring, so decided to make it a big ring ride and stay on that ring the whole way, just for the hell of it. Saturday was going to be a short ride just to stay loose. Minutes after I changed back into regular clothes, I got a call for an emergency errand so I changed again and did a second ride of the same length. So 30 miles;”just to stay loose”.

The Ride

Sunday dawned chilly so required tights and a jacket for the first couple of hours, then shorts and a short-sleeved jersey for the rest. The wind was supposed to pick up around noon, by which time it would be a tailwind. Right.

We headed into the sunrise, so it was bright until the sun got higher. There was a mass start, complete with a countdown by the MC over a PA and the option to download a tracking app so folks could know where you were at all times. I considered tearing the sensor out of my ride number. All a bit much for me. There were mile markers every mile for the first ten and again at the end – they were from the 25K route, so mile 101 was announced as “Mile 16”. Cruel. All distances were generous (since 25K is 15.5 miles.) The forecast was for early sun, then clouds. The temperature hit 80 (27 C), the clouds didn’t come until well after we finished, and the wind was a factor by 9:30 – by “factor”, I mean “not a tailwind”. The canopies at the rest stops were blowing over, trash receptacles blowing away, the signs (despite being weighted) were falling down, flags were snapping (and shredding) in the “breeze”; and that’s not to mention the effect on the riders. As usual, a great day for a ride; just a bit harder than last week (and despite being only two miles longer, it took a half hour longer).

Religious diversity in Rockdale – two Lutheran churches within shouting distance

Thanks to all the donors for the ride! Shouts out to Mark (California Alps Cycling), Tim, Candice, Celeste, Patti, Vikki, John (A Midnight Rider), KR, all anonymous donors, and anyone I forgot, missed, or couldn’t identify. Thanks to blogging friends I have met only online. Thanks to 50th reunion classmates who are partying while I am riding (stay safe and have an extra beer for me).

The last miles contained tributes to people with cancer. RIP Jerry, Carol, Geoph, Kate, Lloyd, Mary and the rest of you. This ride is to stop that list from growing.

Woolly Bears

Around here, the woolly bear caterpillar is said to predict the winter weather. This caterpillar is generally brown in the middle and black on the ends. More black is said to mean a harsher winter. I saw four on the ride – two with narrow black bands and two that were all brown with no black on the ends. That is supposed to mean a mild winter. I had to look this up, because I thought it was the other way around. One source said a small study confirmed the folklore. Another said the relative sizes of the color bands actually shows what last winter was like. A third source claims no correlation. We’ll see.

It’s a beautiful day for math!

It is a perfect day. Too bad the century ride is tomorrow. The sun is out, the sky is blue, it’s beautiful and so are you…wait,

The title comes from the kids’ algebra teacher. I rode past him on the footbridge on the way home from the co-op, buying supplies for the camping weekend…

As I set up camp, the front blew in. The sky turned dark and the wind kicked up. The temperature began dropping. I closed up the tent before going to Sister Bay to pick up my ride packet. The threatened rain (whose chances and number of hours forecast kept shrinking as the week wore on) never came, but it will be a cool ride tomorrow. I’ll be getting up at the usual time for work due to a 7 AM start two towns up the road from here. Carbo-loading tonight with pumpkin tortelloni covered in pesto I made this morning.

I got up in the dark, normal at home but a little different when camping. Breakfast and coffee and off to Sister Bay at 6:20. First decision – what to wear. The temperature was in the low 50s (11 C), with a forecast high in the mid 60s (18 C) and it wouldn’t get to 60 (15 C) for a few hours. I opted for a long sleeve jersey, figuring it would be good all day, and shorts, figuring they’d be chilly at first but the right choice later. In a variation on the old bike racer trick of stuffing newspapers down the front of the jersey, I used the plastic bag we got our swag in. No ink on your chest, and no peeling off the disintegrating newspaper when you sweat through it. I needed that for the first 25 miles. My knees were cold in the morning and the sun felt pretty good when we were in it.

I avoided the mass start, not liking anything with “mass” in it these days. I rode out with someone I would see off and on all day. We started at a comfortably slow pace. The other advantage to avoiding the mass start is avoiding the adrenaline rush of the big crowd, which makes me ride faster than I should with 100 miles ahead of me.

At the 28 mile rest stop they served brats – only in Wisconsin (at 9 AM). I passed. A few miles on, I saw topiary in the shape of a camel. I wanted to stop and take a picture, but there were barking dogs on the other side of the fence. I figured they’d go nuts at someone stopping right outside their gate. It didn’t matter, since 100 yards later I came upon a couple of real camels grazing.

At 46 miles I was hoping for some substantial food, but there were only melons, donut holes, and cookies. I noticed I was riding faster than I intended to, so I thought I’d slow down a bit to save strength for the end. A few miles on from there, R from Milwaukee rode up beside me. I had seen him coming and figured he’d pass me, but he settled in and started talking. The next 15 miles flew by – both because I don’t notice them while chatting, and because we were riding faster than I intended.

At mile 64 his family was waiting to meet him. After saying hi to them we started off with 5 more of his friends we met at the rest stop. From there to the mile 80 rest stop was easy going as a result. At that stop, all the talk was about the big hill coming up.

We hit that hill at 85 miles. It was pretty much like the average sort of hill we climb several of on every local ride. The Milwaukee crew disappeared behind me on the way up. I didn’t see them again. At mile 90 I talked to a couple of Ironmen (I don’t know why we don’t call a woman who completes one of those an “Ironwoman”, but we don’t.) I didn’t plan to keep up with her or her partner. They hadn’t done our local Ironman last week, but were planning two others this fall. This was just a warmup.

The miles were starting to take their toll after that as we rode into a headwind. A group of about 8 passed me with 6 miles to go. As they were young enough to be my children, I wasn’t tempted to try to keep up, even though it would have helped with the headwind. Miraculously, they did not disappear up the road and I followed them into Sister Bay after 101 miles and 6 hours and 6 minutes in the saddle. I had expected it to take 7 hours. The free beer was a welcome sight. Even better, they had several choices – all from One Barrel Brewing. It was a perfect day for the Oktoberfest while wading in Green Bay.

It was, by the way, a great ride – well-organized, through beautiful country, and less crowded than the more famous ride up here a week ago (which I did once and will now avoid). In a week, we’ll see if I can do it again (though close enough to home to sleep in my own bed).

Lost in Translation

I used to tell people my specialty was English-to-English translation. We have so much trouble understanding each other even when two native speakers of the same language talk. Expectations and what we want to hear often get in the way. Wanting to be heard (instead of wanting to hear) and planning your response before the other person speaks get in the way. I would hear two people talking past each other and quickly rephrase for each of them and they would come to an understanding.

This is not to say that I don’t have the same problem with some people. It is though we speak two different languages which contain the same words.

In my work I spend a lot of time translating medical into English. Doctors tend to forget that normal people have no clue what most medical terms mean. People don’t want to seem dumb so they smile and nod. When the doctor leaves, I’ll ask what they understood of that. Frequently the answer is “nothing”, so I translate.

This was prompted by someone else’s post about actual language and cultural differences, which prompted this memory [cue harp music for a flashback].

I was in Nicaragua and our regular interpreter was unavailable. One of our group leaders offered to translate. Someone asked a local farmer how life had changed since the revolution. She said it was harder to get food now. The interpreter said something completely different, vaguely and rhetorically in support of the revolution. Two of us called her on it. She tried to say that the woman didn’t really understand the question. We argued that she clearly did understand the question but the answer was not the one you wanted to hear. After a bit more discussion, with the interpreter and the farmer (who made it clear she understood the question) in Spanish, then the group in English, we agreed to continue, with the translator knowing that she couldn’t get away with that degree of “interpreting” another’s thoughts and statements.

This also led to thoughts about language, fluency, and on-line translators. On-line translators are handy if you know both languages and are uncertain of the nuances of a particular word choice. They do not work if you think you can get the gist of a large work from an algorithm. If in doubt, listen to this:

“Let it Go” run through Google Translate through multiple languages and back to English. If you want the original English lyrics, they’re here.

I used to get asked if I were fluent in Spanish. Usually I just said no. Sometimes I answered that I wasn’t sure I was fluent in English. Other times I thought about what fluency meant.

After five weeks of language school I took a week off to travel and try to incorporate what I’d learned. Standing on a train, I started chatting with a local school teacher. After we’d talked for a while, he went to get a bottle of pop and asked if I wanted one. While he was gone I checked my watch and realized we’d been talking for two hours; a wide-ranging discussion that made me realize that: 1) I was thinking in Spanish and conversing naturally; 2) I had just fulfilled the goal I’d set five years earlier in Ecuador when the owner of the hotel where I was staying tried to initiate a similar conversation and I was unable to carry out my half.

I thought I had told this story before but, searching through the archives, I can’t find it. It was about January 1977. I was going through a home and roommate-related crisis. I called a friend in Berkeley, who knew the issues and people involved. He suggested the best solution was to join him and a friend (who had just arrived from Australia) on a trip to Colombia and Ecuador. On that trip, I could sort things out, and things here could sort themselves out.The idea had merit. A week later, I met them in Miami and we flew to Barranquilla, Colombia. We stepped off the plane and into customs. Since S & C had met while traveling extensively in Guatemala, I presumed they spoke Spanish pretty well. The customs agent asked C how long she would be in the country. She smiled. He repeated the question. She smiled more sweetly. He turned to S with the same question. He smiled, more broadly and sweetly than C. I realized: 1) they had gotten through Guatemala on friendliness and smiles; 2) they knew not a lick of Spanish; 3) I was now responsible to communicate for three. I told the customs agent that we all wanted 90 day visas, he stamped our passports, and we were on our way.

My Spanish got us through shopping, getting meals, finding our way, renting hotel rooms- all the basics of being a traveler. One rainy day (in Baños, Ecuador), while S & C were in another town, I was sitting in bed reading. The hotel owner stuck his head in the door, said hello, came in, sat down, and struck up a conversation. Within minutes (seconds?) I had my English-Spanish dictionary out. [It was years later that I bought a Spanish dictionary, recognizing that knowing a language meant learning to define words, not translate them.] Within a few more minutes I realized I was over my head. I did not know how to talk to anyone. I could conduct business, but I couldn’t talk. I apologized, he left, I cried. I felt shallow. I vowed that I would learn to speak Spanish and have that conversation some day.

After a week of vacation I went back to school for three more weeks. Was I fluent at that point? How about five years later when I went back for a refresher course and, as my final exam after three weeks, I gave a 45 minute slide presentation (on my work in Nicaragua) to the school in Spanish? Or when I returned to the school for a visit after 3 months working in Nicaragua and someone told me that the secretary said I was back in town and now spoke with a Nicaraguan accent? (I’ll admit I was flattered. For a Mexican to say I sounded Nicaraguan and not North American was one of the best compliments I had ever received.)

I realized that we have word-finding difficulties in any language. If the language is familiar enough, we find a way to talk around the missing word if it doesn’t come to us. There are words that we may not know, but we can discuss the concept in a way that gets the meaning across without the missing word. Ultimately, I discovered that fluency is a continuum, not a point. I’m pretty fluent in English after speaking it for more than 65 years. I’m less fluent in Spanish and considerably less fluent than I was when I was cutting down trees in the forest and miscommunication could mean death from falling tree.

Daddy, what’s money?

You’ve heard all of the COVID-19 conspiracy stories. I don’t need to relate them here. But there is a conspiracy you may not have heard of. The conspiracy to get rid of money.

Once we traded things, deciding their relative values. Then we traded precious metals for goods. We melted metals and formed them into coins. The metals became more valuable than the coins so we switched to cheaper metals. Quarters, instead of silver, are made of copper and nickel. Nickels are mostly copper, not nickel. Pennies are now mostly zinc, not copper. We developed paper money, symbolic of those metals – cheaper yet. US dollars used to be “silver certificates” and promised that the US held silver equal to its value to guarantee it. Then we made the dollar wholly symbolic, with the US government’s trustworthiness the only guarantee of its value.

Banks started making it harder to go inside. Cash came only from ATMs – once you could get $5 bills from them, then only twenties. Bills became harder to find. I rarely see a ten any more. The banks wanted you to use plastic cards instead of money. It cost them more to handle actual cash than virtual transactions. Then the virtual transactions became more virtual, with phone apps. And if they could charge you a service fee for doing it the way that was cheaper for them, so much the better.

Gas stations put card readers outside and didn’t want you to come in and use money any more. Just swipe a plastic card. The pandemic came and my neighborhood grocery store no longer accepted money. Soon the only place I could still use cash was the hospital cafeteria. Then they wanted me to use exact change, saying there was a coin shortage. And now, the one cashier who still took real money quietly told me that, starting tomorrow, I would no longer be able to use cash. I could use a phone app, a payroll deduction, or a credit/debit card. Is the money in my pocket about to become obsolete?

Time was, when someone opened a store, they would frame their first dollar. How soon will it be that storekeepers frame their last dollar? As U. Utah Phillips (The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest) wondered aloud 50 years ago about a child wondering what a train is after they disappeared, I now wonder if my son’s child will one day ask, “Daddy, what’s money?”