Ever wonder why it is that lately, every other television commercial is from a credit rating service touting their ability to improve your credit score? Let's face it, it's either that or the local "attorney du moment" enjoining you to call him if you think you've ever come in contact with asbestos, any number of prescription drugs, the IRS or an insurance agent that didn't drop his drawers and bend over when you called about a dislodged shingle during the last perturbance in the Gulf of Mexico. OffHisMeds cynically assumes that the credit rating agency advertising boom is all a scam; after all, you've either got good credit or you don't, and there's not a damn thing a third party should be able to do to improve it.
More to the question, what is driving this business such that it can afford a bigger advertising budget than the Big Three and Proctor & Gamble combined? OffHisMeds believes it is similar to other phenomena that only crop up when the economy is seriously and profoundly in the tank, and politicians start prescribing solutions with the same discrimination Charlie Sheen uses in his romantic liaisons'. For example:
1. Historically low interest rates followed by yet more historically low interest rates. Of all the things that politicians do that ought to be causing you to stuff the miserable remnants of your IRA into a coffee can and hide it under a floorboard (along with gaming the unemployment numbers or declaring that the Trillions they're stealing from you are "investments"), enticing you to refinance your mortgage has got to be near the top of the list.
On what other planet can you triumphantly declare that the hundreds of billions in mortgage refi's that have taken place during our so-called "recovery" are legitimate business activity, when the net of that activity is to take previously profitable mortgages and turn them into taxpayer subsidized money-losers? The answer to that question would be: Planet Obama. Sure, it's good for you the homeowner in the short term, but did we learn nothing from the last decade of Mortgage Orgy?
It's one thing for these knuckleheads to take mortgage contracts from the pocket of one banker and put them into the pocket of another and declare it "economic activity" when it clearly is not; it's yet another thing for them to declare these refi's profitable when they clearly are not; and it's yet another thing for them to continue to Feed The Monster by underwriting all this loan activity with many additional hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars. It's quite another thing for you the Citizen to accept that all of this is true. Let's face it: these jackasses never learn anything until we teach them, which is never going to happen unless we learn our lesson first.
2. The proliferation of branch banks. Is it just me, or does it seem like there's a new one on every corner? That's not necessarily a bad thing considering the number of fast food franchises the banks likely displace, along with the nail salons, Mexican restaurants, dry cleaners, pawn shops, discount auto parts franchises, check cashing joints and dollar stores that propagate like weeds in Suburbia.
Ironically, the explosion of branch banks has mostly upside for OffHisMeds, in that: a) he won't have to pay for them until they inevitably fail, and b) they provide that many fewer opportunities for him to die prematurely from heart disease, since they've gobbled up valuable real estate from the aforementioned fast food joints, for which OHM has a weakness. It is simply worth noting, however, that the Tribbling* of banks goes hand-in-hand with the Tribbling of mortgage refi's and the Tribbling of the credit rating agencies currently clogging up the air waves. The three are inextricably linked to the frantic effort to re-leverage the American consumer and to get him hyper-consuming again. After all, that Trillion dollar Euro bailout the U.S. just underwrote isn't going to last forever.
3. Hospital construction. Scratch a Recession and you'll find a hospital building boom. Just look back over the past 40 years as Health Care went from 6% of a $1 Trillion pie to almost 20% of a $14 Trillion dollar pie, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Hospital construction and the growth of the health care sector are portrayed as an unambiguously good thing, and yet a further sign of robust economic activity.
After all, who doesn't want health care?
Well, me for one. I'm perfectly content to remain healthy and out of the hospital, but seem to be in the extreme minority in the assumption that it is the natural tendency of the human body to remain healthy, ward off infection and disease, that kind of stuff. What good is a million year's of evolution otherwise? Why did my parents go to all the trouble of endowing me with an immune system and the good sense not to run into traffic if they didn't expect these efforts to keep me healthy?
Common sense says that the less you need to pay on health care, the more money you've got to spend on other things that make life enjoyable. My point here is that health care is not legitimate economic activity. What it is, is one of the reliable sectors that the government will inflate whenever true Private Sector economic activity falters. It simulates the real thing, which keeps the populace from freaking out. It also has a calming effect on our Pols, makes them feel useful, and sustains the illusion that they can actually have an impact on the Big Picture.
What all these things have in common is that none of them are on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, the one infallible means by which to differentiate meaningful economic growth from the phony government-inspired kind. You remember Maslow from college, or 10th grade if you went to a Catholic High School prior to 1980. His pyramid laid out the things that rational people willingly seek out to sustain and improve their lives. Things like shelter, food, sex, safety, acceptance and enlightenment. Nowhere in there will you find that these things are achieved or even implied to be achieved by an overabundance of branch banks, mortgage loans, credit scoring agencies or hospital buildings, which means that none of them are rational activities. The same is true of Stimulus Plans, Health Care reform bills, Democrat subsidies for Planned Parenthood, AARP and Acorn, and so-called "investments" in Infrastructure.
If you have a single, healthy, unleveraged, cynical bone in your body - and one attuned to self-preservation - you already knew that, and you're asking yourself the questions Maslow would have enjoined you to ask: 1) Does an oversupply of these things contribute in the slightest to your happiness and overall welfare? Will they ever allow you to achieve the highest point of the pyramid - what Maslow calls "self actualization"?
Not likely, but they do put a smile on the face of Barack Obama and his apparatchiks.
* Tribbling - Mindless, uncontrolled and ultimately destructive growth or reproduction (See Season Two, Episode 15 of Star Trek, "The Trouble With Tribbles"; See also: the 111th Congress).
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Of Europe, American Taxpayers and the Bailout of Greece
The ink is barely dry on a Trillion dollar "bailout" that Europe has constructed to contain the uncontainable: the berserk European social spending that even Europeans couldn't help but characterize as "PIIGs". That acronym stands for Portugal, Italy, Ireland and Greece, the four true basket cases of the EEU, and the ones in immediate need of a bailout.
OffHisMeds gives them credit for a sense of humor, if not a particularly keen sense of irony. It is one thing for a Frenchman to haughtily dismiss his less fortunate brethren; quite another for him not to acknowledge that the only thing that separates the PIIGs from France is a matter of timing.
Europe has been living off America's dime for several decades now. Our direct subsidies include contributions to the World Bank and the IMF, military expenditures, liquidity swaps, tolerance of the Mercantilist policies of Euros, and OHM's current favorite: the manipulation of America's stock markets.
All of these things unambiguously transfer American dollars into the pockets of Europe's senile democracies. As a particular case in point, much of the Trillion dollar bailout is financed by the IMF. The US contributes 18% of IMF funding. So $100 billion was transferred from American taxpayers to Europe without so much as a vote in Congress. All this took was a stroke of Barack Obama's pen.
Ask yourself if any IMF money has ever benefitted America. Ask yourself how pathetic a nation we have become when Europe can write themselves a $100 Billion dollar check drawn on our Treasury any time they want to.
The sadly predictable part is that this will all be for naught. OHM is going to go on record and predict that the so-called "reforms" Greece committed to in reining in social spending will not happen. People will continue to retire at age 53; Greeks will continue to enjoy ten weeks of vacation; workweeks will stay at 30 hours; government employment will continue to be the only game in town.
And America will not have a leg to stand on in criticizing Greece. Take their cushy make-work society and tell me how it is different from government employment anywhere in America?
It's exactly the same.
OffHisMeds gives them credit for a sense of humor, if not a particularly keen sense of irony. It is one thing for a Frenchman to haughtily dismiss his less fortunate brethren; quite another for him not to acknowledge that the only thing that separates the PIIGs from France is a matter of timing.
Europe has been living off America's dime for several decades now. Our direct subsidies include contributions to the World Bank and the IMF, military expenditures, liquidity swaps, tolerance of the Mercantilist policies of Euros, and OHM's current favorite: the manipulation of America's stock markets.
All of these things unambiguously transfer American dollars into the pockets of Europe's senile democracies. As a particular case in point, much of the Trillion dollar bailout is financed by the IMF. The US contributes 18% of IMF funding. So $100 billion was transferred from American taxpayers to Europe without so much as a vote in Congress. All this took was a stroke of Barack Obama's pen.
Ask yourself if any IMF money has ever benefitted America. Ask yourself how pathetic a nation we have become when Europe can write themselves a $100 Billion dollar check drawn on our Treasury any time they want to.
The sadly predictable part is that this will all be for naught. OHM is going to go on record and predict that the so-called "reforms" Greece committed to in reining in social spending will not happen. People will continue to retire at age 53; Greeks will continue to enjoy ten weeks of vacation; workweeks will stay at 30 hours; government employment will continue to be the only game in town.
And America will not have a leg to stand on in criticizing Greece. Take their cushy make-work society and tell me how it is different from government employment anywhere in America?
It's exactly the same.
Foreign vs. Domestic, Pt IV - The Greedy Incompetent Americans Myth
It has always struck OffHisMeds as more than passing strange that Americans have spent so much time demonizing "greedy short-sighted American corporations" and "corrupt unions" as not only the source of all ills with American cars but as a justification for purchasing a foreign car. Granted, neither has done everything right, and the UAW in particular had a sordid history in the 70's and 80's of subsidizing laziness and incompetence, but so what? Can anybody plausibly argue that Toyota and Volkswagen - or the Unions that represent their workers - are less greedy, less corrupt? Particularly in light of the recent news that America would be contributing hundreds of billions to bail out the Euro and the hundreds of billions we spend yearly defending Japan, Inc. and Europe, Inc., it's clear that "virtue" is relative.
Common Sense would dictate that corporations the world over have at minimum the same regard (or disregard) for ethical conduct, and in countries less open than America (which is all of them) it is arguably worse. I give you Toyota's decade long fraud on the problem with Sudden Acceleration as a case in point.
But it's as if in America none of that is even contemplated, much less matters. American consumers give foreign car companies a big thumbs up in the Virtue department every time they enthusiastically turn tens of thousands of their hard-earned dollars over to buy a Corolla, Jetta, Civic or Sonata. Voting with their pocketbook, they not only give foreign companies a Hall Pass when it comes to corporate virtue, they actually invest them with a virtue greater than our own. It is the Thinking Man's lament: but that we viewed as critically the conduct of foreigners and their corporations as we do our own. The fact that we don't speaks volumes about the Democrat Party's decades-long demonization of American business, the demonization by Republicans of Unions, and an endemic intellectual and moral laziness on the part of many American consumers. It's strange to think Liberals with their agenda and Conservatives with theirs are both milking our Consumerist ethic so diligently towards a common goal: the destruction of manufacturing in America.
Can you imagine the Germans or Japanese tolerating such self-destructive behavior? That said, the politicization of manufacturing has contributed to popular numerous misperceptions about the quality of domestically manufactured goods, and these have tended to focus most particularly on the automobile, the icon of manufacturing. Sure, they may be other mechanized things with more pizzazz than a car - yachts, Apache helicopter gunships, space shuttles, etc. - but those tend to be out of price range of most folks, and thus we must settle for automobiles in probing the psyche of the American consumer.
Many car buyers in America have some sense of loyalty to their fellow citizens; unfortunately, most do not. They go for "value" as it is portrayed in the media (predictably skewed against American car companies); they go for trends, and foreign cars are certainly trendy; and finally, they make no allowance for even the slightest of differences in Quality Ratings between domestic and foreign cars, regardless of whether the criteria are faulty or not. So, for example, if Consumer Reports gives Toyota a quality rating of 92 on a particular model and GM gets a score of 89 on a comparable model, most folks would make no allowance for the statistical insignificance. And if the GM car was projected to cost over its lifetime an extra ten cents per day, these same consumers would make no allowance, even if the end result was keeping Americans employed and generating taxes for the mortgage deductions, Social Security and Medicare benefits that they no doubt feel they are entitled to.
I wonder if anybody contemplates the irony of purchasing foreign cars at the expense of our own economy, only to discover that that wasn't quite enough, and that now we as taxpayers will have to further mortgage our children's future spending untold Trillions every decade to subsidize a Greek's right to retire at age 53; a German's right to 10 weeks of paid vacation; Japanese, German or Korean car company's ability to dump the retirement costs of their employees on their government, or the monstrous welfare states they have all constructed, which are then directly subsidized by American taxpayers' - and car purchasers' - dollars.
Try explaining that one to your kids when the bill comes due.
Common Sense would dictate that corporations the world over have at minimum the same regard (or disregard) for ethical conduct, and in countries less open than America (which is all of them) it is arguably worse. I give you Toyota's decade long fraud on the problem with Sudden Acceleration as a case in point.
But it's as if in America none of that is even contemplated, much less matters. American consumers give foreign car companies a big thumbs up in the Virtue department every time they enthusiastically turn tens of thousands of their hard-earned dollars over to buy a Corolla, Jetta, Civic or Sonata. Voting with their pocketbook, they not only give foreign companies a Hall Pass when it comes to corporate virtue, they actually invest them with a virtue greater than our own. It is the Thinking Man's lament: but that we viewed as critically the conduct of foreigners and their corporations as we do our own. The fact that we don't speaks volumes about the Democrat Party's decades-long demonization of American business, the demonization by Republicans of Unions, and an endemic intellectual and moral laziness on the part of many American consumers. It's strange to think Liberals with their agenda and Conservatives with theirs are both milking our Consumerist ethic so diligently towards a common goal: the destruction of manufacturing in America.
Can you imagine the Germans or Japanese tolerating such self-destructive behavior? That said, the politicization of manufacturing has contributed to popular numerous misperceptions about the quality of domestically manufactured goods, and these have tended to focus most particularly on the automobile, the icon of manufacturing. Sure, they may be other mechanized things with more pizzazz than a car - yachts, Apache helicopter gunships, space shuttles, etc. - but those tend to be out of price range of most folks, and thus we must settle for automobiles in probing the psyche of the American consumer.
Many car buyers in America have some sense of loyalty to their fellow citizens; unfortunately, most do not. They go for "value" as it is portrayed in the media (predictably skewed against American car companies); they go for trends, and foreign cars are certainly trendy; and finally, they make no allowance for even the slightest of differences in Quality Ratings between domestic and foreign cars, regardless of whether the criteria are faulty or not. So, for example, if Consumer Reports gives Toyota a quality rating of 92 on a particular model and GM gets a score of 89 on a comparable model, most folks would make no allowance for the statistical insignificance. And if the GM car was projected to cost over its lifetime an extra ten cents per day, these same consumers would make no allowance, even if the end result was keeping Americans employed and generating taxes for the mortgage deductions, Social Security and Medicare benefits that they no doubt feel they are entitled to.
I wonder if anybody contemplates the irony of purchasing foreign cars at the expense of our own economy, only to discover that that wasn't quite enough, and that now we as taxpayers will have to further mortgage our children's future spending untold Trillions every decade to subsidize a Greek's right to retire at age 53; a German's right to 10 weeks of paid vacation; Japanese, German or Korean car company's ability to dump the retirement costs of their employees on their government, or the monstrous welfare states they have all constructed, which are then directly subsidized by American taxpayers' - and car purchasers' - dollars.
Try explaining that one to your kids when the bill comes due.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
2Fast 2Early 2Slow 2Late - Program Trading In The Age Of Obama
The wild gyrations of the stock market Thursday - at one point down 1000 points - should remind us all to follow the money when things like this happen. OffHisMeds has been of the opinion that the Stock Market has been consistently rigged since at least 1999, although the first large-scale fiscal piracy of the modern era took place as early as 1987.
You will recall that the problem with the market on Black Monday in 1987 was so-called "Program Trading", a computerized trigger that dumps stocks automatically when they lose a certain percentage of their value within a certain time-span. The whole concept is idiocy, of course. Since when can inert computer programs substitute for expert judgment and the ability of human beings to analyze information and events? That is why it is all the more ironic that the market was yet again plundered through this glitch - allegedly by a trader who hit the wrong key on his computer - some 23 years later.
Meanwhile, computers have advanced orders of magnitude in their power, as have the programs that drive them, but Program Trading is just as problematic as ever.
Which brings us to OHM's First Law of Economics: Instability benefits Predators.
At one point, the Dow Jones average lost 1,000 points, or 9% of its total value. NASDAQ and other markets suffered similar losses. If you assume these losses were perpetuated throughout all publicly traded stocks in America, the momentary loss was approximately $1.25 Trillion. This is yet another classic example of the "milking" that occurs routinely in our Stock Markets, where the wealth contained in the conservatively managed Mutual Funds of folks invested in IRAs and 401Ks is siphoned into the accounts of fast-acting and predatory traders the world over.
You have but to look at the performance of Mutual Funds since 1999 versus the overall market to see what I'm talking about. Looking strictly at large-scale swings in market performance (at least 5% in any given fiscal quarter), you find that when the Market fell, Mutual Fund losses as a percentage were nearly twice as high as that of the Stock Market overall. Likewise, when the Market experienced a significant uptick, Mutual Funds would experience roughly half of that increase.
So, assuming that the defensive posture of Mutual Fund Program Trading simultaneously causes them to sell too fast too early, and then buy too slow too late, it's reasonable to assume that this was one of the largest single day thefts in world history. After all the wild gyrations, if only half of that wealth was transferred from ordinary investors to Traders, and only half of that money belonged to Mutual Funds that supported retirement accounts, that would still be almost $300 Billion picked from the pockets of Savers nationwide.
Who benefits? For sure it was the Day Traders and other carrion pickers who swept in and bought up Procter & Gamble, for one example, when its price plunged from $60 to $33. The other beneficiaries were the Usual Suspects: George Soros, Warren Buffett, Chinese Communist Overlords, Arab Dictators, Russian Mafias and anybody else flush with US dollars at the moment the market plunged.
So, what does all of this have to do with Barack Obama? Simple: for all his anti-Wall Street rhetoric, Obama's SEC is not going to find that anything like the scenario I describe above ever happened, small investors are not going to be recompensed, and nobody will be punished. As the largest recipient of political contributions from Wall Street, Obama is not going to bite the hand that feeds him, or holds his leash.
You will recall that the problem with the market on Black Monday in 1987 was so-called "Program Trading", a computerized trigger that dumps stocks automatically when they lose a certain percentage of their value within a certain time-span. The whole concept is idiocy, of course. Since when can inert computer programs substitute for expert judgment and the ability of human beings to analyze information and events? That is why it is all the more ironic that the market was yet again plundered through this glitch - allegedly by a trader who hit the wrong key on his computer - some 23 years later.
Meanwhile, computers have advanced orders of magnitude in their power, as have the programs that drive them, but Program Trading is just as problematic as ever.
Which brings us to OHM's First Law of Economics: Instability benefits Predators.
At one point, the Dow Jones average lost 1,000 points, or 9% of its total value. NASDAQ and other markets suffered similar losses. If you assume these losses were perpetuated throughout all publicly traded stocks in America, the momentary loss was approximately $1.25 Trillion. This is yet another classic example of the "milking" that occurs routinely in our Stock Markets, where the wealth contained in the conservatively managed Mutual Funds of folks invested in IRAs and 401Ks is siphoned into the accounts of fast-acting and predatory traders the world over.
You have but to look at the performance of Mutual Funds since 1999 versus the overall market to see what I'm talking about. Looking strictly at large-scale swings in market performance (at least 5% in any given fiscal quarter), you find that when the Market fell, Mutual Fund losses as a percentage were nearly twice as high as that of the Stock Market overall. Likewise, when the Market experienced a significant uptick, Mutual Funds would experience roughly half of that increase.
So, assuming that the defensive posture of Mutual Fund Program Trading simultaneously causes them to sell too fast too early, and then buy too slow too late, it's reasonable to assume that this was one of the largest single day thefts in world history. After all the wild gyrations, if only half of that wealth was transferred from ordinary investors to Traders, and only half of that money belonged to Mutual Funds that supported retirement accounts, that would still be almost $300 Billion picked from the pockets of Savers nationwide.
Who benefits? For sure it was the Day Traders and other carrion pickers who swept in and bought up Procter & Gamble, for one example, when its price plunged from $60 to $33. The other beneficiaries were the Usual Suspects: George Soros, Warren Buffett, Chinese Communist Overlords, Arab Dictators, Russian Mafias and anybody else flush with US dollars at the moment the market plunged.
So, what does all of this have to do with Barack Obama? Simple: for all his anti-Wall Street rhetoric, Obama's SEC is not going to find that anything like the scenario I describe above ever happened, small investors are not going to be recompensed, and nobody will be punished. As the largest recipient of political contributions from Wall Street, Obama is not going to bite the hand that feeds him, or holds his leash.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
MS-150 Chronicles 2010 - Part 4
Sunday Morning
Picking up from the Start on Sunday morning, the rain stopped mere minutes before packs of Riders began to depart from LaGrange. I was in the third shift, and was soon rolling down an extended decline out of town. When I hit around 23 mph, the front wheel started shimmying violently. I hollered "stopping!", dropped both feet on the ground whilst simultaneously applying handbrakes (try that sometime) and brought the bike to a stop along the side of the road without managing to take anybody else out. Thinking the shimmy was a fluke, I tried rolling again, but the symptoms re-occurred. I could find nothing wrong, so I flagged a SAG wagon, we threw my bike in back, and I was now rolling towards the first rest stop, knocking about 10-12 miles off my Ride, not to mention my weary backside.
A mechanic at the Rest Stop could find nothing wrong, but tightened the inset screw at the base of the handlebars, and I was soon on my way. That symptom was a new one on me, but I experienced no other breakdowns, and not a single flat tire. That was a lucky break because the ride this year seemed plagued with many more flats than in years' past.
While the mechanic was working on my bike, I took the opportunity to try to call and text some folks to update them on my whereabouts. No luck. See, my beloved Motorola Razor is on its last legs, steadily losing functionality more or less in direct proportion to the frequency with which I drop it on the ground. In fact, after so much abuse, it's hilarious when I do drop it. Whereas before it would simply bounce around, picking up yet another ding on the surface, it now explodes into four different pieces, and some reassembly is required. Intermittent failures are now total, such as the inability to scroll through menus or use the phone book. I also can't get the number 9 on the keypad to work except intermittently, and it has a tendency to insert a 6 instead, causing me to dial quite a few wrong numbers. All of the folks I mis-called were polite, and several seemed thankful for the call, like they didn't get too many. It's strange to think that in our communication saturated society that too few calls would be an issue, but there it is. It's also strange how you don't realize how dependent you are on your celly until it starts losing features.
So in a nutshell, my cell phone essentially allows me to do three things: receive phone calls, make calls to friends as long as they don't have any 9's in their number, and read text messages sent to me as long as nobody is expecting a response. So, sorry John Holmes and John Breland if you haven't heard from me: y'all having 9's in your number is a deal killer as far as the Razor was concerned.
Just for grins, I purposely dropped it on the ground at the rest stop prior to lunch to see if that would shake things up a bit and improve performance. I reinserted the SIM card, battery, backplate and faceplate, but no luck. Note to self: get new cell phone next week.
The rest of the trip into Bastrop for lunch was a chill, wet and slightly claustrophobic experience, not the least because the skies were overcast and everybody was a little goosey about the wet ground and the considerable speed you could accumulate on the downhills. I actually applied handbrakes all the way down the 500 yard long downhill you hit just before the Buescher State Park split, foregoing the thrill of hitting 45 mph so as not to discover whether that shimmy might decide to do an encore. At 45 mph, I was going to have precious fewer options than at half that speed, and none of them involving a happy outcome.
I also blew off Buescher State Park and its scenic hills, opting for the more gradual incline of the surface roads outside of it, and within about an hour was into lunch. Soon enough, I'm back out on the road, and the miles are coming harder now, no doubt due to the combination of a lack of hill training and, of course, the never-ending hills and damnable headwinds that comprised most of the Sunday ride. I couldn't fault the hills; they were there first. The headwinds we started hitting around Mile 20 were another matter altogether. I make a mental note to ask the Ride Committee if they maybe can't do something about this for next year.
With 36 miles to go, I started doing a countdown. The winds had dropped, and I managed to lurk onto a reasonable Pace Line going about 18 mph. Sweet, I say to myself. At this rate, I'll be done in two hours. Shortly thereafter, the Pace Line sped up, and I was unable to keep up with them. I've now slowed down to 16 mph, but at least I covered four miles. Some quick math reveals that if I can just sustain that speed, I'll be into Austin in two hours. Soon enough, the winds return, and every Rider is slowed, some more than others. I covered another 4 miles, but now down to 14 mph. At this pace, I will be done in two hours.
You can see where this is going. Each successive loss of just 2 mph in speed every four miles left me an unchanging two hours away from the Austin Finish, and sure enough, the winds picked up with a vengeance, slowing me to 12, then 10, then 8 mph. It was like I was in an episode of Twilight Zone, where you can not only contemplate Infinity, but actually effing experience it! Suddenly, declaring to myself - "I've only got two hours to go!" - as I had twenty miles back was no longer a cheerful and good thing, but an acknowledgment of the distinct possibility that my speed would slow relative to the remaining distance until time and space themselves ceased to have any meaning. My "progress" in the previous 20 miles left looming in my mind the ignominy of having the last SAG wagon haul my butt to the end, just ahead of the 92 year old guy from New Jersey that comes out and completes the entire ride every year.
Not exactly the scenario Einstein had postulated, but close enough.
Gloomy, I pulled into the Next-To-Last rest stop, mostly because it is gleefully advertised as such by the volunteers who man it, several of whom hold up big cardboard signs proclaiming "Only 16 miles to go!" I wanted to smack them. Instead, I picked up on their cheerful vibe, downed one last handful of cookies, and decided to go for broke. I had been nursing a twinge that felt like a cramp in my right calf for the previous hour, but decided to hammer it until it locked up or let me go, determined not to cover the next 8 miles at an average speed of 4 mph, and still theoretically a depressing two hours from the finish.
For what it's worth, the last 16 miles were relatively easy. I stood in the stirrups on every uphill without cramping, and I was within two miles of the finish in about an hour, the Austin cops cheering us on with one shouting out "nearly there, nearly there", and high-fiving Riders stopped at an intersection. The Pack resumed on the green light, heading down a hill, and just like that we were at a full stop again. A Rider was down, but this was no leisurely exercise as had been the others. There were at least two paramedics and two Rider parameds working on the Rider, and there was a definite urgency about their movements. The cops diverted us around the ambulance, everybody made an effort not to gawk, and a thousand silent prayers went up simultaneously.
Within minutes I was rolling down the long entry chute at the end, lined with hundreds of cheering folks. Edging over to the left, I stuck out my hand and did a continuous High-Five with a couple dozen folks along the fence as I rolled to the finish, managing this safely until I came to the inevitable road-block of Bright Room photographers occupying the entire left half of the Finish Line, stacked three wide, four deep, and clicking away like crazy.
I clipped out one last time and zipped directly to the vans prepped to take our bikes back to the Starting Points in Houston. Once again, a cheerful 16 year old grabbed my bike, reminded me to take all my valuables, and bundled my bike on board. I moseyed over to the Continental tent for one last sign-in and trooped directly to the showers, intent on catching the first available bus so as to get home at a decent hour.
While in line for a shower, a handful of us circled one of the Top Fundraisers - his Rider Number identifying him as such - hoping to catch some tips on elevating contributions from, say, "Decent" (my current status) to Club 300, which is $3,500 or more. The Top Fundraisers are deep into five figures territory. The conversation, though, is all about the just-completed Ride, and pretty soon I'm into and out of the showers, seeking my last beer before the Bus Ride, and looking around the Continental and St. Arnold's tents for anybody I know. No such luck, so I gimped on down to the bus line, my luggage stuffed with extra Continental T-Shirts that our organizer Beth was pressing on everybody, along with a couple packs of Continental playing cards that might be a collector's item one day, assuming they consummate a proposed merger with United Airlines.
Don't do it Continental. A little belt-tightening and innovation is the sure path to future profits, and need I remind you that Chicago is not exactly a bastion of free enterprise.
The bus pulls out of Austin around 4:00 pm, and the ride back to Houston is accompanied by a free movie that is so awful that I can't even remember what it was. I turn to my seatmate, and we strike up a conversation that lasts maybe a half hour, after which time I'm prepared to sack out for the rest of the bus ride home, along with 80% of the folks I was riding with. Three hours later, we roll into the Omni Hotel, Sharon is waiting for me, and I head on home.
Life is good.
Picking up from the Start on Sunday morning, the rain stopped mere minutes before packs of Riders began to depart from LaGrange. I was in the third shift, and was soon rolling down an extended decline out of town. When I hit around 23 mph, the front wheel started shimmying violently. I hollered "stopping!", dropped both feet on the ground whilst simultaneously applying handbrakes (try that sometime) and brought the bike to a stop along the side of the road without managing to take anybody else out. Thinking the shimmy was a fluke, I tried rolling again, but the symptoms re-occurred. I could find nothing wrong, so I flagged a SAG wagon, we threw my bike in back, and I was now rolling towards the first rest stop, knocking about 10-12 miles off my Ride, not to mention my weary backside.
A mechanic at the Rest Stop could find nothing wrong, but tightened the inset screw at the base of the handlebars, and I was soon on my way. That symptom was a new one on me, but I experienced no other breakdowns, and not a single flat tire. That was a lucky break because the ride this year seemed plagued with many more flats than in years' past.
While the mechanic was working on my bike, I took the opportunity to try to call and text some folks to update them on my whereabouts. No luck. See, my beloved Motorola Razor is on its last legs, steadily losing functionality more or less in direct proportion to the frequency with which I drop it on the ground. In fact, after so much abuse, it's hilarious when I do drop it. Whereas before it would simply bounce around, picking up yet another ding on the surface, it now explodes into four different pieces, and some reassembly is required. Intermittent failures are now total, such as the inability to scroll through menus or use the phone book. I also can't get the number 9 on the keypad to work except intermittently, and it has a tendency to insert a 6 instead, causing me to dial quite a few wrong numbers. All of the folks I mis-called were polite, and several seemed thankful for the call, like they didn't get too many. It's strange to think that in our communication saturated society that too few calls would be an issue, but there it is. It's also strange how you don't realize how dependent you are on your celly until it starts losing features.
So in a nutshell, my cell phone essentially allows me to do three things: receive phone calls, make calls to friends as long as they don't have any 9's in their number, and read text messages sent to me as long as nobody is expecting a response. So, sorry John Holmes and John Breland if you haven't heard from me: y'all having 9's in your number is a deal killer as far as the Razor was concerned.
Just for grins, I purposely dropped it on the ground at the rest stop prior to lunch to see if that would shake things up a bit and improve performance. I reinserted the SIM card, battery, backplate and faceplate, but no luck. Note to self: get new cell phone next week.
The rest of the trip into Bastrop for lunch was a chill, wet and slightly claustrophobic experience, not the least because the skies were overcast and everybody was a little goosey about the wet ground and the considerable speed you could accumulate on the downhills. I actually applied handbrakes all the way down the 500 yard long downhill you hit just before the Buescher State Park split, foregoing the thrill of hitting 45 mph so as not to discover whether that shimmy might decide to do an encore. At 45 mph, I was going to have precious fewer options than at half that speed, and none of them involving a happy outcome.
I also blew off Buescher State Park and its scenic hills, opting for the more gradual incline of the surface roads outside of it, and within about an hour was into lunch. Soon enough, I'm back out on the road, and the miles are coming harder now, no doubt due to the combination of a lack of hill training and, of course, the never-ending hills and damnable headwinds that comprised most of the Sunday ride. I couldn't fault the hills; they were there first. The headwinds we started hitting around Mile 20 were another matter altogether. I make a mental note to ask the Ride Committee if they maybe can't do something about this for next year.
With 36 miles to go, I started doing a countdown. The winds had dropped, and I managed to lurk onto a reasonable Pace Line going about 18 mph. Sweet, I say to myself. At this rate, I'll be done in two hours. Shortly thereafter, the Pace Line sped up, and I was unable to keep up with them. I've now slowed down to 16 mph, but at least I covered four miles. Some quick math reveals that if I can just sustain that speed, I'll be into Austin in two hours. Soon enough, the winds return, and every Rider is slowed, some more than others. I covered another 4 miles, but now down to 14 mph. At this pace, I will be done in two hours.
You can see where this is going. Each successive loss of just 2 mph in speed every four miles left me an unchanging two hours away from the Austin Finish, and sure enough, the winds picked up with a vengeance, slowing me to 12, then 10, then 8 mph. It was like I was in an episode of Twilight Zone, where you can not only contemplate Infinity, but actually effing experience it! Suddenly, declaring to myself - "I've only got two hours to go!" - as I had twenty miles back was no longer a cheerful and good thing, but an acknowledgment of the distinct possibility that my speed would slow relative to the remaining distance until time and space themselves ceased to have any meaning. My "progress" in the previous 20 miles left looming in my mind the ignominy of having the last SAG wagon haul my butt to the end, just ahead of the 92 year old guy from New Jersey that comes out and completes the entire ride every year.
Not exactly the scenario Einstein had postulated, but close enough.
Gloomy, I pulled into the Next-To-Last rest stop, mostly because it is gleefully advertised as such by the volunteers who man it, several of whom hold up big cardboard signs proclaiming "Only 16 miles to go!" I wanted to smack them. Instead, I picked up on their cheerful vibe, downed one last handful of cookies, and decided to go for broke. I had been nursing a twinge that felt like a cramp in my right calf for the previous hour, but decided to hammer it until it locked up or let me go, determined not to cover the next 8 miles at an average speed of 4 mph, and still theoretically a depressing two hours from the finish.
For what it's worth, the last 16 miles were relatively easy. I stood in the stirrups on every uphill without cramping, and I was within two miles of the finish in about an hour, the Austin cops cheering us on with one shouting out "nearly there, nearly there", and high-fiving Riders stopped at an intersection. The Pack resumed on the green light, heading down a hill, and just like that we were at a full stop again. A Rider was down, but this was no leisurely exercise as had been the others. There were at least two paramedics and two Rider parameds working on the Rider, and there was a definite urgency about their movements. The cops diverted us around the ambulance, everybody made an effort not to gawk, and a thousand silent prayers went up simultaneously.
Within minutes I was rolling down the long entry chute at the end, lined with hundreds of cheering folks. Edging over to the left, I stuck out my hand and did a continuous High-Five with a couple dozen folks along the fence as I rolled to the finish, managing this safely until I came to the inevitable road-block of Bright Room photographers occupying the entire left half of the Finish Line, stacked three wide, four deep, and clicking away like crazy.
I clipped out one last time and zipped directly to the vans prepped to take our bikes back to the Starting Points in Houston. Once again, a cheerful 16 year old grabbed my bike, reminded me to take all my valuables, and bundled my bike on board. I moseyed over to the Continental tent for one last sign-in and trooped directly to the showers, intent on catching the first available bus so as to get home at a decent hour.
While in line for a shower, a handful of us circled one of the Top Fundraisers - his Rider Number identifying him as such - hoping to catch some tips on elevating contributions from, say, "Decent" (my current status) to Club 300, which is $3,500 or more. The Top Fundraisers are deep into five figures territory. The conversation, though, is all about the just-completed Ride, and pretty soon I'm into and out of the showers, seeking my last beer before the Bus Ride, and looking around the Continental and St. Arnold's tents for anybody I know. No such luck, so I gimped on down to the bus line, my luggage stuffed with extra Continental T-Shirts that our organizer Beth was pressing on everybody, along with a couple packs of Continental playing cards that might be a collector's item one day, assuming they consummate a proposed merger with United Airlines.
Don't do it Continental. A little belt-tightening and innovation is the sure path to future profits, and need I remind you that Chicago is not exactly a bastion of free enterprise.
The bus pulls out of Austin around 4:00 pm, and the ride back to Houston is accompanied by a free movie that is so awful that I can't even remember what it was. I turn to my seatmate, and we strike up a conversation that lasts maybe a half hour, after which time I'm prepared to sack out for the rest of the bus ride home, along with 80% of the folks I was riding with. Three hours later, we roll into the Omni Hotel, Sharon is waiting for me, and I head on home.
Life is good.
White Man Blows Up Times Square!
They Mainstream Media just can't help themselves, can they? Regarding the attempted terrorist attack in Times Square, today the New York Times reported that "Arrest made in Times Square bomb case". Yet, only yesterday in the article "Motive sought for car bomb", they showed no scruples to report that the prime suspect was a "white man", reporting of "surveillance footage that showed a white man who appeared to be in his 40s walking away from the area as he looked over his shoulder and removed a layer of clothing", and "images of the white man leaving the scene of the SUV that were shot by a tourist in Times Square".
Frankly, I would question the judgment of anybody of any race who didn't look over their shoulder after pulling a layer of clothing over their head in Times Square, much less a New York City alley, since it would be at exactly that moment that a mugger would knock you over the head. Or it could be that the guy was simply hot.
The article also reported that the white suspect was "was seen in Shubert Alley". He wasn't. The video clearly shows him removing his shirt on the same street as the parked SUV and walking down that street, but we all know how much more plausible his guilt would be if he were to be reported sneaking down an alley.
So why the rush to identify the culprit as a white man? Since when does taking off a sweatshirt make one a suspect? It's not much of a stretch to presume that the authors of the article wanted it to be a white man, and preferably a member of a Tea Party. Either way, it sounds like racial profiling to me.
One final note: it isn't just the Mainstream Media that fanned the Guilty Whitey theory; local, state and federal government investigators all fed this bogus story for two days, or roughly the length of time it took them to determine that a Pakistani American - Faisal Shahzad - had just recently returned from Pakistan, purchased the car, and was arrested at JFK airport today attempting to flee the country to Dubai, where he ran not the slightest risk of being racially profiled.
Frankly, I would question the judgment of anybody of any race who didn't look over their shoulder after pulling a layer of clothing over their head in Times Square, much less a New York City alley, since it would be at exactly that moment that a mugger would knock you over the head. Or it could be that the guy was simply hot.
The article also reported that the white suspect was "was seen in Shubert Alley". He wasn't. The video clearly shows him removing his shirt on the same street as the parked SUV and walking down that street, but we all know how much more plausible his guilt would be if he were to be reported sneaking down an alley.
So why the rush to identify the culprit as a white man? Since when does taking off a sweatshirt make one a suspect? It's not much of a stretch to presume that the authors of the article wanted it to be a white man, and preferably a member of a Tea Party. Either way, it sounds like racial profiling to me.
One final note: it isn't just the Mainstream Media that fanned the Guilty Whitey theory; local, state and federal government investigators all fed this bogus story for two days, or roughly the length of time it took them to determine that a Pakistani American - Faisal Shahzad - had just recently returned from Pakistan, purchased the car, and was arrested at JFK airport today attempting to flee the country to Dubai, where he ran not the slightest risk of being racially profiled.
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