Airport Art

Had the first opportunity in an unimaginably long time to drive out to the Sacramento International Airport this afternoon -- at 4:30 PM no less, in an odd late-June downpour causing chockablock traffic in both directions. A wonderful first visit to the new several billion dollar terminal B facility.

Well, the terminal isn't actually completed yet; a few more long months of tweaks and the pull of some levers and the rotation of some gears and the thing will be ready for public consumption by 2012.

Just in time for systemically higher oil prices.

Airplane travel is one area where the smart grid, smart phones, plug-in hybridization, personal windmills and rooftop solar PV systems will mean precisely dick. Getting a plane up in the air only ever came about due the introduction of a suitably powerful engine a century ago -- nothing in the ensuing eleven decades has decreased the reliance of air travel on petroleum. Nothing. It won't take off using batteries and solar cells. Shit...it probably wouldn't even come close to staying aloft on batteries and solar cells, assuming we could even build a hybrid plane using kerosene to take off and renewables for everything else. We'll have to drill in 7,000 feet of Gulf of Mexican water and then through another 14,000 feet of rock to get the future oil needed to power these aircraft -- in my little opinion, it's not going to be cheap, yet we built out a fantabulous new terminal designed to handle dozens of additional daily flights under the assumption of a cheap energy future ad infinitium.

I dropped off a passenger this afternoon. Come 2025 we might get light rail out to the airport, but I'm not holding my breath. If you're gonna fly from Sacramento you had better be prepared to drive, too. I'm imminently pleased that I did not have to fly today. I'm not mentally prepared for the back-of-the hand security maneuvers and the dumping out of all but 3 ounces of insulin because I didn't happen to pack my prescription label. No, not today.

I would like to build the following aluminum plate for my next stroll through the Sacramento airport x-ray device:

I wonder if it would even garner attention. It most certainly couldn't be construed as "domestic terrorism," you think? That's the problem with airport security -- no sense of humor. It's not like I'm making any threats...

I'm hardly joking about bombs or other such shit. I just want them to know what I really think of their security procedures, because to actually vocalize my thoughts would cause alarms to go off and large men with guns to appear. I don't feel particularly safer knowing the five year old boy in front of me was frisked for undergarment explosives or that his shoes' lasts were examined for Semtex-1A. I do feel particularly safer knowing that I and a few dozen others will ignore the seat belt sign (much to the consternation of the flight attendants and the FAA) and dogpile any would-be terrorist before he'd have his opportunity to light his wares or fill the fuselage with lethal gas.

Most decidedly a he. And, most decidedly a young he. And, most decidedly a swarthy young he. It is for our failures to openly practice such profiling as a viable means of terror enforcement, at least as it pertains to the largely-symbolic act of airport security, that I offer my contempt. I do believe its intention is just to make white people feel safe. Every time the news reports on an individual who agrees with such measures it is always either an old white woman or a middle-aged white woman. "I feel safer knowing the terrorists are now leaving their bombs at home" they say.

Remember boarding a Southwest flight from Burbank to Sacramento in 1998 and having to answer the "three big questions?" Imagine that today:

One -- Did you pack your bags yourself?

"No. My wife packed my bags. I was too busy fuckering around on your website trying to print out our boarding passes that you used to do for us passengers twenty years ago. No. I get the enjoyment of being rejected because it's 10:22AM and the flight is at 10:25AM tomorrow and for "reasons of national security" I can't print this fucking thing out more than a day in advance. You used to send them to me in the mail six weeks before my flight...now I'll be charged five bucks if I ask you at the counter."

Two -- Did anyone unknown to you ask you to carry anything on board the plane?

"My Muslim Bengali co-worker did indeed! ask me to carry a package to our associates in the southland, and I did indeed! find it somewhat odd with its plain brown wrapping and that older model cellularized telephone fastened to its side...but what, exactly, is an unknown person? Surely everyone is known to someone. He's a known person -- as are all the 6.9 billion others on this planet. So no."

Three -- Have your bags been out of your possession since you've packed them?

"Yes. After my business travel we vacationed on the fabulous Carnival Splendor cruise ship, where we just disembarked for my return flight home and where I left my bags out in the #3 hallway unattended for several hours. They were hastily loaded into my trunk by three swarthy 26-year old bearded men who were clearly Carnival employees -- in fact, I remember their names: Chad, Jordan and Al Bania -- it was clear as day on their nametags. I remember, because they refused my tip. I always remember the tip refusalists so I can find them again on my next trip..."

The Unit

I have often lamented the erosion of "social."

With television, Xbox-360, two wage-earning families and suburban sprawl, there really is no longer any sense of social.

At least, certainly not within my own familial unit and the other units around me. I have to think that among other units across the US this is probably also true, not just here in my Elk Grove. We find that fewer and fewer of us relate to the Shriners, the League of Women Voters, or the Ladies Auxiliary these days. The notional arrangements of social capital are eroding further each and every day...at least, the arrangements of what passed two or three decades hence are no longer valid...or at least, are less important than they once were.

As I grew up, family and friends were important. As kids we used to band together and play in parks, in the streets, but I could easily see the erosion of this idea as early as 1983, when the family unit no longer held sway as it likely once did a generation earlier. Technology and fossil fuels have allowed for each member of the family to migrate out separately...and earlier...than what used to be the case.

Nine year olds are now texting one another within the confines of bedrooms, instead of actually having to venture out of doors. Interactive gaming has taken the place of getting on the bike, cruising to your friend's house and playing the console for hours.

I suppose what I'm really lamenting is my own closed-in notion of social, my own dated expectation of what people these days ought to do for social engagement. This blog is an example of energy shunted away from social interaction -- time spent to post meaningless monologues to myself. This has value, yes, but in the larger context it really is more a means towards further isolation. I post alone.

As I'm neither a gen-y'er nor a millennial, I don't think I will ever fully accept the practice of mom on Facebook, dad playing Angry Birds, sis on Twitter and bro with his iPod while at the dinner table at the fast food outlet. This is the new normal, but it's too new for me.

At work, I can hardly enter a cube (both those of co-workers and management) without some form of Internet media taking away a fraction of your electric ratepaying dollar. If not using the corporate resource, private smarte phones are becoming more common, where everyone can keep the outside world apprised of your everyday activities.

Without personal interactions, it is my belief that Americans are more likely to presume that the TV figment called Snooki is more a real-life figure in their worlds than they'd like to admit. I do not see this as beneficial for a nation about to fall off the cheap energy cliff, a nation that cannot grow its way out of $15 trillion in debt. These things that are passed off as social do not lend themselves well to any form of real calamity. I don't see them improving our situation should our situation turn ugly.

If the familial unit, while completely connected yet completely disengaged can't seem to find any common purpose, what do you suppose the community means to anyone? What do you suppose our culture means to anyone?

La Raza

I'm a white guy. Raised in white Sacramentan suburbia. I attended grade school, middle school and high school in the 1970's and 1980's where 2% were black and 3% were Asian. (I am supposed to capitalize Asian, but not black, yes?)

I was among other whites growing up; indeed, all the way through college. West Point in the late 80s was predominantly white. CSUS in the 90s was also predominantly white -- at least, as an electrical engineering major it was.

The segregation has, in an odd sense, prevented me from ever holding any racial bias against anyone. I say odd -- because Mexican Americans that I know now in later life are among the most racist people I've ever, ever! known. There rarely, very rarely, is a Mexican American around me who doesn't treat Asians, blacks, or whatever completely different than I. Our upbringings contribute to our racisms.

I write this now as I live in the most racially diverse neighborhood than I've ever lived in anywhere else in my life, here in Elk Grove...and I have no issues with it. I don't think the neighborhood is going to go uphill or downhill just because "some nigger" moves in next door, or if "some chink" does. I use this authentic, American language here on my blog as this is the language used by everyone around me. I've really never had any reason to do so.

What reasons are attributed to such language/actions, I ask? I don't know. I've never felt compelled to treat others differently based on their race...at least, not that I've been aware of. I've a new Mexican American engineer working in our group but I think he's a shitty engineer -- not that he's Mexican. Race has no bearing in my judgements on others.

At least, so I think.

I will argue that among all the Nigerian and Ghanaian electrical engineers I've ever come across, all have been substandard...relative to my own abilities. I have yet to work with an African American electrical engineer who I believe is a talented individual. Does that make me racist for stating such an observation?

I really don't give a shit if you do or don't classify me a racist based on my 20 years of empirical observations. I have yet to work with any who I hold in high regard. Today, I hold the highest regard for an Indian engineer. He's one talented engineer, and to label me a racist simply for decrying all African electrical engineers fails to respect my 20 years in the industry as someone who knows and respects talent when he sees it.

I argue this, because we've a young Indian engineer in our group who routinely denigrates Pakistanis. He does so in a jovial way, yes...but deep down, I have to believe that he harbors extreme prejudice against them. He's grown up with that idea in northern India. Two nations in perpetual disagreement over what I consider to be the most trivial of reasons...over uninhabitable land in Kashmir...among other disagreements. What I'm saying is that this young Indian engineer is fifty times more racist than I...yet as a white guy, any single hint of racism and I'm out the door, off to find my own way again in a diverse work environment.

Jovially suggesting that earthquakes and American drone strikes in Pakistan leave a few fewer Pakistanis in the world and the world is incrementally better off. If I were to suggest that in any environment I'd be chastised up and down, be handed letters of reprimand, get fired, what have you. Yet, coming from another "minority," this is somehow deemed acceptable.

I offer that my own observations are true to form. I don't sugarcoat them. I suggest, without racial interest whatsoever, that electrical engineers from Ghana are among the most unqualified engineers in my field. This from observation. I argue that stereotyping is acceptable where prejudice is not. I argue that my beliefs about Ghanaian engineers is based on factual evidence, not on an assumption on a group of people before having adequate knowledge to be able to do so with guaranteed accuracy. I have adequate knowledge -- twenty years in the field -- I think they are bad engineers.

I do not suppose I fall into the same trap as my Indian coworker because I base my beliefs on empirical observation -- I do not do so simply based on their nationalism, heritage, or belief system. He bases his beliefs on the fact that there are inherent differences in Pakistanis traits and capacities simply due to their race. He justifies his different treatment of Pakistanis because they are Pakistanis. It is a belief system he's grown up with...and one I did not grow up with.

I often mention racism here on my monologues as 1)it's a monologue, not a dialogue, so I post whatever I want, and 2)it cuts to the core of how we've developed our social arrangements here in the U.S., and how it will impact us going forward in my expectation for eras of resource shortages. It will not be pretty. Blacks will blame Asians, Mexicans will blame blacks, and whites will blame everyone who's not white. This is not conducive towards managing national trials in my opinion, but this is what we're gonna get.

I am not a fan of La Raza as I don't hold my own white skin in any way different or superior to anyone else...as I really do see La Raza promoting such ideas. Contributions mean the most to me -- contributions as social animals, as respectful citizens, as caring for others regardless. I, really, do not see our nation following these ideals under any calamity or suffrage, and La Raza will be among those willing to promote our differences during calamities rather than our commonalities.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

I noticed two Sacramento County sheriffs eating lunch today at a table just down from me. What I didn't notice then, as I noticed as I walked out into the parking lot, was that they chose to leave their vehicular unit running (presumably) with the AC running, too. It was a pretty scorching afternoon here in the central valley, yes, approaching the century mark.

Really, I don't care too much about these wasted tax dollars; these officers need to be comfortable, yes. No, it isn't the loss of a dollar or two of a non-renewable resource that pisses me off, nor is it that my Sacramento county is among one of the few counties designated as non-attainment for the 1-hour federal ozone standard, nor that I have to ingest their exhaust emissions as I ride my bicycle anywhere in Elk Grove -- it's the fact that if I were to do that in my driveway, to leave my car idling while unattended it would be a crime.

If the correctional peace officers association (and whatever organizations associated with law enforcement) fails to meet their annual goals for fundraising or charity or assistance for wounded officers' families, whatever, you can rest assured that it'll have been in part to me going out of my way to never offer an additional dime to these arrogant pricks. I wish I had the wherewithal to go back inside to chastise these men for their actions. I was with others and hadn't the opportunity, but I'm fairly well assured that it wouldn't have made one bit of difference, that they would have either ignored me (their most likely response after having heard my argument), offered that it's a function of security or responsiveness or some other bullshit retort.

It is for these sorts of actions that I, a generally law abiding individual, always votes down public safety initiatives. Always. I will continue to do so. I have blogged many times how firefighters spend the vast majority of their time responding not to fires, but to vehicular accidents, accidents that they've indirectly caused by the mandate that roads be wide enough to turn their big fucking firetrucks and allowing drivers to comfortably drive 65mph down 35mph streets. That the only interaction I have had with the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department in the last decade is that they left a cruiser idling in the heat is enough for me to hold the entire "public safety" field in contempt.

This, along with that asshole CHP officer who told me, completely contrary to the law, that I couldn't take the lane on my bicycle, has left me with a lifelong disdain for law enforcement.

Disdain, even while I had the enjoyment this last Saturday night to walk from my housal unit 1.5 miles to the corner of Franklin and Laguna Springs to watch said law enforcement conducting a sobriety check point, the first I've ever witnessed on my Franklin Blvd. I sat at the bus stop (waiting for a bus that doesn't run on Saturdays) and got to witness the drawing of a few sets of handcuffs, the hauling away of a few cars for who-knows-what -- suspended licenses, expired registration, whatever. I would have liked to thank these law enforcement folks for what they were doing, yes. I worry about being plowed down by drunks on my bike, yes...which is why I never, never! ride at night.

I know it takes a certain level of ego and arrogance to perform their jobs; however, leaving a car running unattended for 35 minutes because "it's really, really hot outside!" represents the ultimate lack of judgement and lack of respect for their public funding. They can never count on me for support.

Balancing Authority of Northern California -- A "Too Big To Fail" BANC

"Just ask yourself; if you were to walk into any corporation, would you find faces brimming over with deep fulfillment and authentic delight -- or stonily asking themselves 'if it weren't for this accursed paycheck, would I really imprison myself in this dungeon of the human soul?'"

This comes from a recent blog entry on the Harvard Business Review website. Just think to yourself - how many 2011 Harvard graduates are truly concerned about the social ramifications of their actions as future cogs/spokes in the corporate machinery...particularly when faced against $171,455 in student debt? Come on, they'll be the first to become corporate slaves and soon-to-be managers -- 1) to pay off their massive educational debts, and 2) to seek to transfer the wealth of the poor to themselves, to transfer the wealth of the elderly to themselves, to transfer the wealth of the powerless to themselves (the most privileged group among us), and to transfer the wealth of communities, people, and society to their corporation which is nothing more than a "human equivalent" in the eyes of the law, laws they manipulate via campaign contributions, funds provided to political action committees and corporate sponsorships, all to eliminate taxes and to favorably alter regulations that benefit their own existence.

Why would anyone post such a blasphemous statement on that hallowed website? Certainly whoever did so wasn't a Harvard Business School undergraduate or graduate.

To counter such corporate whoring, I take efforts to use cash where I can, to eliminate the 3% haircut that my local businesses like Corti Bros. take to simply sell their wares via MasterCard. I take efforts to patronize local establishments, to prevent my dollars from flowing to corporate headquarters in St. Paul, MN to enrich attorneys and tax lawyers and their management analysts who are tasked with maximizing corporate (and their own) profits, who don't give a damn about their outlets' contributions to "community" here in Sacramento or elsewhere. I try to spend local as my dollars stay close and have the side-benefit of being returned to me in myriad but often subtle ways, such as better buildings, better services, or simply as a nicer place to live, better interaction with others, along with potentially nicer architecture...instead of miles of tilt-up concrete walls encasing consumptive warehouses filled with cheaply manufactured Chinese shit.

I am exceedingly privileged to work in an electrical engineering department (my department, not my organization) that values my contributions and expertise in a specialized field, a field that cannot be manipulated to extract more from electric ratepayers, and one that I find so enjoyable that it is no longer considered work. Contrast this to people like Severin Borenstein of the Hass Business School in Berkeley. He more than likely also immensely enjoys his work, too; however, he goes to work everyday devising market mechanisms to skim profits from electric ratepayers under the guise of free-entry markets, or hedgability of retail electric pricing, and applications of financial arbitrage between day ahead and hour ahead markets...all the while working to enrich top tier management at the California ISO whose jobs are to siphon California ratepayers to support their $870,000/year salaries. Remember, the ostensible purpose of such entities as CAISO is to encourage competition, to promote "equal access," to decrease the wholesale cost of electric power so decreased costs will "trickle down" to retail customers. Tell me. Do you really think that the California ISO has worked to decrease electric rates for Californians, what with their 620+ staff and duplicative transmission planning, operations engineering, settlements and energy management systems? If these functions which were traditionally at the utility level were eliminated and consolidated at the ISO then yes, we'd certainly find efficiency gains through such actions. But PG&E, SDG&E and SCE have all had to increase these departments and had to develop new departments just to interface with the ISO...along with entities such as SMUD that isn't even a mandatory participant but who also has to maintain considerable staff (and expense) just to interface with CAISO at the periphery. The California ISO has only enabled the role that traditional energy providers have had in providing their services. The ISO is comprised of staff derived from member utilities who are now paid 28% more than what they were formerly earning doing the same jobs at their former utilities. The ISO has transmission planners; so do the member utilities, and indeed, both organizations now have more planners than before the ISO ever existed, while the number of new "planned" facilities has only decreased. Edit 9/11: And ask yourself: has "reliability' been improved over the last fifteen years of the ISO existence when, today, a single contingency (the loss of a single 500kV line in Southern California), led to the largest blackout in the history of this state? I wonder what most ratepayers would think.

I see the same thing occurring with the smart grid. You, the electric ratepayer, are lulled into thinking that the grid is archaic and "rusting away," and you're bombarded with adverts by utilities, including SMUD, arguing the benefits of this smart grid. It has nothing to do with you, the electric ratepayer. It has everything to do with enabling SMUD and every other utility to increase their role in providing the services that they already provide. Take note how neither the California ISO nor SMUD explicitly states the economic benefits of their actions upon ratepayers. SMUDs latest annual report does not even remotely suggest that the "smart grid" will reduce rates; indeed, it's not supposed to. It's supposed to enable SMUD to become more relevant in providing their service. It's not as if we (the collective we) have to endure extended power outages. It's not as if we (the collective we) couldn't already respond to tiered energy pricing. Smart meters and the coming smart grid are intended to create dozens and dozens of positions within SMUD to manage the wireless networks to aggregate customer data, to manage the 18 additional terabytes of customer usage data, to hire and retain senior smart grid managers, to create an entirely new IT staff simply to stop hackers from fucking with the networks, to employ another group of people as contractors to maintain the AMI networking and to build and test these meters (although we can be assured the actual manufacturing will eventually migrate to Eritrea), to hire people to develop automated routines to restore power on the distribution network fourteen seconds faster than we already do, on and on and on.

And so ends my rant on the vaunted "efficiency gains" that the California ISO was to bring to electricity markets and the vaunted "efficiency gains" that the smart grid is supposed to bring to the physical electricity network. I will stop here, and allow you to accept smart metering into your life, allow you to remain enraptured by technology like you are with your new hot-shit 4-G cellularized telephone, allow you to accept the flawed notion that you are better off for them, all while passively accepting 2.9% annual rate increases ad infinitum on top of all other rate increases just for the right to access these "smart" privileges. While I might argue that the upper management of Silver Spring Networks will personally gain far, far more from the smart grid than will all of SMUDs ratepayers combined, I will end my rant and accept that this shit is coming and there's not much I can do about it. Sure, system reliability may increase through "smart grid solutions" that restore the system incrementally faster, but tell me if you are willing to pay 34% more for power that's already available 99.97% of the time for an additional 0.01% reliability improvement. Actually, it doesn't matter what you are willing to pay, you're going to pay it regardless, because corporations such as Silver Springs are far more influential in the debate than ratepayers and will either pay/bribe/influence board members/senior staff/politicians to sway development of the smarte grid that favor their positions.

I personally see smart grids as incrementally drawing your ratepaying wealth directly to me, an electrical engineer for an industry bent on becoming smarter. In that sense I suppose I ought to wholeheartedly whore for such "improvements" to our "outdated," "rusting," "nineteenth century" electric infrastructure. The more electric utilities are empowered to provide that electrical service, the more relevant my job becomes.

It's not just smart grid, either. I see the creation of the Balancing Authority of Northern California (BANC) as a way for SMUD to develop itself as a mini-California ISO, as a way to spend millions of dollars to save hundreds of thousands. A mini-ISO. Call it CAISO-West. Uh-huh. A mini-ISO formed by a distribution company that happens to own transmission. Sure, the benefits appear benign on the linked slide presentation, but take my commentary as well...and with a grain of salt please:

• Strengthens local control and independence from the California ISO. Hmmm...if the CAISO was such a good fucking establishment as we've all been made to believe these last fifteen years, why, exactly, should SMUD seek to further distance itself from it? Shouldn't we seek to work even closer to this 620+ staffed behemoth rather than attempt to distance ourselves from it, particularly as we have no option but to interface with it every hour of every day? I do find it particularly revealing that if and when BANC develops itself as an independent entity, ~85% of its staff will come directly or indirectly from the CASIO. Uh-huh. A great way to strengthen its independence from it.
• Reduces members' exposure to risks of NERC non-compliance. Hmmm...seems to me that SMUDs last two NERC audits were sterling, yet they have since hired several quarter-million dollar staff members, analysts and managers, oh, for various needs. That is -- SMUD will spend millions millions! over then next several years to manage the political risk of a few hundred thousand dollars in potential NERC fines that have yet to be levied and that will likely never be levied if staff members continue to do their fucking jobs and simply follow the NERC reliability standards. Political theatre, but hey, perception is indeed everything, and particularly perception that shines negatively on management, because you can be assured that the mitigation costs to prevent such direct public exposure to phantom fines will be without limit.
• Gives MID, Redding and Roseville an ownership voice. Hmmm...seems to me that these smaller entities stand to lose in their association with BANC..assuming these phantom NERC violations ever come to light.

Just opinions, nothing more. I am obviously not a fan of the California ISO, smart grids, and the Balancing Authority of Northern California. In my small opinion, and make no mistake it is indeed small, they all seek to enrich a handful of individuals at the expense of ratepayers, to promote utilities' influence in providing electric service, and to empower utilities and their staff. But they are all led by influential individuals with individual mandates, and while on the surface these concepts may appear beneficial, I see them all as a simulacrum of noble purpose -- their real purpose is to support their own structures, their own efforts, to build their own empires. I would remind you that electric power provided by SMUD is a public good, that the introduction of these sorts of concepts into the delivery of that power ("unfettered markets," "long-run efficiencies of real-time electricity pricing," etc.) will be a net gain to a few and a net loss to the majority.

You don't have to take my word, the word of some semi-anonymous blogger; no, just review the history of deregulated electric markets in California (meltdowns) and review your own electric bill and review the fiscal carnage brought about by overlaying Borensein's electric market fundamentals upon housal unit market fundamentals. Time will prove me right -- these concepts will invariably produce a few winners and a whole lot of losers.

I saw the following occur at the California ISO:
and I see the very same thing occurring at SMUD. Based on my arguments above, you can easily gauge where I think we are on this timeline -- somewhere between maturity and bloat. Anyone not wearing blinkers can see the end game coming a thousand miles down the road...

If you think that the highbrow ideas of smarte grids, etc. have SMUDs ratepayers' best interests in mind, you are on the wrong fucking planet my friend. In the same vein, if you think corporations have the best interests of American consumers in mind, if you think that the immense profits skimmed from local communities aren't conferred to the elite enclaves of those who own the vast majority of this nation's financial assets but are instead conferred back to private investors or the public at large, you aren't going to find your way back to this third rock anytime soon.

Illigitimi Non Carborundum

When I blogged the other day about my disdain for bicycle commuting, I did so for three distinct reasons. The first being that I am getting older, and riding doesn't come as easily as it once did. There's not much to be done about that I'm afraid, but I accept this and hopefully will be able to accept the fact that I will not be able to ride as much as I once did.

The other two facets, really, are things that are the reason this blog exists in the first place -- one being the other drivers on the road, and the other is how the road is funded.

It was a combination of me being tired and the "feel" of traffic the other day that ground me down. That day, with two bad drivers worthy of the finger and a host of others that also deserved it, I was worn down by those bastards, felt as if bicycle commuting was nothing but grinding work, not a pleasurable act whatsoever. But I've recently discovered that the "feel" of traffic is indeed a real phenomenon.

I've tried to pinpoint when and why traffic feels threatening and why it doesn't on other days -- maybe on full moons, on Mother's Day (the day EBT cards are credited), during hot weather, or based on some other specific reason...but I have never been able to find it. But it's there. Some days I get shirtless blacks feigning running me over in their Dodge Neons and white alpha-males racing past me in their Ford F250s, while most days this doesn't happen at all. It comes in clusters, or so I think. But it's not just me on a bike who's on the receiving end of these posturing male impulses from 159,000 years ago: my best friend also gets it on the San Fransisco Bay.

He noticed how, while anchored at Point Blunt off Angel Island on his sailboat, power boaters would accelerate around the point as soon as they notice him anchored, and would let off the power as soon as they knew their wake would no longer impact him, providing the greatest wake possible just to screw with him.

My friend at work with whom I goose hunt in the winter did the same thing against a female bicyclist on Tomales Rd. when we were driving from Pt. Reyes to Santa Rosa. He forgot for a moment that I was in the passenger seat, me, the outspoken commuter bicyclist, and mumbled how "she was going to eat my exhaust" as he punched it past her while giving no clearance whatsoever. "Do you suck or fuck?" was his rhetorical question to her as we raced past. Really, I had never been in such a situation before, but it became clear to me that alpha males, when alone or in groups inside the carapace of their own fossil-fuel powered vehicular units, intentionally create bad environments for non-motorized users of the roadway...or the waterway.

Today riding home was fun, because these sorts of people weren't present. They are out there, presumably, but they just weren't on Franklin Blvd. the same time I was today. I had the wind at my back, 89 degrees and no assholes on the road; a good day. It's days like today (and yesterday, too) that compel me to ride. And I do.

The second facet, that of how roads are funded, took another turn following the disclosure of the new California State "budget," passed onto the Governor to sign, which increases the vehicular unit registration fee another 12% to manage these "tough economic times."

One more reason why commuting by bicycle is a net economic loser, and why it's becoming increasingly hostile to even attempt it in this most golden of states. It should be obvious to most that 96.3% of those riding a bike to work cannot jettison their ownership of their cars; far from it, particularly in our land of low-density suburban sprawl where car ownership is compulsory for all and used for every facet of living by most. Riding a bicycle is but a hobby for me, and as you know, hobbies cost money; only interests are free. I go out and save the world by not driving and get screwed by the state to pay more to register a car that sits in my driveway. A real worthwhile endeavor, that bicycle commuting, eh? No -- can't charge the real users of the road through gasoline taxes; no, can't do that. We have to siphon tax dollars from the general fund to support the roadway and siphon car registration fees to refill the general fund. When we increase registration fees instead of user fees, the guy driving 34,000 miles per year in his Honda Civic to commute from Lodi to Sacramento pays the same as I do to use the road who drives 4,000 miles per year and who rides a bike.

I should hope that the bastards don't continue to wear me down...but there's precious little evidence to convince me that they won't still continue to do so...

Greatest American Hero

Tomorrow I will mount the bicycle for the first trip of the week into work by human power. Both Monday and Tuesday I drove, both because I woke up so late as to miss the bus and to pick up a lighting device after work, something that isn't possible on a bicycle.

One reason why bicycle commuting will forever be a third-tier transportation medium -- you can really only transport yourself on one, nothing else.

Sure, on occasion my panniers are filled with produce from the CSA or other such wares but in reality it's obviously impossible to fill up your propane tank, to bring home a lawnmower from the service shop or to shop at Sears on a bicycle. Nowhere to attach a 20# tank to your bike, can't drag a lawnmower behind you, and Sears demands patrons drive as they don't have a single bike rack near any of their three entrances. The bicycle as a mode of transportation is really just a wealthy-white-boy concept here in America -- immigrants don't ride bikes, poor people don't commute on bikes, and women most certainly don't commute by bikes.

At least, Elk Grovian women don't. Never seen one in nearly twenty years of bicycle commuting. A fair number of Sacramentan women ride, yes, but they live in areas that are expensive and are near valid destinations. They reek of wealth. Bicycling is more a recreational function than a true mobility function for them.

No middle class Elk Grovian woman would be caught dead commuting by bicycle. Not caught dead. They are far too deserving and privileged to ride a bike, and if she's an immigrant woman, whoa! there's no way she'll be caught dead riding a bike. She immigrated for the precise reason not to ever have to pedal around under her own power again. I say it once more -- she didn't immigrate to America to ride a fucking bike.

Elk Grovians didn't move to Elk Grove to ride bikes, either. The median income prohibits it. Bicycling as a viable mode is really only for those with 2+ DUIs and those who can't afford the reasonable registration/insurance costs on a vehicular unit or two, and these types of people generally don't inhabit Elk Grove...at least not yet. Nonetheless, Elk Grove is slowing becoming such a "community," where $3.85 gas begins to interfere with our God Given Right to Perpetual Motoring. Some of us gasp! are actually beginning to use the e-tran bus services! Some are limiting their recreation use of motoring. This is a slap in the face to the energy intensive lifestyles of extreme suburban commuting that we've become entitled accustomed to.

This is a mad, mad world! $3.85 gas! Oh, shimmering future, where are you! Aren't our best days supposed to be ahead of us? Aren't we entitled to perpetually cheap energy?

I drove to work today as there was no other option available to me for the sin of having slept in an extra hour. I fought with traffic the entire way, while it was not lost on me that I was traffic, that if I weren't there driving to work, traffic would have been incrementally reduced. I took advantage of the drive and completed two errands that I couldn't do by bicycle, such as picking up that light. I merged the two activities of consumption and commuting, and for that I should be recognized as the Greatest American Hero, reducing my carbon footprint by combining trips and enabling our economy..you know, the one based on 70% consumption.

Yep. I am the Greatest American Hero. I drove. I consumed. I feigned environmental consciousness. I did everything I could do to support our American ideas. I am but a humble Hero, yes...

Engagement

I am waiting for the heretofore unknown concept of peak oil. I'm anticipating it because if it were to happen, my expectation is that this nation of ours will fall to pieces as we are unaccustomed to any notion of resource shortages, but that we will emerge stronger, we will emerge a better nation, one suddenly willing to accept the strange notions of community and fraternity that have eluded us for the past several decades of our existence.

I asked the rhetorical question a few months ago here on my blog: suppose a Fukushima event occurred here; suppose a tsunami-style event occurred here in the Midwest, or the Southeast, or here in my Northern California. What, do you suppose the liklihood that community or fraternity would prevail over riots, lootings, and general disorderliness? I'd put all my marbles on the latter.

My gut feeling is that there'd be no order whatsoever, that we'd only consider number one, that we'd sooner fuck our neighbors out of any meager assistance such that our own excessive comforts are secured. This is the America that we live in, where we discount our neighbors, where we only look out for ourselves, where we will totally fail to accept any notion that community is stronger than individualism, that we might just persevere by joining together.

I do not recall any media coverage of looting in Shichigahama. I do not recall hearing about hordes of teenagers smashing windows in Matsugahama for all those Sony/Samsung flat screens in all those window displays. Perhaps because it never happened. Fifty bucks says that if a similar event occurred here, anywhere here in the U.S., we'd be reporting on the $40,000,000 in natural damage and the $52,650,000 in material losses due to theft, looting, and robbery.

I await a resource shortage so that we go through the arduous, painful process of exposing the hyper-individualism of our NASCAR-crazed populace for what they are as quickly as possible, so that we might sooner develop real communities, communities based on relationships instead of private automobiling, communities based on engagement rather than individualism.

The Nineteenth Floor

I like to argue that I hold a manufacturing job here in the United States -- manufacturing electricity.

It's a pretty weak argument, but I do actually produce a physical something, a tangible good. I am engaged in the technical craft of protecting transmission lines, bulk power transformers and hydro power generators from destructive short-circuits. Without protection engineers there would be no power. There are no Mennonite protection engineers.

Compare this field with, say, a woman involved in raking fees and/or percentages from the financial churn of mortgage backed derivatives for a large investment bank on the nineteenth floor in some glass warehouse in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her profession can more suitably be referred to as extraction, rather than value-added production. Her livelihood is based on the skimming and churning and shuffling of digital digits representing the physical production of others inside a server-farm in Madison Park. She makes her living by having increased the cost of interest on a lath and plaster worker's mortgage, by enriching an already wealthy layer of managers and other financial winners including herself.

I recently watched a video of a production run at the JunTing power transformer production facility in China. The workers were shown layering the laminate steel core by hand. For emphasis, take note that this detailed level of manufacturing cannot be done by low-wage, low-skilled factory workers or robotic devices. Chinese labor is not just endless arrays of dour women in matching grey uniforms in football-field facilities sewing buttons on a 650,000 production run of apparel accessories for the next hot-shit doll for the 2011 American Christmas...although of course that does exist. No, it's not just that -- their manufacturing today is comprised of thousands of small facilities supporting an ever larger global industrial directive, which represents the loss of similar manufacturing jobs here.

Just as important is that the entire chain of assembly has also moved elsewhere, the entire value-added chain that feeds the worker layering the laminate steel -- steel manufacturers, insulation developers, tractor-trailer drivers, factory janitors and HVAC engineers...

In this nation we denigrate the skilled industrial worker and hail the CEOs of gaming software, smart phones, social media moguls and financial operators such as Citi and Chase as the only possible avenue for future wealth for our citizens. Germany and Japan have never lost on their skilled workforce. We've been doing it for forty years, through the new-found dominance of short term profiteering through quarterly earnings as the sole motivator. Fail to meet the next quarter estimates and management won't last long enough to pursue any long term capital investments in people or in facilities.

And then! Base your economy on housing and perpetual automobiling after you've fuckered away your manufacturing infrastructure. Develop new incentives in real estate financialization through favorable influences to government, such that the woman on the nineteenth floor can reap immense profits from the churn of perpetual re-fi's and HELOCs. Subsidize ever-larger, more wasteful homes on the suburban fringes by unlimited mortgage interest deductions, taxpayer funded road expansions and cheap gasoline, and fill them with non-productive citizens managing finance, insurance and real-estate related fields.

If you have any doubts that we've based our entire economy on the endless cycle of new housal units on the suburban fringe and the hollowing out of city cores through the wholesale dismantling of former productive jobs and the lack of investment in existing neighborhoods, then just review all the headlines of the last three years regarding "housing starts," Case-Shiller, and how far down from the hallucinated peak we are with respect to housal unit valuations.

I find this an enjoyable topic here on my little blog, because in many of the same ways we squander our energy, we also squander our future. I am a personal doomer -- prepared for the worst, but able to live comfortably in the moment. I like the idea of our "empire in decline." I like the notion that less than two out of every one hundred of my neighbors believe that our best days are still ahead of us. I've been positioning myself for the "best days are behind us" prospects for the last twenty years -- maintaining little debt, being more valuable to my employer than what they are paying me, holding physical assets, mentally equipped to live a lowered energy lifestyle as necessary, ability to ride a bike, ability to trade skilled woodworking labor with neighbors...

What, exactly, would those 2% be bullish about? Our $14,345,000,000,000 national debt and our $1,205,000,000,000 annual deficits? Double digit health care increases ad infinitum? Gas at horrors! $3.87? Some future economy based on vaporware or some other hot-shit 6-G smart phone? 43,000,000 on food stamps? Housal unit prices expected to crest 2006 valuations sometime in the spring of 2034? 120,000,000 new green jobs building windmills?

If you are one of those 2/100, what are you bullish about?

The Florin Adventure

I am struggling to find enjoyment in the bicycle commute these days.

I had to take a different route the other day leading me into the left turn lane of Florin onto southbound Franklin, and what a zoo that was. The left turn signal only turns green after the thru-traffic on the right has been green for about 30 seconds, so there I am on my bike, trapped between stopped traffic to my left in the turn lane and 45-mph cars to my right.

There is no good that comes from bicycle commuting; I'm beginning to come to that realization. After six years on Franklin Blvd. and ten years before that in Elk Grove proper I'm reaching the end of the line with the bicycle. Elk Grove was not, is not, and will never be accessible by bicycle, ever. This I've known, but only now at my advanced age does it become more axiomatic.

Advanced age! Ha! Forty one! But yes, there's a complete difference than fifteen years ago when I could ride to Folsom somewhat comfortably compared to today where I can barely walk down the stairs first thing in the morning. I've some substantial left knee pain along with a right heel plantar fasciitis and then I'm just simply tired and weak and unwilling to do anything around the housal unit for the entire weekend.

The Florin Road adventure yesterday left me distraught, because for the first time ever I reached a point of disgust on the bike. Twice I couldn't contain myself and flipped off two separate drivers -- one who advanced in front of me and turned right into the Home Depot parking lot, cutting me off, and the second was right after the turn onto Franklin where a woman yelled at me for being in the road. "Fuck her," I muttered, and proceeded to raise the finger. She entered the Valero to gas up the Pacer, and it's problematic for me to now know that I'm likely forced to be doing the same as her going forward.

A point of disgust and total capitulation regarding my two-decades-long experiment with alternative commuting. I knew that someday I most certainly wouldn't have the legs to do it, yes, but right now I'm wrestling with both physical and mental issues.

If the mind isn't configured for bicycle commuting, well the legs don't really matter.

Nineteen Months

Like adverts in an early-November newspaper ringed by sleigh bells and red ribbon, so too comes a presidential field well in advance of the actual election, still some nineteen months afar. Nineteen months.

We're going to have to watch Mobile Palin for that long? Romneycare attacks for nineteen months?

Palin indeed has a brilliant plant, though...creating the meme of a demoralized population living in hollowed out cities aching for a return to their former greatness. She most certainly can rile up hundreds of thousands of people whose manufacturing jobs have vanished overseas, never to return, or tens of thousands of families who've lost their homes, or who can't pay for $3.75 gas for their birthright to private automobiling fifty five miles a day. No problem with that, I suppose. It makes for good political theatre, particularly for someone who hasn't even announced her candidacy and who most certainly has no chance whatsoever in taking the GOP nomination. But man, nineteen out of every forty eight months in this nation we have to endure the slow torture of presidential politics. I kinda wish, by law, that campaigns were shortened; then, perhaps, lawmakers might get around to balancing budgets ha! or some other nonsense such as that.

Romney's announcement yesterday, among a crowd of exclusively-white New Hampshire geriatric residents, was indeed interesting. Not for the single race crowd directly, no, but rather for the indirect fact that we have a black president in office who needs to be removed not for being black no! but for being a socialist. Which I find compelling, because this crowd cannot and will not support socialism...except as it pertains to their Medicare, to their Social Security. Back off, all those who dare touch my entitlements!

You could argue the point that they've paid into these programs for life and now have the entitlement to receive benefits, but if you do the math, simple really, take note how within eight years of receiving the benefits as structured today their entire lifetime contributions have been exhausted and for every minute they live beyond they are on the public dole. Hmmm...sounds suspiciously like the government lavishing money on people who don't deserve it. In Palin's terms, "that sounds like socialism" (sound it out in your head with her Alaskan drawl, please.) But who, exactly, are the people whose money is being taken to be handed over to those who don't deserve it?

• All those on Medicare?
• All those on Social Security?
• Wall Street?
• The forty three million on food stamps?
• Investment Bankers?
• The 13.4 million unemployed, those on extended, extended, extended unemployment?
• Our troops mired in endless decades-long wars?

None of them directly...but they are indeed handing money right back to themselves by way of a falling dollar and rising commodity prices as a consequence of their entire set of county, state and federal governments hopelessly broke. They pay for $3.50 gas horrors! yet get paid back with a food debit card. They pay for a $1.09 fast food taco horrors! but get paid back with week seventy eight's unemployment check.

Taxes on the middle class have only been reduced this year. I'm paying, as you are, 2% less this year thanks to the great compromise. We're hardly being taxed to death to support all those transfer payments to those who don't deserve it. I'm spending my 2% buying Chinese made shit, making sure Americans never again never! have to work in icky, icky manufacturing jobs. Nope, I'd say that I'm already doing my part for this nation, and yes, I'm willing to help out some more.

I'm helping out, yes, as I receive two shiny Lincoln cents each year for every ten dollars I save thanks to the bailing out of our investment banks, and I will surely get to watch my retirement savings melt away under inflation (or deflation, take your pick) that's sure to come once Moody's and our other stellar credit ratings agencies (you know, the ones who accurately bestowed AAA ratings on all those wholly defunct collateralized debt obligations) downgrade our nation's treasurys.

This is the perfect time to be debt free. I'm not completely debt free, but I'm not all that far away. The perfect time to not have to worry about being taxed to death to support all of you who don't deserve it -- I can handle it. But what I'm really going to struggle with is each one of these next...long...arduous...nineteen months.