Catching a Break
It has been a very warm week here on the hilltop. Notice that I am saying warm and not hot. Because it has been dry, the warmth of the day has felt good and not bad or oppressive. Nonetheless, when I stopped by to see our friends Faraj and Yasuko yesterday, two people who seem always on the go and usually outside in the garden, they were hunkered in the house with the air conditioning on, saying that it was too hot to be working outside. It didn’t stop Joventino from putting in his normal 10 hours in my yard trimming and cleaning up anything that needed sprucing. Joventino is a machine and he is out there in any sort of weather San Diego can muster. The last time I glanced at the forward weather predictions for my area, all I saw was temperatures in the 90s. As I sit and contemplate what I will be doing today, I looked again at the forward predictions and noted that everything has shifted back to the low 80s, even dipping down to 79 this Saturday. While I am skeptical to suggest that we have broken the back of summer and that it will not go above 90 again in this cycle, I do find myself thinking that we have somehow past the worst of the heat and that this coming week at least, we are catching a break and can plan to go out and about and maybe even put on a pair of long pants for a change.
I especially have my eye on the weather in Halifax, Nova Scotia since we will be spending a week riding motorcycles around the Maritime Provinces in mid-September. I am still a good four weeks away from that and I have visibility out to September 5th so far (our trip starts on September 16th). The temperature seems pleasant with highs in the mid-70s, so I am less concerned about the heat than I am about the possibilities of rain. The almanac says that Nova Scotia gets about 5 days of rain in a normal September. The furthest out week is can see at this point suggests that there is a 20-45% chance of rain each and every day. When you take motorcyle trips you have to expect that a little rain is likely to fall, so you plan accordingly and bring at least some rain gear. I will bring a pair of rain pants and make do with my nylon riding jacket since I have generally found that it suffices when the rain is mild. If I get caught in a downpour I am going to get wet no matter what and it becomes less about staying dry and more about drying off overnight when it comes right down to it. I am hoping that when it comes to rain in Nova Scotia in September, that we will also catch a break and have more dry roads than slick wet roads to traverse. Nothing like some wet leaves on the road to make your motorcycle riding more interesting.
I think today I will take a long ride up to Mount Palomar capped off by a lunch at the Lake Henshaw Cafe. It is the perfect day ride because the roads are nice and being in the middle of the week, the traffic will be light. I ride several days each week, but its usually just around the neighborhood. That is good for the muscle memory of getting on and off the bike and keeping the feel in place, but taking a longer ride like I plan to do today is important as a buildup for our week on horseback in the Maritimes. The last organized ride I took was last year to New Mexico and I must say that I was feeling more saddle sore than I want to admit. I hope to be in somewhat better form this year since we will be riding smaller bikes (that generally means less comfortable for someone of my size) but the days will be decidedly shorter and the riding less wearying. When it comes to long distance riding, there is no such thing as catching a break, there is only putting in enough saddle time beforehand to get your body accustomed to five days of bike travel.
I am reminding myself that I am 70 now and, knock on wood, feeling pretty darn good for my age and size. I don’t stay anywhere near as active as I should, but I go and swim several times each week and get into the gym for some exercise a few times (at the proper gym or in my garage gym) as well as doing some light gardening most days. That all said and done, I am still far more sedentary than I should be, so I think its important to prepare for things like this Maritime ride. In a few weeks I will be visited by my old high school friend Tom, who has now sold his house in Santa Fe and is in the process of moving to Australia. He has had a rather ominous view of America’s future under a potential Trump second term and has found it more in keeping with his views to reactivate his Australian citizenship and move there rather than risk struggling through some bad times over here. I will be curious to see how he feels now about the prospects of keeping Trump out of our lives now that the Harris/Walz ticket is looking far more likely to prevail than the Biden/harris ticket did just a month ago. I will be making a strong case to him that we are catching a break as a country with this current reversal of political fortune that we have seen of late. In fact, like the heat of summer, my optimism suggests to me that we may have broken the back of the bad political spell that we have suffered under for the past year. I am equally wary of declaring victory just yet, but as the DNC concludes tonight in Chicago, I am feeling better about our prospects as a nation than I have for quite a while.
I heard Bill Clinton make a claim last night, which is true and very revealing about our country and its political situation. He said that since 1989 there have been 51 million jobs created in America and that 50 million (technically 97.4%) of them have come from Democratic administrations like his, Obama’s and Biden’s. That is an astounding statistic that should make any rational person sit up and take notice. You can say what you want about liberalism and the welfare state, but the economy is something both Republicans and Democrats equally care about in promoting the advancement of prosperity, regardless of how egalitarian it may be. The best absolute measure that economists use is GDP, but the next best indicator is job growth since it tells the real tale of economic growth. The adult population of the country is about 260 million, so 51 million jobs represents about 20% of the working population. No matter your political leanings, everyone must be able to agree that the economy is dramatically better off if 20% of the population is working rather than unemployed. We have seen the numbers for deficits and national debt levels under Republican versus Democratic regimes and we know that tax cuts are the biggest culprits of Republican deficits, but it is hard to tell what that says about economic growth. Job creation is crystal clear. More jobs equals more economic success because we all know that we now live in what is largely a consumer-driven economy around the world. Helping the working middle class Americans catch a break by getting them a job is the single best thing anyone can do to promote their own well-being economically speaking… not to mention what it does to promote political stability.
I like the theme of catching a break. Life is hard and luck plays a big role in anyone’s success. We all need to catch a break whenever we can. I need it for the weather and my riding. We all need it for our continued good health. And we all need it for our collective AND individual prosperity. We must remember that helping each other is the best way to help ourselves. We should catch every break we can for everyone who can catch one.