Gasbags

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
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The Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta is up, up and away.

The Journal‘s homepage, never a thing of beauty even when it’s not rearranged for tourism, still isn’t displaying properly in Safari. And the managing editor was tapped to write the story about day one’s calamities, which included balloonists touching down in power lines, parking lots, and other unsanctioned locations.

Trust issues? Beats me. I got yanked off the Gazette copy desk once to help cover a tornado in Manitou Springs. But I was just a rim rat, not the managing editor. There’s a lot of names on that masthead you’d expect to see atop that story before the ME’s. But it’s been a lot of years since I pulled a shift in a newsroom.

Whatevs, as the kids probably don’t say anymore. I don’t attend the Balloon Feast for the same reason I’ve never driven up Pikes Peak. These things are for tourists, and I don’t do tourism even when I’m not in my hometown.

“Balloons. OK, what’s for breakfast?”

I rode a mountain bike up to Barr Camp once. And Herself and I bicycled down to the Balloon Feast one afternoon, early on in our residency in The Duck! City, before we realized that all the action takes place in the morning and evening.

Now I walk out onto the driveway at 7 a.m., squint to the northwest, and mutter: “Yup. There’s one.” Then I go back inside and finish breakfast before kitting up for a ride.

Summer’s heat and that late monsoon appear to be in the rear view, and the October weather is fine for cycling. The traffic is a little less so, but you can’t let it bust your balloon.

Home with the armadillo

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments
My people were most definitely not Texans, but we dug “¡Viva Terlingua!” all the same.

A story about Luckenbach, Texas, Hondo Crouch, and Jerry Jeff Walker in The Guardian sent me on a little spin down Memory Lane over coffee this morning.

Maybe it’s the Londonesque weather we’ve been enjoying:

Well, it’s cold over here, and I swear
I wish they’d turn the heat on. — Gary P. Nunn, “London Homesick Blues”

October could get chilly in the college cowtown of Greeley, Colo., too, which is where The Mombo Club-El Rancho Delux crew mostly played the mortal shit out of Jerry Jeff’s “¡Viva Terlingua!” album and once saw “Scamp” Walker Hisself perform live, loud, and knee-walking drunk at the University of Northern Colorado:

Sure does like his Falstaff beer
Likes to chase it down with that Wild Turkey liquor
Drives a ’57 GMC pickup truck
Got a gun rack
“Goat ropers need love too” sticker. — Ray Wylie Hubbard, “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother”

Maybe it’s the sudden realization that it was 50 years ago when, after more than a few Falstaffs of my own, a 20-watt bulb blinked to sputtering life in my hairy head: “Holy hell, I think I’m gonna have enough credits to graduate come spring. …”

And before you could sing a verse of “Gettin’ By” I was off to the rat races. Cage-liners, bike mags, and blogs, O my!

Don’t matter how you do it 
They say, “Just do it like you know it,” 
And I’ve been down this road once or twice before. … — Jerry Jeff Walker, “Gettin’ By”

Water on the brain

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
“Good Lord, Holmes, some rotter has made off with the famous Southwestern Climate!”

Looked like a Sherlock Holmes flick in the cul-de-sac this morning: “The Case of the Missing Desert.”

“The game’s afoot, Watson!”

And indeed it is, if the game is “Who’s the dumbest man in the Senate?”

There’s always a thundering herd of whinnying glue-factory candidates in that august stable, but lately it’s a two-up horse’s-ass race between Eric Schmitt (R-Misery) and Tommy “Coach” Tuberville (R-CTE).

Schmitt couldn’t even pull off a “Gotcha!” against Jack Smith without stepping in it up to his flag pin.

But Coach may edge him by a nose — a big red one that honks when you squeeze it — with his charge that the friendly skies are full of furries.

Talk about game. It’s one helluva race when it looks like Ted “I’m Not Just Stupid, I’m Evil Too” Cruz might not even make the podium. It’d have Holmes reaching for the old iron butterfly and his 7-percent solution, craving mental exaltation.

Marco! Polo!

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
The monsoon was late to the party, but man, is it ever dancing up a storm now.

“Check this strange beverage that falls out from the sky.” — Tom Waits, “Til the Money Runs Out.”

Fenders and a rain jacket will not do the trick today. Maybe a wetsuit and flippers.

As of 6 a.m. Duck! City time our weather widget had recorded 0.43 inch of rain since midnight, 0.66 inch in the past 48 hours, and an astounding 3.78 inches for the month.

And it ain’t over yet. We have a flood watch that extends through late tonight for all of northern and central New Mexico.

Fine sleeping weather. I’d hop right back in the sack if I didn’t have two cups of strong black coffee in me. I’d just lie there with my eyes out on stalks, buzzing like an electric blanket with a short in it. Better maybe to chase the java with a steaming bowl of oatmeal and a tall mug of Irish tea with honey.

Herself has fishtailed off to work and I hope she hasn’t had to use her Honda’s air bags as flotation devices. I did insist that she take a second pair of shoes in case she had to hopscotch through a few puddles on her way into the Sanctum Sanctorum.

If I can squeeze in a short run in my mud shoes I’ll do it. But at the moment the only Miles I’m logging is of the Davis variety. As in “Kind of Blue.”

The cool September morn

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 8 Comments
Breakin’ the law, breakin’ the law. …

Does a moral handicap count when it comes to reserved parking? Asking for a friend.

I had time to sneak in a quick ride around the Elena Gallegos Open Space on Friday before motoring off to the Sunport to collect Herself, who was inbound from Tennessee after spending a week helping her sisters give bro-in-law Bill “Wild Man” White a proper sendoff to The Source.

And now things are more or less back to what passes for normal in these parts, if you overlook the rain. “Normal” precip’ for September is 1:15 inch; we’ve already gotten 3.12 inches and the month ain’t even over yet.

Mind you, I’m not complaining; just observing.

Anyway, the deluge made a pedestrian of me for three days last week and two this week. I got carried away and put fenders on the Soma Double Cross, which was both unnecessary (I had three fendered bikes already) and unsmart (the short wheelbase means some serious and unwelcome toe-fender overlap).

So that poor decision will get reversed directly and the DC will once again sport some bare-ass 42mm Soma Cazadero knobbies, which are better suited to riding trails, especially now that they’ve been guttered all to shitaree.

There’s more time for this sort of aimless wankery in the mornings these days because the sun doesn’t show its face above the Sandias until around 8:30 and it won’t be much longer before I greet it wearing pants instead of shorts.

No pic-a-nic baskets here, Yogi.

The sliding glass doors remain closed until sunrise because our friendly neighborhood bear is back. We finally caught him on our trail cam at 3:08 a.m. on the 22nd, dropping a deuce by the butterfly bush.

This may be retribution for my bringing the bird feeders in at night and storing garbage in the garage until pickup day. If we won’t be his restaurant we will be his restroom.

The skunk is likewise back, rooting around in the yard for tasty morsels. So is the Cooper’s hawk. As for the hummingbirds, they’ve never left. It still looks like the Battle of Britain out there every time we refresh their feeders.

Miss Mia finds The Pile purr-fection itself.

And Miss Mia Sopaipilla has found herself a new sweet spot for naptime — a scattering of fluffy bits and bedding that we’re calling The Pile. Just the place to sleep off a medium-heavy breakfast, treats, and thyroid medicine.

Sure beats watching His Excremency King Piggy the Sticky-fingered waddling along the red carpet alongside the Red Menace, who looked as thrilled to be there as an OYO Rooms C-suiter tallying pecker tracks on the hot sheets at a Motel 6 in Chlamydia, Nevada.

“No, I don’t care to see your ‘ballroom.’ I can smell them from here.”