More rain, which, yay. And sunshine this morning, which, likewise.
Leftovers from last night’s rain.
It’s pleasant upon awakening to reach for socks instead of sunscreen. And to have nodded off to a stout rain backed by thunder! Lightning! And the rest of that Eddie Floyd-Steve Cropper lyric, too.
We basically got an entire September’s worth of precip’ in the past 48 hours. Morning temps are in the 50s. HVAC/irrigation systems are on pause.
As is cycling. I was feeling a bit overtrained, though I’m not training for anything. So I’ve spent the past few days being a pedestrian, either running or walking the local trails network.
Anyway, just because I have three bikes with fenders — hold on, make that four, just outfitted the Double Cross yesterday — doesn’t necessarily mean I want to use ’em.
Because next it will be knickers, and then arm warmers, and before you know it — winter!
Clearly the gods have finally heard our sniveling here in the northernmost reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert. UnRealtors throughout the Greater Duck! City Metropolitan Area rejoice and sing “Hosanna!” Which is not a Gilda Radner character from Back in the Day® when “SNL” was still funny.
Anyone hoping to float the Rio anytime soon will still need 32-inch wheels, knobby tires, and hydraulic disc brakes for their rafts and kayaks. Nevertheless, arise, ye prisoners of dehydration, etc.
Raindrops keep falling on my head. Maybe with a little fertilizer I can get a fresh crop of hair started up there.
I went running in the rain yesterday, and it seems that I will be doing it again today, if I want to enjoy any class of healthful outdoor exercise, which I do. There’s not enough water for swimming — not yet, anyway, unless you’re suddenly awakened while sleeping rough in an arroyo — and since Herself works from home on Thursdays, if I should happen to make an indoor thing of myself she will find some chore for me to perform.
Anyway, running in the rain gets me away from the Mac, where the news is.
Jesus wept. The Squeaker of the House just shut the joint down and sent all his clock-watching monkey-spankers home after doing less actual work in the past few months than Mitch McConnell, who at least had the excuse of being kept alive in cryogenic sleep while RFK sewed him up a new body out of fresh roadkill and a couple prehistoric Trump Steaks from Natalie’s freezer.
Too bad. I was looking forward to watching that caravan of fools try to impeach Field Marshal Scheisskopf von Kegsbreath while he heaves and grunts through a few of his weak-ass pullups, stinking of cheap O-club gin and kicking his legs like a cranky toddler resisting bedtime.
That’s probably why Beelzebozo ordered RFK to rebuild The Turtle. He wanted to make sure the Senate had the numbers to keep Kegsbreath on his sinking PBR, if the House actually grew a pair, and if that meant reinstalling the old Kentucky roadblock as a collection of rotting coonskins that Dan’l Boone wouldn’t wear to a goat fuck, well, tough shit, Mitch. Die on your own time.
The Duck! City reached a high of 95° last Friday, and boy, did I feel every degree of it heading back to the rancho from the Rio.
The climbing is no big deal, about a thousand feet of vertical from the Paseo del Bosque’s intersection with Mountain Road NE. But most of it gets served up in the last 12 or so miles, with a side of stop-and-go on the mean streets and the Paseo de las Montañas bike path.
It should go without saying that a fella feels considerably warmer on the uphill leg of this 37-miler, even with steam escaping from the helmet vents.
A spot of damp.
We’ve either been breaking high-temp marks or missing them by a single degree lately. So it has been a delight to suddenly enjoy a little rain, straight out of the blue — 0.28 inch in the past 48 hours, which Noah might snort at but no New Mexican would sneeze at. Not here in the upper reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert, where we have been drier than the proverbial popcorn fart.
The Monday-Wednesday Geezer Rides have been on hiatus, so when the rain started pelting down early yesterday morning I thought, “OK, fine, good excuse to go for a run.”
But I wasn’t really feeling it. I’ll be doing plenty of running if we ever get anything like winter around here. So when the rain abruptly shut off, I pulled a fendered bike from its hook in the garage — the rim-brake Soma Saga, which is wearing a rear Tubus rack with a strap suitable for packing a rain jacket — and off we went.
Why a fendered bike, when the rain had stopped? Simple. There may be puddles, and I don’t like collecting that famous damp brown stripe up the backside. It’s undignified for a man of my years and may lead to ill-informed gossip and speculation.
“Ah, look at the poor ould fella, would you now? Your man has gone and shite himself midride. Must be all alone in the world. No one to wipe ’is hole for ’im.”
“That’s a pretty nice bike, though. Someone must love him. Or at least tolerate him, manky arse and all.”
I am blessed in that regard, and also when it comes to bikes sporting fenders. I have three such at the moment and have had them all out in the past week to see if I could tempt the rain gods into having a wee. No joy. Rain before and rain after, but never during.
Maybe fenders don’t work that way. Maybe the rain gods see them and say: “Stand down, lads. We’ll never give the manky arse to that ould gobshite whilst he’s rocking the mudguards. Leave us wait until he takes that custom Nobilette for a long go into the East Mountains.”
Left? Right? Straight? Sheeyit, he’ll never go straight. …
There’s enough bullshit in the media for Texas to open a branch office. And you’d still have enough left over to start two law firms and a Christian bookstore. — George Carlin, “40 Years of Comedy.”
George Carlin’s advice I have been taking for much, much longer.
I caught Carlin’s act early on, when he gigged on “The Tonight Show” with Jack Paar and later Johnny Carson. But he really got my attention with the 1972 album “FM & AM.” His treatise on bullshit didn’t arrive until 1997, during his live HBO special “40 Years of Comedy,” but as usual he was (a) right on target, and (2) prescient as hell.
What would he have to say today? Plenty, I expect. Carlin was a master alchemist who could transform bullshit into gold.
Me? Strictly an amateur. JV. In it for the yuks, which have proven elusive lately. Can’t quite spot the diamonds in the dung.
“I’ll get you for this,” says Miss Mia Sopaipilla following her visit to the groomer.
So instead of blogging I’ve been riding and running, feeding the birds, watching some standup (Kyle Kinane, Rory Scovel, Leanne Morgan), taking Miss Mia Sopaipilla to the spa for a wash and brush-up, contemplating various household projects long deferred, and reading fiction — no, not the news, actual for-reals fiction.
And I’m definitely not trying to round up enough pennies for the rumored foldable iPhone Duo. $2K and up for something you can leave on top of your car at the gas station or drop in a toilet?
The Rio Gonzo, seen at 10 a.m. Thursday from the Gail Ryba Memorial Bridge along I-40.
If the Rio had a pulse yesterday, I couldn’t find it.
Our local water wizard, John Fleck, noted Wednesday that the Bernalillo County Water Utility Authority, with the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District and Audubon Southwest, was releasing “a pulse of water” from Abiquiu Reservoir on the Rio Chama in northern New Mexico “as an experiment – what might a several-day pulse of water do to help the aridification-starved riverside forests along New Mexico’s Middle Rio Grande?”
Then he went out to chase that pulse. And on Thursday, I so did I.
What I saw, you see, right up top there. Nada. Niente. Bupkis.
It was a good day for a ride down to the bosque. Not a good day for the bosque. As far as I could see in one quick pass, anyway.
The Journalfound something to celebrate, but Matthew Reisen and Eddie Moore may have paid their visit later in the day and/or further north along the Rio, closer to the Alameda bridge than the Gail Ryba. I skipped the Alameda trailhead in favor of the most direct route west from El Rancho Pendejo — Bear Canyon Trail, North Diversion Channel Trail, Paseo del Norte Trail, and finally the Paseo del Bosque Trail.
A parched path.
Everything looked parched along the path. Lots of leaves on the deck already and some very unhappy trees. A smallish crop of roadies in various flavors plus a few dudes rocking gravel bikes on the unpaved trails who were definitely going to want to give a little postride love to their dusty drivetrains. Some water in an irrigation ditch east of the bosque path, but the river was as you see. It seemed an odd day to be riding a bike that takes its name from the Spanish for “fishmonger.”
Fleck hasn’t posted an update yet, but that’s to be expected. He’s the expert, not just another rando rambling along the road to Perdition.
It seemed a very long, hot ride back to the rancho, where water springs from the tap at the twist of a wrist. For the moment, anyway.
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