Month: May 2016
Illumination rounds
Once we fanned over a little ville that had just been airstruck and the words of a song by Wingy Manone that I’d heard when I was a few years old snapped into my head, “Stop the War, These Cats Is Killing Themselves.” Then we dropped, hovered, settled down into purple lz smoke, dozens of children broke from their hootches to run in toward the focus of our landing, the pilot laughing and saying, “Vietnam, man. Bomb ’em and feed ’em, bomb ’em and feed ’em.”
That quote from Michael Herr’s “Dispatches” just snapped into my head as I read this New York Times piece about the prez authorizing the sale of “lethal military equipment” to Vietnam.
Pretty much describes our entire foreign policy, doesn’t it?
Bomb ’em and feed ’em; bomb ’em and feed ’em.
Feeling the Bern’d out
Faugh. I think I have myself a medium-light sinus infection going on here. Just the ticket for a fella staring down a whole passel of deadlines.
Herself went downtown to catch Bernie’s act last night when he visited Duke City, but I stayed home and hit the sack early. The Giro d’Italia is ongoing, and I like to log in six-ish at Live Update Guy to give Charles Pelkey some immoral support (he’s generally been on since 3 a.m. or thereabouts).
As it happens, I was up around 5 ’cause I felt more or less like I’d been et by a coyote and shit off a smallish cliff. Blaugh.
The Giro has been … interesting. Maybe things would have turned out differently had the stage-9 ITT not been something of a swim leg, but to this point none of the big GC boyos has really taken hold, perhaps in part because the race is so keister-heavy, with most of the action coming in the final week.
Vincenzo Nibali (Astana) was briefly flummoxed today, but bounced back. Alejandro Valverde (Movistar) followed the wheels all day until suddenly he couldn’t. And now Estebán Chaves (Orica-GreenEdge) and Steven Kruiswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo) are looking very good indeed, as are Darwin Atapuma (BMC Racing), George Preidler (Giant-Alpecin) and Kanstantsin Siutsou (Dimension Data).
What is not looking so good is the Tip Jar. Earnings are way down from the 2015 Giro, and it could be that we’ve finally just worn out our welcome. Either that or we need some new wrinkles, and not just the ones in our faces, either. Auuuggghhh.
The Sandia Blues
The May weather has weirded up on us here in Dog Country. The folks up Santa Fe way got a shit-pot full of hail the other day, and yesterday we enjoyed the sort of winds that ordinarily are restricted to Wyoming. Plus rain.
But nobody in his right mind who lives in a desert bitches about rain. This adage may or may not apply to me.
I got a nice little ride in Monday on the Rivendell Joe Appaloosa, grunting my way up to La Cueva Picnic Area off Tramway.
Tuesday looked ugly, and I had a bunch of things to do, so I went for a short run early before the winds got busy.
But as it turns out I might have been better served by riding yesterday, ’cause today is one gray, chilly, breezy sumbitch.
Maybe I’ll deploy a cyclo-cross bike and chase myself around Piedra Lisa for a bit.
Or maybe I’ll just stay inside and try to make me some hay while the sun ain’t shining.
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