That’s one way to beat the traffic at the Big I.
I mostly get to ride mostly whenever I please, so it’s always something of a shock to ride when circumstances dictate I do so.
Like, say, Tuesday, when it was pretty much the coldest morning we’ve had so far this fall.
How’s this for your basic socialist-realism selfie? “Forward, comrades!”
Sue Baroo the Fearsome Furster needed her 30,000-mile checkup, so off we went to Reincarnation, down off 1st and Mountain.
And since I had things to do while the rig was on the lift, this meant (a) fetching a bike along for the 15-mile trip home and (2) digging out the winter kit to go with it — tuque, tights, long-sleeve jerseys, jacket, wool socks, long-fingered gloves, in short, everything save the shoe covers.
It was worth it, though. I got two rides in, the last considerably warmer than the first. And I saw a balloon sailing low along the North Diversion Channel Trail just south of I-40.
I wonder how often the pilot has to have his rig serviced. Makes me glad all my mechanicals occur at ground level. I bet AAA won’t tow a broken-down balloon.
Mad Blog Media 
October 26, 2019 at 6:12 pm |
Good on ya, PO’G! BUT….. strap yourself in for a weather change, eh, mi amigo?
Was outside in sunny 60+F temps today in the Bibleburg area BUT also getting ready for temps to drop markedly (40F drop), with sleet/ice/snow up to 1 FOOT in the next 12-24 hours…..and temps never to go above freezing for the next 5 days. Indoor trainer time coming up muy pronto, eh? 🙂
Hurben: If you’re on the net, please DON’T inform us as to how your sandal tan is progressing! 🙂
Ride/indoor trainer on! 🙂
October 26, 2019 at 6:38 pm |
It’s an (All) Black day down here in Gods Zone, JD.
England thrashed New Zealand in the first semi-final of the Rugby World Cup in Tokyo.
While the weather is beautiful, the nation’s mood is dark
October 26, 2019 at 7:33 pm |
19-7 eh? Well, I still love the Kiwis and know you’ll emerge even stronger!
Enjoy Spring…..ride on! 🙂
October 27, 2019 at 8:46 am |
Flogged by the Poms? It won’t do. Next the Irish will be havin’ a go at ye so.
October 27, 2019 at 11:36 am |
They had a good go at us, PO’G, we just narrowly beat them 46-14 in the Quarter Finals.
Springboks beat Wales in the second Semi last night so now we’re facing a Springboks/England final. Go the Bokke!
October 26, 2019 at 6:28 pm |
Here’s one for you, comrade.
http://100photos.time.com/photos/robert-capa-falling-soldier
October 27, 2019 at 8:54 am |
That’s a classic. Maybe These Kids Today® have been desensitized to this sort of deal, but in my geezerhood I recall being deeply moved by images like this.
They came as something of a shock after a steady diet of war movies, where Our Hero gets tagged, a cute nurse slaps a Band-Aid on him, and off he goes, back in the shit, to battle Adolf and Tojo.
Throw in a little “All Quiet On the Western Front,” which has an ending very much like the one pictured, and a fella muses: “Hm, I get the feeling there’s more to this whole war notion than John Wayne ever told me. …”
October 27, 2019 at 12:01 pm |
We read Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, and Malraux’s Man’s Hope for that short course on the Spanish Civil War. Came away with the idea that war is insane, people are stupid, the good guy doesn’t always win (and there were precious few good guys in Spain as Orwell noted) and a lot of blood gets shed for precious little. Kinda reminded me of that WW I flick, King of Hearts. On the bright side, I fell in love with Geneviève Bujold watching that flick.
October 26, 2019 at 8:51 pm |
Nice to know you are alive and well mi amigo. I know many times the “work” thing, like bike reviews, gets in the way of us hearing from you. Got to buy the kibble don’t you know. I had a little victory of my own today. I got a copy of “Napalm and Silly Putty” by George Carlin today at the Friends of The Library used bookstore for $1. Worth every penny I say. I will never say “clean as a whistle again. Whistles are full of spit.
October 27, 2019 at 8:00 am |
Or “clean as a hound’s tooth.” ’Cause, like, y’know, they lick their whatevs, an’ stuff.
October 27, 2019 at 12:50 am |
It’s far from cold (though I did pull a hoodie out last night when we went out for gelato) over here in Sicily, but the rainstorms that made a mess up in Piedmont last week came down and made a mess down here over the past couple of days. Our house came though OK, just two leaks – one pretty obvious as to how-to-fix, the other will need some inspection from above. The trick will be getting someone with a bucket lift or ropes to do it! I’ll see just how messed up the roads are when I get out on the bike – the roads here have pretty much zero crown so it takes a looooong time for some of ’em to dry out.
October 27, 2019 at 9:01 am |
Oy. Leaky roofs. We had some dudes through here to deal with ours the other day, and I have my fingers crossed. The head dude used to work for the outfit that did the original job, has a couple decades on the job, and seemed like a standup guy.
As to greasy roads I feel your pain there, too. When we lived outside Weirdcliffe the county maintained our boondock boulevards whenever it was convenient and/or affordable, which mostly it wasn’t. When they managed a bit of maintenance, it seemed they only made things worse.
October 27, 2019 at 6:17 am |
We had it all here in the Mitten State this past week. Brilliant sun with spectacular fall colors. Crisp temps, then plunging temps with Chinook winds followed by machine gun like rain. But no wildfires, hurricanes or “turdnados” so our household remains intact. Yet there is no fighting the Shortening of the Light as the daylight gets compressed into all too few precious hours. Once most people arrive home from WORK!! there remains scant little time for either a ride or any other outdoor stuff. Almost makes ya wanna work 2nd shift…or take one of those juicy, fat freelance writer jobs we hear about so you can jump up from your desk at any moment and hop on your bike. Sure, as we’ve read, you won’t make any money but you can serve as the shining icon for many who still wish they were you.
October 27, 2019 at 8:10 am |
“Money?” What is this “money” of which you speak? Your words are strange, friend. To survive your freelancer must slink from yard to yard, taking nourishment from unguarded gardens, dog dishes, and hummingbird feeders.
October 27, 2019 at 8:07 am |
The Duke City is back to what passes for normal again, which is to say sunny and 60s.
But my people in NoCal are in the shit again. Hijo, madre. A PG&E exec must be as popular these days as ISIS, Ebola, and that fabled burning, itching sensation.
October 27, 2019 at 9:08 am |
If I was a NorCal’r I’d be madder n’ hell! Spend all that loot to live there and you get a rickety, third-world power grid while Ma Nature tries to burn, flood or quake you outta there. Is she saying there are too many folks living in CA in general? I guess in the 30’s and ’40’s and even into the 1950’s it was pretty nice, but now it’s an overcrowded mess by most counts.
October 27, 2019 at 9:40 am |
You get the feeling that Ma Nature is issuing various eviction notices, to be sure.
What a shame, though. I couch-surfed through the state a couple of times while hunting newspaper jobs in the Eighties, and wanted to live in Ventura, Santa Barbara, Monterey, or Santa Rosa. They looked mighty good to me back then.
But I never got a job offer, not until I had already landed the gig at The New Mexican in Fanta Se. The Ventura paper changed its mind about not hiring me, just a couple months after TNM managing editor Dave Mitchell got me off the dole, and I told the Ventura people I’d be delighted to accept just as soon as The New Mex gave me the heave-ho, which it never did.
I did that to myself in 1991, not long after management ran Dave off the property, and I’ve never looked back.
October 27, 2019 at 11:32 am |
Growing up in SoCal I thought it was paradise. Until I left for awhile. Coming back to visit made me wonder why the hell I thought it was so great? Too expensive, too damn many people, too much traffic, etc. The weather was great but the seasons of fire, flood, riot and earthquake were not. Now I even dread visiting, which we’ll do next March…but only for ONE week!
October 30, 2019 at 5:28 am |
I liked Santa Rosa and points north quite a bit. Also Ventura. I had friends in both places, and I’d always wanted to live within shouting distance of the beach.
If the Ventura paper had signed me up immediate post-interview/tryout, before The New Mex got me, my life would have been very different, I think. And probably not for the better.
October 27, 2019 at 4:09 pm |
One 6.2 magnitude earthquake, while on a business trip to Anaheim, and one wildfire evacuation in 2011 Monument Fire were enough for me. No mas, no mas!
October 30, 2019 at 5:30 am |
I rode out a quake in West Hollywood (one of the Whittier rumbles in the mid/late Eighties) and I did not care for that, no sir, not one little bitty bit.
October 28, 2019 at 8:36 pm |
I interviewed for a job at UC Santa Cruz back in the day. At the time I was bummed that I didn’t get it. In retrospect, I think I would have tired of California pretty fast.
October 29, 2019 at 1:13 am |
For a time we thought San Luis Obispo would be a good place for us. We went up there a few years ago during a visit to the in-laws in SB to escape the smoke from the fires and found lots of changes…none of ’em good.
October 29, 2019 at 7:53 pm
Yep. I got tired of tripping over homeless folks sleeping on grates in San Francisco when I went to the American Geophysical Union meetings. Last time I went to that meeting I ended up buying pizza and beer for some homeless guys sitting in the shadow of the San Fran Christmas Tree. That was painful. Now it seems like most of California isn’t far behind.For a so called progressive state, they sure seem happy to let people slide off the Titanic without a lifeboat.
Main problem in New Mexico is that the state is circling the bowl in terms of good jobs and reasons to stay off hard drugs. Shootings in places like Albuquerque are just fringe benefit of living here. Lousy education, loss of meaningful jobs, social media poisoning. I think the whole country is circling the bowl.