Weather Underground ain’t got nothin’ on us.
Hot and windy for the old folks today as the USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships continue with more road racing northeast of Sandia Park.
The forecast is for a high of 88° with winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. And the National Weather Service advises that we might expect some elevated haze since most of the western United States is on fire. Bother, wot?
Still, it beats Colorado, where Boulder meteorologist Russell Danielson advises that Saturday should be one of the worst days of the year in terms of fine particulates in the air.
Adds colleague Paul Schlatter: “We’re expecting very poor air quality throughout the day Saturday.” Cut me off an extra-crispy piece from the end there, Paul old scout. I like my air well done.
Speaking of very poor, after all the chin music about the fat stacks masters nats is expected to bring to our fair city, the homers aren’t covering the actual gold rush as far as I can tell. So you’ll need to keep an eye on social media, particularly Twitter, if you want to know who’s doing what to whom.
USA Cycling posts the bare minimum at the end of the day, basically writing off the results — I expect that other little event in Japan has been distracting the A team — and you can find the actual results at One2Go.
Meanwhile, our informal 15-mile foothills ride yesterday was a huge success. We saw a young Cooper’s hawk working the backyard doves before departure, and en route encountered quail, a bunny rabbit, and a six-pack of antlered bucks strolling through someone’s yard.
In the finale Herself won the driveway sprint when I stopped to check the mail. She’s sneaky that way.
Tags: USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships, Wildfires
Mad Blog Media 
August 7, 2021 at 10:59 am |
Your ride with Herself is my idea of the perfect ride. We got 3/10 inch of rain here yesterday, but we are still 4 inches short of normal for the 12 months ending July 31st. Tomorrow and the beginning of the week look promising for rain, and I hope we can get normal done and dusted.
I had the cataract removed from my right eye 3 weeks ago, and the left last Thursday. I guess 40 years of Arizona sun were more than the natural lenses could take. I’ve known this was coming for the last 6 years. The difference in vision is truly remarkable. I did look in the shaving mirror this morning and frightened myself. Sweetie, says I, when did I get this ugly? She said it started 6 years ago.
August 7, 2021 at 2:25 pm |
We do at least one ride together each week, usually on Friday, sometimes adding a second ride on Sunday. Strictly road — Herself is not a fan of shredding the gnar. We climb a few hills and keep an eye out for critterage.
I’m working up a couple cataracts too, or so they tell me. I need a new reading prescription as well. But I’m avoiding vision correction and reflective surfaces so I can cling to the fantasy that I look just like Bruce Willis to anyone with cataracts who is standing across the street from me, drunk, with the sun in their eyes.
August 7, 2021 at 6:50 pm |
Yea, you kinda looked like Bruce last time I was there. Not sure about the next visit! Doc told me I was on the edge of flunking the driver’s license eye test. That got my attention! I should have done it last year. To quote a wise man,”I will never be smart.”
August 7, 2021 at 11:18 am |
I talked to my friend Bill Meyers yesterday. He said that at 86, he decided to retire from the race game. Was extracting, as he said, too much preparation, training, organization, and watching the diet. He has a full woodworking shop up in Golden and is having the time of his life and just doing fun rides from now on.
August 7, 2021 at 12:05 pm |
Gotta love Bill Meyers! I’m 74-plus and helping coach a high school MTB team. Rule #1 is FUN!
I tell the kids: “I used to go far and fast; then I used to just go far; now I just try to go!” 🙂
August 7, 2021 at 2:33 pm |
Racing burns a lot of daylight. I had my fill when we were living in Weirdcliffe. All the events were hours away, sometimes involving an overnight in some shitbag motel. Plus I spent a few years promoting a couple cyclocrosses in B-burg and helping with the state cyclocross series, which involved driving the BRAC race kit all over the damn’ state, from Fort Fun to Pee-ebb-blow and many venues in between.
Many was the morning I crouched over a barrier at stupid-thirty, pounding rebar into frozen ground in the icy darkness and thinking, “Is this the day that I am the only person who shows up for this mess?” A time or two I skipped racing my own race so I could gallop around the circuit pissing out fires.
I did love me some cyclocross, though. I would jump through a lot of hoops to make a race. In the end, however, I decided I enjoyed the training nearly as much and stuck to that, saving myself a ton of driving, fillups, and motel stays.
August 7, 2021 at 3:33 pm |
Bill proved what he needed to prove. He and his brother Jim both spent time as national champions in their age groups. Bill said the constant pressure to race at the top of his age group rather than just race was getting to be a little too much.
I’ve known Bill since graduate school in the 1980’s, as he was a sedimentology professor at SUNY Stony Brook and I was a geochemistry grad student. Back then his brother Jim Meyers was racing USCF and Bill’s son Karlin was racing for the Stony Brook collegiate team; that’s when I started riding for more than just getting to work. We got Bill on a bike back then and he took to it readily; he and I went out and bought those mid-1980’s Cannondales. Bill, my advisor Gil, and yours truly would ride out to the east end of Long Island and back. It got pretty competitive towards the end of my time there and Bill and I would flog each other over hill and flat. I think Bill’s rest pulse back then was in the high thirties. We used to tease him about it.
I finally got my degree and headed out to Honolulu. A few years later Bill retired from the department, headed out to Steamboat, and joined his brother in full time racing. Bill really got good.
Story from a few years ago here.
https://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/john-f-russell-bill-meyers-riding-into-the-future/