Hm. Looks like rain.
It’s a gloomy day here, and not just because we have an Ivy League theocracy legislating from the bench.
The monsoon has settled in like a jurist with a lifetime gig, and while the moisture is more than welcome, it is something of a wet blanket as regards the old training program.
Exactly what I’m training for remains a mystery. But still.
Yesterday, with the forests having reopened, I took a quick ride between rains to La Cueva Picnic Site. It’s a nice, steady, milelong climb that reminds me of the road to our old hillside hacienda outside Weirdcliffe, only the La Cueva road is paved, kinda, sorta.
It’s a great road for hill repeats, though the coarse chip-seal makes for some bumpy going, especially on the descent.
But yesterday was a one-and-done, because I wanted to get back to El Rancho Pendejo before Thor started limbering up his pitching arm. Fenders are nice, but they won’t keep the lightning off your Lycra.
Anyway, I’m stopped at a red light with the clouds circling round and this motorcycle dude thunders to a stop next to me. He looks like Dennis Hopper from “Easy Rider,” only without the hat, astraddle this low-slung hog.
I give him the old head-wave, and he does likewise, then says with a grin, “We ain’t got rained on yet.”
Tags: La Cueva Picnic Site, The Supremes
Mad Blog Media 
June 26, 2022 at 3:59 pm |
Ah, comrades on two wheels! It is pouring down rain as I type. First measurable rain in 4 or 5 days. Isolation does mess up my time sense. Omicron done whupped my ass last night. I got about a hour of shuteye from 2 to 3 AM. None the night before. Sandy is the same. Dodge this bullet if you can.
June 26, 2022 at 4:22 pm |
Good news about the rain. Bad news about The Bug. I hope you folks get past it soon.
I hate being sick. I remember all manner of illnesses as a child, from simple colds and flu to bronchitis and pneumonia, allergies, asthma, sinus/ear infections, migraines, tonsillitis, you name it. Plus the usual rites of passage like mumps and whatnot.
It all meant that I had to stay indoors, frequently in bed, and I couldn’t always con my mom into picking me up a few comic books, though I was pretty much always able to work her for some chicken noodle soup.
I think we’re all gonna get some form of this thing eventually. I haven’t gotten the second booster because it seems likely CDC will want everyone to get stuck with the new version by fall, and that one is a combo tailored to omicron. Those tumbling dice. Hope they don’t turn up snake-eyes.
June 26, 2022 at 6:27 pm |
PO’B: Rain is a reminder and gentle suggestion for you and yours to hydrate …. rest …. suck it up …. and rejoice in the ability to have virtual and distributed asynchronous collaboration with folks of like minds. Say what?? 🙂
And for Mother Nature to reveal yet again that she plays the long game ……. millennia, millions of years …. and always wins!
The human bloom on the rose is but short-lived.
Get better soon!
June 27, 2022 at 7:14 am |
Thanks JD! Both of us are feeling better.
June 27, 2022 at 8:32 am |
Good news that. Having the thing hit the both of yis at the same time is a bitch. When Herself and I got the Andromeda Strain or whatever the hell that bug was back in 2019 we had no one to make soup and buy comic books. That was a long week.
June 26, 2022 at 4:45 pm |
Years ago I was on a long training ride for a century in Spokane,
WA. I stopped at a convenience store in 90-degree heat. I walked in with cleats, a helmet, and lycra,. I bought two liters of water, poured one into my bottles in cages, and drank part of the other. 12 Bikers show up as I am dumping the rest of the water over my head. A biker guy walks over and asks what I am doing. Pointing at the steel LeMond.I reply “Cooling the engine, it is overheating”. He looks at my jersey and shorts and sniffs. he says “Okay” and walks off, goes back to his friends, and points at me and they laugh. Had another 20 miles to go.
June 27, 2022 at 7:19 am |
We look odd to the citizens. Some laugh, some bully, and some just watch like we’re 3-D TV.
I was doing laps on my cyclocross course at the Weirdcliffe place Back in the Day®, hurdling barriers and legging it on run-ups, when I saw this pick-’em-up truck slow and then stop on the county road just across the creek from my setup. Old boy just sat there and watched for a while, then rolled off. I often wonder what he was thinking.
June 27, 2022 at 12:22 pm |
A few years ago a group of us stopped at a country store* to rehydrate, most of the way through a century ride. A bunch of Harley riders stopped there too and we compared rides. “Is that carbon fiber? What’s one of those cost, $400 or so?” “Well, yeah, that would cover a new pair of shifters.” Turned out we had ridden considerably farther than they had that day. 8)
Four wheels good, 2 wheels better. We’re all in danger of being run over by the same bozos.
*Across the road from where Custer & his troops camped when they came through some years before. The store sold bottles of “Dixie Water” bearing the label slogan “Pure as the heart of a Southern belle.”’
June 26, 2022 at 9:42 pm |
Just got back from four days in Zion at a wedding. Of course, barely got home and got an email from the hosts saying someone at the ceremony had The Bug. Hopefully, no one I was sitting near.
Meanwhile, was thankfully out of touch with all the latest politics.
June 27, 2022 at 7:24 am |
Yow. More Bug. That sumbitch is everywhere. We’re still Condition Red here in Bernalillo County and I’m narrowing the scope of my outings again.
Did you get a few dry moments so’s you could buff the rust off your steel plate? We’ve gotten 1.25 inch of rain in the past 48 hours and today looks like a total rainout, bikewise.
June 27, 2022 at 2:18 pm |
Fanta Se is starting to look like a tropical rain forest. It was soggy yesterday and even soggier today. We’ve had about 2.1 inches of rain in two days.
June 27, 2022 at 2:18 pm |
https://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KSAF.html
June 27, 2022 at 3:28 pm |
I have been ridiculously lucky weatherwise. Every day it rains, and every day I manage to find a window for a dry(ish) bike ride. Sometimes it’s only an hour, but an hour on the bike is loads better than an hour indoors.
It’s probably because I ride a bike with fenders and pack a rain jacket. I ever leave those charms at home, I’m hosed.
June 26, 2022 at 10:58 pm |
“we have an Ivy League theocracy legislating from the bench…”
Get out your umbrellas and galoshes, a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.
Been a hellava week.
June 27, 2022 at 12:08 am |
I thought the rain was already falling. You know, the golden shower that is dribbling down upon us from the Supreme joke? I’ve got my survival suit and snowshoes pulled out and ready just in case things get real bad.
June 27, 2022 at 7:16 am |
Shawn, they are really bad.
The cartoon in the Op-Ed of this morning’s Janesville Gazette shows an AK-47 addressing a woman saying “Really? That’s weird, I have lotsa rights.”
My BFF said she’s not reading the news anymore. I love her, but she’s wrong.
June 27, 2022 at 8:54 am |
Yup. Charlie Pierce is off to a running start this week with a piece in Griswold and the right to privacy. Anybody who thinks John Roberts could or would put a halt to this shit hasn’t been paying attention. He’s a slow-walker, but he gets there.
In related news, say adios to the idea that you may enjoy freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion. The High Priests of Textualism have nailed that sumbitch to the cross.
June 27, 2022 at 1:01 pm |
Preventing prayer isn’t a goal of schooling kids. But performative bullshit like this shouldn’t be condoned. We all know how this would’ve ended up if he’d rolled out a prayer rug and gave thanks to Allah.
June 27, 2022 at 3:45 pm
I still sniff a whiff of Establishment Clause violation here. How long d’ye suppose one of Coach Jesus’s footballers would remain on the team if he declined to join the prayer circle at midfield, going all like, “Sorry, Coach, I’m more of a Cthulhu guy. Go Big Squid!”
These thumpers are waterboarding the law and back-shooting precedent to get the results they want. And somehow the second-string Elmer Gantrys who run the GOP are OK with this group of unelected elites — two-thirds of them Catholic, all but one graduates of the Harvard or Yale law schools — making decisions for the rest of us. Go figure.
June 27, 2022 at 1:33 pm |
Same god with a different name. Me thinks Clarence is diddling with the 14th Amendment so he can reverse Loving vs Virginia.
June 27, 2022 at 3:11 pm
I know he left that decision out of his bag of tricks, but what would you do to get rid of ginni?
June 27, 2022 at 3:26 pm
Heh.
June 27, 2022 at 4:06 pm
I wonder if southern Italians are considered white for the purposes of anti-miscegenation laws.
June 27, 2022 at 4:20 pm
Hmph. Next you’ll be suggesting the Irish are white. There are limits, bejaysis.
June 28, 2022 at 11:13 am
Irish and Italian say, “we be mates.”
Still positive, and not in a good way.
June 28, 2022 at 3:06 pm
Oof. That’s one tenacious Bug. You see Peter Sagan has had it three times? And he’s cleared to start the Tour. I would be starting my vacation.
June 29, 2022 at 5:02 pm |
Apparently it is not just our imagination that it has been raining lots.
https://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/early-monsoon-brings-unusually-high-june-rainfall-to-new-mexico/article_3f9a8188-f713-11ec-8862-3f142cd46de5.html