The cul-de-sac was rockin’ last night.
Grandpa Doug was in charge of the boom-boom. We got a courtesy call from the fire marshals. And the crowd — well, you could actually call it a crowd. Lots of folks, not all of them residents of the cul-de-sac. Young and old, men and women, right and left, brown, black, white. Your basic melting pot.
We stayed up a little later than is our practice, and I slept a little later than is practical for a Fourth of July with a heat advisory in effect.
So by the time we’d broken fast, handled our morning chores, and just kinda-sorta gotten our poop more or less in a group, the menu of exercise options had shrunk like a spider on a hotplate.
We settled on a short road ride, which inexplicably saw me roll off without a water bottle. Duh. So we had to circle back after a couple miles to collect that, after which I decided we might as well keep on heading south since that was where the wind was coming from.
For old times’ sake we noodled on over to have a look at Herself the Elder’s first residence here in The Duck! City, now a private home rather than an assisted-living residence.
Then we got a little random, hopping onto and off of a couple bike paths linking various suburban streets, before agreeing that it was just about as hot as we cared to have it and rolling back to the rancheroo for some light refreshment.
By noon the temperature was 93° if you believe our little weather widget, and 88° if you don’t. And the weather wizards say we ain’t seen nothing yet.
When the high temp matches my average heart rate on a road ride I sometimes think about getting back in the pool, churning out the laps in the cool, chlorinated fluids, where the distracted drivers and earbudded pedestrians mostly aren’t.
But I don’t know that I want to be the 69-year-old dude in the banana hammock trying to relive his glory years (Mitchell High School swim team, 1969 South Central League champs). Aren’t the bib shorts and Lycra jersey bad enough?
Mad Blog Media 
What a nice place and time you enjoyed last night. Welcoming neighborhoods where people know each other’s name, rather than half hearted waving through a windshield, are rare.
With my dry sun baked hide, sitting by a pool in the sun, or a dip in chlorinated water, are permanently off the menu. Me in a bathing suit would scare 10 years of life out of my neighbors. Many of them can’t afford it!
These neighbors who put on the block party, fireworks, etc., are the best. Pitch in any time for any reason, and usually don’t need to be asked. Check in on the older couple next door to them, keep an eye on everybody’s dogs if they need to be elsewhere for a few hours (or a few days), mind the daughter’s grandbabies, lend you a truck if you need it … you name it, they’ll do it.
And yeah, swimsuits. Oof. There’s an age limit for the Speedo, and I shot past it many a mile marker ago. We mustn’t skeer the chirruns.
One of my dumb and dumber episodes. Went golfing with old friend this morning. Beat the heat (95 F) but then since I already was greased up like a Phil Wood bottom bracket with sunblock and skeeter dope, I figure I might as well shovel load after load of mulch clear across the yard into an area where I murdered the vegetation off with vinegar/salt/soap solution. Brilliant. Trying to be an Earth Dad, I chose not to fire up the tractor/trailer combo and did the wheelbarrow shuffle. Close to heat stroke I crawled into the house and came to my senses with a very stiff gin and tonic.
Some days there just ain’t enough gin in the world.
The Germans have been experimenting with non-alcoholic beer as a sports/rehydration beverage. I’m not so sure that would work on this side of the Atlantic. Think about getting stopped by the gendarmes on the way home from a century and trying to explain that, no, you haven’t been drinking drinking even though you smell like a keg stand gone horribly, horribly wrong.
“ Greased up like a Phil Woods bottom bracket” is good!
What do fireworks look like in the rain? We’re about to find out. From many a demo range, we all know that the boom boom turns into BOOM BOOM when you have a layer of clouds for the percussion to bounce off. But the light show part of the equation wasn’t high on our priority list.
But Lordy, I’ve never seen so much rain in these parts. We have another ten day stretch of 50% chance every day. I overheard this carpenter talking to his three sons about cubits and gopher wood, and I’m pretty sure the two unicorns that just ran by said something to the effect of, “I’ll be gawddamned if we miss the boat THIS time.”
My sis said Fort Fun was fixin’ to take a beating. The pix Hal sends me from Weirdcliffe make the place look like the Amazon rain forest. And I see at least one Colorado ski area still has snow.
Meanwhile, it’s all like “Lawrence of Arabia” down here. I guess that’s why they call it a desert. …
That’s just rainy… But a high of 65° today. It’s like it’s November or something
That looks like a nice Cul-de-Sac good time. Did you guys by chance water down the pavement? Your image gives a little reflective sheen at ground level.
Herb, I believe the secret is to start with the gin and tonic and then contemplate the work to be done. After a while you’ll realize that we are a mote in God’s eye and it doesn’t matter if we put the task off until Lucifer has run off and a more reasonable summer time temp has returned.
I saw a shot (and read about) of folks having fun at Copper Mountain on a few hundred feet of snowcat packed snow. Although the snow is there, it’s not like it’s really natural. The surrounding peaks a couple thousand feet higher up seem to be pretty green. Snow or not, it’s a great time to be up there.
Wasn’t there a rumor at Interbike one year about Phil using KY Jelly in his bottom brackets? It seemed I heard that story being spread all over and journalists were popping up all over the place to find out if it was true.
Don’t buy into the KY joke. I was fortunate to meet Phil and Lavada many years ago at a trade show. About the nicest and most humble folks you could run across in life. Not trying to be a total jerk, I mentioned to him that I was getting some grease from a guy who worked selling industrial lubes that seemed really similar to Phil’s. It was smuggled to me by the rep in little “sample only” jars, unmarked with any other ID. Waterproof but yet not tarry like other heavy duty grease-and greenish. Phil said it might be the same but was only sold in barrels or vats and the military had first dibs. The lube rep, who was a rabid cyclist, felt that Phil might have tunneled into buying the magic grease from Exon or Mobil etc. and simply repackaged it so’s regular people could buy it. We have a custom made mixte that still sports the free spinning Phil hubs and bottom bracket after 40 years of use!
I can remember buying $10 tubes, 3.5 ounces, of teflon grease for my Shimano cup and cone hubs. Must have been some good shit! Cyclists always looking for the magic speed bullets.
I don’t recall ever hearing of any buffalo in the Pyrenees. I can’t imagine how they’d be able to wrangle it while riding. Was this something that you recall POG?
“We’re onto the lower slopes of the legendary Col du Tourmalet (17.1km at 7.3%) now as Hindley and Haller have a slightly uncoordinated drop of a bison while handing it over. Thankfully it didn’t go wrong for the yellow jersey wearer.”
“Ed. Ed. Ed! Wake up. The buffalo are loose again in the kitchen.”
Recalling another post, I thought Phil might enjoy my humor about KY Jelly, spreading it all over and journalists “popping” up. If necessary, I could have added the modifiers “older journalists” and “little blue pills” but I didn’t want POG to think that I was including him in the mentioned group.
Uh….sorry to report that Phil is no longer with us. He checked out a dozen or so years ago and is no doubt refining bike components on another astral plane. IF there are lathes and CNC machines in what is referred to as heaven; then I’m betting he’s still on the hunt for perfection.
I didn’t know that Herb. I’d be sad if I didn’t think that as you say, he’s probably having a good time improving on the function of Heaven, Valhalla, the belly of Buddha, the tour bus of those 69 virgins, and Shirley McClaine’s baby carriage.