Some like it hot, they say.
Not me, Bubba.
There are moments when the summertime heat feels almost bearable. Say, when there are no pressing matters and a pool sits nearby. There is an iced beverage sweating in a tall glass and a broad umbrella throwing a soupçon of shade. Someone else is picking up the tabs.
But even then. …
When I was a kid on Randolph AFB the San Antonio summers were murderous. Crouch under the Fedders window unit and play board games or haunt the officers’ club pool like a toasty ghost.
Tucson? Don’t get me started. I drove a 1974 Datsun pickup with no air conditioning, and my guest-house rental (also sans a/c) was a long, slow-rolling, late-afternoon drive from The Arizona Daily Star, where I labored in dubious battle with Young Republicans and old fascists.
Mostly I passed my days at the pool there, too. Not at the Star; at the University of Arizona, where the coeds weren’t yelling at me all the time unless they caught me drooling.
Now here I am in The Duck! City, where everything I do makes life hotter and the windows of opportunity are quickly closed and curtained against the sun.
Cycling. Running. Cooking. Especially cooking. Sometimes I feel as though it’s me browning in the skillet.
Not an early riser by nature, I find myself compelled to rush through the morning’s rituals so I can get out and back in while Tōnatiuh is still warming up in the bullpen.
Coffee. The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, the Albuquerque Journal. More coffee, with toast this time. The litter box. Not for me, for Miss Mia, who has already been in there a time or two while I was ethering my sputtering carburetor. Then the baño for me.
A bite of breakfast — yogurt with granola, oatmeal with nuts and dried fruit, a mandarine, or some combination of these. No tea, it’s already too hot, and we don’t want to overclock the old CPU. Dole out some water to the parched foliage.
And then — hey, what’s that sound, everybody look, what’s going down? — it’s raining. Not for long, not in any quantity (0.01 inch), and it evaporates from the chip-seal in the cul-de-sac before the echo of the raindrops fades.
But still. Music to the ears. Maybe I’ll have that cup of tea after all.
Mad Blog Media 
You cannot use that title without me messing with you. And not exactly frigid up here. I did the near vertical roads along Hyde Park yesterday and got back drenched with sweat.
Herself and I were sweating out a ride through the foothills yesterday when we saw this ratty-ass brindle coyote, looked like he was half fox, half bat, jogging down the middle of High Desert in the high-dollar ’burbs.
Dude looks at us like maybe we’re DoorDash or some shit and suddenly this large deer bolts out from a construction site and nearly stomps his ass into a thin paste.
“Go, Bambi!” we sez to the deer we sez. I guess the heat was making everyone a little crazy.
“Ethering up the sputtering carburetor” you say? Some of your loyal fans might not get that reference. That’s going a long way back to a cold climate and vintage autos.
The dew point here is 50 degrees with a 50% chance of rain here tomorrow. Hope lives. But, until then, the weather is perfectly suited to my Rainsong guitar. See, carbon fiber is good for one thing anyway.
Sandy just told me that Cavendish crashed out of the tour. Suspected broker collarbone, of course.
Ah, that’s too bad. His last Tour, too. Tough way to head for the couch.
Didn’t know it was his last tour. But, he sure could sprint with the best, yes?
Speaking of cycling and climate change, there is this story from Taos. Coming soon to Duke City maybe? The annual income divide there is unimaginable to me. How the hell do you even eat regular on god damn $15K a year?
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-mexico-trail-clash-echoes-culture-war-across-us-west-2023-07-07/
The gulf between rich and poor in New Mexico has been mind-boggling since .. well, since forever.
We had our first experience with it in Santa Fe, in the late Eighties. Herself and I both had pro gigs with decent paychecks (managing a bookstore, helping edit The New Mexican) and we spent every nickel we earned on the basics: rent, food, transportation.
But at least we were living in a tiny two-bedroom casita on Romero Street, across from the Ark bookstore, just behind where the Railyards are today. I could (and did) easily walk or cycle to work. Some folks had to (and still have to) commute to their Santa Fe service gigs from Española, Pojoaque, Pecos, or The Duck! City.
Taos is the samey same. As is Aspen. And Jackson Hole. And Sedona. And any other place the Beautiful People like to visit when their first, second, and third homes grow tiresome. The working stiffs can’t afford to live in town so they commute, live dorm style, camp in their cars, whatever.
The Duck! City is more like Bibleburg or Tucson, with their large military presences, colleges, and a side of tourism. We have Sandia National Labs, Kirtland AFB, and the University of New Mexico, with a side of tourism (Balloon Fiesta). Top jobs for some, service gigs for everyone else.
And The Duck! City also has something in common with Pueblo, Colo. Both places seem to have sizable populations of folks who were born there and never left. They have extended family in the area and like being close to them; they feel a sense of “home” that I’ve never had anywhere. That must be worth something.
The culture and money war is alive and well in NM. I am pretty disgusted with our city government, which seems to lick the assholes of the rich while selling out the poor. But that just reflects NIMBYism first class up here.
Oh, bummer. I saw him give Philipsen a run for his money yesterday. Did he crash today?
Yes, today.
https://apnews.com/article/cavendish-cycling-tour-de-france-crash-40655b1de1b81868e94b0470da93ddf5
Two days of bad juju for sure. Blew a shift yesterday and broke a c-bone today. Ow wow yow zow.
Rewatching the sprint yesterday – Stage 7, it certainly appears that Cavendish was having a bike problem. It certainly didn’t appear that he ran out of gas in the sprint. A jumping chain can sure mess up your concentration. I do think though that Bimian Girmay was cutoff by Philipsen. Based on today’s sprint rules and etiquette, I would have relegated Philipsen. It is sad that Cavendish crashed out, but he has tied Merkyx’s record. He can be proud of that.
Regarding starting fluid, isn’t it nice that we don’t have to wander out into the cold now, lift the hood, pull off the air cleaner cover, stick a screwdriver down in the carb to open the butterfly and spray some starting fluid into the intake. Not too much now. Backfires and subsequent engine fires are exciting. Not to mention that possible engine destruction if way too much is used.
It’s interesting to read about Taos. I would have thought they would have dealt extensively with trail and land use problems at least 20 years ago. Fortunately there is a lot of western communities that have gone through those problems and compromised on the use outcomes, and could be looked to for resolution ideas. Telluride seems to be one that took many years to work out to it’s current status. As an avid MTB cyclist, I admit however, that I’m not a big proponent of new trail development and construction. I’ve seen too much trail degradation due to MTB’s and feel they should not be able to be ridden everywhere. This becomes more of an issue as offroad e-bikes are utilizing trails.
It’s good to hear (read) that you had a brief spritz of precipitation. If only that were to occur each day late in the afternoon cooling everything off, and then the bright sun would rise in the morning for a few hours of fun.
The Taos News has been following the trail thing, if you’d like a local take.
I don’t spend any time there and don’t have a dog in that fight, but there sure are a lot of dogs to fight if you enjoy that sort of thing. Ancient territorial disputes and a few new ones pitting Anglos v. Chicanos v. the Pueblo people v. Uncle Sammy v. New Mexico, et al, etc., and so on and so forth. John Nichols has gotten a book or three out of the doings up there, and there are plenty of people who are not happy with him, either.
Trails climb up a lot of tight arses. I remember people pitching a bitch about the New Santa Fe Trail linking Bibleburg to the Greenland Open Space via the U.S. Air Force Academy, how it would have hobos and dope fiends and preverts peeking in decent people’s windows. Khal may know a little sumpin’-sumpin’ about how the Dale Ball Trails came to be in Santa Fe; if he doesn’t have the 411 on that, my man Matt Wiebe can give us chapter and verse when he gets done chasing salmon around the Alaska coast.
Trails also get overloved in general — never more so than during the Reign of the Bug — and “enhanced” by riders who consider themselves design experts. We have a lot of that going on here in the Foothills, along with e-bikers making their presence known. I see many tire tracks and few skills.
E-bikes are not allowed on non-motorized trails, single tract hiking, biking, and equestrian trails, in the Coronado National Forest here in SE AZ. But, local forest managers can change that after public notices and ecological impact studies are done. My, opinion is they have no place on single track trails. A high end, fully suspended, fat tire mountain e-bike is a motorcycle, not a bicycle.
Took a few good biffs on mountain bikes I did back when they were mostly unsuspended. I lost enough hide and the repair bills were sobering back then. Can’t imagine what damage I would have done to body/wallet with 29’ers, shock absorbers galore and a goddamn electric motor. If you’ve ever had a tree branch whack you at 10 mph, just imagine adding a few mph to that. As they say “stupid oughta hurt”. My guess is there will be plenty of nimrods on e-bikes being carted off the single track trails on stretchers.
I’ve spent so much time riding rigid steel on the trails that I got to where I couldn’t ride my old DBR with its suspension fork. Unplugged my mojo it did. So when the fork sprung a leak and HippieTech was no longer around to provide a repair/rebuilt canti-boinger, I went with a steel Soma fork on the sumbitch and called it good.
Riding rigid, whether it’s flat bar, 26-inch wheels, and 2-inch tires or drop bar, 700c, and 33mm, keeps me honest about my skill set and insurance-policy limitations. I pick days and times when I’m pretty sure traffic will be at a minimum, avoid the more technical sections (even the ones I know I can ride), keep my eyes and ears open, and yield trail to everyone, even if I have the right of way.
I don’t even wanna think about adding a motor to the mix. And I’d rather not see anyone else with a motor out there either. We occasionally shared trail with the putt-putt crowd back in Bibleburg, but since they were the ones doing all the trail maintenance until Medicine Wheel started lending a hand, we considered it part of the cost of doing business on the singletrack.
Also, most of those throttle-twisters knew what they were doing.
Ebikes are great but I am seeing the lack of operator ability and education for using them affect their perception. As long as a user is not tearing up the trail and they are practicing proper trail etiquette, I don’t mind them. But we all know how that goes and as with not all bikes should not be on all trails, regulation is important.
As for fully rigid rig riding (FRRR), I think those who started out before suspension was developed for bikes probably more easily resorts back to that style of riding. I will always have some sort of a fully rigid “Mountain” bike. I also believe that because suspension on a bike consists of a complete system including the rider, a fully rigid bike forces the rider to be more flexible and shift their weight around more. This body motion is good for me as I age.
The TDF is getting pretty exciting as I write this. The sub-par live updates I’m reading have an American going for the summit win and another not far behind.
I’ve not done my homework on the e-bike-access issue, so maybe Khal can chime in here with what’s allowed where.
I do know that we are seeing e-bikes everywhere, on road and off, in all manner of configurations. I doubt your average John Law could tell one from another, because I sure can’t. Some look like bicycles with a tumor on the downtube, others look like baby Harleys, some look like dual-sport motorcycles.
The new state law treats Class I ebikes like bikes, so they are good on trails. Class II and III are not allowed on trails unless local jurisdictions allow it. I’m hopping mad at how the smoke filled room shit got dosed into the state bill at the last minute, as we had been working on a city bill up here.
As the former owner of a 73 Plymouth Fury III, I get the ether/carburetor reference!
Meanwhile, should I be concerned that the fan in my MacBook kicked on high as I read this WaPo story about the heat dome stir-frying the Southwest?
I don’t know what hot is these days.
Heading to Nebraska to help with harvest, although typically the most help I can offer is to stay out of the way. And we got to the Wyoming/Nebraska border, Pine Bluffs, at 1 PM, and it’s 65°.
We get to Sydney an hour later, and it’s 59°
It’s my father-in-law’s birthday, and he’s lived in the same house for 85 years, and said this is the coldest birthday he has ever had.
This time last year, we’d seen a dozen days in the 90s, with about a month’s full still to come. But I’m still wearing a hoodie and sometimes a beanie when I walk Bruno in the morning.
I guess if I’m working harvest, or even just trying to stay out of the way, 60-sumpin’ would be preferable to 90-sumpin’. My one agricultural experience was detassling corn in Iowa in the summer of 1972. I had zero skills and even less work ethic and got the sack at noon the first day for smoking my lunch.
Happy b-day to the father-in-law. Does Bruno get a beanie in the morning too?
Bruno is my polar opposite in the shaggy head department. My kids joke that because I am the tallest in the family and the only one with a chrome dome, it’s my job to tell everybody when it’s raining because I’m the first one to feel the raindrops. Bruno, on the other hand, looks like he needs a haircut about 15 minutes after his last haircut.
It appears that Lucifer is winning the battle down in your neck of the cactus’s. Did you melt into an oozing, stinking morass of goo yet or have you just dry roasted and burst into a popcorn fart of illiterate particles?
I hope you are staying cool perhaps thinking (a la Data in Star Trek) about how you’re going to create a vortex hole into space to let in some of that zero degree Rankine energy and deescalate the panic of electrons in your region.