Landscraping

~ Patrick O'Grady
Just take a little off the top, please.

July has been a scorcher, with 12 triple-digit days and one record high (104° on the 17th).

It was 103° yesterday. Not a record, but still, damn. Today, at 3 p.m., it’s 97°.

And I’m gonna try real hard not to bitch about it because I’m not one of the landscapers trying to make a silk purse out of the sow’s ear that is our back yard.

I didn’t even go out to sweat for fun yesterday.

But the landscapers were out there bright and early under Tōnatiuh’s broiler, with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, excising scorched swaths of grass, excavating edging stones gone all wobbly like a meth-head’s dentition, and wheelbarrowing railroad ties off to … who knows? A railroad, maybe?

All the livelong day, too. As an expression of solidarity while motoring to the grocery for some grub that would not require cooking I refused to turn on the a/c in the Subaru.

19 thoughts on “Landscraping”

  1. If you put a cooler full of a “metric shit ton” of iced down gatorade on a patio table in the shade, you will earn some dividends.

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    1. That’s a swell idee, Paddy me lad. We pulled the patio furniture’s cushions out of their footlocker and set up a break area in the shade, but cold beverages probably would not suck at all.

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  2. Painted houses in summer, I did. As well as lawn work and a stint slinging concrete blocks. Led kayak excursions and undertook bike tours. But NEVER in heat anywhere near 100 degrees. Sweet Jeezus…While I appreciate that a lack of humidity makes the temp a tad more bearable-I also once, by accident, microwaved my hand which is what I figure it feels like digging up your yard.

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    1. I did short stints of heavy lifting in hot weather as a young dope fiend in Colorado, mostly for beer money, occasionally to pay the rent.

      Installing home improvements (storm windows, screens, patio covers, etc.). Delivering appliances. Tarring roofs and shoveling landscaping gravel for a wealthy trouser stain who showboated around town in a right-hand-drive Bentley.

      Tell ya what: It made journalism look real good. You can do that shit in the shade.

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  3. Rainy here again. Middle of the afternoon and it’s 81°. Too much rain, too much shade.
    Somehow we’re in a bubble, not going to complain, cuz I know it’s our turn next.

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    1. That was SOP in Bibleburg back in the Sixties and Seventies. The clouds would come sailing in over the peak in midafternoon and a dash of rain would cool things down a bit, which was nice, even though San Antone remained all too fresh in our memories. Great John God, did that place ever get hot.

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  4. Exterior painting at high temps is not a good thing. The paint does not want to flow very well above about 95F.

    I’ve always enjoyed the outdoor work, even at warmer temps. But well, memories being just that, I don’t see myself out there these days working in the warmer temps. It’s kind of like thinking that you are as fast as you were when you were 25.

    Iced down beer set out just before quitting time sure would be nice. But then open containers and driving and all that, well you might then just have some guests over for dinner. But hey, that might not be too bad. We can never have too many friends.

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    1. I’ve not done a ton of outdoor work, but I have had a couple bad days in the heat.

      One midsummer day I didn’t drink enough while cycling from Bibleburg to Pueblo for no defensible reason and I was seriously scrambled by the time I got there. Took a long shower, drank gallons of water and Gatorade (and finally beer), ate a ton of food, and went straight to bed like stupid early.

      I paid closer attention to hydration on the return leg.

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    1. This is … weird. Not much info there, not even which shop she worked at. I expect the police reporters at the Journal are swamped, but not all of their subscribers have Facebook for the rest of the story.

      A cursory check of local shop websites turns up bupkis; I don’t see anything at BikeABQ or New Mexico Touring Society.

      If the motorist who hit her just took her home and dumped her there, that’s even worse than fleeing the scene. Unbelievable.

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      1. Perhaps she was in a state (condition) where she felt that she just wanted to go home. An injured person / animal in a confused and injured state typically wants to go to a place of comfort. Either the person that hit her or another motorist may have advised her to go to a hospital but made she said “just take me home”. Her condition then turned out to be severe enough that she died within the time of arrival to her home and when she was found the next day. But hopefully there will be more information in the near future.

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  7. IMO Shawn nailed it. One of the immediate effects of a concussion is fuzzy thinking, etc. Been there, done that. When I was scooped up on the front of a giant pickup during the pandemic, the guy who hit me took me home, called a couple of times after to make sure I was ok. He got a lot of points from me for being nearly the only one who cared. The cops who showed up didn’t do any assessment, notice that I was concussed, or even bother to write it up or get my name. (And this is a pretty bike-friendly city) I was, and still remain, happy that I didn’t finish up as roadkill. I did know enough to have someone in the family call to make sure I hadn’t passed out or whatever. Seems clear that person didn’t have the necessary backup.

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    1. You guys could be right. No hospital could mean no health insurance (or bad insurance and no ready cash for emergencies). Or a head injury and fuzzy thinking.

      I’ve been there. Who hasn’t?

      If I’d been zapped on the bike in that stretch when I was between losing my job at a weekly newspaper chain in Denver and getting hired at The New Mexican in Fanta Se, I’d have been in the hurt locker for real.

      I was 34, on unemployment, and couch-surfing, and my assets were a 1983 Toyota pickup, a Trek road bike, a S&W wheelgun, and a couple of dogs. If I could speak, I might have told anyone who stopped to check me out, “Please take me home.” Home being some generous friend’s place. My driver’s license had a Denver address but I could’ve been anywhere.

      When I played Suburban parkour a couple years later in Tesuque the motorist involved took me to the ER to get scoped out (I was largely undamaged), and her husband replaced my totaled bicycle (a 10-day-old carbon-fiber Specialized Allez Epic). I had a decent job at The New Mex and health insurance, and friends in the bike biz, so if I had been clipped by some hit-and-run psycho I could’ve paid the freight myself.

      My go-to when I hear about some auto-vs.-cyclist nightmare in The Duck! City is to think “psycho motorist.” But even here that can’t always be the case.

      • Update: A couple local TV stations, KOB and KRQE, have followed up on the Journal story, and as I suspected, Rosanna apparently worked at the city’s Esperanza Bicycle Safety Education Center. So she not only rode her red-and-white Trek everywhere, she helped other people get around on two wheels.

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    2. One article said her helmet was trashed and she had a lot of road rash. It is possible that she was in a haze and just wanted to go home but still, to not call 911 with that level of severity is atrocious decision making.

      In my case, I was still unconscious and bleeding from a head injury when the ambulance got to me (I woke up cussing out anyone in earshot as my bike’s front fork and wheel were mangled) so there was no option other than to call the ambulance and police. They stitched me up and sent me home. The post-concussion syndrome started a couple days later and I was back in the hospital for a CAT scan to look for any blood clots on the brain. Took about six to nine months to fully recover and I still can’t do the math I could do before that little brain rearrangement.

      The bike recovered, too.

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