Voted today. Very scary! Boogity boogity boogity. …
Boo!
Month: October 2023
Stocks and bombs
You know, without having to be told, that conversations like these take place.
Nevertheless, reading the actual words is something of a stunner.
Q.: “Hamas has created additional demand, we have this $106 billion request from the president. Can you give us some general color in terms of areas where you think you could see incremental acceleration in demand?”
A.: “I think if you look at the incremental demand potential coming out of that, the biggest one to highlight and that really sticks out is probably on the artillery side.”
— from a General Dynamics third-quarter-earnings call on Oct. 25.
“Lord Death is a real big eater,” as Jim Harrison once wrote. And His shit is pure gold.
What is the sound of no snow falling?
Dude, we got to bed at midnight, after mildly terrifying descents of both the Eisenhower Tunnel and Fremont Pass in the giant bus sleigh, which . . . barely made it the last miles to the college due to a mechanical issue. Also, it only had one headlight. — Hal Walter, who joined son Harrison for a Colorado Mountain College team bus trip to the NJCAA Region IX Championships Oct. 28 in Beatrice, Neb., after their return to Leadville in the dreaded wintry mix
We may be short of water here in The Duck! City, but we are also light on what state departments of transportation call “winter driving conditions,” a state of transportation that I do not miss in the slightest.
I don’t drive much in any conditions these days. Duck! City motorists lean toward the Four I’s — Inept, Inattentive, Impaired, and Insane — and are reliably unpredictable under sunny skies on dry roads.
So, even in good weather, I tend to limit my happy motoring to the weekly grocery run. That way the odds are 50-50 that I’ll have something to snack on while waiting for the paramedics.
And winter driving? Cyclocross may have ruined that for me before I ever got to The Duck! City. I always loved racing in mud and snow, because I was a strong runner, but unless I was promoting the event I was at least an hour’s drive from whatever soupy and/or snowy mess awaited me.
If the forecast were particularly dire I might drive up the day before a race, treat myself to a motel room and a restaurant meal. My ass didn’t always get a whuppin’, but my wallet pocket did.
Once, when we were living in Crusty County, I nearly slid off the icy descent of State Highway 96 through Hardscrabble Canyon en route to a race in Pueblo with the Bicycle Racing Association of Colorado’s cyclocross race kit — and my own race kit, including two expensive bicycles — piled high in the bed of my 2WD Toyota truck.
“2WD Toyota truck?” you inquire? Why, yes, it was blindingly pig-ignorant, thickheaded, and just plain stick-ass dumb of me, especially since I also owned a 4WD Toyota truck, and thanks for asking.
But as I recall the BRAC kit was already stacked in the bed of the 2WD truck, moving it over to the 4WD would’ve been a hassle, and surely the extra weight of all those plank barriers, metal stakes, and Reynolds 853 Steelman Eurocrosses would help keep the rubber on the road?
Just barely, as it turned out. Somehow I managed to keep the truck out of Washout Creek and the front end pointed downhill and made it to Pueblo in plenty of time to see hardly anyone turn out for the race because … well, it was in Pueblo.
Most of the racing then, as now, was in the Boulder-Denver clusterplex. It’s where I had to go to fetch the race kit. And if you can race twice a weekend just one cup of bespoke java from home, well. …
This was one of the reasons our Bibleburg races drew about half the entrants of a Boulder ’cross. In The Steal City, yet another hour’s drive south in bad weather, the race organizers were lucky to draw flies. Why was I there? Because I was the schmuck with the race kit.
Eventually I wised up. My last race was in Bibleburg, after we gave up on Crusty County. I didn’t promote it. Didn’t fetch the race kit. Rode my bike to the race.
It should go without saying that since I didn’t think to bring a spare bike slung over one shoulder, I flatted about halfway through and chalked up a big fat DNF in my final cyclocross.
After I replaced the punctured tube, I hung around for a while to heckle the Boulder-Denver contingent — “Hey, that looks just like cyclocross, only slower!” — and then pedaled lazily home.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. But it was a beautiful day just the same.
Toasty … for now
Miss Mia Sopaipilla may find her daily backyard promenade going on hiatus for a while.
The weather wizards say a “potent cold front” is hooking up with a “fast-moving storm system” and we may be compelled to endure a short stretch of weather that is something other than 65° and sunny.
O, the agony. Still, if whatever we’re served comes with free water I’m all for it.
Expectations are that this first taste of winter weather will have a short shelf life here. Our readers to the north seem to be in for some heavy shoveling, however. Be judicious; give some thought to the lower back.
Speaking of shoveling, Mike Ha’pence just got tossed onto the growing pile of GOP Pestilential Candidates Who Are Not Orange and Under Indictment. Gosh, Mother, it makes a man’s eyes damp, for sure.
Footnote
as long as you watch your step.
Man, am I ever glad I’m not an influencer.
If I were, I’d feel obligated to opine on Hamas v. Israel; the Rt. Rev. Dr. Mike Johnson (R-Pecksniff), our latest Shaker of the Hose; psycho killers who use gunfire to drown out the voices in their heads; and various Trumps getting hauled, with eyes a-rolling at the sheer injustice of it all, into various courts of law.
But I ain’t. So I won’t.
Besides, my back hurts, because I somehow managed to banjax the bugger on Monday while shoveling out Miss Mia’s litter box and ever since have been lurching around the vicinity like an angry Ent with one root in a cast.
I haven’t even considered riding or running. But I have shuffled out for a few short hikes with my trusty staff and to date have not rendered dysfunctional any other aspects of the organism.
Also, I have not been compelled to endure bombardment, conversion, gunfire, or jurisprudence. Thus, winning, etc.
In other news, we’ve been watching a graphic-novel adaptation on Netflix, the limited series “Bodies,” and I can’t recommend it as a muscle relaxant. More of an irritant, really. But we’re six episodes into the sonofabitch and I want to find out how it ends so I can hate it properly.
Ordinarily I love almost any tale involving time travel. But at the moment all I can think of is going back to 1976 and telling the 22-year-old me not to work the top end of a hand truck while delivering a large refrigerator into an upstairs apartment.
“Dude,” I’d say, “just look at me. I’m all that remains of you. There are ways to get beer money that are easier on the lower back. For starters, weed is gonna be legal here in 2012. You heard it here first. Get busy.”
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