My morning routine changes with the seasons.
Come autumn, the first part of the day is always the hardest — getting out of bed.
Hey, it’s dark out there, man. What am I, a farmer?
Stagger to the bathroom, dispose of the next item on the agenda, pull on some clothes — the past couple mornings, with temps in the low 40s, this means a T-shirt and lightly trail-shredded Patagucci joggers, not my ancient, decaying Columbia shorts — and shuffle into the kitchen to mumble “Hell’s goin’ on in here?” to Herself and Miss Mia Sopaipilla, who do not object to early rising and consider Your Humble Narrator a hopeless slacker.
Next there must be strong black coffee, and the morning news, which is mostly what you might expect from an afterlife peek at the front page of The Lake of Fire Cauldron-Inferno (“The Hell You Say!”).
A slice apiece of homemade whole-wheat toast with Irish butter and French jam helps soak up the acid (avoid those stomach ulcers, kids!). And then breakfast gets serious.
This time of year it’s likely to be hot oatmeal with a dash of brown sugar, maple syrup, cinnamon, dried fruit and nuts, plus a tall mug of tea. Yogurt, müesli, and smoothies are generally summertime fare, while eggs with taters and chicken sausage have been more of a lunch than a breakfast in recent years.
Just now as I was finishing my tea I heard a thunk! in the living room that couldn’t be attributed to an old house slowly warming as the sun peeks over the Sandias.
It was a dove taking a header into the picture window — they will do that, especially if the neighborhood Cooper’s hawk is clocked in and on the job — but this one apparently augured in without assistance.
Dazed, the bird squatted on the landscaping rocks, blinking like an old computer slowly booting up. Slowly, the frantic breathing became more regular; next, the head swung first this way, then that; and poof! Liftoff, straight up into the backyard maple.
No harm, no foul. Fowl? No, the sun may finally be up, but it’s still too early for cheap jokes.
Mad Blog Media 
If you ask me, I would say that you had a very fine morning. So did the dove, in a way. Did you grab the hickory staff and go walkabout with no destination in mind?
Nossir, but I’ll probably take that up again directly. This week I felt like running, so I did that on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, and rode on Tuesday, Wednesday, and today. Friday I took completely off, something I hadn’t done in a month.
Today was a beautiful day, if a bit brisk. I jumped on the New Albion Privateer and went for a 20-mile ramble in the foothills between the tram and Candelaria, just picking roads at random. A fair amount of up and down it was, just short of 1,400 feet. Didn’t see any quail, but the roadrunners were sure busy.
When I worked at Deere’s HQ, also known as the Rusty Palace (made from Cor-Ten steel) you’d occasionally have to walk from one building to another in this glassed in, elevated bridge between buildings. Every now and the a bird would fly into the glass. Ducks and geese made an incredible noise. The oddest thing would be that they would leave an imprint on the glass. It was oil off the feathers. It was like a bird hologram.
The first time we saw one of those bird holograms, on a sliding glass door, we were all like, “What the hell is that?” Until we saw a bird actually hit the sucker and make a fresh one. It’s amazing the sound you get from even a smallish dove bouncing off that picture window, which is 54×54.
For the Cooper’s hawk, it’s the dinner bell. He drives ’em into the glass and then settles down to a meal on the lawn.
One of our long-term projects is to replace that big-ass window with something more sensible.
Don’t plan on driving to Bibleburg tomorrow.
https://www.koaa.com/news/covering-colorado/interstate-25-closed-in-both-directions-north-of-purcell-blvd-due-to-crash-involving-train
Yeah, Herself told me about that. Apparently it made national news. I’ve driven and bicycled under that bridge more times than I care to think about. It’s south of the old Piñon truck stop and the shuttered rest areas, just before the quarter-mile-oval race track on the east and the KOA campground to the west, off Purcell Boulevard.
It’s miraculous that there was only one death in this mishap. As reported to date, anyway.
Does our national transportation infrastructure need a bit of maintenance, d’ye think?
Civil engineers obviously want to drum up work, but with the national infrastructure grade at C- it seems this bridge rated an F.
https://infrastructurereportcard.org/
That is a great Groucho quote by the way. Sounds like something charlie mccarthy said before he was voted squeaker of the louse house. Or the other maga folks with their eyes on dumpster’s prize.