“Jungle?” you say. “Looks more like desert to me.”
Indeed it does, especially when you gain some perspective by leaving the mean streets behind and hoofing it a mile or so southeast and about 500 ankle-twisting feet up into the Sandia foothills, just below the Candelaria Bench Loop.
But it’s a jungle, too, down there. And for a cyclist, well … let’s just say we’re not the apex predators.
I was reminded of this on Friday when I got the word that one of my riding buddies had been hit by a car at Alameda and 4th.
He and another riding bud were eastbound on Alameda, preparing to turn left onto 4th. Alas, auto traffic being what it is down there, RB No. 2 made it to the left-turn lane without incident while No. 1 got boxed out. So No. 1 hung a right, planning to make a quick U-turn and head north on 4th.
But there was this car, and the laws of physics were applied, and our riding buddy got carted off to the hospital with what I’m guessing was a pretty significant elbow injury (a couple breaks and a dislocation, according to RB No. 2).
It’s particularly disheartening because he was riding so well and with such enthusiasm last Wednesday. And then this happens.
Still: It could’ve been a lot worse. A lot worse. I ride Alameda west from Guadalupe Trail now and then, to get to the bosque, and I always feel like a rabbit on a rifle range.
Let’s all us cottontails be extra careful out there as we’re hopping down the bunny trail. They’re always locked and loaded on the firing line.
Mad Blog Media 
Hope your buddy makes a speedy and full recovery.
Are you still enjoying the chicken soup leftovers or did you make the chicken tacos this weekend?
Thanks, Libby. I’ve never done an elbow before, just both collarbones, ankles, toes, fingers and thumbs, etc. So I dunno how difficult a comeback the dude faces. Lots going on down there in elbow country.
We have one more serving of soup apiece left. That really is (was) a big-ass pot of soup. Tomorrow I have to devise another weekly menu and hit the grocery with a vengeance. Temps are supposed to drop a bit and we might even get some rain. And those chicken tacos are mighty good, if a tad rich.
I haven’t done any stir-fries lately. Maybe I need to shake things up a bit. Messy, though. What’ve you been cooking lately?
Salads! Lettuces, often the mixed greens and lettuce, sometimes shaved raw cabbage, croutons, chickpeas. Sometimes jarred roasted red peppers , canned tuna or cheese. Usually a bottled dressing. Plenty of organic or limited ingredient choices. It’s hot and I want easy.
Good thinking. Herself usually does our salads, favoring a blend of red leaf lettuce, baby arugula, shaved red cabbage, halved cherry tomatoes, and diced radishes and cucumber, drizzled with olive oil and topped with a sprinkling of salt, pepper, sunflower seeds and piñon nuts.
If we should happen to have any seafood left over from the previous night’s meal and haven’t eaten it for lunch, that’ll go in there too.
Tonight I’m doing these shrimp-and-mango tacos by Martha Rose Shulman. Minimal prep, cooking time, and cleanup, which are all most welcome on a hot summer evening. I use frozen mango chunks to keep things simple.
Ugh. Sorry to hear that. We (three of us somewhat rusty League Cycling Instructors) just this morning finished teaching a League of American Bicyclists Traffic Skills class up here in the City Indifferent for the Bike Santa Fe Board folks. First time I taught it in a while but it comes back to you and we only taught the board honchos as a warmup to doing mere mortals.
If we could put our students in the tailgun position in a B-17 and tell them they were about to be attacked by Messerschmitt-109s, it might be more useful training for riding in traffic. All three instructors had war stories to tell.
Jesus, and I was just explaining to them the “jug handle turn” for situations like that when you can’t quite make it across the firing range, er, I mean, over to the turn lanes, intact. Like it was more safe or something.
Friend of mine in college high sided off his motorcycle at high speed and broke his elbow in multiple places. I was trying to keep up with him (headed home from a bar, of course), but he was on a 1000 cc Gold Wing and I was on my CB450 doing close to triple digits but not keeping up, so all I saw was the dust and sparks till I got to where he was sitting there bleeding. The surgeons wired the elbow together best they could and it sorta worked after that but never as good as God intended.
My best to your friend.
This intersection is Death. Here’s a pic from Kindly Old Doc Google. There are just so many ways shit can go wrong there.
As you know, there’s a metric shit-ton of this kind of thing down here, and sooner or later you’ll find yourself forced to (a) deal with it or (2) seek out some sort of creative alternative.
The first time I rode Alameda east from the bosque I said “Never again.” There’s a not-so-awesome bike path that parallels Alameda, and if you can’t bear that there’s a pedestrian crossing at Guadalupe Trail — you can get out of the bike lane there, hit the crossing button, and then scoot across when (if) you get a green light and everyone else stops for the red, ho ho ho as fuckin’ if.
Then you noodle around a bit in a nifty old North Valley neighborhood until you work your way over to 4th via Camino del Bosque, after which you deal with the roundabout at Roy and finally climb up Tramway under I-25 and past the casino to the foothills.
One advantage to riding a cyclocross bike everywhere is that I can get off the pavement and onto one of the many sandy trails, official and social, that parallel so many stroads in the foothills. I did 20 miles today on my Soma Double Cross and I bet 25 percent of that was on trails that run alongside Simms, Academy, and Spain.
My Cross bike with 700-40’s is now my go to citybike.
For some reason I’m really loving the Soma Double Cross lately. It’s got 35mm rubber now, which is fine for most stuff (not long stretches of deep sand), but I have a set of 42mm Soma Cazaderos that should fit, and I may go that route. The subcompact triple (46/34/24T) and wide-range cassette (13-34T) can handle pretty much anything this burg can throw at ’em.
I’m running close to the same gearing on the Long Haul Trucker: 48-36-24 up front with a 11-34 in back on 26″ hoops.
I’ve found a few “certain death” traffic areas near or on route to good cycling areas. I used to just tough it out and do battle with various vehicles trying to pick me off but as time goes by I find the close calls are getting well…closer. As in inches. So I often load bike on hitch rack, drive to where I can safely begin cycling and keep my stress level down. I used to be pretty militant in regards to my right to a lane whilst pedaling but then behemoth SUV’s and pickup trucks, coupled with cell phones taught me that having to drive a few miles to bike was better than being dead or maimed. Yeah, I know it’s giving in to the idiots behind the wheels but as they say, “never take a knife to a gunfight”.
Yup. The vehicles get bigger, the brains get smaller, and the roads stay the same size. It’s a recipe for disaster.
We lost a lot of fine cycling roads in Bibleburg to sprawl and idiocy. I took to self-segregating rather than go toe to toe with the Behemoths, since cycling is already an inherently dangerous activity in and of itself.
Here in The Duck! City I look for workarounds that keep me off the worst streets. We have a good network of on-street bike lanes and separated bike paths, but you still have to thread the needle here and there. Tramway can be very scary, but with a little patience and a cyclocross bike with 33mm tires or better you can skip large stretches of that 50-mph highway.
I still hate driving to a ride. Probably stems from all the driving I had to do to get to races in New Mexico and Colorado from 1988 to 2004.
When we visited Asheville, I talked to a fair number of bicyclists who said they drove to a ride starting point rather than getting splattered leaving from home on two wheels. And I talked to Andy Clarke, former Grand Pubah of the League of American Bicyclists, who said that Asheville would legitimately give even a good bicyclist The Fear. Kinda was the kiss of death for me considering moving there. As much as Santa Fe roads and drivers can intercourse the penguin as far as bicycling, I see it as way easier to stay alive here even if I roll out the driveway and go anywhere I want.
Good judgment, Herb! I and my road cycling friends had too many near misses/partial hits/total wipe-outs dueling with traffic of all sorts. So …. about 12 years ago I said to myself: “If I’m gonna die on a bike, it’ll be because of me, not some inattentive or purposeful idiot taking me out.”
So, I switched to MTB’ing. Helping coach NICA high school mountain-bike teams, etc. I’ve had a few nasty tumbles (my fault); but I’m still alive and kickin’ at 77 ….. much prefer the trails to the roads …. and feel mucho safer.
We get a lot of traffic on the trails I can access straight out the front door, so I have to stay focused on the task at hand. If the mind wanders in a blind corner someone flies off into the pointy bits.
There are all types out there — walkers, dog-walkers, joggers, runners, mountain bikers, gravel riders, and one crazy old bastard on a cyclocross bike. Mostly everyone gets along, but occasionally you’ll bump into someone who didn’t learn how to share in kindergarten. Being a man of leisure I can pick my day and time and usually am rewarded with a low head count on the trails, which, yay. And I yield to everyone because I’m never in a hurry. Just happy to be alive and out there.
PO’G: Wonderful wisdom and insights as always! Thanks!
Lack of hobbies/passions/external commitments outside a job is unfortunately the downfall of many retirees I know.
Doesn’t matter what those engagements are …. but waking up everyday with a desire and ability to relish in your talents, and maybe even contribute to the betterment of others/your community, is exhilarating/challenging/frustrating; and motivation to keep on keepin’ on!
Stay the course – – keep the faith – – Rule #1 is FUN!
PS: I was a mechanical engineer and USAF fighter pilot: Human behavior is a side passion!!
I truly miss the fun and the fitness. Every now and then I get the urge to go to the shop and build up another Double Cross. But the fear outweighed the fun, and it still does. What I witness while driving the car just reinforces the decision to stop riding. It is an individual choice and a hard one to make. A change of identity is what. I was a cyclist. I’m not quite ready to call myself a guitar player. Maybe someday soon.
The bike made the entire second act of my life possible. Cycling has gotten more dangerous since 1985, for sure — especially since I ain’t getting any younger — but I still relish a good day in the saddle. Especially when I can chirp “Good morning!” to some Fun Hog chugging along with the full BroDozer™ package — double-boinger, hydro discs, tubeless fatties, hydration pack, baggies and pads, helmet with visor — and then zip around them on a 26-year-old cyclocross bike rocking 33mm rubber, rim brakes, and drop bars.
It remains a challenge, and I like to think it helps keep me from losing my last few marbles. “I can still do this. Not as fast, maybe, and with a good deal less panache, but I can still do this, kinda, sorta.”
I enjoy a road ride, too, solo or with company. But you don’t have to be Nostradamus to see where that might take you. Everyone doing 10 to 20 mph over the posted limit, drifting across the fog lane onto the shoulder, using the bike lane as a right-turn lane or a parking space, running stop signs and red lights, staring at their phones as they merge into traffic, passing in the breakdown lane, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.
Motorists crash into houses here. This is no shit. It is also entirely avoidable. That’s a fixed object there son! It ain’t making any sudden moves on you. The old “sun was in my eyes” gag won’t fly there, Skeezix. You hit a fucking house and killed a dude in his living room.
“Bicycling is an inherently dangerous activity,” as the old USCF releases used to read. Definitely a risk. But how big a risk?
I recently read an interesting piece in The New York Times about alcohol and the ongoing debate over the risk-reward aspects of drinking even just a little bitty bit. Tim Stockwell, a scientist at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, told author Susan Dominus that he and his colleagues “detected a statistically significant increase in risk for all-cause mortality — the risk of dying from any cause, be it medical or accidental — for women who drank just under two drinks a day and for men who consumed more than three a day.”
But then he bottom-lined it for her:
I take this to mean that, yes, some of our habits can shorten our lives. But if we enjoy a daily drink — or a daily bike ride — maybe we have a little more fun in a little less time?
I used to ride to earn my beer. Now I drink a beer or two sitting on my ass strumming a guitar and singing a song. Maybe the act of playing and singing increases my life span as much as the beer decreases it. It’s in the math. Want to substantially increase your lifespan? Quit worrying. Stress is the killer.
Whatever makes your heart go pitter-pat, me lad. It’s all good. The people I’ve known who were miserable in retirement didn’t know what to do with themselves after their jobs went away. No hobbies or other pasatiempos; disinclined to volunteer at one thing or another.
Me, I like to ride, run, blog, cook, and occasionally go places to flush out the headgear. Haven’t been doing much of the latter because it doesn’t seem fair to leave Herself without a cook and a cat wrangler while she’s working full time and trying to find space for her own hobbies.
PO’G: Purely administrative to your blog. When I send comments to a specific comment (yours and other readers) in response to their specific comment online, it doesn’t seem to attach directly to their comment. It gets added somewhere in the mix of comments.
Sorry to trouble you with the 21st century complications of internet nuances, but IT DRIVES ME NUTS!!
Maybe that’s their way to get more “search the site and $$ hits”? A consumer -oriented lack of facility they should know about?
My apologies …. because I’m an outcome-oriented advocate.
Maybe you could make some $$$$ by suggesting this to them?
Thanks, JD. Anyone else having this problem? I reply to comments from the Comments page in the WP dashboard, not in the actual post itself, and haven’t noticed any issues (that I can recall).
Comments should stack in descending order and indent right — if you reply to the top comment, your reply should wind up at the bottom of that comment pile, indented right. (See “The long view”: Libby commented, I replied to her comment, she replied to mine, each comment stacked below and indented right of its predecessor.) If you reply to a comment somewhere further down in the stack, it should appear beneath that comment, with an indent.
JD, what are you using for a computer? Mac? iPad? PC? Linux? Android phone? Might help me puzzle this out. The indent is subtle, not always obvious. But if you reply to a particular comment using the “Reply” link at the bottom of that comment, your reply should appear underneath that comment.
PO’G: MacBook Pro ….. JD
I’ve found that it appears my comments in reply to a previous comment do not look as though they will end up in the right location, but then they do. Although I don’t know if I always go back to check. For all I know my comments are ending up on that Maga site that I embellish with my presence.
It took me awhile to settle into retirement. Like five minutes. But being self employed for 40 years; it was an easy transition. Going from not knowing if there would be any shekels each month to tapping SS and 401k on a steady path is the only strange feeling for me. Keep wondering when the $ faucet will turn off. Then I remember that I paid into the stash for 55 years while not racking up debt so it’s “drinks are on Herb time”. Well …..unless Rethuglicans somehow fester SS which oddly, one of the fekkers is always trying to do. Or if I lose my marbles and push SEND and forward portfolio to nice folks calling me daily to help pay off my student loans which I didn’t know I even had.
I hear ye, Herb. I did 15 years with newspapers and then twice that as a cycling freelancer. So there was no gold watch and retirement banquet. One by one the magazine gigs drifted off the back like watercarriers with the crook gut and soon I was alone in the wind, with no one to hand me a bottle of IOUs.
Suddenly there were no deadlines, and no having to hound editors over unpaid bills.
“Did you get paid this month? You did? Well, you can draw the cartoon and write the column, then. I’ll get back after it just as soon as I see a check, and it clears.”
Uncle Sugar sends his Dead President Love Notes every month without prompting, and I haven’t had to tap the 401(k) because Herself is still on the clock, bringing home the bacon. And yeah, it feels weird. I had figured that either SS or I would be long dead by now. The Rethugs want to make SS another revenue stream for their owners and leave us high and dry in the sun on the dusty banks of an empty arroyo.
I haven’t got the student-loans pitch yet. Have you gotten the “friendly reminder about your court date?” I’m getting that one regularly, despite having retired from crime even before I gave up the journalism.