Fall color remains elusive at the bosque. But it’s still a fine place to ride the ol’ bikey-bike on a Tuesday morning.
The 32-mile loop I did is about two-thirds easy-breezy like a Cover Girl. But the last bit from Mountain and Broadway back to El Rancho Pendejo has about a thousand feet of vertical in it. And since most of the climbing stacks up on the back side it sorta gets a fella’s attention.
As does the ongoing devolution of TFG. When the legacy media finally start catching on, you know that shit is dire.
A “town hall” that drifted into a “Mister Music, please” segment from Romper Room? A one-on-one Bloomberg interview in which the candidate answered only those questions posed by the voices in his head?
I wonder if there are any early voters who’d like a do-over. Dude makes King Lear look like Norman Lear.
Mad Blog Media 
trumple foreskin, and his cult, live in an alternative reality. Kinda like Matrix, but controlled by a large, damaged, and malfunctioning brain. Not one cultists would change his early vote. Like Carol said, “It’s too late baby, now it’s too late.” Gee, I guess this is what preaching to the choir feels like. Thanks for the opportunity, Patrick
Remember the glory days of 2004, when an anonymous Dubya source derided journo Ron Suskind as being part of “the reality-based community?”
Writing for The New York Times, Suskind said:
Good times. Maybe not.
I think J. William Fullbright once referred to that as the arrogance of power (full confession, read that in high school). We saw how that turned out.
Suskind should have identified the spineless asshole in print. See how much he liked the light of day.
As far as I know, Paddy me boyo, he never gave the aide up. Quite a quote, though, hey? The speculation was that it was Karl Rove, but there were so many devils in that particular hell that you couldn’t tell one from another without a program. Or an ID.
Someone told me TFG stood for The Former Guy, and I laughed cuz I thought he was making up something he could say in mixed company. Turns out, not everyone thinks This Fucking Guy when they see it.
One of my fave shorthands for the dude, to be sure. In my head I always hear it as a Noo Yawk kind of thing: “Dis Fuggin’ Guy.”
Meanwhile I’m salivating over what looks to be a pothole FREE road in your photo. I’ve heard about such things but never seen them here in the Mitten State. Up until now, I thought they were a myth.
That’s the Paseo del Bosque bike path, Herb old salivator. You remember that one from your last visit, yeah?
It’s in pretty good condition, down to Mountain, at least, which is as far south as I’ve taken it lately. The trails and streets here are, like everywhere else, in a variety of states ranging from top notch to bottom of the barrel. Simms Park Road is in both states simultaneously, being half-resurfaced between Tramway and the Elena Gallegos Open Space.
The best part is that the resurfacing just laid a thin veneer of blacktop over the existing cracks and wrinkles, so that now when we zoom downhill on the sumbitch we can’t see the hazards before they present themselves under our wheels.
By jingo it IS a bike path now that I look at it on a big screen and can see the scale of things. ‘‘Twas a fine ride indeed or maybe it was just the company. I can say that we are happy to have more and more miles of bike paths here each year. Good thing since if the potholes don’t kill you on the roads the fekking pickup trucks (seems like every 3rd vehicle) roaring by might.
Herb old buddy, that ride was one of my favorites. Still have the pictures. Good company and the Paseo del Bosque. Hard to go wrong.
Here’s the link Herb. Fine looking fellows in those pix. Khal, Patrick, Andy and I did the Santa Fe century ride the next year and we missed you.
The Irish did Halloween right, before M&M/Mars™️ got their paws on it.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/inside-irelands-gate-to-hell-that-birthed-halloween?rid=0606F4B73C52F9573B04FF3833A40985&cmpid=org=ngp::mc=crm-email::src=ngp::cmp=editorial::add=WeeklyEscape_20241016
If that link makes you sign in, try this one:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/inside-irelands-gate-to-hell-that-birthed-halloween
O buggah. They both make me sign in. No surprise there: Disney owns the outfit now.
Then I probably shouldn’t do this …
In the middle of a field in a lesser known part of Ireland is a large mound where sheep wander and graze freely. Had they been in that same location centuries ago, these animals might have been stiff with terror, held aloft by chanting, costumed celebrants while being sacrificed to demonic spirits that were said to inhabit nearby Oweynagat cave.
This monumental mound lay at the heart of Rathcroghan, the hub of the ancient Irish kingdom of Connaught. The former Iron Age center is now largely buried beneath the farmland of County Roscommon. In 2021, Ireland applied for UNESCO World Heritage status for Rathcroghan (Rath-craw-hin). It remains on the organization’s tentative list.
Rooted in lore
Spread across more than two square miles of rich agricultural land, Rathcroghan encompasses 240 archaeological sites, dating back 5,500 years. They include burial mounds, ring forts (settlement sites), standing stones, linear earthworks, an Iron Age ritual sanctuary—and Oweynagat, the so-called gate to hell.
More than 2,000 years ago, when Ireland’s communities seem to have worshipped nature and the land itself, it was here at Rathcroghan that the Irish New Year festival of Samhain (SOW-in) was born, says archaeologist and Rathcroghan expert Daniel Curley. In the 1800s, the Samhain tradition was brought by Irish immigrants to the United States, where it morphed into the sugar overload that is American Halloween.
Dorothy Ann Bray, a retired associate professor at McGill University and an expert in Irish folklore, explains that pre-Christian Irish divided each year into summer and winter. Within that framework were four festivities. Imbolc, on February 1, was a festival that coincided with lambing season. Bealtaine, on May 1, marked the end of winter and involved customs like washing one’s face in dew, plucking the first blooming flowers, and dancing around a decorated tree. August 1 heralded Lughnasadh, a harvest festival dedicated to the god Lugh and presided over by Irish kings. Then on October 31 came Samhain, when one pastoral year ended and another began.
Better:
https://wapo.st/3Y9tyhQ
Ah, ’twas a fine read that was so. Here’s a short bit I unearthed with an O’Google search that includes imagery of one of the cave’s fabled Hell-Cats.
I haven’t done any caving since I was a young stoner slithering around with pals in Huckey’s Cove, an unimproved offshoot of the massively bogus Cave of the Winds in Williams Canyon at Manitou Springs. There was a narrow lightning-bolt shaped passage down there — The Stovepipe, maybe? — that required a good deal more flexibility of mind and spirit than I possess now. And The Bottomless Pit gave all of us The Fear.
Just say no, kids. It may be legal now but it still won’t make yous smart.