I’m gonna go out on a snowy limb here and say it was probably a good idea that the Soma Pescadero and I had our maiden voyage yesterday rather than today.
Yesterday it was knickers and arm warmers; today it’s green tea and bloggery.
Cruel it isn’t, though. Not at the northern edge of the Chihuahuan Desert, where we haven’t seen any sort of precip’ in the better part of quite some time.
Here is no water but only rock
Rock and no water and the sandy road
The road winding above among the mountains
Which are mountains of rock without water
If there were water we should stop and drink
Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think
Sweat is dry and feet are in the sand
If there were only water amongst the rock
Dead mountain mouth of carious teeth that cannot spit
Here one can neither stand nor lie nor sit
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
Whew! That Eliot feller would’ve made one helluva blogger, amirite? “The poet’s mind,” he once said, “is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together.”
He also wrote: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.”
F’sure, bruh. Same thing m’self.
Mad Blog Media 
Just a short shower here this morning. Water from th3 sky in any form would be welcome here. Glad you got some.
O, man, it was most excellent. Our weather station’s rain gauge is on the fritz, so I’ve no idea how much we got out of it, but it seems a nice, wet snow. A bit light and a whole lot late, but better late than never, hey?
Big Gummint, or what remains of it, says we got 0.31 inch of precip’. We’ll take it. Now, if something Noahesque would wash away all the fascism in DeeCee, well, that would be a bonus.
That is a decent amount of precipitation for us desert rats! It might make a difference in the severity of the fire season that it sure to come this year. I wouldn’t wish 30 days and nights of rain in DC right now because Congress is not in session. How about West Palm Beach?
Got wet snow all day, which is good when you are in a drought. It has been drier than a popcorn fart up this way.
Da wife and I took a short course up here in the City Indifferent on T.S. Eliot a couple years ago. Waste Land was one of the poems we studied; the classes made my head explode but being a geologist, I was the one asking dumb questions, which the instructor seemed to appreciate. That was with the Renesan program. Then the program went belly up. I guess it is trying to make a comeback this year, but with much scaled down offerings.
I can appreciate some poetry on a very basic level, but a lot of it — most of it? — eludes me. It’s like an iceberg, with only a small portion of the whole shebang above water where you can see it.
When I read a study guide for something like “The Waste Land” I want to run away screaming.
Yeah. That class had a lot of people’s heads hurting. And some in the room were definitely more impressed with themselves than they shoulda been.
I read a bunch of Eliot in high school, because my 11th Grade English teacher wanted us to be literate, rather than the rural hayseeds most of us were in actuality. Tried writing my own T.S. Eliot style poems. I am pretty sure they got lost during the divorce but if I ever find them, I’ll hopefully burn them before anyone sees them. Some things one does during one’s youth don’t age well.
Not to worry, Khal y mi amigos, on the head-hurting.
Try on some philosophy, ethics/morality/integrity, and/or quantum physics courses for a challenge. For me they were like sucking a wheel at the back end of a peloton ….. and realizing I was nowhere near that caliber of performance (intellect) ….. and acknowledging I never would be.
Is that called pragmatism or humility? Probably “self-awareness”! 🙂
Meanwhile …. “IIlegitimi non carborundum”!
Visted me Soma mixte yesterday at the shop for some fitting afore the cockpit parts were on final approach. All The Young Dudes (queue Mott the Hoople) that work there were giving each other looks like” WTF is with this old dude having us rig up this ride with upright bars, that old WW1 looking leather saddle, stump pulling gearing? Is he trying to duplicate his John Deere?” Not enough front tire clearance under the fork crown for the 40’s since if you picked up a small stone or stick you could do a face plant so hoping the 38’s will not be as tall. Winds have been UP this week so my forays on “other” bikes have been in the 10-12 mile range mostly but who cares? At my advanced age I began noticing last year that around the 17-18 mile mark, I wasn’t cooked, but rather just felt like being done pedaling and wanting to do something else. It turns out that my errand running rides to various stores for grub and hardware is 12-16 miles so I plan on doing a lot more of that unless I need to pickup an anvil or some bowling balls.
Your Peski looks great POG, shining like a new dime and holding a stance like a runway model.
That Peski is set up kinda like my Salsa LaCruz. I’ve been meaning to replace the bar tape, as it looks pretty tattered and one of these days the bike is gonna tell me it feels neglected.
It’s pretty much what I like in a bike these days — friction bar-cons, Deore rear derailleur, low end of 30×32-34T, rim brakes, 38-42mm tires.
There are exceptions, but they don’t get ridden as much.
When the people at the shop see your completed mixte, everyone will want one! That includes me. Too bad my mad money went to Gibson this year.
Gratification delayed. hey? I know that feeling. Also, the look on a mechanic’s face when I say I’d like this, that or the other on a frameset.
“Uhhhh … ohhhhhhhkay.”
Occasionally, when he thinks I’m not looking, an index finger slowly orbits his temple for the amusement of his colleagues.
Windy here too, until the snow hit. And the wind will return, like it or not, bearing a fresh load of pollen, dust, fertilizer, wood smoke, you name it.
I seem to be stuck at the 20-mile ride. It’s a Ground-Dog Day sort of deal. I don’t object to anything from 25 to 50, but the 20-miler seems to hit my sweet spot these days. I have groceries to buy and cook, a señorita-citizen cat to coddle, Herself to obey, etc. And this blog to tinker with.
Sometimes they jest ain’t enough hours in the day.