Ruts. I’ve been stuck in a couple lately.
Take the 20-mile ride around the foothills. Please. Sure, you do enough of them, they add up to a nice pile of miles at week’s end. But still, damn.
Also, the not running. I never have been and never will be a “runner.” But as Richard Pryor has taught us, running is a useful skill to have at one’s disposal in case of emergency.
But you got to stay in shape and shit, ’cause you never can tell when in real life you will have to … run! That’s right, run. Goddamnit, run. Why get killed when you can … run! That’s right, a lot of people get a ass-whipping, and you could run. You’ll be in the hospital, your ego will heal a lot faster than a broken jaw. ’Cause you’ll still be in the hospital talking about “Shit, I should have run.” Run! That’s right! If somebody pull a knife on you, and you can’t pull out nothing but a hand with some skin on it, your intelligence ought to tell you to … run!
So I’m slowly easing back into running — nothing outlandish, just a 5K, one per week — just in case anybody gets the idea that I’d be a whole lot quieter in a hospital with my piehole wired shut.
And I’m trying to break my oh-so-convenient 20-miles-in-the-foothills habit. Today I logged a 33-miler, descending to the bosque for a looksee — some dipshit(s) have been setting fires down there — and then climbing back to El Rancho Pendejo.
This three-hour ride weaves together several of the local off-street bike paths, which is a pleasant change of pace from, say, Tramway, which always makes me feel like a cottontail on a rifle range. That itch between the shoulder blades, etc.
And at the bosque I was rewarded with my first coyote sighting of 2025. Right troublesome little bastards they can be, but I still like seeing them. I’ll take an honest coyote over the devious dawgs of DeeCee any old day.
Mad Blog Media 
I’ll have to take anti-rut lessons from you. I’ve just not been interested in longer rides this last couple years. I think since I had that Covid anomaly. I should get my ass back in gear.
I have to try a little harder to keep it fresh here. Bibleburg had a bigger velo-menu, what with the Santa Fe Trail running north-south from Fountain through the AFA to the Greenland Open Space, all the rolling rural roads to the east and northeast, Highway 115 south to Penrose-Canon City, and the variety of ways to get into some cool climbing to the west (Old Stage Road, Highway 24, Gold Camp Road, etc.)
The psycho motorists and indifferent road maintenance here make me think twice, even thrice, about stuff like riding 14 to Santa Fe. So I got locked into this system where I can get a couple thousand feet of vertical in 20 miles, just doing loops and out-and-back climbs in the foothills.
Trouble with that is when it gets too familiar I start taking things for granted and don’t always keep my eye on the ball. Let the mind wander. It’s a great way to end up a statistic.
I thought about that Rt. 14 ride to Albuquerque and taking the train back, but just have not.
There are a lot of 15-20 mile loops here where I can get in 1,000 or more feet of climbing and they don’t seem to get old. And then that little wee bit of a hill up to the ski lodge, which I still have not done all of (there is a huge boulder at the 13 mile mark at about 9,400 feet), and I’ve often stopped there) since the heart murmur, albeit that arrhythmia seems to have stopped. Probably do that whole thing pretty soon even though it means carrying my weight in water to avoid dehydration.
I just lost my enthusiasm for century rides and that sorta stuff. Not sure why.
I used to ride the mountain bike to Brown Canyon two or three times a week. Friends would ask if it ever gets old. I said never. I see different animals, take different routes back to the home, meet other riders both new and familiar, and talk to visitors at the historic ranch house. You could make it an easy ride or a hard slog depending how far up the trail you climbed. If you went all the way to the dirt road turn off the trail, back to Ramsey Canyon road, and descended back to ranch house, that is a five mile loop. We still hike up there in the cooler weather.
And, no chollas next to the trail! Chollas give me the fear.