Following the news was starting to feel like losing a shit-eating contest, so I stepped away from the Mac and treated myself to a little expedition down to the bosque.
It was something of a whim, actually. I just grabbed the Soma Pescadero and without a plan in place took the Paseo de las Montañas trail down to I-40, rolled up and over the bike-ped bridge, and then risked life and limb riding Indian School and Washington to the brief I-40 Trail at Carlisle, which leads to the North Diversion Channel Trail.
But instead of turning northward as per usual, to head back to the Mac via Osuna-Bear Canyon, I swung south. What the hell? I thought. Why not? Let someone else gnaw on that shit sandwich for a few hours.
Ridden south the NDCT has an exit onto Indian School, which becomes Odelia as it traverses I-25. It’s the sort of auto-friendly shooting gallery that bicycle advocates call a “stroad,” with a bike lane, and drops past Albuquerque High School (pay no attention to the graveyard on your right). To avoid the equally dicey Broadway at the bottom I hung a left off Odelia onto Edith, then a right onto Mountain.
This is the same route I ride to collect the Forester whenever it needs a little love from the Subaru wizards at Reincarnation. But Mountain also winds through Old Town to the Paseo del Bosque trail.
Mountain can be a little sketchy, being a narrow two-lane shared with street people and gas-guzzlers. A seemingly endless construction project that I first dodged in June added a small degree of difficulty, taking me off the street and onto a series of sidewalks from Tiguex Park to the Albuquerque Museum. After dodging a dog-walker, dropping off the sidewalk onto Mountain, and crossing to the opposite sidewalk to punch the bike-ped button at Mountain and Rio Grande, it was smooth sailing to the bosque trail, which I joined just south of I-40.
Then another whim: Check the state of the Rio Not-So-Grande. Up the Gail Ryba Memorial Bridge I rode. Yikes, etc. Back to the bosque trail.
The cottonwoods weren’t showing a lot of fall color so early in the season. Just a hint of yellow here and there. No matter; just happy to be here. I brought arm warmers but never needed them as I cruised along at a pleasant skull-flushing pace.
I shared the trail with kindred souls. E-bikes, recumbents, mountain bikes, gravel bikes, even road bikes (how quaint). One long lean type on a flared-bar, fat-tired gravel bike ahead of me was riding no hands, swaying gently to some music in his mind.
They call me the breeze / I keep blowing down the road
Was he was thinking about ways to drag hapless strangers into unmarked vans and out of the country, or into court to fight some half-baked rap, strip them of their jobs, health care, and reputations, sic’ the thugs in his cult on them, or simply shoulder his way in front of a cluster of cameras so the rest of us have to look at him and listen to his bullshit? If so, I wasn’t seeing it. Just another dude on his two-wheeler, enjoying some fresh air between shifts in the barrel.
As I turned north off the bosque onto the Paseo del Norte Trail and headed for home I thought about how the barrel is with us always. We need a broader view than the one we get through the bunghole.
Mad Blog Media 
Sounds like a lovely ride. What was your final odometer reading?
I’m still riding the Physical Therapy Special, the Stumpjumper set up with Speed City hoops and Schwalbe Marathon Plus tires, so I don’t have to get off and fix anything. Also, trying to avoid massive climbs. But it is getting better. I can ride 10 miles without any pain. At least without pain until I get off the bike! Gonna try for 20 miles on Monday. Just don’t tell my doctors, who don’t even want me on the bike. But they probably don’t want me in a padded cell, either.
The ride covered 33.3 miles and just 1,313 feet of vertical gain (lots of 3s in there). Most of the vert comes on the way home.
Last Sunday I did a 30-miler here in the foothills that took in 2,168 feet of vert. It’s amazing how much up you can find so close to home.
Glad to hear you’re on the Stumpy instead of in the ambulance or on a surgeon’s table. One of the geezers I ride with took a digger on the mountain bike the other day and banged his ribs pretty good on a big ol’ rock. He decided against a visit to the doc and turned up to the next group ride. He was clearly feeling the consequences but having more than a few aftermarket parts in him already he figured there wasn’t much a sawbones was gonna be able to do for him.
During the ride I kept thinking about the EMT who advised me against cycling to the ER the last time I broke a collarbone. “See, there’s this big blood pipe right there and if one of these fragments cuts it open, well …” So I rode the ambulance instead. If I’da bled to death Herself woulda murdered me.
I have a date with a surgeon at the end of October, which I’ll probably need as the disk bulge is not going away and my left leg is starting to resemble a twig. Oh, well…
Well, sheeyit. I guess we all end up on the table sometime. Hopefully not as dinner. Lately I’m starting to wonder whether that might be in the cards. Or on the menu. …
I have great memories of riding, more than once, the Paseo del Bosque with you guys. So, good on you taking advantage of that gem to, as you say, flush out the brain pan. You probably had to flush twice, heh?
Flush and plunge, flush and plunge. It’s a job a work, I tells ya!
I have a shop jam session this afternoon, and, if the stars align, we will have four guitars, one dobro, one slide guitar, an upright bass, and a harmonica. We take requests, but we’re going to sing anyway.
“Can you sing ‘Far, Far Away?’ Then please do.” A request I’ve gotten many’s the time.