We were on something of a weather carousel here this morning, a slowly revolving lazy Susan serving up blue sky, clouds, rain, sleet, and snow. Don’t like what’s set before you? Patience. Another option will be coming around directly.
Eventually, ol’ Suze coasted to a stop … on snow.
Oh, well. It was bound to happen eventually. It’s October, f’chrissakes. Cyclocross season in an ordinary year, which this is not, with the Giro just wrapped and the Vuelta ongoing.
I got my cyclocross in yesterday before the weather went all to shitaree, rolling south on the foothills trails past Copper and back again.
No running, thanks all the same. Not even a hike-a-bike. The weather was cool, but the ground was dry, alarmingly so, and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t ride on my trusty Steelman Eurocross.
Alas, as Thomas McGuane has written, “sometimes a man needs to be afoot to keep from going broke, get down and go to his tasks, instead of posing on the horse. …”
So today, no horsing around. I pulled on some long pants, grabbed the push broom, and herded some snow off my driveway. Yippee-ki-yay, etc.
Hard to believe, innit? Wasn’t it just the other day that we were all sitting in front of our TVs as the election returns began unfolding like the wings of a giant vampire bat, or maybe Rodan the Flying Monster, and we began discussing our options for the next four years?
“Ireland?”
“No, too damp. I’d start drinking again for sure.”
“Canada?”
“Too nice. We wouldn’t fit in. I wouldn’t, anyway.”
“Argentina?”
“Hey, if we wanted to while away the hours around a bunch of old Nazis we could just move back to Bibleburg.”
Now, suddenly, here we are, two weeks away from our last chance to chase Adolf Twitler and his Brown Noses out of the White House before they finish gutting the place like crackheads stripping a squat for its copper wire.
I was running a couple errands yesterday and took another glance at our neighborhood polling place as I passed. The line was even longer than on Saturday, this time stretching all the way around two sides of the strip mall and out of my sight as I barreled down Montgomery in the usual thundering herd of honking land yachts.
I chose to interpret this as a good sign. No, not the land yachts. The line. Angry people ring other people up, write letters to the editor, and vote.
I choose to hope — yes, there’s that word again — that this time the right people are angry for the right reasons.
Yeah, yeah, I know. “Hope in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up faster.”
Still, what the hell else can you do? Unless you like living in a Tom Waits song. …
No disrespect intended to the men and women of the U.S. Postal Service, but this absentee ballot is being hand-delivered.
We have voted the rascals out. You’re welcome.
Yesterday we voted ourselves out, for a quick five-mile march through the foothills.
Walking the Dog. Photo: Herself
It was a brisk morning, and we didn’t get out until noonish, because the sun doesn’t clear the Sandias at Rancho Pendejo until sometime after 9 and we’re rarely in a rush unless Herself has a long list of chores to be accomplished, which come to think of it is almost always.
The Merrell Moab 2 Mid Ventilator boots have broken in nicely after about 20 miles of light hoofing, and this morning I planted one of them in Adolf Twitler’s oversized fundament, metaphorically speaking.
It’s my second try at kicking his fat butt; let’s hope this time it helps do the job.
If the boots get ’er done, I’ll buy a second pair, because it seems that every time I find footwear that suits my dogs, that model is instantaneously discontinued and replaced with some Nazi bondage gear.
There’s always the stick, of course. But I don’t think the SS boyos will let me anywhere near Adolf if I’m waving Ol’ Hickory around and screeching about going all Andy Jackson on his ass.
Now that’s what I call getting some big air.The view from the Candelaria Bench Trail is pretty spectacular. I can only imagine what it’s like a few hundred feet above it.
Herself and I were slouched on the back patio at El Rancho Pendejo, airing the cat, birdwatching, and enjoying our respective tasty beverages when I spotted a rara avis over the Sandias.
We haven’t seen many aeronauts this year, not since The Bug® came to town. This one was definitely not making a maiden voyage — he or she stayed aloft for the better part of quite some time, cutting didos above the Candelaria Bench Trail.
Apologies for the poor image quality. I sold my Canon DSLR a while back and the point-and-shoot I grabbed just can’t bring ’em back alive from a distance.
The Granite Face on the Whitewash Trail is no place for an elderly fella with a dodgy ankle. But I’ll probably hike up the sonofabitch anyway.
Once I saw a young man yell “look” in the lobby and let his prick hang out; he closed his overcoat then and tried to run out the door, rather swirled clumsily in the revolving door. One woman screamed but most people shrugged. Depressing. He needed help. A lock on his zipper for beginners. — Jim Harrison, “Wolf.”
Faced with the ceaseless weenie-wagging that constitutes our national politics it’s easy to forget that the world remains a remarkable place.
Yesterday during a brief hike in the Sandia foothills my iPhone hooted. It was a text from Apple advising me that it had received my MacBook Pro, shipped the previous day, and that the agreed-upon repairs would commence directly.
It was not that long ago that I would have had to wait until I got home and checked the answering machine to see whether the typewriter repairman had gotten around to my Royal manual yet.
Of course, my hip pocket was a quieter place back then, what with no mobile phone and a wallet that bordered on the anorexic; no matter how I stuffed it with money it always vomited it up somewhere.
And if I’d wanted to snap any photos during the hikes I was mostly not taking I would’ve had to pack along the Pentax MX camera I had acquired in a trade with an iffy acquaintance. I got the camera, some cash, and a bit of the old nose whiskey, and he got my S&W .41 Magnum (I was slightly overgunned at the time).
Later this gent would draw a short stretch at Club Fed in Texas, not far from where Apple is resolving the shortcomings of my MacBook. Not for anything involving the .41 Mag, or me, happily. Last I heard he had become a respectable citizen and taxpayer, a credit to society, just like Your Humble Narrator.
Time passes, and things change. For instance, it was probably fortunate for me that I shipped my MacBook in when I did. Just this morning MacRumors noted that this mid-2014 edition of the venerable 15-inch laptop will be added to Apple’s list of vintage and obsolete products come Halloween.
The 13-inch model I’m using to create this post is already on the list, as are all the other Macs in the house, save the iPhones and iPads. The 2014 MacBook Pros are supposed to remain eligible for service indefinitely, says MacRumors … “subject to parts availability.”
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